They still just don't get it

I threatened a while back to talk about politics here. I'm following through on my threat.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is still going around on one television show after another, saying things like "I'm convinced, absolutely convinced, that we saved thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of lives," as a result of what have been called "harsh interrogation techniques" -- torture. He is saying that with President Obama's absolute forbidding of torture that Americans are in danger of another terrorist attack.

As far as I can see, never before in the history of our country has a former member of the executive branch waged such a campaign against the new resident of the White House. It's unseemly and it smacks of being a poor sport because the opposition party was the one that replaced him.

I've begun to wonder if Cheney is doing this as a way to, as they say on legal tv shows, affect the jury pool in case some folks get their way and those who authorized torture during the Bush administration are arrested and tried for their actions. Cheney is giving a defense to keep himself out of prison because he knows he broke laws in what he and Bush did.

The most striking thing about this, though, is that whether or not lives were saved is completely beside the point. This is a nation of laws and the only thing that Bush and Cheney vowed to preserve, protect and defend was the Constitution. Back in Dec. 2005, Bush claimed "As president, I took an oath to defend the Constitution, and I have no greater responsibility than to protect our people, our freedom, and our way of life." He was wrong. His responsibility was to protect, preserve and defend the Constitution.

I belonged to a politics discussion list for a number of years and at one point the discussion centered around the "ticking time bomb" scenario, where there is a bomb set to go off that will kill hundreds or thousands of people and you have a terrorist with you that you know is aware of that bomb's location. The question was whether, in that particular instance, torture would be okay.

The more conservative members of the list didn't see a problem with torture in any case, but definitely agreed that in this case it would be perfectly fine. At least one of the more liberal members said they would do it and plead not guilty if brought to court for their actions. I said that, no, neither one of those was acceptable. If I were in the position as outlined and if I fully believed that torture was the only way to get the answer in time to save people, I would use it. And then I would turn myself in to the courts, plead guilty to the charges of breaking the laws against torture, and accept whatever punishment was deemed appropriate.

There seems to be a pervasive belief that if one does a bad thing for good reasons, it ceases to be a bad thing. But I don't believe it to be the case. It's still a bad thing and before we do bad things we have to be willing to accept the responsibility for doing them.

Should Bush, Cheney and others from the previous administration be prosecuted and punished for their illegal actions? I don't know. Once again being a Libra rears up and I can see two (at least) sides. I think it's likely a mistake for a new administration to investigate and prosecute previous administrations. It sets a bad precedent. But it also sets a bad precedent for nothing to happen to people who break the laws, even if those people are at the highest level of government. Remember the whole thing with Clinton? Supposedly the reason he was impeached was because he broke the law by lying to Congress and not because he had a really stupid affair. In the '90s, the Republicans were all in favor of the absolute rule of law. Now... not so much, it would seem.

There was a person on Bill Moyers a week or so ago who suggested that what Obama should do is to pardon Bush and Cheney, even before charges are brought against them. It would avoid the problem of one administration prosecuting the previous one, but, in order for the pardon to actually go through, Bush and Cheney would have to accept it, admitting what they did. Sounds to me like the ideal solution.

A lesson in restraint

I have this character flaw. I am compelled to correct anything that I see as being patently factually incorrect, especially when it comes to history and even more so when it comes to genealogy. It causes almost a physical discomfort and preys on my mind.

At the same time, there is the concept of asking oneself "Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?" before saying, well, just about anything. One person I found said that it's okay to speak if at least two of those criteria are present.

In an online community to which I belong, there is a place to discuss genealogy. A person posted yesterday that her 27th great grandfather was Julius Caesar and she is also a descendant of James Polk, the 11th president of the US.

I thought back to things I've seen about Rome -- I, Claudius and Rome -- and I couldn't remember Julius Caesar having had grandchildren. So I looked it up. Julius Caesar had a daughter Julia by his first wife. Julia had one child who died, unnamed, after only a few days. Caesar also had a son Caesarion by Cleopatra, but Octavian (later Augustus) had the boy killed at the same time that Mark Antony had to fall on his sword and Cleo made an asp of herself. There seems to be a suggestion that Brutus (you know, the "honorable man" who killed Caesar) was actually Caesar's son from a dalliance with Brutus's mother, but Brutus only had one child, too, who died in infancy. Therefore, there are no progeny of Julius Caesar. It possibly could be that the descent is through an adopted child (those Romans adopted people left and right, even when the adoptee still had parents), but even so, the idea that any line could actually be traced back to 44 BC stretches credulity.

Since I was already Googling, I thought I'd take a look at James Polk. That's only going back 200 years or so, and we do have records from then, so there's a possibility this could be true. One visit to Wikipedia was enough to tell me that Polk never had children and was believed to have been sterile because of an operation he had as a teenager.

So.... I can post this on the message board or not. Using the criteria above, yes, it is true. Necessary? Probably only to ease my own discomfort about having unchallenged wrong genealogical information on the 'net. Kind? Probably not, no.

The devil's advocate (or maybe just the devil) in me suggests that, maybe this was intentional, to see if anyone would challenge her. For her to have picked two people that have no progeny seems to be quite a coincidence. Her claim for a source is "a relative who pretty much makes her living by genealogy" and maybe she's saying that professional genealogists are not worth paying for. But overall, I think this argument is just me trying to make up a justification.

I'll get over it, but it will likely bother me for a while. I have to keep telling myself that not giving in to my compulsions will make me a better person.