Seattle's Solution to homeless drunks

While I applaud them for their compassion, I have to wonder if the city of Seattle has really thought what they plan to do to homeless alcoholics. I'm all for getting them off the streets, but I don't think letting them continue to drink themselves, possibly to death is such a good idea. If they were going to give them apartments, why not at least try to get them off the booze as well? I realize it may not have that great a success rating, but they're already taking a step in the right direction by giving them a place to live.

Cookies on the NSA Website

I wish this type of story would go away, but at least the good news is that the NSA admitted that placing cookies on their website was a mistake. I applaud the agency's honesty on this and whoever had the intelligence to realize the people who were visiting their website were likely not involved in terrorist activities.

Lately the current administration has a poor record on privacy issues and seems not to respect the right to privacy that is constituionally protected.

I hope I can go on to commentary to new news soon, but this is likely to dominate the scenes for a while.

Border guards dating illegal aliens

To be honest, I don't quite believe this is really happening but it seems to be a growing problem. I know I'm not the only one who sees a definite conflict of interest when it comes to this particular piece of news.

It's almost as if the border guards themselves don't take the problem seriously or know that their efforts to keep people out of the country illegally are doomed to failure anyway. If the latter is the case, I don't blame them. The existence of organizations like the Minutemen show that people are fed up with illegal immigration.

Dating people who break the law by being here for some border patrol agents only aggravates an already severe problem. We cannot allow people to come into this country who break the law. If you want to come here to work, I have no problem if you do so legally, and if you want to become an American citizen, I applaud you. But if people just come here because we have a better welfare system, then I have a problem.

No Child Left Behind

I realize I'm a little late on this, since it's already gone though, but after getting the details of the program from my nephew I'm a little worried. It seems that they keep the entire class at the pace of the slowest student. I'm not sure exactly what the point of this is, but some students will be smarter and some will be better in other areas than others.

This is not preparing them for life, nor is it more importantly fair to the students who are able to handle the work presented to them. Do the schools expect a professonal environment merely to set up pace with their lowest performers? While it may be a nice thought, encouraging that sort of mediocrity will never happen unless it's a company that is not at all making money or in the case of a non-profit corporation, achieving their goals.

Making sure every child gets an education is a noble goal, but making sure every child gets the same education merely holds those who are capable of doing better work back and not letting their talents show. All in all, it was presented as a good idea that suffered horribly in execution.

Saddam Hussein and Torture

As much as I appreciate the irony, I find it hard to credit as I'm sure many people do. Although I'm sure his hysterics in the courtroom server a purpose at least to his mind, I don't think many people are going to have sympathy with the plight of Saddam Hussein or believe the U.S. is really engaging in torture of this prisoner.

Saddam is undoubtedly one of the few people in the world many people would agree has earned his place in the theological place of eternal punishment and few would shed tears if he was being abused, except possibly the French.

More on the same

As today is Christmas Eve and I plan on being stuffed with ham and other goodies tomorrow, I thought I'd take a brief time to wish what few readers this blog has right now a Merry Christmas. Now that that's out of the way, we can delve into more serious issues.

Before I get too deeply I must admit to only a cursory inspection of the news this morning and it seems the wiretapping scandal has grown deeper. While I don't mean to focus on this, it is important to maintain constitutional liberties even in the face of terrorism. Assuming I wasn't dreaming or misintepreted the whole thing entirely -- which is possible -- it seems the NSA was snooping in on e-mails and phone calls without warrants as well even on citizens within the U.S.A.

While I sincerely hope I'm wrong and I welcome the opportunity to be told I am, this is worrisome. The government seems to be taking less regard of our constitutional liberties with the excuse that it's okay as long as we're at war. I realize that even if this is the case, the percentage of e-mails and phone calls they took the liberty to read is small, and in any case e-mail is not protected the same way phone calls are. (System administrators can and are expected to read your e-mails in many cases.) Stil, the provision for warrants was put in the constitution with good reason. We as citizens are supposed to be mistrustful and paranoid about our government, not the other way around.

Bush has already admitted he did this. I hope he admits a mistake and takes steps to correct it in the future. What he has done so far is immoral and unconstitutional.

Wiretapping

The recent controversy over wiretapping has me worried to be a Republican. I supported George Bush through the last two elections, preferring him over the alternatives. There are times however when he worries me. Going and listening in on private people's conversations without getting permission is not only illegal, but has been ruled to be unconstitutional.

I'm not arguing that the information obtained may not have been useful, I'm saying that he should not have done it. It's not the governments business to be listening in on conversations of private citizens just because the information might be useful.

President Bush seems to engage in some kind of strange moral relativism when it comes to the war on terror. It seems that when it comes to tracking down terrorists, the ends justify the means. Such a position is strange given it is likely his religious views to not allow for such a relativistic outlook. Why didn't he go and get the warrant necessary if it was so important?

George Bush needs to show more restraint when it comes to overstepping constitutionally protected freedoms. Wiretapping and some provisions of the Patriot Act make me worry about some of the ways he chooses to run the country.