Blame the State Department, Not Hillary

As stories arise of millions of e-mails having been "lost" during Chimperator George W. Bush's regime, that Jeb Bush used private e-mail while governor, and now that the State Department long had no system to save and archive e-mails, the  "scandal" over Hillary Clinton's private e-mail usage seems to be falling largely apart.  Not that the Hillery haters or lazy members of the media will let go of the story anytime soon given their refusal to drop conspiracy theories about Benghazi even though GOP controlled committees have found no "smoking gun."  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the crumbling story line.  Here are excerpts:

What began life two weeks ago as another “Clintons play by their own rules” mega-scandal is now pretty clearly devolving into a “what do you expect, it’s the government” saga that is about as dog bites man as it gets.

The Times headline, on A1 Saturday, proclaimed: “Emails Clinton Said Were Kept Could Be Lost.” The article, co-bylined by the reporter who broke the original story and another, reported that the State Department did not start automatically archiving the state.gov email traffic of deputies until February of this year. This bit of information came from department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, who discussed this at her daily briefing the day before (i.e., last Friday).

Clinton had said at her UN press conference last week—that even though she used a personal address, everything she wrote to her deputies’ state.gov addresses was archived: “The vast majority of my work emails went to government employees at their government addresses, which meant they were captured and preserved immediately on the system at the State Department.”She’s right that they were captured, but that doesn’t mean they were archived, according to what Psaki said Friday.  

If you read farther down into the article—and certainly, if you read the transcript of Psaki’s Friday briefing—the picture that is very clearly beginning to emerge here is one of a lumbering department (is there any other kind when it comes to matters like this?) taking a long time (shocking!) to get itself into compliance with regulations and laws.  

[S]omebody asked, again naturally enough, why not sooner. “I’m sure,” she said, “if we had the technical capability to, we would have, and it’s just a process that takes some time.” And then later: “This has been a process that’s been ongoing, and obviously, it’s not only time-consuming and requires a lot of effort on the part of employees to do it in other ways, but they have long been planning to do this. It’s just something that it took some time to put in place.”

You get the idea. Anybody shocked to hear those words? A government agency got a directive, and it’s taking a long time to implement it!

[A] lot of what has happened here would probably have happened no matter who was secretary of state. If the secretary had been John Kerry then or Dick Holbrooke or whomever—why, even if it had been Clinton scold Maureen Dowd!—the department would almost surely have operated exactly as it did in terms of regulatory compliance. So, if some of these records weren’t preserved, it wasn’t a Clinton thing. It was a State Department thing.

[H]ere’s what we’ve learned. On March 2, when the story broke, this was dynamite—a scandal that might prevent Clinton from even getting in the race. Then it emerged that the original Times report overstated things a little. Then it emerged that all kinds of other former secretaries of state and cabinet officials do more or less what Clinton did (some quite a bit less). Then it emerged that Jeb Bush took seven years to release all his emails and chose which ones to put out just like Clinton did. Then it emerged that other Republican candidates also have transparency issues at least the equal of Clinton’s. And finally, it emerged last Friday that the State Department performs certain administration functions rather slowly.

And remember, the only reason we’re going through all this anyway is that the Republicans, who’ve investigated Benghazi six ways to Sunday and come up with nothing on her, are now taking rocks they’ve already turned over and turning them back over. The whole Gowdy committee is nothing but a capital-P Political sting operation. It’s clearer than ever now that this is a committee to investigate Clinton that has one job and one job only: find something, anything, that might keep her out of the White House.

The Unthinking Mindlessness of Catholic "Sheeple"

The reactions to the news story that Pope Francis has admitted that there is a gay "lobby" or cabal in the Vatican is all over the ball park.  All too typically, some of the laity in the pews refuse to recognize that THEY are part of the problem because they continue to bankroll the corrupt and morally bankrupt Church hierarchy.  One such Kool-Aid drinker, apparently from Australia - where a government investigation is revealing orchestrated cover ups of sexual abuse by the hierarchy -  was incensed by my post that suggested that an organization like the Vatican hierarchy deserved to be destroyed:

That organization would be the GLBTI and the sooner it is destroyed for good the better. I notice today that the Russians have set the world a good example. 

For such simple minded - and dare I say in my opinion psychologically disturbed - individuals the facts don't matter.  Documentation exists that proves conclusively that every Pope from 1962 onward - yes, even John XXIII and the less than saintly John Paul II - directed that crimes against children be covered to protect the Church's "image and reputation" and , of course, its money and wealth.  Apparently, in the warped world of the author of the comment, the last six or seven Popes were all part of the "GLBTI."  The ignorance and refusal to face reality is stunning.  Unfortunately, that phenomenon seems to increasingly describe the "pious" and "godly" folk.

Fellow LGBT blogger Father Tony - who served at the Vatican while a young priest before leaving the priesthood - had theses comments:

Poor naive pope. He reads a report about a "gay lobby" among his cardinals in the Vatican. He equates "gay" with "corruption" in his comments and he goes on to say that he will do something to correct this. All this tells me is that we once again have heterosexual pope. And one who is sexually infantile. http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/06/11/pope-francis-gay-lobby-exists-inside-vatican/

[H]e will find it impossible to administer a successful gay witch hunt: a queen cardinal attacked will strike back by naming his enemies. Francis will find himself caught in a huge crossfire of substantiated accusations. He will have to either replace the entire curia or drop the idea of the purge. The funny thing is that if he replaced the entire curia, in would come some new queens who will be exactly what Francis is trying to get rid of.

