Passing into History

On February 19, 1945, 30,000 Marines landed on Iwo Jima an eight-square-mile volcanic island about 650 nautical miles south of Tokyo. The grim, bloody, pitiless battle that followed finds few rivals in the annals of war and sacrifice.

Slowly but relentlessly, the Marines climbed up the slopes of Mount Suribachi, fighting with flamethrowers and grenades for every last yard. They gained the summit on February 23rd, and raised the American flag. A month of grim fighting still lay ahead, but the highest point on the "Hot Pork Chop" now belonged to the Americans.

A young Associated Press photographer named Joe Rosenthal was on Iwo Jima with the Marines. When he heard about the flag raising at the summit, he very nearly didn't go up. But for some reason, and fortunately for him and for history, he decided to go ahead and make the climb. The Marines decided they needed to hoist a bigger flag, and Rosenthal arrived just as they were attaching the flag to a length of pipe. He started to pile up some rocks to stand on for a better vantage point; but when he realized that the moment was about to pass him by, he picked up his camera, swung it around and aimed it without even looking through the viewfinder. The shutter opened just in time to catch Ira Hayes, Franklin Sousley, John Bradley, Harlon Block, Michael Strank and Rene Gagnon planting the Stars and Stripes into the inhospitable volcanic soil they had fought so hard to wrest from the enemy. The photograph would win Rosenthal a Pulitzer Prize, and become one of the best-known images of all time. Rosenthal's photograph was used as the model for the U.S. Marine Corps war memorial near Arlington National Cemetery, pictured above.

The young photographer who had captured an icon of World War II and a Pulitzer without half trying went on to have a long career with the San Francisco Chronicle. On August 20, 2006, at the age of 94, Joe Rosenthal was reunited with the six men who hoisted the flag on Mount Suribachi.

Update: The Solar System's Expanding Waistline

It looks as though Pluto will (a) remain a planet, and (b) gain some siblings, if the proposal for a new definition of "planet" announced by the International Astronomical Union passes the final vote on August 24th. If the IAU proposal passes, then henceforth planets shall be defined as follows:

A planet is a celestial body that (a) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (b) is in orbit around a star, and is neither a star nor a satellite of a planet.

So in order to qualify as a planet, an object must (a) be round (since roundness is due to gravity, and gravity depends on mass), and (b) orbit a star, but not be either a moon or another star. This means that tiny Pluto qualifies as a planet. Clearly, Pluto does revolve around a star (the Sun), is not itself a star, and is not another planet's moon; and even though its diameter is only about 1,423 miles (compared to Earth's diameter of 7,927 miles and the Moon's diameter of 2,160 miles), it's still massive enough to be round.

Not only will Pluto get to stay a planet under this new definition, but the new object discovered lurking beyond Pluto and nicknamed "Xena" will also be granted planetary status. And at least two other objects are up for a promotion. Ceres, which lies between Mars and Jupiter and was demoted to asteroid over 150 years ago, will be re-planetized. Also slated for upgrade under the new definition is Pluto's soon-to-be-former satellite, Charon, since it turns out that round Charon does not revolve around Pluto, but Pluto and Charon revolve around a common center of gravity.

Not everybody, however, is happy about this new definition that includes Pluto. As the L.A. Daily News reports, among the sourpusses is Hayden Planetarium director Neil de Grasse Tyson, who drew the ire of schoolkids five years ago by snubbing Pluto in a solar system exhibit. Objecting to roundness as a criterion for planethood, Tyson sniffed: "A Plutophile is well served by this definition. It is one of the few that allow you to utter Pluto and Jupiter in the same breath."

As if all this Pluto-smooching wasn't bad enough, the IAU is also proposing a new classification of planets named in its honor. If this new classification is approved, then henceforth Pluto-like objects whose orbits are more tilted and elliptical and that take more than 200 years to revolve around the Sun will be called "plutons." There is no knowing how many plutons will eventually be discovered. Dr. Tyson will surely get over it in the fullness of time.

After the New Horizons spacecraft reaches Pluto nine years from now, it is expected to reconnoiter the Kuiper Belt, where a number of curious objects exist, some of which are potential candidates for planethood. New Horizons' voyage may well lead to the discovery of even more planets. In the words of Jack Horkheimer, director of the Miami Space Transit Planetarium and host of PBS's weekly Stargazer: "The solar system is a middle-aged star, and like all middle-aged things, its waistline is expanding."

Read more about the new IAU proposals here.

To Be or Not to Be (A Planet)

One winter morning in the first half of the 20th century, a 24-year-old nobody, an amateur astronomer from a tiny town in Illinois (who grew up in an even tinier town in Kansas) made a big splash at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. Using a 13-inch reflecting astrograph (photographic telescope), he assiduously searched the heavens for an elusive object thought to exist since the late 19th century. Finally, his efforts were rewarded. Two photographic plates taken six days apart were almost identical – except for a tiny pinprick of light that was clearly moving across the field of background stars. Comparison to an earlier plate and further photographs confirmed the discovery. On February 18, 1930, Clyde Tombaugh succeeded where the big guns – including Percival Lowell himself – had failed, and the news of the existence of a ninth planet in the solar system broke upon the world. On the suggestion of an 11-year-old girl from Oxford, England, the newly discovered planet was christened Pluto, after the Roman god of the underworld.

