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Wednesday, October 12, 2005
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Darren L. Moore, a Sunday school teacher at a church in Norman, Oklahoma, was sentenced to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to three counts of forcible sodomy and one count of indecent exhibition of obscene material to a minor, a 7-year-old boy. As reported the Norman Transcript:
"The mother of the victim told the court, in a pre-sentence report, that her son didn't want to go to heaven because that's where Moore told him he was going and he wouldn't feel safe with Moore there."
-- Bobo's world
(Via Jesus' General.)
7:55:18 PM 
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I'm disappointed that the White House released this document for the Harriet Miers nomination hearings. I had hoped that they'd stick to their guns and refuse to release anything.
Damn. It looks like they released other documents.
(Via Jesus' General.)
7:54:55 PM
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March 2003, Paul Wolfowitz testifying before the House Appropriations Committee:
There's a lot of money to pay for this that doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money, and it starts with the assets of the Iraqi people [...] and on a rough recollection, the oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years. [...] We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.
21/2 years later:
Iraq's oil production has fallen below prewar levels to its lowest point in a decade, depriving the country's fledgling government of badly needed income and preventing the United States from achieving one of its main reconstruction goals. Iraq's oil wells — beset by equipment problems and saboteurs — are producing about 1.9 million barrels a day in net production, lower than the 2.6 million it was producing just before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, according to the London-based Centre for Global Energy Studies (CGES). [...] Production continues to slide despite a massive U.S.-funded effort to stabilize and boost output, repair critical parts of Iraq's oil infrastructure and develop a long-term plan for the Iraqi oil industry. The U.S. has spent $420 million fixing the oil network and allocated $1.7 billion to the sector.
—USAToday, "Pessimism surrounds falling oil production in Iraq"
Wolfowitz's keen financial planning skills are now being put to good use as President of the World Bank, of course, which should make developing countries everywhere heave heavy sighs of resignation.
(Via apostropher.)
7:32:34 PM
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A RELIGIOUS TEST? If we are to construe that part of the rationale for the Miers nomination is her religious faith, then the nomination does indeed appear to be unconstitutional. An added irony is that the woman she would replace would be among the most opposed to such a test, as an alert reader has pointed out. In her concurring opinion in Wallace v. Jaffree, 1985, Sandra Day O'Connor wrote"In my view, the Religion Clauses - the Free Exercise Clause, the Establishment Clause, the Religious Test Clause, Art. VI, cl. 3, and the Equal Protection Clause as applied to religion - all speak with one voice on this point: absent the most unusual circumstances, one's religion ought not affect one's legal rights or duties or benefits. As I have previously noted, "the Establishment Clause is infringed when the government makes adherence to religion relevant to a person's standing in the political community.' Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38, 69 (1985) (O'CONNOR, J., concurring in judgment)." My emphasis. Didn't the president just make "adherence to religion relevant to a person's standing in the political community"? Does this president have even a rudimentary respect for the separation of church and state?
(Via Daily Dish.)
4:42:19 PM
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© Copyright 2005 Steve Michel.
Last update: 11/1/2005; 9:46:57 PM.
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