Good morning.
- That FOIA thing, with some numbers.
- Change … or not.
- St. Cyril on the Lord’s prayer.
- Climate.
- Flight.
- Art.
- Healthcare and the Jedi younglings.
- Budget and the latest version of the bill … and a big lie.
- Abandoned churches in Russia, a photo-montage. (HT: Paul Gregory Alms)
- Campaign finance.
- Attitudes in academia? Counter-intuitive?
- An Aussie judge strikes out.
That FOIA thing, with some numbers.
There’s not really enough information here to know if those numbers even represent more denials, let alone what percent happened under the Bush administration and what percent were denied by Bush appointees who Obama hasn’t been able to replace yet. If Obama’s really no better on FOIA, of course that’s a bad thing.
But where were you when Bush was president? Funny how rarely you complained about him while now you criticize Obama by saying he’s too much like Bush? WTF?
Change … or not.
So 43% of Americans “strongly disapprove” of Obama (according to Rasmussen, a polling firm that is consistently an outlier and biased towards Republicans, owned and run by former paid consultant for the Bush administration.) Consider that 33% of Americans are “not sure” or don’t believe that Obama is even a natural-born citizen. I think it’s safe to say most of them “strongly disapprove” of Obama and would have “strongly disapproved” even if he single-handedly saved America from nuclear Armageddon and invented a car that runs only on water. Another 10% of strong disapprovers is hardly a big deal.
An Aussie judge strikes out.
Wow, that’s messed up.
No comment on the Pope sex-abuse scandal?
Of course we are assuming that FOIA requests are the same today as they were under the Bush admin. I could see how a metric like this could be gamed by a group making a huge number of spurious requests they would know the administration would have to deny (say requests for nuclear launch codes) thereby making it look like Obama is ‘worse than Bush’. Not saying that’s actually happening but one should at least look to see if the nature of FOIA requests have changed since Obama came into office. Its possible revalations about torture and terrorist policies have driven a lot of innocent FOIA requests that are simply in areas that need to be denied.
Healthcare and the Jedi younglings.
I’m not sure how the blog you linked to relates to your choice of headline for this. Exactly how is the current political wrangling on the healthcare bill like a pseudo-genocide in a fictional cartoon universe?
Boonton,
On #7 I liked the poetry of the paragraph,
JA,
Sex abuse and pope, is that a reference to the last item in passing? I think the “scandal” is mostly in the minds of those who hate the catholic church (of which I note I am not a member). Read this for a viewpoint likely other than what you’ve been ingesting. It’s not about the “kids” its about attacking the church.
I think the “scandal” is mostly in the minds of those who hate the catholic church (of which I note I am not a member).
As far as I can tell, these are the facts and they are undisputed:
A Catholic priest forced an eleven year old boy to perform oral sex on him. Ratzinger himself approved this man to go to therapy, rather than turning him over to authorities. The man later went to do a different parish and raped more children.
Even your article does not deny this. It’s also been reported that the Catholic church in Munich covered up for hundreds of child predator priests in Germany in the 70s.
Are you really going to pretend that Ratzinger knew nothing about any of that, despite having been caught red-handed refusing to go to the authorities in this case?
I’ve learned by now to never underestimate the power of denial, but damn. This is getting ridiculous. How much smoke does there have to be before you admit there’s fire?
Nothing in Catholic theology claims becoming Pope indicates the man is worthy of sainthood. In fact, its quite possible for Popes to end up in hell. I think the current Pope is seriously tarnished by this. That’s not to say, though, he cannot redeem himself through a sincere and honest acknowledgment of how and why these mistakes were made.
JA,
You perhaps “hate of the catholic church” is not the root cause. Recall the Darfur genocide which gots lots and lots more press than the genocide(s) in the Congo, yet occurred over a shorter period of time and involved two order of magnitudes less people. The latter should have gotten more coverage and notice but did not. Similarly, while the sex abuse in our public educational system is many orders of magnitude larger, is closer to hand, and so on … what gets the press …. the Pope. Why?
Catholics think it is an animus/attitude regarding them. That may be correct. You can’t cast public aspersions about Blacks or Jews … but you can tell Catholics and Priests. Is there a connection? What do you think? Why did the Pope and the Sudan get the press but the bigger but equivalen problems didn’t?
Mark,
I’m not familiar with your claim of sex abuse in education being many orders of magnitude larger. Do you have a cite for that? Were abusers sheltered from the authorities and put in positions where they could continue their rape?
