Incompetent Gonzales finally gone

WASHINGTON (AP) - Alberto Gonzales, the nation's first Hispanic attorney general, announced his resignation Monday - ending a nasty, monthslong standoff over his honesty and competence at the helm of the Justice Department.

It is about damn time.

One of the few things the Republicans and Democrats have agreed on recently is the need for Gonzales to resign. He has proven incompetent at best and at worst a threat to the checks & balances that keep our democratic system alive by turning the justice department into a political arm under the Bush administration.

Now they need a real (read independent) leader who can clean up the mess. But, that isn't likely with the current administration's inability to admit any wrong.

America a Christian Theocracy?

This is a topic near and dear to my heart and one that has had a profound affect on me and my life.

I grew up a strict Catholic with very conservative views. Included in my teenage years, I happened to witness the results of abortions when viewing garbage cans full of baby parts. This turned per permanently against abortion, especially late-term abortion. Once you take the step that abortion of a late-term baby is murder the only reasonable place to stop (or so my teenage logic argued) was at conception. Ever since then I have based much of my voting on the candidate’s stance on abortion – which led me to almost always vote Republican.

Bush, the Christian Fundamentalists, and the movement to turn this country into a Christian Theocracy has finally overridden that stance. I no longer consider abortion the most critical issue in America today. Instead it is a bunch of right-wing fundamentalists who are trying to re-write the American history into one based on religion and now are trying, and in many cases succeeding, in turning this country into a theocracy run by Christians with other religions (and non-religious) being subjugated.

This movement scares the hell out of me!

Many reasonable religious people agree and are voicing their opinions on this and on the separation of church and state, which is a very related topic. There are also many Jewish holocaust survivors who recognize in this movement the same horrifying events that preceded fascism in Nazi Germany. Very frightening stuff!

If you have doubts about this or want to read more, there are two excellent books out on the subject. Be forewarned though that they are disturbing books and will cause you to lose sleep at night if you have any concern for America remaining a fee country. The books are:

Michelle Goldberg’s Kingdom Coming
Damon Linker’s The Thocons

Buy and read both immediately!

You can also visit the First Freedom First foundation for more information.

Bush out-of-touch on Stem Cell Research

Once again, President Bush has vetoed a bill that would ease restraints on federally funded stem cell research. His stance is based purely on religious beliefs and isn't scientifically-based. The difficult question here is whether you consider a fetus life at conception. I struggled with this one most of my life, electing to agree with the fundamentalists because I couldn't see how a baby, just prior to being delivered couldn't be considered life; and once you make that step it was difficult to see where to stop - when is it life?

Some would say that it is life only once delivered, some when it has a heart beat or when "quickening" happens (when the mother can feel it move). In some countries/societies, the baby isn't considered life until well after birth. I struggled with all of these until recently when I read an article suggesting that we have a clear definition of when life ends - with the cessation of brain wave activity; why isn't the definition of when life starts based on the same premise - that life begins when brain wave activity is detected.

Given this perfectly reasonable scientific definition of the beginning and end of life, there is no reasonable argument against stem cell research. President Bush’s vetoing this bill is another example of him foisting religious views of right and wrong on the country and further is an example of just how out of touch he is with his constituency.

From a Humanist standpoint, our views of right and wrong have to be based on scientific, rational reasoning and on eliminating pain and suffering for sentient, aware people – not on ill-defined and personal religious opinions.