It didn't happen

I don't like talking about Donald Trump, but I have to say that I understand why he believes there were mass celebrations among American Muslims when 9/11 happened. To someone with his mindset, it just feels like it might be true.  It's not surprising that people would step up to defend him, "remembering" these things that didn't happen, and desperately clinging to anything they can find, no matter how far-fetched or undocumented, that supports the position.

The conservative media are leading the charge to prove his position, going so far as to pronounce the pushback Trump has gotten to be the product of their usual bogeyman:  a conspiracy of the Liberal Media.

But let's be honest:  While there may have been very isolated examples of American Muslims (or non-American Muslims who happen to live here) celebrating what happened on 9/11, there were no mass celebrations, no swarms of thousands of Muslims dancing and celebrating in American streets.  Such activities would have been documented in a lasting fashion; it would not be necessary to comb through news reports hoping to find nuggets of support.

The reason why we know this is because in the days following 9/11, the government began detaining Muslims, mostly men, whom it deemed to pose a threat to national security.  These men were frequently held for long periods without access to family or attorneys, in undisclosed locations.  In a political climate that would permit the *government* to engage in these decidedly un-American activities, it is simply not credible to believe that thousands of American Muslims could celebrate 9/11 so openly that Donald Trump could see them doing so on television, yet no video of those activities survives even 14 years after the fact.

The American Muslims I know were horrified at what happened on 9/11, not because of what they surely knew would bring retribution heavily down on them, but because what happened on 9/11 was a crime against all humanity, including themselves.

I have said it many times:  The human brain is an amazing thing, capable of great intellect and reason, but dangerously capable of self-deception.  Memory, particularly long memory, is untrustworthy, because it can be distorted by emotion and imagination.  In one prominent example, many people remember the famous shower scene in the Hitchcock film Psycho for its vivid red blood, running down the shower drain.  It's a shocking scene, one of the greatest in cinematic history.  But the people who "remember" red blood in that scene are wrong. In reality, Psycho was filmed in black-and-white.  In reality, the filmmakers used Hershey's syrup, which of course is brown.  In reality, no one saw red blood, or red anything, in Psycho--but many people "remember" it that way.

Wanting to believe something happened makes it easier to "remember" it.

This is not a media conspiracy against Donald Trump.  He is simply wrong about what he remembers.  That's a human-enough error that can be excused on its merits.  But what we should be more vigilant about is not the "what," but the "why."  Why does it matter?  What is the importance of "knowing" that American Muslims celebrated 9/11?  If you falsely believe that they did, what are you going to do with that information?  Are you using it to feed hatred in your heart toward people who have literally done nothing to you?  That can't be a good idea.

Huddled masses

If my Facebook timeline is any indication, there is an incipient mass hysteria that President Obama is about to import thousands of terrorists into Hometown USA.

Several Republican governors have announced that they will not allow Syrian refugees to be admitted into their states.  (Sorry, but that's not a choice that governors get to make, so these pronouncements are just ineffectual drum-beating.)

There's a popular analogy going around, in response to the perfectly reasonable and factual assertion that these refugees are the victims of our enemies, not our enemies: "Would you eat grapes knowing that one might be poisoned?"

We can't accept Syrian refugees, they say, because some of them might be terrorists.

Look, I get that people are worried and fearful.  They see images from Paris last Friday night and imagine it happening to them or their loved ones.  Somehow, because Westerners were the victims there, it strikes closer to home than when the same thing (or worse) happens to, say, innocent but brown victims in Africa or southwest Asia.

There are about 2 billion Muslims in the world.  The number of them who sympathize with ISIL is less than 1%.  It's less than 0.1%.  In fact, it's probably on the order of 0.001%, or one in 100,000.  Refusing refugees because some of them might be sympathetic to ISIL is like rounding up Christians because some of them might be sympathetic to the handful of Christians who commit violence against abortion providers here in the U.S.

And the "grapes" analogy?  First of all, people aren't grapes.  They're people, with lives and hopes and dreams and potential and the desire to be free and safe.

But even if you accept the analogy, we make that choice every day.  Would you buy grapes knowing that one might be poisoned?  Yes, of course.  If you buy grapes, you make that choice every time you buy grapes, because food-borne illness is always a possibility.  Maybe it's not grapes.  Maybe it's ice cream or peanut butter.  Do you buy ice cream or peanut butter, or anything else, knowing that it might be poison? Yes, you do.  So that's not a reason to refuse refugees.