As for the Sudan and Congo, I’m not sure I see your point… Why do you think one got more coverage than the other, if in fact it did?
As for Catholics vs. Blacks and Jews, there’s a big difference between criticizing an organization — which is what we’re doing — and criticizing a group of people, which we absolutely are not doing. In fact, many times I’ve argued on this very blog that Catholic laypeople are much more reasonable (and liberal!) than the Catholic Church hierarchy. (E.g. the majority of American Catholics are pro-choice.)
A better analogy would be criticizing the Israeli government, which is emphatically not antisemitic, no matter how often the (Israeli and American) right pretends that it is. (Or criticizing Bush, which the right pretended was anti-American, etc.) Nobody’s picking on Catholics here, don’t play that card. We’re picking on those who sheltered and enabled child rape on a massive scale.
JA,
From the piece I linked above,
You ask, “Were abusers sheltered from the authorities and put in positions where they could continue their rape? ” Yes.
The link.
You’ve heard of Darfur in connection with genocide? Are you claiming that the concurrent (and prior and later) genocidal violence in the Congo got more press?
No. You. Are. Not. There are two groups, one has 100 times more abusers and victims than the other. Which do you pick on. The latter. You just think your being objective. You’re not. You are being led.
Mark,
Googling for that report is difficult because 99% of hits are blogs quoting the exact same article. Finally, I found an AP article.
Problems, as far as your comparison goes:
Some educators immediately took issue with its approach, mainly the combining of sexual abuse with other behavior, such as gestures or notes, into one broad misconduct category.
I’m not saying inappropriate gestures or notes are okay, of course, but they’re not exactly forcing a kid into oral sex, either. Why not break up the numbers into categories? Is it just more useful to make it sound worse?
There’s also no indication of rapists being sheltered from the authorities and kept in positions where they could rape again.
“There is no research that documents teacher union attempts to identify predators among their members.”
Seems odd to expect a union to do investigations. That’s administrators’ jobs. Obviously if a union knew about some sort of abuse, they should report it, the way the Pope did not, but there’s no indication that happened here.
Finally, even if the public school system was 10x as bad as the Catholic church, that doesn’t excuse the Catholic church in the slightest. If you can show me that the schools or whoever was complicit the way the Church was, I’ll be right there with you condemning them, believe me. I’m in no way about double standards.
It’s just that with the church, we know for a fact that there was a pattern of not just abuse — that’s not necessarily the church’s fault, unless we want to get into their primitive views on sexuality, homosexuality, and celibacy — but of sheltering from the authorities and cover up and enabling reoffense.
You’ve heard of Darfur in connection with genocide? Are you claiming that the concurrent (and prior and later) genocidal violence in the Congo got more press?
No, I’m not claiming anything. I’m just wondering what your point is. Why do you think Darfur got more coverage, if that’s the case? Why are you being coy?
No. You. Are. Not. There are two groups, one has 100 times more abusers and victims than the other. Which do you pick on. The latter. You just think your being objective. You’re not. You are being led.
I’m picking on the one I know about. I’ve never heard any credible claims of the California school board harboring and protecting child rapists, but if you show me a good citation, I’ll pick on them at least as much, and if you show me that they did it 100x more, I’ll pick on them 100x as much.
But you haven’t shown that, and you probably can’t. You can just point to a report that doesn’t seem to differentiate between one time in 15 years hearing an inappropriate comment from a bus driver and being raped every day for a decade.
One more thing. The media didn’t start the firestorm about the Catholic church. The abuse victims did. They grew up and spoke and and sued the church. Where are all the former California students?
You perhaps “hate of the catholic church” is not the root cause. Recall the Darfur genocide which gots lots and lots more press than the genocide(s) in the Congo, yet occurred over a shorter period of time and involved two order of magnitudes less people.
I think I could forgive the New York Times for failing to give coverage to a genocide in the Congo more than I could forgive them for allowing a genocide to happen right inside their office building! Here the future Pope was in charge of addressing claims of abuse, in fact the policy was that all such claims had to be forwarded to his office and kept secret.
“There is no research that documents teacher union attempts to identify predators among their members.”
This is a nice scummy sentence. Teachers unions also don’t attempt to identify genocides happening in Africa either. But it is the law that any teacher who even suspects a child might be a victim of any type of abuse must report it, even if their feeling is based on just a hunch. A teacher’s union that kept abusers secret from police and tried to ‘cure’ them with private ‘counseling’ before putting them back int he classroom would find its leaders in jail.