As one of the most mysterious objects in our solar system, Pluto has proven to be full of surprises. On June 22, 1978, astronomer James Christy of the U.S. Naval Observatory discovered that Pluto has a moon, christened Charon. Ten years later, Pluto was found to have a thin atmosphere which freezes and falls to the ground as Pluto moves in its elliptical orbit away from the Sun. A true color image of Pluto taken in 2001 shows that Clyde Tombaugh’s pinpoint of light is actually mostly brown. Only last May, the Hubble Space Telescope revealed the existence of two more moons orbiting Pluto, named Hydra and Nix.

Now, as Fox News reports, an uproar of controversy roils the scientific community in the wake of the recent discovery of a yet more distant planet, as astronomers debate what a planet really is, and whether Pluto is a planet at all. The new possible planet, currently nicknamed "Xena" and officially named 2003 UB313, also has a satellite and turns out to be even larger than Pluto, which is smaller than several moons in the solar system, including our own. In a world where a bright-line definition of "planet" is lacking, whether "Xena" is declared a planet may have implications for Pluto’s status. Should "Xena" be declared a planet? Should Pluto be demoted? If "Xena" is not declared a planet, why should the smaller Pluto retain planetary status? These are some of the questions scientists hope to resolve at the meeting of the International Astronomical Union in Prague over the next couple of weeks.

Of course, it’s always possible that even after the International Astronomical Union reaches its verdicts in Prague this month, new data may force yet another re-evaluation. On January 19th of this year, NASA launched the New Horizons unmanned spacecraft on its mission to Pluto, which it should reach in nine years. Pluto has not failed to deliver surprises over three quarters of a century, and New Horizons is sure to discover some of its best.

In the meantime, Pluto’s status has yet to be set in stone. There is precedent for demoting an object that once had planetary status: Ceres, discovered in 1801, was later reduced to asteroid (though this is being reconsidered at the Prague meeting). Personally, I hope this precedent won’t be followed in the case of Pluto. As a kid fascinated with astronomy, I grew to know and love Pluto as the ninth planet, even before we had any pictures more revealing than Tombaugh’s plates (and how bummed I was when I realized we wouldn’t get any pics from Voyager II). Besides, Pluto has three moons. If Ceres is re-promoted to planet, then Pluto will take its place as the tenth planet, making "Xena" a possible number 11. However this works out, I’ll be happy as long as Pluto gets to remain a planet, wherever it is in the pecking order.

Murder Will Out

Although there is technically no statute of limitations on murder, murderers do slip beyond the reach of human law. Through the march of the ages, the tides of time sweep over the victim’s grave, his killer, his family’s grief, and ultimately, even the local civil authority responsible for meting out punishment.

Still, as Miguel de Cervantes observed, murder will out. Archaeologists digging at the site of a Roman farm in the village of Sedgeford in Norfolk, England have uncovered evidence of an ancient homicide. A human skeleton found inside a Roman corn-drier is all that remains of an unfortunate person who, alive or dead, was shoved into the drier and apparently set on fire about 1,500 years ago.

The most we can reasonably hope to find out about this ancient murder victim is the age, the sex, and possibly the cause of death and how long the bones have lain hidden. Unless archaeologists turn up more evidence when the digging season resumes next year, we will probably never know the victim’s identity. Still less can we hope to know the identity of the killer who escaped earthly justice...only to answer to a higher and more terrible tribunal.

A Woman Clothed with the Sun

The princess is decked in her chamber with gold-woven robes; in many-colored robes she is led to the king, with her virgin companions, her escort, in her train. With joy and gladness they are led along as they enter the palace of the king. Psalm 45:13-15 (RSV)

And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.... Revelation 12:1 (RSV)

Today is a blog day off, in honor of the Feast of the Assumption. (I had planned to upload an image, but I'm having technical problems with image uploading.)

Against Blotting Chrisianity Out of Public Life

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) recently introduced a bill intended to help protect the display of religious symbols on veterans’ memorials, public buildings, and government seals, as well as the use of public property by the Boy Scouts. As currently constituted, the law allows the winning party to recover attorney fees in civil rights actions against government entities, including First Amendment claims of violating the "separation" between church and state. This gives groups like the ACLU extra leverage in the fight to eradicate every scintilla of Christianity from public view, since fear of getting stuck with mammoth attorney fees encourages local governments to cave. Sen. Brownback’s bill would amend existing civil rights litigation law to exclude attorney fees in lawsuits over religious words or images on public property, and over the use of public property for Boy Scout events.

Without question, something needs to be done about this tyranny of the anti-Christian minority, exercised via the courts. Consider the lawsuits going on in New Mexico over the crosses in the logo of the City of Las Cruces (which, by an amazing coincidence, means "The Crosses"). According to the plaintiffs, who have far too much time on their hands, the crosses violate the separation of church and state (not found, by the way, in the Constitution). They also allege that it violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964, since people who apply for jobs with the city are "forced" to sign an application that has Christian symbols emblazoned on it. One of these ridiculous cases has evidently survived summary judgment and is set for trial in November. No doubt the next step will be to eradicate New Mexico’s state flag, which has a big red sun with rays in the shape of a cross over a yellow field.

A nodding acquaintance with the Constitution and its history are all it takes to figure out that the Founding Fathers never envisioned its use to flush all vestiges of America’s Christian heritage out of public life. Senator Brownback’s bill is only a small step toward correcting this blatant abuse, but it is a step in the right direction.