This morning, Jeb! Bush was on my TV, talking about how we should only accept Christians from Syria, as though there aren't many more innocent Muslim victims of these butchers. 

I am profoundly disgusted by the people who use one breath to call this a Christian nation and use the next to say that we should refuse these people asylum because some of them might be our enemies.  You can't claim that this is a Christian nation--in fact, you can't claim to be a Christian--and ignore what Jesus said about this very situation:

“But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you.

“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

 (Luke 6:27-36.)

Of course, my favorite statement of our commitment to accept the refugees and the many more who came before them comes from a rather different source, inscribed at the base of our most recognizable monument:

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!"

 --Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus"

Mother of Exiles, indeed.  Just who did you think she was referring to, when she talked about the "wretched refuse"?  Well-to-do Europeans?

Let's see if this thing still works

Wow, the engine turned over.

Sorry for the long absence.  I'll try not to take so long with the next one.

Today's post is about abortion.  The reason why it's about abortion is because some brain surgeon, and I mean that in the literal sense in that this fellow was an actual brain surgeon, and not in the figurative sense that he's a really smart guy (he's not all that smart about stuff other than brain surgery), said over the weekend that he's against abortion in all cases, including when the conception occurred as the result of rape or incest.  I'm of course talking about Dr. Ben Carson of Maryland, candidate for the Republican nomination for President in 2016.*

* - Dr. Carson has never held elective office. So, kudos for aiming high.

This position of his is sort of controversial.  Even though most Americans can be put into one of two camps regarding abortion--"pro-choice" and "pro-life"**--it turns out you can split those two groups up into finer and finer distinctions.

** - That's the name most people use.  I find that name to be deceptively misdescriptive of their actual position, but let's not have that debate right now.

Over on the "pro-choice" side, you've got some people who think that abortion ought to be available, just sort of hard to get, and only in the first trimester.  There are others who think it ought to be more easily available.  And there are some folks who think it needs to be available at any point before actual birth, at least in some cases.

(I don't have a uterus, and I prefer to let people who do make their own choices about how those uteri are used, so I guess that puts me mostly in that latter group.  So I'd prefer that abortion be fully legal up to the point of genuinely reasonable fetal viability, which is about 6.5 months--yes, I know that some babies have survived birth at 24 weeks, but it's rare--then available only in cases of rape or incest, gross fetal deformity, to save the life or health of the mother, or, with some sort of review, when there are extenuating circumstances that prevented an earlier abortion from being obtained.)

On the "pro-life" side, you've got some people who are 100% against abortion in all cases, like Dr. Carson.  You've got some people who are against abortion almost all of the time, but will allow a woman to have an abortion to save her life.  And you've got some people who are willing to let abortion be legal in cases of rape or incest, even though some of them don't believe rape can result in pregnancy.

And let's not forget that most of the above people are OK with abortion when pregnancy interferes with their personal interests, like when they accidentally impregnate a prostitute.

But Dr. Carson's position goes well beyond even where most pro-lifers are willing to stand.

I find that to be a compellingly consistent and coherent position on his part. After all, if you are a member of the cult of the fetus, it shouldn't matter how conception occurred. A baby is a baby, even when it's not yet a baby.

But what that position really means, when you look at it carefully, is that the less militant part of the anti-abortion crowd, the ones who say abortion should be legal in cases of rape or incest, isn't really all that anti-abortion.  Instead, they're more interested in taking away the bodily autonomy of women. 

If you're raped or you're the victim of incest, that wasn't a choice, it was just something that happened to you and you shouldn't face the consequences. But choosing an abortion because the condom broke, or because your financial circumstances mean extreme poverty if you continue an accidental pregnancy, or because you're 15 and were unfortunate enough to grow up in a place where they teach abstinence-only--those are wrong choices. Bad choices.  Evil choices that must be punished with consequences.  Even though many if not most of those people make those same choices and don't consider them to be evil--they were just lucky enough to avoid the consequences, in some cases because we pro-choice folks took a stand.

(Yes, I know that was a bunch of sentence fragments in a row.  Send the grammar police after me.)

