In the paper - 12.25.08

The one or two of you who read this blog probably already know this but just in case you do not - I can be placed in the “old school” bucket for nearly everything. This includes preferring to read the paper every morning rather than doing the online thing to find out what is going on in the world. This certainly has its disadvantages, the most noteworthy of which is that I receive a single view of the world because I only subscribe to a single newspaper, the Houston Chronicle. However, the Chronicle is a fairly decent paper that offers a good mix of conservative and progressive viewpoints. If the Chronicle were anything like the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review or Washington Times I would probably not subscribe and join the masses online.

Everyday the Chronicle has one or more stories that either puzzle or infuriate me. I intend to start relaying some of them here when I have the time. To begin let’s look at two “nuggets” that were in the Christmas Day edition.

On the front page was a nice article about a pastor who gave $100 to anyone who would use the money to help the less fortunate among us. The article went into the whole sermon part of his message more than I will relay here but let’s just leave it as a church leader trying to encourage members of his congregation to get out there and do some good. (Just a small aside – I was not particularly pleased to see this article on the front page of a Thursday edition of the paper. The Chronicle has a special Religion section that they include every Saturday, where this article should have been placed. But being Christmas I give them a pass on this.) 55 members of his congregation accepted the offer and the article went on to describe some examples of the great things that these folks did. One woman turned the $100 into $36,000 by obtaining donations to help provide clothing for folks in Galveston who lost everything during Hurricane Ike. Others did equally impressive things to make their $100 do a lot more than some of us could imagine.

So, these folks, and all churches who do great things to help the least among us should be commended for their good work. But as I read this article I couldn’t help wondering about the magnitude of assistance that could have been provided to needy folks if churches would have spent the tens of millions that they raised to fight gay marriage on more meaningful projects. Plus the result if the investment would have immediate returns, rather than the intangible and discriminatory "benefits" from preventing two people from making a legal commitment to each other.

The other article was buried on an inside page. This one covered the pardons that Bush has begun to issue. This is a practice that has been going on for a long time and has never passed the smell test for me. But the activities surrounding a specific pardon particularly caught my eye.

On December 23 Bush pardoned a guy who was convicted of illegal storage and disposal of hazardous waste without a permit. But after being provided additional information Bush rescinded the pardon the following day. The article did not editorialize but I am sure that there are people all over the country lauding Bush for reversing his decision once he had more information. My thoughts did not go there, but rather the opposite direction as in “Then why in the hell did he not pull our troops out of Iraq when he learned there were no weapons of mass destruction?” So my takeaway from that article is that Bush has the capacity to do the right thing, (the rescinded pardon) but not always the will (Iraq).