One More Warning

At 07:53 local time, December 7, 1941, Japanese bombs began striking American ships and military installations at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. In America’s worst naval disaster since the Revolution, two battleships were sunk, six more were disabled, and 2,400 people were killed. On the same day, Japan also attacked Guam, Midway, Wake and the Philippines, all possessions of the United States. America was plunged into World War II – "up to the neck and in to the death," as Winston Churchill recalled in his war memoirs.

When the Japanese decimated the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, they weren’t targeting civilians – that time – and they weren’t attacking the mainland, or even a state – Hawaii wasn’t admitted into the Union until 1959. But the outrage of Pearl Harbor remained ever before the eyes of America, and fueled our determination to win the war. The battle cry, "Remember Pearl Harbor!" appeared in music, on posters, billboards and postcards, in jewelry – even on underwear. Movies and radio shows celebrated the exploits of America’s military heroes. Celebrities toured the country selling war bonds. To free men up for combat duty, millions of women went to work in factories that in peacetime had specialized in civilian goods, building airplanes, tanks, ships and guns. Schoolkids collected waste metal for scrap drives and newspapers for newspaper drives. Millions of Americans wore their country’s uniform: even Bugs Bunny was officially inducted into the Marine Corps as a private, and by war’s end had been promoted to Master Sergeant. Radio news brought the sounds of battle into American living rooms. The draft, rationing, and shortages of everything from sugar to rubber made the war a pressing reality for every man, woman and child in the country.

Sixty years later, America was again up to the neck and in to the death. On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 Muslim extremists boarded four separate commercial flights from the East Coast, chosen because each was carrying enough fuel to fly all the way across the continent. At 08:46 local time, American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. At 09:02 local time, United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower. At 09:37 local time, American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. At 10:03 local time, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed into a field outside of Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Flight 93 was probably bound for either the White House or the Capitol, but its passengers and surviving flight crew, who knew what was afoot, fought to prevent the hijackers from reaching their target. 2,973 people were killed in the attacks. Three days later, Congress passed a joint resolution – tantamount to a declaration of war – authorizing the use of force against anyone who was in any way complicit in September 11th.

Some opinion makers call the War on Terror World War III. This is unquestionably a World War that has engulfed every nation (though I personally believe that this is actually World War IV, the Cold War being World War III). The United States is in a war for its life, just as it was during the Second World War. In fact, the threat today is arguably even more grave than the one posed by the Axis Powers. Germany and Japan were readily identifiable nations whose soldiers wore readily identifiable uniforms. Today, we fight against terrorist organizations whose members disappear into our population and turn our very openness and freedom against us. And though Germany patrolled our Atlantic seaboard with submarines, and Japan lobbed a few shells and balloon bombs at the west coast, the Axis never mustered enough force to launch a deadly assault on our mainland. Our present enemies may not have armies or navies, but they have figured out how to use a minimum of resources to maximum lethal effect on our own shores.

Even so, we suffer grave disadvantages today that would have been unthinkable 65 years ago. For one thing, since World War II we have had Vietnam – a war that we lost from within, thanks to the fellow travelers in our midst who broke down our will to fight. The arrested-development Vietnam peacenik crowd is still very much with us, and straining every nerve not only to revive drawstring pants and hemp jewelry, but to recapture the glory days of derailing American foreign policy. Before Pearl Harbor, the isolationists and anti-war activists were vocal; but afterward, they either got behind the war effort or just clammed up. America First, the foremost anti-war group, actually disbanded after the United States declared war on Japan. But today, now that the initial shock of 9/11 has long since worn off, the Hananiahs are out in force, working to convince the country that there is no real war. During the Second World War, it would have been considered seditious and even treasonous for an American to side with Germany or Japan; today, in elite circles, it is siding with the United States that is seditious and treasonous. During the Second World War, generals could confide the details of upcoming offensives to reporters, confident that they would not spill the beans; today, reporters consider it their duty not only to root for the enemy but to give them the heads-up on secret operations against them. During the Second World War, enemy aliens were rounded up and incarcerated (and not just the Japanese); in this war, the press bites its nails over the creature comforts of captured terrorists. During World War II, the Republican Party, though out of power, supported the war effort. Today, it is the Democrats who are out of power, and our present war effort takes a back seat to their fight to regain Congress and the White House. We have no way of being certain that the next administration will prosecute this war through to absolute victory. Even the present administration is unable to operate untrammeled by the burden of political correctness.

Unlike the Second World War, this war began with a devastating attack on civilian targets on our mainland and the deaths of thousands of men, women and children. How is it, then, that civil society makes it acceptable in this present war for so many of us not only to lack the resolve to win, but to declaim the same from the rooftops? Perhaps this is due in part to our vast prosperity. We were not in a Depression when war came, like the World War II generation was; we are not called upon to make the sacrifices that that generation was called upon to make. Although we have instantaneous, 24-hour access to news, we are still able to distance ourselves from the war: watching war coverage or reading it is not the same as the war having a palpable effect on our daily lives. Also, we have an all-volunteer military instead of the draft, so very few Americans actually face the prospect of marching into battle. Most of all – thanks to the security measures so execrated by the Left – five years have passed without a major attack on U.S. soil, allowing us to indulge the belief that the threat has passed.

And so one of the curious features of World War IV is its invisibility, at least to Americans. We are not subject to a constant bombardment of reminders that we can’t ignore; on the contrary, unless you have to fly a lot, or you have regular business at a federal courthouse, the war is very easy to tune out. The war is so easy to tune out that it wasn’t until late Thursday that I realized that the Brits had foiled a plot to murder several thousands more innocent civilians, this time on planes flying over the Atlantic to the United States. Here was the biggest threat to our nation since 9/11 (that we know about), and I was able to go all day without finding out about it.