So Dr. Carson gets points for being honest about an extreme, if highly consistent, position.  But it also means he has no business being President of the United States.  After all, POTUS nominates Supreme Court justices.  And the right to an abortion, which most Americans openly agree is a right and should be available, and which many more Americans agree should be available (for them, if they need it), hangs by a slender thread.

Feeling the Bern

One of the really terrible things about politics is how unfair it can be.

Several months ago, I wrote a blog entry about Hillary Clinton's candidacy for President in which I expressed tepid support for her.

I grew up in an Arkansas where Hillary Clinton was a respected leader who seemed genuinely focused on moving the state forward.  I like her a lot on a personal level.  In fact, one of the reasons why the GOP opposes her so...violently...is because she is smart and competent and would be a very effective President.

If politics were fair, she would be our first female President.  She's spent a lifetime in service to the greater good, and she has the intelligence and judgment and charisma to be among our most effective presidents.  But politics isn't fair.

It could be that this is just the silly season in American politics.  During the summer, nobody wants to talk about serious things.  I've heard almost no substantive discussion about policy on either side.  Rather, the coverage of the presidential campaign has focused on the "horse race"--who's up, who's down--on Hillary Clinton's email server, and on how the GOP candidates are trying one-up each other with bombast and slurs.

That doesn't advance the interests of the nation.

I wonder sometimes if the media aren't doing it this way because they recognize that the electoral math for the Republicans is so bad that they have no real chance of taking the White House.  The GOP is distinctly a minority party.  They will take a majority of white men's votes; their electoral strategy must rest on either (a) minimizing turnout among minorities and women or (b) capturing votes from minorities and women who are confused about which party advances their interests.

Blacks will likely vote 90%+ for the Democrat; Hispanics will likely vote 65%+ for the Democrat.  The overt racism of the Republican candidates, especially their fascist leader Donald Trump, isn't going to make option (b) a possibility.  Trump isn't the only frightening GOP candidate; in fact, each of the GOP candidates is frightening in his or her own way.

So, returning to the main topic:  There is a lot to like about Hillary Clinton, but from a policy perspective, she just doesn't do anything for me.  Her campaign is funded primarily by those who have the least to gain (immediately, anyway) from implementing the policies I want implemented--mostly Wall Street.  There might have been a time in American politics when campaign contributions didn't carry much weight in policy, but to the extent it ever existed, it doesn't anymore.

I cannot trust Hillary Clinton to be on the right side when it comes to middle-class economic issues (the biggest of which is that 35 years of Reaganomics have left us without much of a middle class).  I'm sorry to say that, but it's true.  Goldman Sachs will still run things if she is elected.

In the same post four months ago, I knocked Bernie Sanders' candidacy using the two knocks that anyone has been able to use against him:  He's 73, and he's a socialist.  That, too, is unfair.  He seems to be in great health.  As for being a socialist, he clarifies that he's a democratic socialist, and while I respect that most American troglodytes can't figure out what that means, see Obama, Barack, there is time to define it in a way that people can relate to.  The truth is that Bernie's positions align with a majority of Americans on almost every issue.  We're not a nation of racist xenophobes who want to deport all the brown people and give more money to plutocratic billionaires; that view commands barely a fifth of the electorate, plus probably another fifth who are abortion voters.

People want the government to work better, to be a facilitator of economic growth, to give poor folks a hand up, and to be a governor on the 1% whose only care is accumulating more money than they could spend in ten lifetimes.  People want bridges to be safe, they want cheap access to high-speed internet, they want good public schools that teach kids how to think rather than just how to take tests.  They want healthcare insurance that allows them to get the treatment they need quickly and effectively.  They want responsible action on the environment and international trade.  They want an end to banks that are "too big to fail."  They want the minimum wage to be raised, and they want Social Security benefits to be increased.

Bernie Sanders is for all of those things, because that's what a democratic socialist is.  Hillary is for some of them, not for others, and on some, she won't say.

We are a long way from voting, and a lot can happen during that time.  But if the election were held today, Bernie would get my vote over Hillary.  His policies are what we need to make sure we are a great nation for generations to come.  We can have these nice things.

One heck of a week

If you think and believe as I do, the past seven days have been a blur of excitement and of wishes fulfilled.

