RANDOM #1 - CRUZ/CHRISTIANITY, SNOWDEN/OLIVER/WIKILEAKS/SONY & REAGAN/CLINTON/OBAMA

CRUZ/CHRISTIANITY

Ted Cruz is reported to have said that there is no longer room in the Democratic Party for Christians. If I were a practicing Christian, I would be pissed that the litmus test for being a Christian has become adherence to the laws of the Old Testament rather than an understanding of Christ's message of grace.

For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.

SNOWDEN/OLIVER/WIKILEAKS/SONY
Folks like Jon Stewart and John Oliver appear to delight in insisting that they are not journalists, even as they do the very jobs that journalists ought to be doing but are not. For instance, it took Oliver just minutes to burst the bubble of righteousness Eric Snowden and his admirers have erected around his actions. Having admitted to Oliver that he hadn't read all of the documents that he leaked and that it is at least possible, perhaps likely, that bad things will happen to good people as a result, Snowden admitted to having to own causing collateral damage. One has to suppose that those canonizing Snowden would be among the first to condemn the military when a drone strike harms the innocent. What about Snowden, then?

Transparency can be a bitch when it applies to you, can't it?

And now we know that transparency applies to anyone and everyone. The personal information of thousands of Sony employees are publicly available - in a searchable database, no less - thanks to the determination by the folks at WikiLeaks that Sony, like the US government, qualifies as a suitable target for transparency. Who's next? Certainly not the folks at WikiLeaks. Why not? Good question. Maybe John Oliver will get to ask it one of these days.

REAGAN/CLINTON/OBAMA
On an internet discussion board recently, one writer gave Bill Clinton credit for presiding over the best American economy in a good long while. One naysayer insisted Clinton was not responsible. Rather, a Republican majority in Congress was responsible for the good times in the late 90s. One wonders if the same writer would be as quick to credit a Democratic Congress for Reagan's successes. Of course, just as Clinton's good times have grown better than they actually were when viewed through the lens of history, so have Reagan's good times...if indeed a judicious look at the Reagan years can be characterized as good times.

And what of Obama? By the numbers, Obama has presided over the best times of all. Which just goes to show, modern history is written by those with the most powerful microphones.

WikiLeaks, Assange, Transparency, and Accountability

What was the source of dramatic tension in All the President's Men? The reporters had the basic story early on. The tension came from editor Ben Bradlee's requirement that reporters Woodward and Bernstein independently confirm the elements of the story.

What's that you say? No need to confirm the WikiLeaks documents. Well, you're right about that. They were what they were, although there have already been phony dumps if what we hear out of Pakistan is correct. But what about that tricky editing thing? If you believe, as all but the most naive and radicalized among us do, that there's a legitimate need for governments to keep some things secret, particularly as it applies to foreign affairs, then there simply MUST be a filter.

(Yes, you read me right. If you don't believe that there are legitimate secrets, you are naive, radical, and frankly downright dangerous. So you can stop right here, hack my computer, and put me and my 14 readers out of business.)

And the filter that I’m talking about needs to be publicly accountable. To those who say that there is no equivalency between the governments keeping secrets and the lives of the individuals reporting them, I say, "Why the hell not?" We elect the government. They are, to at least some extent, an extension of our will. Our elected officials and those that they appoint serve at our pleasure, and are therefore accountable to us even if only in the most removed sense. And as public officials, their lives are subject to public scrutiny. It comes with the package.

What of Assange and those who believe that ALL must be transparent? What do we know of them? To whom are they accountable? If the answers to those questions are Nothing and No one, then there are no limits. They are just as much above scrutiny as they claim that the government has become. I don’t see that as a good thing.

All our freedoms are limited. The Second Amendment does not grant my neighbor the right to construct a nuclear-tipped ballistic missile. The freedom of expression of your fist ends at the point of my chin. And IMHO opaque, unrestrained journalists do not have the right to demand total transparency from my government.