It’s staggering to think that we live in an age when so many Americans can forget about the fact that our country is locked in deadly struggle. But as President Bush remarked, "This week, America received a stark reminder that terrorists are still plotting attacks to kill our people." Though so many of us cherish the illusion that we are not at war with an enemy that has murdered three thousand of us on our own shores, the terrorists have not forgotten for a moment that they are at war with us. They are bent on our destruction, and have not made their intentions less plain that Adolf Hitler made his before he rose to power. We ought to believe them.

President Bush summed it up best in his radio address today:

Because of the measures we've taken to protect the American people, our Nation is safer than it was prior to September the 11th. Still, we must never make the mistake of thinking the danger of terrorism has passed. This week's experience reminds us of a hard fact: The terrorists have to succeed only once to achieve their goal of mass murder, while we have to succeed every time to stop them. Unfortunately, some have suggested recently that the terrorist threat is being used for partisan political advantage. We can have legitimate disagreements about the best way to fight the terrorists, yet there should be no disagreement about the dangers we face.

I hope and pray that this foiled plot will be enough to shake us from our complacency. The next warning will not be so painless.

Ireland’s Ancient Bog Psalter Yields More Clues

Last month, an on-the-ball backhoe operator stumbled across the fragments of an ancient book of Psalms while digging peat in Faddan More bog in County Tipperary, Ireland. The psalter, found open to Psalm 83, may be more than a thousand years old. Experts speculated that it might have been dumped in the bog by Viking raiders fresh from pillaging a nearby monastery (of which there were several in the early Middle Ages), or the monks might have hidden it there in order to save it from the Vikings, with the intention of going back for it later.

As of the end of last week, the experts from the National Museum of Ireland are leaning toward the latter theory. On August 5th, the Irish Times reported the discovery of more pieces of the manuscript and cover of the Bog Psalter. Archaeologists also found part of a "fine leather pouch" that once held the Psalter. Based on the new discoveries, they believe that the Psalter was deliberately hidden in the bog by owners who probably intended to come back for it.

The Bog Psalter may have much to teach us about Ireland in the early Middle Ages. But beneath the excitement and anticipation of great discoveries, an inescapable poignancy flows from a part of the Psalter’s story that we may never know: why the owners never came back for it. At a time when books were written by hand on vellum and bound in leather, the Psalter would have been a very valuable item even in its day, so it’s unimaginable that its owners would not have retrieved it without a very compelling reason. It could be that they did go back for it after the danger had passed, but could no longer find where it lay. Yet it’s likely that, in an age when life was nasty, brutish and short, and monasteries made vulnerable and tempting targets, the defenseless owners fell under the strokes of a Viking battle axe, blotting all knowledge of the Psalter from living memory.

Maybe, though, if the Psalter’s owners had not been prevented from recovering it, it would not have survived to the present day. For centuries it has lain beyond the reach of marauders, fire, sieges, soldiers, religious wars, and political turmoil, preserved for an age with the technology to preserve it and restore it, at least in part – a witness to a forgotten age.

A Dispatch from Reuters

I’ve been thinking a lot in the last couple of days about Edward G. Robinson. Yes, one of Hollywood’s greatest bad guys: the power-hungry Rico in Little Caesar; the smug, cold-blooded Johnny Rocco in Key Largo; the slithery, treacherous Dathan in The Ten Commandments. But Robinson wasn’t only an expert when it came to evil: some of his dozens of characters managed to muster at least a little nobility of heart.

And sometimes more than a little. Like in 1940, when Robinson played the proprietor of a messenger pigeon service with a fascination for wire signals. In order to serve the community at large, he turns down the opportunity to provide exclusive stock price services to a banker. He over-extends himself financially, but with the aid and encouragement of his loving wife, he turns the messenger pigeon service into a (19th-century) high-tech service relaying stock prices and news. He turns down the chance for a high-paying position with one of his competitors, preferring instead to go deeply into debt in order to develop his own technology. When he scoops even the American ambassador to London with his report of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, which leads to a stock crash and brings him under the scrutiny of Parliament, his integrity and dedication to accuracy save the day and guarantee a free press in Britain.

When I consider Edward G. Robinson’s noble and indeed heroic portrayal of Paul Julius Reuter in A Dispatch from Reuters, I can’t help contrasting it with Reuters’ current practice of trying to pass off on a (not quite so) gullible public blatantly doctored images of the war in Lebanon. Some of these pics are so blatantly fake that even my cats could spot the deception. Read all about it:

Reuters admits to doctored photo of air-raid damage

Reuters cans photographer Adnan Hajj
Reuters withdraws 920 pics by guilty photographer

“I hereby sentence you to read The Grapes of Wrath!”

When I was a kid, I would have considered this a punishment, even though I’ve always loved to read. In fact, I did consider it a punishment when I had to read it in high school, and I’d still consider it a punishment, because despite his considerable talents, I find John Steinbeck depressing. The question is: is it enough of a punishment for convicted criminals? What about sentencing a defendant to yoga classes, or to clean houses? As Fox News reported recently, judges all over the country are looking for all sorts of alternatives to ordinary, run-of-the-mill jail sentences and fines.

Since the legislature prescribes penalties for criminal offenses, the first question is whether the courts even have the authority to order a sentence other than incarceration. The answer is that, except for certain crimes, like first-degree murder, the courts do have the authority to place people on probation, and to set terms and conditions of probation. The creative sentences I have seen during the course of my own career have virtually always been terms of probation. Probation always involves suspended jail or prison time and/or suspended fines, so if the probationer doesn’t hold up his end, he’ll go to jail or get stuck in the pocketbook.