As CNN noted, the The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests summed up the root of the problem well:

The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests said, "structure, not sexuality, is the real issue."  "The church is a monarchy. Monarchs are unaccountable. So many monarchs are corrupt. This is true in both secular and religious institutions," SNAP said in a statement.

The willful rejection of reality and modernity is the hallmark of the Vatican's shrinking echo chamber and members of the Catholic laity who insist on sticking their head in the sand.

 

Georgia "University" Seeks to Weed Out Gays

When a supposed institution of higher education seeks to impose loyalty oaths and similar batshitery on faculty and students, one would hope that accreditation authorities would take a serious look at withdrawing the institution's accreditation since obviously quality education and the pursuit of knowledge and truth have been thrown out the window. A case in point is Shorter University, a Southern Baptist-affiliated college (what a surprise - NOT!) in Rome, Georgia, that is beginning to require faculty and staff to sign a "personal lifestyle statement" that bans homosexuality and other condemned sexual activities. I'm surprised the nutters haven't banned all sex not utilizing only the so-called missionary position. It would be the logical extension of the batshitery. Needless to say, gay faculty and staff are terrified of the coming witch hunt - not that I can fathom why anyone gay would want to work at a Baptist affiliated institution. Employers seeking the best and the brightest recruits ought to delete Shorter grads from the list of interviewees. Religion Dispatches looks at this institutionalized bigotry and the disservice the leadership is doing to its students; Here are highlights:

It's not shocking that a Southern Baptist school would include such a statement — and as a private institution, it is within its legal rights to do so. Employees who happen to be gay and Christian, however, are now in fear for their jobs. One employee told the GA Voice that they now fear witch hunts and vendettas because of the new statement.

Certainly, those who don't like it can find new jobs and Shorter will have the employee base it wants — good, obedient, homogenized Christians who gladly sign a list of beliefs and adhere to the letter of the law.

This is the real problem, however. Any organization, be it the military, a school, a church, or even the local bridge club, that seeks to purify itself from any dissent or diversity automatically dooms itself. Organizations that force its members to conform — even if they do it gladly and eagerly — cuts itself off from the source of any future growth. What causes growth among groups is most often disagreements, differing points of view, or different understandings of the world around them. To automatically shield itself from the necessary messiness and conflicts of community, Shorter is doing itself — and its students — a disservice.

While some employees may find the statement comforting, human beings cannot live too long in the shell of unbending religiosity without suffocating. What seems to die off first is any tolerance for difference, and any compassion one might have for others outside their tight circle. It's a human trait to want to be among the like-minded — but it is in the challenges and crises of community that real human freedom is found.

As German theologian Eugen Drewermann observed: "Truth can't be fixed in a certain formula. We can never possess a doctrine that is valid once and for all, or have a statement for which we give up everything and go through the world threatening all those who don't recite it in the proper way. Some ways of becoming human can be crushed by fear, but we must dare to try, no matter what it costs."

Shorter's threat to its employees and faculty over this statement is born of fear. If they allow themselves to be crushed by that fear, what it really costs them is their humanity.

Catholic Church Embraces Testing to ID Gay Priests

Rather than focus on identifying bishops and cardinals who enabled or covered up for sexual predator priests who preyed on minors, the Catholic Church in Melbourne, Australia, is Hell bent to ID possible gay priests. Not, of course, because these priests have necessarily committed any improprieties, but rather merely because they are gay. Never mind the fact that most pedophiles are straight males. Likewise, never mind the Church's bizarre obsession with sex and the role of women as evil temptresses. No, rather than accept scientific and mental health knowledge about homosexuality the Church in Melbourne intends to rush off on a witch hunt married to its 12th century view of nature and human sexuality. Here are some highlights from the Herald Sun:

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Under the guidelines, potential priests who "appear" to be gay must be banned. The head of the Vatican committee that made the recommendations has made it clear celibate gays should also be banned because homosexuality is ‘‘a type of deviation’’.

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Victorian Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby spokeswoman Hayley Conway said the church was sending a ‘‘dangerous and offensive’’ message about sexuality. ‘‘They seem to be moving backwards in a lot of ways which is really unfortunate . . . especially for those who are Catholic and out, and there are a lot of them already struggling,’’ she said.

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‘‘If the plan is to root out pedophilia or child molestation, targeting people with homosexual tendencies isn’t the way to go about it.’’ Outspoken Catholic priest Father Bob Maguire said the document ‘‘flies in the face of secular society’s sense of fairness and justice’’. ‘‘The point is not to what gender you are attracted, but how you manage that attraction,’’ he said.

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One can only wonder as to who will decide which priests "appear gay." Of course, from what I've seen of the Prada Pope who always keeps his handsome and much younger personal secretary nearby (see photo above), I'd speculate that Benedict XVI might fail the test of not "appearing gay."