Sunday, March 9, 2008

They turned the clocks BACK this week

While the rest of us were dutifully springing forward and losing an hour of sleep today, there were others who not only forgot to set the clocks ahead, but actually turned them back.

On Saturday President Bush vetoed a bill that would have prohibited the CIA from using waterboarding, turning the US back to a time he's evidently more comfortable with. The Roman empire. As Governor of Texas, he executed more people than any other state, and probably wished he could dispense with the electric chair, and just throw prisoners to the lions.

Senator Diane Feinstein lamented the fact that Bush wouldn't close the door on using torture. Of course Senator Feinstein also cast a deciding vote in confirming Michael Mukasey as Attorney General despite his unwillingness to call waterboarding torture.

Mukasey is an observant Jew, but why can't he observe the Sabbath and the Geneva Convention?

Israelis and Palestinians turned back the clock this week, by returning to the same senseless cycle of violence that will never achieve peace. And by doing so, they turned their back on their own people, the vast majority of whom want a peaceful, political solution to the conflict, and know that the time is now 2008, not 1948.

Back in the US, the senseless cycle of campus shootings continue, but Arizona State Senator Karen S. Johnson wants to turn the clocks back to the Wild West. She sponsored a bill, which the Senate Judiciary Committee approved last week, that would allow people with a concealed weapons permit (21 and older) to carry their firearms at public colleges and universities. There was a time not long ago when we would discuss the best ways to get guns out of people's hands. Now legislators are finding ways to get guns in everybody's hands.

Hillary Clinton's campaign turned the clock back to the McCarthy era, by silently asking the question of Barack Obama, "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Muslim faith?

Obama, on the other hand, is so hopeful about the future, that he probably doesn't turn the clock back, even in the fall.