Some proponents of "creative" sentencing seem to think it’s a good way to deal with the overcrowding of jails and prisons. My own take on prison overcrowding is that the only real remedy is the reduction of crime, which will require a long and hard fight to regain lost moral ground in society. I don’t think "creative" sentencing really saves jail space. You have to hold jail time over people’s heads in order to induce them to carry out the "creative" conditions of probation, and an awful lot of people end up preferring the risk of jail even to carrying out the simplest conditions. Nor do we really know how effective "creative" sentencing is when it comes to deterring crime. Activities like cleaning up trash or doing yard work under the supervision of county sheriffs is imposed all the time as a substitute for actual jail in Idaho. While this does leave us with cleaner highways, I couldn’t call it a fool-proof deterrent. I’ve had plenty of customers come back for more – several times.

On the other hand, I can think of times when a few innovative conditions of probation may be in order. For example, when the defendant is going to get a slap on the wrist, by operation either of law (like juvenile cases) or local custom (like first-time misdemeanor offenses), it might pay to throw in some extras in order to make him repair some of the harm he has done, and to drive home the point that what he has done was wrong. It might even do him some unexpected good. How can a defendant be worse off for having to read A Tale of Two Cities and then write a report on it? Sometimes, being made to do things you wouldn’t otherwise do yields unexpected fruits. I know I'd never have discovered the joys of classical music if I hadn’t been forced to take a music appreciation course in college.

For more offenses that are more serious but still less than heinous, the punishments could be ratcheted up. Humiliation is an age-old punishment that still has its uses even today, with sex offender registration laws (even though the courts have uniformly ruled that the purpose of sex offender registration is not punitive in nature). Maybe we could start sentencing people to a few hours in the stocks for petty offenses. I’d even support corporal punishment for some offenses. Years ago, after that American kid got caned in Singapore for vandalizing property, a California assemblyman introduced a bill to impose butt-swats as a punishment for graffiti tagging – a problem so serious that freeway signs in the Los Angeles area had to be enmeshed in razor wire. Although the bill might have given respectable society a real weapon against a class of criminals who plied their trade blatantly and openly, it went down to defeat.

Where we run into problems with "creative" sentencing is when it translates to outcomes like microscopic terms of local jail, or no jail at all, for people convicted of heinous crimes. Probably the most infamous recent case in point is that of child molester Mark Hulett, whom a Vermont judge sentenced to a mere 60 days of local jail for repeatedly victimizing a child over the course of four years. The court reasoned that rehabilitation was more important than punishment, and that Hulett needed a short sentence so that he would be eligible sooner for sex offender treatment. Amid a firestorm of public outrage, the same court was persuaded just a month later to up the sentence to 3 to 10 years in prison.

So why shouldn’t a child molester get a 60-day local jail sentence? What good can be achieved by throwing the guy in prison? How’s he ever going to get rehabilitated by being forced to associate with a bunch of criminals? Those who focus on rehabilitation to the exclusion of almost all else forget that sentencing also has other purposes. In the first place, just retribution is a legitimate objective of sentencing. Our human instinct for justice was not given to us in vain: some crimes, like child molestation, cry out to heaven for severe punishment. In the second place, mercy does not consist in adopting a policy of impotence. On the contrary: to decline to exercise the legitimate authority to punish without a compelling reason is to negate deterrence and invite an increase in crime and disorder. And in the third place, and perhaps most importantly, there are criminals who can be safely dealt with only by removing them from society. In the absence of proof that alternative punishment renders criminals harmless, we should not play Russian roulette with the lives of innocent people by letting violent criminals and sexual predators off with just therapy, or yoga classes, or a few weeks in jail.

Alternative sentences – especially those that have never been tried before and whose effectiveness has never been measured – should be used only on a limited basis, however appealing they seem in theory. Some of these might be appropriate for use on petty offenders, or even as a supplement to incarceration. But they should never take the place of tried and true punishments for heinous crimes. This is literally a matter of life and death for the people that serious criminals prey upon.

Liberty Enlightening the World

When I was a kid, I was a Statue of Liberty nut. I read everything I could lay my hands on about Lady Liberty. I wrote a report about her for school, I drew pictures of her, I collected pictures of her – I even had a beach towel picturing her reclining on a lounge with a pair of sunglasses, getting a tan. I memorized Emma Lazarus’ sonnet, "The New Colossus," grabbed my mother’s high school Spanish-English English-Spanish dictionary, and tried to translate it into Spanish – back before I learned Spanish. (I gave over every spare moment to this project, and abandoned it only when I finally realized that what I was producing was hopelessly incoherent.) To this day, I’m torqued that I didn’t get to go out to Liberty Island when I visited New York eight years ago, and had to be content to look at the Lady with the Lamp from the Staten Island Ferry terminal.

