After an ABC News report that secret Bible messages are encoded on gun sights used by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan, at least two other countries that also use the equipment in Afghanistan are now considering what action to take.

…The sights are used by U.S. troops and in the training of Iraqi and Afghan soldiers. The model numbers inscribed on the scopes include coded references to New Testament verses.

…”The perfect parallel that I see,” said Maj. John Redfield, spokesperson for CentCom, told ABC News, “is between the statement that’s on the back of our dollar bills, which is ‘In God We Trust,’ and we haven’t moved away from that.”

…On Tuesday, Redfield of CentCom told ABC News that the inscriptions did not violate the directive against proselytizing. “This does not constitute proselytizing because this equipment is not issued beyond the U.S. Defense Department personnel. It’s not something we’re giving away to the local folks.”

The U.S. is not a Christian nation–it’s a secular nation and always has been, despite the attempts of fundamentalist know-nothings (and some knowing liars) to rewrite history.  The U.S. Constitution does not mention God, and it specifically prohibits any governmental establishment of religion or any religious test to hold office.  A U.S. treaty from 1797, signed by our second President John Adams, states explicitly that “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”

Major Redfield’s arguments are ludicrous.  Constitutionally, the U.S. military can’t proselytize among U.S. soldiers any more than it can among foreign nations.  And “In God We Trust,” constitutionally dubious as it is, isn’t offensive to Muslims and isn’t used to kill people–people overseas are not going to care that it’s on U.S. money.  But Muslims may find it very offensive indeed for their coreligionists to be shot at with guns that have Biblical citations on them.

They’re not in some secret code, as the lede might imply–the article later states, “John 8:12 [is] referred to on the gun sights as JN8:12″  JN8:12 is hardly a very secretive way to refer to this verse, which reads, “Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”  I guess that has some mystical connection with the light of a gun sight.  (I’m not joking here–apparently all of the verses cited on various different guns have to do with light.)

Trijicon’s director of sales and marketing “said the issue was being raised by a group that is ‘not Christian.’”  In other words, the person who represents the firm making these guns uses an ad hominem fallacy to try to discredit a message because the people it comes from are purportedly the wrong religion.  The gun sight codes aside, why is the U.S. government doing business with religious bigots?

“When I run, I’m totally incognito because I’m not wearing the trough full of makeup.”

–Sarah Palin, Alaska’s First Jogger
[update: soon to be FORMER First Jogger]

The celebrity mag pol strikes dirt again

Just imagine how angry she’d get if a Democrat suggested that there’s something she gets out of a TROUGH…let alone LIPSTICK…

Toon courtesy of BradBlog…

Now that we have a black President…couldn’t we move it to a longer month?

Why else did Cheney frankly admit to torture?  For that matter, given his own unusually candid recent statements, is Bush also going to pardon himself?

Some constitutional “experts” don’t believe you can pardon yourself (the Constitution doesn’t say a damn thing one way or the other, which is why I’m skeptical about expertise here).  Personally, bearing in mind the way the Framers thought about most things, I doubt the term is supposed to include pardoning someone for something they haven’t yet been charged with, at all.  In other words, I don’t think ANY blanket or preemptive pardons, for all crimes that someone may or may not have committed, are constitutionally valid.  (Yes, in case you’re wondering–that includes Ford’s destructive and utterly unethical pardon of Nixon, which was OBVIOUSLY, to any reasonably astute person lacking the blinders of American national pride in “our leaders,” a quid pro quo, whether explicit or implicit.  And I am not impressed by polls showing a slight majority of people, many of whom weren’t even born then and most of the rest of whom don’t remember the circumstances very well, approve of the dirty deed.  Much more significantly, most people AT THE TIME, when they knew what was at stake and didn’t have the incentive of letting bygones be bygones, thought it was wrong.)

But I digress.  Regardless of whether it really is constitutional to issue preemptive pardons, blanket pardons, even self-pardons–it’s obvious that in this political climate they’d get away with it all the way.  Many would criticize, but who would have the guts to do anything about it?  And besides, there’s a rogue Republican-operative majority on the Supreme Court.  Yes, there’d be political fallout and everything, but that’s sort of like sticking a booger into a nuclear waste dump.  Bush has already incurred so much political damage, the P.R. side almost doesn’t matter any more, as long as HE can take sole responsibility–which is one of the great things about pardons.

It seems to me Bush and Cheney are setting up a situation where all of their subordinates can give the defense that wasn’t accepted when the Nazis used it, namely, “I was just following orders.”  That defense isn’t adequate under American law, either, but it might work anyway; after all, who holds our “leaders” to correct legal standards these days?  And besides, they can say their superiors actually confessed their own guilt.  Then, these “superiors,” the ones who actually gave the orders, Bush and Cheney and perhaps a few other people who can’t pass the buck, are immune from any prosecution because they were pardoned.  This lets everybody off the hook.  It’s sort of like a Ponzi scheme–or should I say Madoff scheme?–except with criminal liability instead of money.  But because justice is a lot less rigorously enforced than economics, this pyramid scheme wouldn’t inevitably collapse.

File this article within the “I hope I’m proved wrong within 37 hours” department.

UPDATE on January 19: I never thought it would be possible to say, even occasionally, “Good news from the White House,” until after the inaugural.  But unless the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, or is lying about the right hand for no apparent reason in a manner that will be exposed for the world to see within a matter of hours, I WAS wrong.  Well, hey–there’s a first time for everything.     :)

To be less cryptic, Bush’s mutants, ahem, aides are saying he ain’t doin’ no mo’ pardons.  I’ll dance a jig to that when it’s certain.

FURTHER UPDATES on January 30 — all happy ones:

1.  There were no further pardons.

2.  We now have President Obama instead of Unelected Usurper Bush.

3.  Having crashed inaugural morning, my computer is now working again.

21st century tax protester:   “Taxation is tyranny!”