Meaning, there is no way to keep any one $-stream from commingling with all other $-streams in a given enterprise. (This currently causes all manner of havoc at med schools and other research institutions, as they must, under federal law, ensure that no proscribed work on stem-cells be supported in any way by personnel, tools, or infrastructure paid for with federal funds. Google some of the stories on this and be horrified.)

Once you've poured the tea into the ocean, there ain't no getting it back out. If LW's money offsets or makes possible in any way or to any degree her Mom's payments to church, then LW's money is going to the church. Period. Any other interepretation is sophistry -- and rationalization. LW's gut reaction, in this case, is based in sound logic. What to do about it? On that, I got nothin -- except deep sympathy for the LW. Seems to me like a no-win situation.

Oh, and q-bert? "Never" is an awfully strong term -- all it takes is one counterexample to make you wrong, and I am afraid I must give you one. In the summer of '75, a friend and I freight-hopped half way across the US & most of the way back. One night, in either Bakersfield or Stockton, CA, we spent the night at the "Sally Ann" mission -- where attendance at services was mandatory if we wanted to be fed (housed too, I think). Maybe things are no longer that way, or maybe that was a rogue operation. But either way, I'm sorry; you just can't say "never."

...in a different place, usually right around the behaviors with which they feel comfortable, but no further.

LW should consider himself lucky that his wife doesn't take it as far as does Leon Kass (chair of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2002–2005), who wrote:

"Worst of all from this point of view are those more uncivilized forms of eating, like licking an ice cream cone—a catlike activity that has been made acceptable in informal America but that still offends those who know eating in public is offensive."

and

"eating on the street... Lacking utensils for cutting and lifting to mouth, he will often be seen using his teeth for tearing off chewable portions, just like any animal... This doglike feeding, if one must engage in it, ought to be kept from public view, where, even if WE feel no shame, others are compelled to witness our shameful behavior." (The Hungry Soul, pp. 148-149. University of Chicago Press, 1994, 1999)

I have no problem at all seeing Saddam Hussein swing for his crimes. I don't even have a problem with the idea that "we" did it, albeit via the catspaw of an allegedly Iraqi court. After all, he was our creation from the get-go, and it's only right that we bear the reponsibility of dealing with him. (We should also be paying at least a generation's worth of reparations to the Iraqis -- and that doesn't mean letting Halliburton et al profiteer off the reconstruction costs, either. It means paying Iraqi firms and staff, so they can try to reverse their current brain-drain, and have at least a chance at rebuilding a functional society. But that's a rant for another day.)

What I do have a very big problem with is the rush to judgement -- and the highly selective prosecution. But I'll leave it to Jonathan Scwartz, who is much more eloquent than I could ever be, in his posting at Tom Tomorrow's blog, "This Modern World:"

"I realize I shouldn’t be shocked by anything anymore…but I am shocked and frightened by the way this has happened. I honestly never believed the Bush administration could get away with preventing Saddam from speaking about his longtime collaboration with the U.S., which started in the late fifties. (Of course, Saddam may have had his own reasons for not, uh, emphasizing this.) And I really didn’t think they could off him with no trial for the large-scale crimes we assisted with. But apparently they can. It’s just a few steps short of an intra-mob hit.

This is a scary, scary world."

(Original posting, complete w/amusing photo, here:

http://www.thismodernworld.com/)

And it's not one bit less scary with just one of the monsters put down. There's plenty more in that closet, including the others that we've created -- and are creating daily.

What's even worse is that we're not fooling anyone (the whole world knows he was our tool) except the American public, of whom I'd bet that not even 1 in 10 knows that we supported Hussein for decades, and supplied those horrible, awful WMDs that he did use on his own people -- before they became the excuse for this catastrophic war.

Instead of counting sheep (of which there are only a finite number in the universe) when I can't sleep, I'm going to start counting "salon sucks" posts.

Hey, whingers -- I've got a radical suggestion for you: if there's something you don't like in your browser window, close it. If your beautiful mind is being sullied by Salon, click another link. And if you're annoyed about your precious attention being wasted by what you find here, why compound it by squandering even more of that scarce resource writing in to spread your sniveling? If your life is really so empty that writing hate-mail to a website seems a good way to try to fill it, why advertise that fact to the world? Are your minds truly so miswired that your verborrhea actually makes you feel better in some way? Do you also like hitting yourselves repeatedly with hammers, and then bitching about the bloodstains? There are medications for that.

Perhaps, if Congress actually succeeds in raising the minimum wage this year, you'll finally have the incentive you need to spend your time elsewhere, and we'll all have a much happier new year -- yes, all of us, even you.