Since Saturday, August 5th was the 122nd anniversary of the laying of Lady Liberty’s pedestal cornerstone, that provides me with an excuse to indulge an old obsession. But instead of just doing the regular run-down of Liberty’s history and vital statistics, here’s a run-down of facts about her that I personally find interesting:

• Lady Liberty is closer to New Jersey than to New York, and is in fact within the geographic bounds of New Jersey, which extend to the middle of the Hudson River channel. New Jersey owns all the submerged lands around Liberty Island (as all states own all submerged lands within their territories) and also provides all power, water and sewage services to Liberty Island. However, Lady Liberty is a citizen of New York. Liberty Island has of course belonged to the federal government for over 200 years, but it, along with the other islands in New York Harbor, has lain within New York’s territorial jurisdiction since 1664. In fact, if Lady Liberty were a registered voter, she would be voting (no doubt for Republicans) in New York’s 8th Congressional District.
• Gustave Eiffel, of Eiffel Tower fame, designed Liberty’s steel skeleton.
• Some say that Liberty’s face was modeled after the mother of her designer, Frédéric Bartholdi; others say it was modeled after the widow of Isaac Singer, the sewing machine tycoon.
• Liberty’s interior has been closed to the public since 9/11, but anybody with top-level inside connections, hatred for tiny elevators and the stamina to ascend 22 stories on foot could climb a spiral staircase of 354 steps to one of the 25 observation windows in the crown. There are rest seats every third turn in the spiral, but back when the interior was open to the public, and before the elevator was built, these were probably always packed during the tourist season.
• Almost exactly 90 years ago, in the fury of the First World War – but before America entered – German saboteurs blew up an ammo dump on Black Tom Island near Liberty Island. Shrapnel from the explosion struck the Statue of Liberty and weakened her torch arm. The torch has been off-limits to the public ever since.
• There is an entrance to Liberty’s interior in the sole of her right foot.
• The Lighthouse Board was once responsible for operating Liberty’s torch.
• The glass-panel flame on the original torch dates back to 1916. The original torch, retired during the centennial renovations in 1986, is now on display at the Visitor Center in Liberty’s pedestal.
• Liberty wears size 879 sandals.

Emma Lazarus wrote "The New Colossus" as part of a drive to raise funds for Lady Liberty’s pedestal. Today, it is inscribed on a copper plaque inside the pedestal. The text of this sonnet seems like a good way to close this piece, so here it is:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

First Friday Saint Profile: The Curé of Ars

The latter half of the 18th century was an era of war and upheaval, both in the Old World and the New. During the 1750s and 1760s, all the major powers of Europe were involved in the SevenYears’ War which resulted, among other things, in the primacy of the United Kingdom as a world colonial power. This same great world power would receive a rude awakening in the 1770s, when a rag-tag army of American colonists defeated the polished, professional and highly experienced British Redcoats and pave the way for the founding of a future superpower. In the 1780s-90s, France was convulsed in a bloody revolution that forever altered that nation’s social and political structures. And into the midst of this worldwide unrest, three years before the Storming of the Bastille, a future saint was born to Matthieu Vianney and Marie Beluze in Dardilly, near Lyon, France, on May 8, 1786.

In a foreshadowing of his future vocation, young Jean Baptiste Marie Vianney worked as a shepherd in his early life. When he was 18, he began studying for the priesthood. Many obstacles lay ahead for him, not the least of which was the fact that he was a very poor student. He was deficient in philosophy and his Latin was terrible; the only thing he seemed to be any good at was failing examinations. On top of all of this, his studies were interrupted during his brush with compulsory military service in Napoleon’s army.

Despite these apparently insurmountable obstacles, young Jean Vianney persevered in pursuing his vocation, and was finally ordained in 1815. In 1818, he was assigned a parish at Ars, an obscure town near Lyon known for its irreligious citizenry and moral laxity. It was thought that to be assigned to this parish was a punishment, because of the abysmal church attendance; but it was here that the Curé showed his quality. He lived austerely, visited the sick and the poor, instructed the ignorant, counseled the doubtful, founded a home for destitute girls, and aided the villagers in their everyday affairs. The Curé of Ars was a man of intense prayer and a model of piety and sanctity. Under his tutelage, Ars was transformed from a sink of iniquity to a haven of Christian devotion.

But most of all, the priest that everyone took for a dunce and a blockhead on account of his poor academic performance turned out to be a gifted preacher and confessor. People came from miles around to listen to his profound yet common-sense preaching, and to go to him for confession. The Curé spent 11 to 16 hours a day just hearing confessions. He understood better than most the urgent need to aid people in repentance, for he personally experienced some of the diabolical torments that await the damned. He had a gift for uncovering the secrets of souls in the confessional and was known for working miracles and seeing into the future.

After four decades of unflagging service, the Curé of Ars died peacefully on August 4, 1859. Pope Pius IX proclaimed him Venerable on October 3, 1874, and he was beatified on January 8, 1905 by Pope St. Pius X. He was canonized in 1925 by Pope Pius XI.

St. John Vianney is the patron saint of parish priests. His incorrupt body is on display at the Basilica of Ars.

Needed: Patron Saint against Heat Waves

As a kid growing up in southern California, I was completely unused to cold weather. We had frosty nights now and then during winter, but only once in the 25 years I lived there did it snow in the San Fernando Valley (overnight, 2 inches, and it was gone by day’s end). We’d bundle up when the thermometer dropped down to 45 degrees. I grew up with this vague idea that snow fell in balls: when we made pictures of winter scenes in grade school, we drew falling snow as big white circles, or glued the paper dots from hole punchers onto blue construction paper. I was 25 years old before I saw falling snow with my own eyes, or heard it crunch beneath my feet, or saw it glitter in the sunlight.

Since I moved to Idaho 11 years ago, I’ve learned to manage in the kind of really cold weather that I had never experienced before. I still can’t go around in shirt sleeves in 20-degree weather, like some of the natives do, but I can drive through ice and snow, and I can breathe in below-zero weather without choking. And, of course, I’ve learned to manage the many nuisances of cold weather, like frozen keyholes, going out to warm up the car, and shoveling snow.

