I was outraged about Maher Arar. I was outraged about Habeas Corpus. I was outraged about the end-runs around the FISA court. I was outraged about extraordinary rendition, about assaults on academic freedom, about “airline security” consisting of sticking your toothpaste in a Ziploc baggie, about waterboarding, about any number of things.
And in return I was insulted by one end of the political spectrum and, for all intents and purposes, ignored by the other.
This is not meant to be a slam against you, Polycarp. But there’s only so many times I can say the same thing…that this administration has only one setting, and it’s “FUCKUP”…before I start to believe that nothing will happen until the United States is dragged right off the cliff. Dragged by the likes of Monica Goodling, Alberto Gonzales, Michael Brown, Tom Delay, Jack Abramoff, Randy Cunningham, Bernard Kerik, Chris Mooney, Julie MacDonald, David Hager, I. Lewis Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, Bill Frist, Thomas Noe, David Safavian, and all the other chuckleheads associated the White House. And when it happens the Limbaughs, the Coulters, the Hannitys, and the Savages will try to blame me and people like me, and all the shouting in the world by me isn’t going to change that.
In defense of Messiah College, it’s definitely a Christian college, and many of its graduates are pretty conservative, but it is accredited by the regional accrediting body, and its programs are also accredited by their respective professional bodies. For example, Messiah students are taught actual science, not Creationism, unlike those at Bob Jones University.
That said, I’ve known graduates of Messiah, and I’ve met a few faculty. While I wouldn’t attend or teach there, their graduates seem to be intelligent and their faculty are dedicated. (in fact, the woman in this photo and I worked together on a project last semester. We also had to pitch a charity to the class, and hers wasn’t necessarily a Christian charity. BTW, this was a master’s program at a public, secular university.)
Please don’t paint Messiah with a broad brush. It may be a Christian college, but its graduates actually have learned something.
Robyn, while Messiah has been mentioned (thanks to the fact that it was Ms. Goodling’s undergraduate alma mater), the focus of this is on [del]CBN[/del] Regent University, Pat Robertson’s private [del]brainwashing[/del] training grounds, and the Unholy Alliance between the 43rd President of the United States and that school that has gotten 1/6 of their graduates positions in the Bush Administration, mostly at the Dept. of Justice. Did I mention that Pat Robertson is on record as saying that Regent University is so named because a regent is one who holds political power for another, and Regent’s goal is to train up people to gain and hold political power and wield it in the name of Jesus Christ and [their opinion of] Christ’s Will. And this is in print in a book published in 1994?
I half feel like a conspiracy theorist for saying that. But dammit, you can chase down the details on it.
I understand the part about Regent University. I lived in Tidewater Virginia while the school was trying to get ABA accreditation. There were so many problems with it that a lot of people were wondering if that would ever happen.
However, I perceived that many posters were painting Messiah with the same brush, and having known graduates and faculty from that college, I feel that’s unfair.
Isn’t it, though? Hatch act, and I could swear some others. That assistant to Gonzales is taking the 5th for some reason… and I get the feeling we’re about to have the other shoe drop when she gets immunity.
I’ve read the whole thread and the links, and I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be upset about. AFAICT it all boils down to “OMG! The Bush administration is hiring people who agree with their basic philosophical stance! I don’t believe in that stance, so it’s wrong! Plus they’re likely Christians! We can’t have any Christians in government!” People who went to Regent University may not be the most qualified people in the world (then again they may, a person’s ability is not necessarily measured by his or her schooling), but are the unqualified? If they are, THAT is where the outrage should come from, but this “Woe and gloom, they’re hiring people who went to a Christian University” is beyond me, and the whole “They’re infiltrating the Justice Dept!” subtext is frankly nothing more than conspiracy theory nonsense. If, say, Dennis Kusinich won the presidency, I would expect it to be a banner year for graduates of Bearkley. Thats how it works, how it has worked for over 200 years. Each administration brings in people that it thinks will best help advance their agenda. What exactly is it I’m supposed to be outraged at?
Yeah, for patronage jobs. Not civil service. Civil service is supposed to be purely professional, meritocratic, nonpolitical and nonpartisan. That is the point of civil service, to provide an alternative to the spoils system.
The problem isn’t that they’re hiring political appointees that share their philosophy. That’s what you expect. And it isn’t even that they’re firing and hiring U.S. Attorneys based on which party they’re investigating - that’s a different thread.
It’s that they’re going out of their way to hire people based on political (and apparently religious) affiliation for civil service positions, which are protected by law from that sort of hiring discrimination.
Well then I’d say you have a mess of proof to dig up. Nothing here rises to that evidenciary level. We have a Bill Mahr op=ed, another op-ed, you linked to a leftist bolg that cites another leftist blog as one of it sources and then there is the piece in Slate, which doesn’t say what you probably think it says. Read the last two paragraphs"
In other words, the point of the article is just what I said earlier was the only legitimate basis here for criticism: The people weren’t qualified to do the jobs they were given. Of course, just saying that doesn’t make for easy Bush and/or Republican bashing, it requires one to be able to read, think and be capable of understanding nuance, which most of the posters here definitely are not, so I’m not really surprised. I guess that leaves you with the task of providing the proof for the allegations that you made in your last post. I eagerly await. I hope you find some, I really do, because a systematic policy of discrimination would be illegal, but I suspect it’ll wind up like most of the Left’s accusations of conspiracy against Bush and the Republicans; full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
If it will make you feel better, that quote is not from this administration, but from Edwin Edwards, former governor of Louisiana. Much to my surprise, he got convicted while not doing either. So there might be some hope.
Qualification has nothing to do with it. Regent’s reputation is that it churns out lawyers to advance the conservative Christian agenda, and it’s a reputation Regent is happy to have. (See this article for more.) It had accreditation problems until 1996, and even then, the quality of its graduates is questionable. Do you really want your government run by people trained to be Christian lawyers, or do you want your government run by competent lawyers who happen to be Christian?
For the record, Dennis Kucinich did not attend Berkeley; Wikipedia says he went to Case Western Reserve. Either way, he went to a much better school than Regent.