On Monday, the tide turned rather suddenly against the militantly defended but racist "Confederate flag"--the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, the design of which inspired various flags used by the Confederate States of America.  Regular readers of this blog know that I am very much against that cause, against the reverence many people hold for the Confederacy, and against the use of that flag in public spaces.

(I do not understand how people can call themselves Americans while expressing support for an armed uprising against the United States in defense of slavery as an institution.)

Then, on Thursday, a 6-3 majority of the Supreme Court upheld those portions of the Affordable Care Act relating to subsidies for health insurance in those states that did not set up their own exchanges under the ACA.  This really should not have been a close question.  Only the most partisan of partisan hacks supported the notion that Congress intended to restrict the subsidies to those who purchased insurance from state-based exchanges, and not to those who purchased from the federal exchanges set up where states declined to do so.

But the real feather in the liberal cap came on Friday, when the Supreme Court, 5-4, held that there is a constitutional right to marry and that states could not deny that right to same-sex couples.  Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a stirring opinion for the Court, which I am not ashamed to admit brought a tear to my eye at several points.  One passage that I found particularly impressive was the following:

Many who deem same-sex marriage to be wrong reach that conclusion based on decent and honorable religious or philosophical premises,and neither they nor their beliefs are disparaged here. But when that sincere, personal opposition becomes enacted law and public policy, the necessary consequence is to put the imprimatur of the State itself on an exclusion that soon demeans or stigmatizes those whose own liberty is then denied. Under the Constitution, same-sex couples seek in marriage the same legal treatment as opposite-sex couples, and it would disparage their choices and diminish their personhood to deny them this right.

That paragraph is beautiful not just for its plain, forceful defense of equality, but also for the subtle but stinging rebuke it delivers to those who have argued that majority rule trumps all.

It doesn't, of course.  It never has.  Rights are not subject to the vagaries of the majority.  Rights belong to all of us.  (Chief Justice Roberts, in his dissent, took time to argue that the abrupt cutoff in the argument about marriage equality, and about equal rights for sexual minorities generally, deprived those minorities of the benefits of convincing the majority of the correctness of their position.  What the Chief Justice doesn't seem to understand, or pretends not to understand, is that the nature of rights is such that no one ought to be forced to convince the majority of their existence.  He is also wrong on the facts; it's the Court, not the public, that's playing catch-up to the other.  Wide majorities now approve of marriage equality--a much wider majority than can be found in the Court's decision.)

I cannot remember a week that was so good for those who share my point of view.  When Barack Obama was first elected, that was close.  But this was a better week.

I would like to believe that this signals a turning point in our discourse, where the influence of the Teabaggers begins its long slouch toward a nadir of irrelevance.  But I am reminded of the story of the great Persian king who brought together a council of wise men and charged them to find a way to bring him joy when he was sad.  The wise men conferred, and a ring was produced and inscribed with the legend, "This too shall pass."  The king found that this solution was doubly fruitful.  In tough times, he could look at his ring and be reminded that his troubles would soon pass.  But in good times, he could look at his ring and be reminded that joy will eventualy give way to sorrow in one form or another.

As good as things are right now, these, too, will pass.  And for that reason we must never stop pushing for the good and right things we support.  There is much work to be done.

The Roman poet Quinius Horatius Flaccus, known as Horace, who lived during the time of Caesar Augustus, wrote a beautiful ode, the title of which is usually rendered "The Golden Mean"--a reference to moderation in all things.  A modern translation* by A.S. Kline appears below:

* - Used by permission.

You’ll live more virtuously, my Murena,
by not setting out to sea, while you’re in dread
of the storm, or hugging fatal shores
too closely, either.

Whoever takes delight in the golden mean,
safely avoids the squalor of a shabby house,
and, soberly, avoids the regal palace
that incites envy.

The tall pine’s more often shaken by the wind,
and it’s a high tower that falls with a louder
crash, while the mountainous summits are places
where lightning strikes.

The heart that is well prepared for any fate
hopes in adversity, fears prosperity.
Though Jupiter brings us all the unlovely
winters: he also

takes them away again. If there’s trouble now
it won’t always be so: sometimes Apollo
rouses the sleeping Muse with his lyre, when he’s
not flexing his bow.

Appear brave and resolute in difficult
times: and yet be wise and take in all your sails
when they’re swollen by too powerful
a following wind.

