Fiat Lux

American troop deaths in Iraq this month now number more than 90, and there’s still 11 days to go before the month ends. Yet in just 10 weeks, the US is supposed to hand over sovereignty of Iraq over — although to whom is far from clear.

This would all be funny if it weren’t so terrible. It makes me feel like we’re trapped, like a mouse caught on a glue trap, nothing to choose from except bad alternatives, and what’s worse is that it all could have been prevented.

And now people like Paul Bremer, as well as most of the military in Iraq, seem to think that only more violence is going to break this bad cycle and fix things. Have they learned nothing from the history of the Middle East this past 100 years? Increasing the violence is only going to breed more violence.

This is the kind of crap that makes me feel bad to be an American.

So the Senate passed an “Unborn Victims of Violence Act” today. This heinous piece of legislation defines an “unborn child” as any child in utero, which it says “means a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb.” In other words, from the moment sperm meets egg.

This is some scary stuff for people who believe that a woman should have the right to control her own life and her own reproductive system. If it’s a crime for a 3rd party to harm a fetus, it’s a pretty small step to making it a crime for the mother herself to harm said fetus. And once that’s the case, then is it that big a step to having the government control what a woman can and can’t do, or eat, or drink? Whether she can get on an airplane, or even drive a car while pregnant?

Hell, let’s just send all women who become pregnant off to special pregnancy camps, where they can stay for 40 weeks and incubate, only doing exactly what the government thinks is good for them during that time. Never mind the woman’s rights. It’s all about the fetus.

Think it could never happen in America?

Just wait. If Bush is re-elected, I’ll lay good odds that Roe v Wade goes down during his 2nd term.

jetBlue Airlines, for reasons passing understanding, violated their own privacy policy and handed passenger information lists over to a government contractor.

Why they blithely handed millions of passengers’ names, addresses and phone numbers over without a subpoena to a private company that could do anything with that data passes understanding.

I’m not feeling inclined to be flying jetBlue again.

Update: Check out this website for more on jetBlue and their invasions of personal privacy.