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In Alabama judges on the assenting and dissenting sides both quoted from the Bible to support their decision.

It was a child custody case. The decision against the father quotes Psalms 127:3-5, that children are a gift from God, but they come with responsibilities.

The lone dissenting decision cited Romans 13:1-2, which says "there is no authority except from God." Parkker wrote that God, not the state, has given parents the rights and responsibilities to raise their children.

He said "courts should interfere as little as possible with parental decision-making, instead deferring to parental authority whenever it has not been fundamentally compromised by substantial neglect, wrongdoing or criminal act."

Are these judges crazy?

Crooks in High Places

There's Rove-gate and the new energy bill that just passed Congress with a little $1.5 billion gift to Sugarland, Texas, home of Tom Delay. There's CAFTA, where Representatives were just bought off to give huge tax savings to oil companies even though these companies are posting the largest profits in their history. This administration is utterly corrupt. Then there was passing the NRA bill so that gun manufacturers can't be held liable for their weapons. None of the Democratic admendments were in the bill: like prohibiting hollow point bullets or redoing the assault weapon ban. Democrats are the voice of reason and Republicans are the power of corruption. I don't see how any Republican can look at what is happening and think they should remain Republican.

My brother- and sister-in-law from Texas said that the redistricting in Texas that was the scandal of the whole nation, was just done because some districts had become too big. They knew the Republicans had done wrong, and just refused to admit it.

Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson told Democrats that President Bush is jeopardizing national security by not firing Karl Rove for his role in leaking the identify of a CIA officer. He said that leaks hamper efforst to recruit informants in the war on terror.

Instead of a president concerned first and foremost with protecting this country and the intelligence officers who serve it, we are confronted with a prsident who is willing to sit by while political operatives savage the reputations of good Americans like Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson.

Big Media Interlocks with Corporate America

No longer can we use the term "main stream media." Our media has been co-opted by big corporations and should just be called "big media" or "corporate media." When the Carlyle group is represented on the board of directors of the New York Times, we can easily see that independent coverage is at risk.

In a review from Powell's:

To criticize what the media has become is to criticize the Republican deregulation of that medium and their retreat from the public good.

An accounting of the debasing of popular culture might focus on the government's retreat from television. In 1961 John Kennedy's FCC chairman, Newton Minow, went before the National Association of Broadcasters and described television as a "vast wasteland." He vowed to "uphold and protect the public interest" and voiced his disagreement with those who "say the public interest is merely what interests the public." Kennedy's FCC sought to limit advertising to children and increase educational programming. But by the '80s, Reagan's FCC chairman, Mark Fowler, derided the idea of the public interest. Television, he said, was only a "toaster with pictures." Reagan's FCC sought to limit government control of broadcasters.

We saw FOX propagandizing for the Iraq war, but now it never shows the war. FOX shows Hilton Paris and the runaway bride, the missing girl in Aruba and shark attacks -- but nothing on the ongoing war in Iraq. Yes, they are like a toaster with pictures.

Sidney Blumenthal has written about the natural instability in Iraq and why the present government cannot hope to be accepted as truly Iraqi by the majority, the Sunnis.

From the creation of the Iraqi state in 1921 to the army's coup of 1958, Iraq had 58 governments. In 1968, the Baathist Party led by Saddam staged another coup. Some periods of this prolonged instability were less unstable than others, but the instability was chronic and profound. The overthrow of Saddam appears to have returned Iraq to its "natural" unstable state. But in fact the instability runs even deeper.

The Baathists, of course, were Sunnis. Saddam was a Sunni. Before him, the monarchs, beginning with Faisal I, were Sunnis. Before Faisal, the Ottomans, who ruled beginning in the 15th century, were Sunnis. Shiites have never ruled the country until now. Why should the Sunnis, after 600 years of control, accede to the dominance of Shiites?

The present Iraqi government is a ramshackle affair of Shiites and Kurds. The Kurds have no interest in a central authority, and play the game only to solidify their autonomy. The Shiites are maintained as dominant only by the presence of the U.S. occupation army and their sectarian militias. They will never disband those militias in favor of a national army unless they can run the army like an expanded version of the Shiite militias. Prime Minister al-Jaafari and the other Shiite leaders, including Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi, have all been Iranian agents or allies, recipients of Iranian largess in one form or another. Shiite Iraqis are natural friends and allies of Shiite Iran. Iraq under the Shiites does not have to be remade in Iran's image to serve Iranian interests. Whether or not sharia (Islamic) law is imposed, Iraqi Sunnis will never see Shiites as Iraqi patriots or nationalists but, instead, as being in league with Iraq's traditional and worst enemy.

Keep your fears to yourself, but share your inspiration with others.
Robert Lewis Stevenson.

I just took a survey for Ode about fear and inspiration. There are so many things we have to be fearful about that it's exhausting. The EPA is testing pesticides on people without their informed consent. They asked people to take gel-tabs filled with pesticides with their morning orange juice. How can that sort of inhumanity be practiced by the United States?

We now routinely torture in Abu Graib, Guantanamo and our gulags. We ship people other countries to have them tortured. Alberto Gonzales said the Geneva Convention was quaint. I believe that the long history and application of the Geneva Convention belies that. How can my country be practicing these things?

There are many inspirations. I have a progressive friend who has decided to run for office. We're starting up a Friday Night at the Progressive Movies here in town. We've started a Progressive Toastmasters Club. I have new friends and everywhere I look the progressives are learning to make their voices heard.

And focusing on our fears plays into the hands of the evil empire.

Isn't it ironic -- the USSR didn't survive -- but neither did we. We became the evil empire. I've read about major transformations in other countries and wondered about the people living there. Remember all the "Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom" in China, where people informed on family members who were re-educated or executed? Or the inflation that hit Argentina. How could people survive when their savings turned into dust? And then they had their "dirty war" where perhaps 20,000 people were taken by the government and never returned. And now here we are , five years into our neo-con future. Where is this one going to end? How many families will have broken by then?

I heard something today: To make peace, don't talk to your friends, talk to your enemies.

This is a good explanation to the stunningly unreasonable dictum that Republicans trot out -- that the reason we have not been attacked here again is that we've "taken the fight to the enemy." There was some idiot who had a letter to the editor saying this just a week or so ago.

TomPaine.com - Rove Tries To Change The Subject: "Finally Karl, please “understand” that the reason we have not suffered a repeat attack on our homeland is because Bin Laden no longer needs to attack us. Those of us with a pure and comprehensive “understanding of 9/11” know that Bin Laden committed the 9/11 attacks so he could increase recruitment for al Qaeda and increase worldwide hatred of America. That didn't happen. Because after 9/11, the world united with Americans and al Qaeda's recruitment levels never increased.

It was only after your invasion of Iraq, that Bin Laden's goals were met. Because of your war in Iraq two things happened that helped Bin Laden and the terrorists: al Qaeda recruitment soared and the United States is now alienated from and hated by the rest of the world. In effect, what Bin Laden could not achieve by murdering my husband and 3,000 others on 9/11, you handed to him on a silver platter with your invasion of Iraq - a country that had nothing to do with 9/11."