So, let's don't get ahead of ourselves.  It was a great week.  But, to quote another symbol of the Confederacy, "After all, tomorrow is another day."

The Great Charter

Nobody tell Jason Rapert, but the birthday of the actual foundation of American jurisprudence is today.

Magna Carta, the Great Charter, was signed by King John on this day 800 years ago.

I'm reminded of a great joke I heard a number of years ago.  An American, eager to see the sights of London but not quite understanding the history, is on a tour of the Sir John Ritblat Gallery at the British Library.  Upon entering the Magna Carta room, where one of the four extant copies of the original is on display, a young boy asks the guide, "When was the Magna Carta signed?"  The guide replies, "1215."  The American looks at his watch, sees that it's 12:30, and says, "Oh, damn, we've just missed it."

In the 13th century, feudal England was engulfed in a low-grade civil war.  John, the unpopular king, was struggling to hold onto power.  A decade before, he had lost his ancestral lands in France, and he had spent most of his time and money until 1214 on war in France to try to regain them.  The defeat of John's allies at the Battle of Bouvines was disastrous; forced to withdraw from France and pay reparations to King Philip II of France, John returned to England to find his vassals restless and mounting an armed resistance to his further rule.

At this time, there were conflicting views about the proper conduct of government.  Some believed in the divine right of kings to rule as they pleased, by vis et voluntas, or "force and will."  Others recognized the divine right of kings but contended that kings were restrained by custom and tradition.  John's recorded predecessors tended to fall into the second camp, valuing consistency and tradition over unquestioned authority.  John differed, however, perhaps being motivated by external considerations.  He imposed high taxes at will and used force where necessary to achieve his goals.

The barons--landed nobles who owed allegiance to the king but who controlled their own areas--became fed up with John's misrule, renounced their allegiance to the king, and began marching on London.  Seeking to avoid all-out war, Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury worked to coalesce the barons' complaints for presentation to the king and brought the two sides together for peace talks in June 1215.  For ten days, Langton mediated the dispute at Runnymede, a meadow on the side of the Thames near Windsor Castle.  On June 10, the barons presented a list of demands; under considerable pressure, John acceded to most of them and on June 15--figuratively and perhaps even literally at the point of a sword, the king signed Magna Carta.  Four days later, the barons re-pledged their fealty to the king, and war was averted.

The document itself is not apparently sweeping in its scope; it is confined to the everyday pragmatic concerns of the barons, as necessary to make peace.  And it is remarkable for its lack of longevity; three months later, with the backing of the Pope, John renounced the document, and the barons repudiated it.  The simmering civil war heated up.  In October, John died, leaving his nine-year-old son, Henry III, as the titular king as England fell to rule by regents.

But in fits and starts, the principles set forth in the original document, with some modifications, were re-instituted in subsequent charters in 1216, 1217, and 1225.  Those principles, including protection of the Church, the right to habeas corpus, limitations on taxation, the right to speedy justice, and the necessity of the consent of the governed, have persisted through the history of Anglo-American jurisprudence, and they are the embedded foundation of justice in our society and in all free societies in the world today.

Duggar'd

I have a complicated attitude toward Arkansas's Largest Family, the Duggars, made famous by their profligate reproduction habits and their TLC "reality" show, 17 18 19 Kids and Counting.

On the one hand, I don't care how many kids people choose to have, as long as they are able to provide (with or without help) what their kids need to live happy and healthy lives.  For me, it's a matter of personal choice that should be respected even if it stands outside the mainstream.

On the other hand, I'm not sure it's a good idea to hold up people as paragons of virtue, as models to emulate, simply because they profess certain religious beliefs and are very public about how they go about practicing them.

And on the third hand--yes, there's a third hand--I can't imagine being bored enough to watch their show voluntarily. Since I'm not in the habit of complaining about television that I don't care about, and since there is no shortage of other shows, some excellent and some the same kind of dreck the Duggars are peddling, it's not like the presence of their show on television somehow makes my life less bearable.

The problem I have with the Duggars, primarily, is in the way they are revered by a certain segment of the population, to the extent that they have a certain political influence that they are willing to use to implement a programme of hatred toward those who don't make the same choices they do.