For all the nuisances of cold weather, though, there’s one distinct advantage that cold weather has over hot weather: you can always put on more layers of clothing. But when it’s hot, you can only disrobe so much before you get arrested. Even if you take it all off, you’re still boiling. Nowhere is this better understood than in the northeast, the south, the midwest and California, which has been enduring record-breaking heat for many days. We’ve had our heat wave too here in southern Idaho, though for the last couple of days we’ve had a break from the triple-digit weather. And at least we have not had a massive power failure like the one in Queens, New York.

There’s nothing anybody can do about the heat, especially if the power is out (please spare me the global warming malarkey), so other than stay as cool as we can, all we can do is pray for help. Catholics look to the saints for special help, since we believe that our responsibility to pray for our fellow men does not end at death, and the saints, being in heaven, are in a position to intervene powerfully on our behalf. We are in the habit of praying to our patron saints, and also to those saints who, based on what happened to them in life, are in a position to specially understand our situations. There are patron saints for cities, nations, all sorts of professions, and sufferers of all kinds of afflictions, maladies and bad circumstances.

But as far as I’ve been able to determine, there is no patron saint against heat waves. I looked and looked, because we really need one right now, but I can’t find any. I have come up with a few nominees, though:

• St. Agricola of Avignon, bishop (630-700 A.D.). It was said during his life that God answered his prayers for good weather.
• St. Medard of Noyon, bishop (456-545 A.D.). It was said that when he was a child, an eagle sheltered him from the rain, so he is invoked against bad weather.
• St. Joan of Arc. She was burned at the stake and likely died of heat stroke before the flames actually reached her.
• St. John the Evangelist. He is invoked against burns. It is said that the Emperor Dometian had him thrown into a cauldron of boiling oil, but he escaped unharmed.
• St. Francis Xavier. He was a missionary to India, Japan, and the East Indies, so he knew what extreme heat was all about.

Some of these saints are pretty obscure, so I bet they would be thrilled to have somebody ask them for their intercession. Why not bring joy to an obscure saint today? Who knows what graces he will obtain for you in his gratitude?

Preventing the Resedafication of Boise

Although there are a few seedy areas of Boise, for the most part, it's a pretty clean town. Back home in Reseda, anything standing still for more than five minutes gets spray-painted; here, most graffiti is scratched into the tops of picnic tables and not visible from a distance. Back home, storefronts were grimy and run-down; here, they're clean and well-kept. If you notice, there's not a speck of trash visible anywhere in this picture of 8th Street (and I didn't go around picking up trash, either).

There's another thing here that we didn't have back home: flowerpots with actual flowers in them. The Reseda I remember had a few flowerpots on the sidewalk here and there, filled with sand and cigarette butts -- or else dried-out soil, a couple of dead weeds, some trash and cigarette butts.

But here, a dedicated crew of private landscapers keeps the city's pots in beautiful plants. A few months ago, a bunch of these guys got up at about four in the morning and worked for 16 hours planting pots like these all over downtown. And ever since, they've been working constantly, watering the plants, culling dead blooms and leaves, and -- unfortunately -- picking out trash and cigarette butts, and repairing vandalism. They're at it several times a week, even on Sundays, working from 1:30 or 2:30 in the morning through to mid-afternoon. They take it personally when their flower arrangements get messed up.

What these guys do may not take a Ph.D., but it does take a lot of devotion and hours and hours of hard work. They take a lot of pride in what they do, and they put an awful lot of time and effort into it. And they're performing a valuable public service. Beautifying the city not only gives us pretty things to look at, but helps to maintain public order.

So the next time you see a nice flower arrangement on the street, if you feel tempted to pluck plants out of it or crush out a cigarette in it, think about the people who put so many hours into keeping it up, and resist the temptation. It'll make their day a little easier.

It's Official: Castro Is Toast

Worn out from nearly a half-century of murder, pillage, rapine, and torture, Fidel Castro is finally ready for a break. The stress of sacking and looting the former island paradise, putting people into prison for trifling offenses, paying homage to revolutionary thugs and crushing dissidents has finally gotten to Castro, who has undergone surgery for a bleeding colon. For the first time in 47 years, Castro has "temporarily" relinquished his tyrannical authority in favor of his brother Raul, who apparently is set up to succeed him.

However, in a mood of cautious optimism, the Associated Press reports that the Maximum Leader is a long way from meeting his Maker (to use a subversive bourgeoise metaphor). According to AP reporter Vanessa Arrington, "Parliament Speaker Ricardo Alarcon said the Cuban leader is known for fighting to the very end and that his 'final moment is still very far away,' the government's Prensa Latina [i.e., TASS] news service reported."

Well, that settles it: if Cuba's ministry of propaganda says full recovery is in the cards, then it's definitely curtains for Fidel. Even the nail-biters on the left acknowledge this as they tremble for the poor sheep of Cuba who now will be bereft of their Beloved Shepherd. Like orphaned children, the Cuban people face a frightful and uncertain future:

Talk of Castro's mortality was taboo until June 23, 2001, when he fainted during a speech in the sun. Although Castro quickly recovered, many Cubans understood for the first time that their leader would eventually die. [Emphasis added.]

