Letters to the Editor
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Robertson's law school
Given that Christian Fundamentalists are more like Islamic Fundamentalists than they are like actual Christians, and also the fact that the Right wants to make a big deal about people who go to madrassas, let's change the name of Pat Robertson's "school": Regent Madrassa Law School. It says everything you need to say about the place and the slimy little scum who come from it.
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Pharisees and Don'tsees
See, the problem, LeftWingPharisee, is - you caught the deliberate mistranslation in the KJV, but then you got two quotations mixed up.
As frahnkenshteen correctly notes, the Hebrew of Deuteronomy 19:21 DOES say: "Show no pity: a life for a life, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, and a foot for a foot."
But we are not combing the Hebrew Scriptures looking for some out-of-context word or phrase which "proves" that the Hebrew Bible was an arrow pointing towards Jesus.
So, we need to look at the context in which that quote is embedded {Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan's translation / bracketed phrases for clarity}:
"One witness must not testify against a person to inflict any punishment or penalty for a crime that he may have committed. A case must be established through the testimony of [at least] two or three witnesses.
[This is what you must do] if a corrupt witness acts to testify falsely against a person: Two men who have testimony to refute [the false witnesses] shall stand before God, before the priests and judges who are involved in that case. The judges shall carefully interrogate [the refuting witnesses], and if the [first] two witnesses are found to have testified falsely against their brother, you must do the same to them as they plotted to do to their brother, thus removing evil from your midst.
When the other people hear about this, they will have fear and never again do such an evil thing in your midst. Do not have pity in such a case, [since you must take] a life for a life, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, and a foot for a foot."
Now THAT'S what I call taking perjury seriously! Wouldn't you love to get Bill Maher's take on it?
You are thinking of Exodus 21:23-27, where the context is compensation for injuries. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth - NOT an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Huge difference! As you so winningly put it: "No Jewish court ever poked anyone's eye out".
This is in comparison to the Code of Hammurabi; which, well before Moses was a twinkle in anyone's eye, said:
* If a builder builds a house, ... and the house falls in, killing the owner, the builder will be killed. If the son of the owner dies, the son of the builder shall be killed.
* If a man breaks down a wall of a house in an attempt to rob it and is caught, his punishment will be to become sealed up inside the wall as a patch.
* If a patient dies after or in surgery, the doctor's hand will be cut off.
* If a man put another man's eye out, his eye should be put out also.
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Thanks anyway, Bill...
Personally, I would've laughed much harder had Maher not been on the bandwagon of those who thought the unprovoked war on Iraq was a good idea.
It is time to say it: If you were so detached from reality that you supported the Iraq war at any time, you should step back and let the smart people drive. And comment. And write. And, most importantly, lead.
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to want the smartest person you can find
"I have been wondering lately why Americans sniff at the idea of an elite, intellectual person running the country. Doesn't it make more sense to want the smartest person you can find running the show??" -- LeftieLefty
I have three words for you: Robert Strange McNamara.
Smart doesn't mean effective and smarter doesn't mean wise.
Cripes - could you imagine Bill Bradley running the government? Edward Said? Adlai Stevenson could barely keep his shoes tied.
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it's been too long
Satire! Trenchant! LOL Funny!
Urge to kill...receding...receding....
More, please!
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Damned by our own stupidity.
We elite go back and forth over the IQ of the administration. Sometimes we talk about how stupid they are. Sometimes we talk about how smart they are.
I believe history will show that the decision makers and policy makers were quite clever war criminals whose followers were mostly idiots.
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Why not?
Figure the avg IQ of Americans is about 92-95. No higher. Liberals like to point to the 40% high school drop out rate and assume that social engineering is needed. Fact is, people are just dumb. We are a dumb nation.
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Enough Elites
Enough with the "ELITES" already!We had enough elites in the Clinton administration--and look what happened--We didn't have one tenth the dummies to laugh at as We now do!!!It was no fun at all!I mean you can only talk about BLOW-JOBS so long and it's not funny anymore.These days I turn on My PC even before the coffee is done because I know another Bush administration NINNY is gonna do something to start My day off with a HOWL!!! I don't know about you but those DAMN ELITES never made Me laugh so much early in the morn'. Tommie27
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secondary sources
i really liked pennywhistler's two posts, the first is a further discussion of legal systems (why Law didn't start with Yale) and the second is the difference between intelligence and wisdom. the last page, pg 12.
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Country Club Republicans and the Fundies
If one is rascist, sexist, homophobic, and religiously intolerant you are NOT an elitest. IT'S TRUE! You are "classless," and that is what it relates too. It is basically a right wing utopian strategy that needs to be debunked--just as Maher is doing here--very perceptively.
George Will documented the recruitment of the Bush administration from the ranks of the fundamentalist movement a long time ago in the New York Review Of Books. America has been in their hands for over six years now. It's shocking to think it is still news to anybody.
Making"classlessness" a virtue is peculiar to right wing neocon politics, and it's ironic. The moderate Country Club Republicans do not share it with the fanatic members of their coalition--and hardly recognize who they are in bed with. That they still don't get "it" is a problem--and the fact that nobody is getting through--especially the so-called "liberal" media who are now choosing to do the same job to the Democrats they did in '00 and '04. It's as true if you get information from the NYTIMES, CBS, or from Fox News. (Apparently, the Iraq War is not reason enough to change their assumptions.)
The Country Club Republicans may vote with the fundies--but do they want their daughters and sons to marry them? That's what it boils down too. The preachers have accumulated a lot of power built on a pile of straw. If the country is going to move forward in '08 a lot more is going to have to be done to bring out the cracks in Rove's alliance.
That is the focus of the Republican nomination battle, and before eviscerating the Dems, it may be of more value to the nation to point out these discrepancies, then letting cheap shots put yet another national election into the hands of the reactionaries.