Case in point:  Last year, the Fayetteville City Council passed an ordinance that prohibited discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodations on the basis of a long list of characteristics--the usual suspects, including race and religion, but some that are somewhat novel in Arkansas:  sexual orientation and gender identity.

Michelle Duggar recorded robocalls against the ordinance, making ridiculous and offensive claims that the provision about gender identity was designed to allow male child predators to dress as women to gain access to young girls in female-only locker rooms.  Never mind that behavior of that type, regardless of the gender identity of the individual involved, is a criminal act that would ordinarily* garner serious prison time for the offender.

* - More on that in a moment.

Of particular importance in Mrs. Duggar's robocall was this statement:

I doubt that Fayetteville parents would stand for a law that would endanger their daughters or allow them to be traumatized by a man joining them in their private space. We should never place the preference of an adult over the safety and innocence of a child.

The Duggars are famous for the rules they impose on their children regarding dating.  One of those rules is that unmarried persons are not allowed to touch members of the opposite sex in most of the normal ways that teenagers who are dating touch each other--no kissing, no hand-holding, and certainly nothing more aggressive than that.

In my opinion--and it's only my opinion, of course--it is unrealistic to expect teenagers not to engage in any such activities.  By 13 or 14, and in some cases earlier, most teenagers have the physical maturity (though not the emotional maturity) to engage in sex.  Forcing teens to repress their natural physical urges creates emotional problems that manifest in a variety of different ways, many of which are extremely negative.

It would be one thing if the Duggars' attitude worked to produce happy, healthy, well-adjusted kids and, eventually, adults.  If so, the argument might be made that their attitude, their policy, is one of many reasonable choices.  And until yesterday, that argument had at least some validity.

Then it came out that the Duggars' eldest son, Josh, now 27 but then 15 or so, molested at least five younger girls, at least some of whom were family members.  The molestation involved the touching of unclothed breasts and genitals.  Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar were aware of the molestation and sought to cover it up.  It was only when an outsider inadvertently discovered a letter about the molestation, and reported it to the Oprah Winfrey Show (which was about to do a feature on the family), that the police became involved.  Unfortunately, the statute of limitations applicable at the time had already run by the time law enforcement was notified, so no charges were filed.

I have seen the police report, which was heavily redacted to protect the identities of the minor children involved.  Despite the redactions, it is clear that the suspect, Josh Duggar, engaged repeatedly in this sort of behavior.

Josh Duggar resigned yesterday from his position with the Family Research Council, a DC-based hate group focused on opposing equal rights for homosexuals.

I take no glee in reporting these matters.  What happened to these girls was unfortunate and likely criminal, at least to the extent that it was not consensual (which would also depend in part on the age of the girls).  I have no idea what Josh Duggar's true heart is regarding sexual activities with young girls.  This may have been a poor choice driven by sexual confusion, or it may have been part of a proclivity toward this sort of behavior.  Hopefully we'll never know--because knowing for sure would mean that there were others.

But one thing we do know is that the Duggars have no business lecturing anyone about sexual matters.  The hypocrisy of their political positions regarding the Fayetteville ordinance and other matters is apparent and appalling.  That Josh Duggar could, with a straight face, lecture and lobby against homosexuals and equal rights--against people who are far better than he is, apparently--while knowing what he had done, knowing that he was a sexual offender, would in an ideal world be simply astonishing.

Of course, we don't live in an ideal world.  And neither do the Duggars.  It's time to stop acting as though they do.

UPDATE I:  TLC has pulled 19 Kids and Counting from their schedule.  I don't know if they were making new episodes, but I'd be surprised if the show returns.

UPDATE II:  My friend and neighbor Matt Campbell, who runs the excellent blog Blue Hog Report, notes the following in a Facebook post:

Let's do some math, just to really put a spotlight on how creepy and awful this Duggar stuff is.  The police report, dated 12/7/06 says that he touched the girls "about 3.5 years ago." Taken at face value, that puts it in June of 2003. There are also references to March 2002 for some of the actions as well. The court order from yesterday says that the victim who requested destruction of the police report is still a minor. To be a minor on May 21, 2015, the absolute latest she could have been born is May 22, 1997. Which means, of course, that at least one of the girls was no older than six when this occurred, and could have been much younger. Yet...the family just conveniently waited until after the statute of limitations on all of the crimes ran out before they went and told police about it?

 Creepy, indeed.