Yes, lovingly sheltered for half a century from death, disease and starvation on their revolutionary island paradise, the Cuban people are now suddenly left to face the loss of the Dear Leader they thought would live forever. They certainly had a right to think El Supremo would live forever, seeing how he has long since surpassed the measly life expectancy of the average Cuban political prisoner. But never fear: already the sheepdogs are out in force to calm the flock. "Cuba's Communist government tried to impose a sense of normalcy Tuesday, its first day in 47 years without Fidel Castro in charge." Read: the goon squad is on the loose. Consider the admission of this young goon squad rookie, whose candor only youth, inexperience and little wit can excuse: "'We've been asked to keep things normal here, and to make sure that the revolution continues,' said Daniel, a young social worker [emphasis added]."

But the revolution is doomed. When Ronald Reagan addressed the British Parliament at the Palace of Westminster in 1982, he spoke of "the march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people." 26 years later, the Soviet Union is dead, Eastern Europe is free, and the march continues. The bastions of Communism are islands under seige. While we may (and should) hope that the Maximum Leader will make his peace with the Maker Whom he has denied by his actions all his adult life, we also can (and should) hope that the ash-heap will not have to wait long for him and everything he has stood for.

August 1, 1838: The Chains Are Buried

The world was a happening place in 1787. The astronomer, William Herschel, discovered three new moons in the solar system – two of Uranus and one of Saturn. Warren Hastings, the first governor-general of British India, was impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors (though he would later be acquitted). Civil war broke out in the Netherlands. Mozart completed "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik." Shays’ Rebellion, which had broken out in Massachusetts the previous year, went down to defeat. 1787 saw the birth of Thomas Gallaudet, founder of America’s first school for the deaf, and the death (on August 1st) of St. Alphonsus Ligouri, founder of the Redemptorist order and Doctor of the Church.

This momentous year would also prove to be pregnant with the future. The Founding Fathers hashed out the Constitution of the United States in 1787 and submitted it to the former Thirteen Colonies for ratification. The Federalist Papers were published, and by year’s end, three states had voted to ratify. Out of the ashes of the Revolution, a new nation was staggering to its feet.

And across the pond, on May 22 – just three days before the beginning of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia – twelve men held a meeting at a printshop at 2 George Yard in London. Their purpose: nothing less than to rid the world of slavery. Though little noticed at the time, this meeting was like a tiny crack in a dike that lengthens and spreads until the dike bursts and gives way before the crashing flood.

Although we in the in the western world in the 21st century take it for granted that slavery is a grave evil, this was by no means the view in 1787. Even in the most enlightened places on earth at the time, slavery was age-old, routine, banal, workaday, taken for granted – and as a result, firmly entrenched and heavily depended upon. Slavery was the backbone of the sugar industry in the Caribbean, which in turn was a major source of wealth for the far-flung British Empire. As Adam Hochschild describes in his book Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves, abolition was unthinkable at a time when so much depended on cheap, captive labor.

Yet these twelve men not only thought the unthinkable; they did it. Decades of campaigning, writing, publishing, buttoneering, organizing, boycotting, petitioning, and enduring all sorts of hardships and dangers, led to a reversal of public opinion on slavery. In 1807 – just 20 years after that first meeting at George Yard – Parliament outlawed the slave trade. For a while, slavery itself continued to wage a fierce yet vain battle against oblivion. Only in stages could the British Empire rid itself of the curse of slavery, but rid itself it ultimately did. On August 1, 1838 – 51 years after the George Yard meeting and exactly 168 years ago today – slavery was officially and forever abolished in the British Empire.

As the great day of Emancipation drew near, one Baptist congregation in Jamaica gathered at church. They decorated the walls with flowers and portraits of Thomas Clarkson, the prime mover in the abolition movement and the sole surviving participant in the George Yard meeting, and William Wilberforce, abolition’s leading advocate in Parliament. A whip, slave chains, and an iron punishment collar lay in a coffin inscribed, "Colonial Slavery, died July 31st, 1838, aged 276 years." The congregation sang as midnight approached. Adam Hochschild describes the scene over which the pastor, William Knibb, presided:

"The hour is at hand!" Knibb called from his pulpit, pointing at a clock on the wall. "The monster is dying!" When midnight struck, he called out, "The monster is dead!" The congregation burst into cheers and embraces. "Never, never did I hear such a sound," Knibb wrote to a friend. "The winds of freedom appeared to have been let loose. The very building shook at the strange yet sacred joy." An open grave lay waiting in the yard of the church school. Still singing, the parishioners lowered the coffin into it. At the graveside they planted a coconut tree, as a "tree of liberty" – a symbol from the American and French revolutions now adopted by former slaves. Slavery was still in place in the southern United States, in the Caribbean colonies of other European countries, in most of South America, and, in different forms, in Russia, most of Africa, and the Islamic world. But in the largest empire on earth, it was ended. (Bury the Chains, 348-349.)

Much tribulation still lay ahead for the newly freed slaves, and it would be almost another thirty years before slavery would end in the United States. Even today, slavery lives on in some parts of the world. But the impulse to liberty is irrepressible. How fitting it is that on the anniversary of the death of slavery in the British Empire, a ray of hope again shines forth as the taskmaster just 90 miles off the coast of Florida lies dying.

It’s staggering to think that in just fifty years – a tiny step in the long march of history – the conscience of an entire empire had been roused, and a seemingly invincible institution that had been taken for granted almost since the dawn of humanity tottered and collapsed. And it all started with just twelve men in a smelly printshop in London.

For those of you who don’t believe in God, doesn’t this shake your faith – just a little?