Tea Party Primer

If you have been following coverage of yesterday's Tea Parties (even reports about the CNN Chicago Tea Party dust up) you might not have a firm grasp on what the Tea Parties were/are about (I'm not sure I could have told you even though I took part).

Well, my friend The Blue Collar Muse (Ken Marrero) provides the best Tea Party Primer that I've seen, below.

A lot of material to work with

A little known (or appreciated) policy in Tennessee is that whichever party has the majority of total members in the General Assembly gets the majority of seats on every county's Election Commission--the people that hire the person who runs every county's election apparatus. Well, I just saw this Tom Humphrey report that,

County election administrators who are fired because of their political affiliation could successfully file lawsuits against county election commissions, according to state Attorney General Bob Cooper.

Given the challenges that seem inherent to administering elections (and have seemed largely intractable for Democrat-chosen election administrators) the newly-Republican controlled election commissions should have no problem removing many election administrators "for cause."

The intersection of isolated lives

I had missed the story about a missing California 8-year-old girl until today, when it was announced yesterday that a pastor's granddaughter had been arrested in the slaying:

A Sunday school teacher was booked early today on suspicion of murder and kidnapping in the slaying of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu, whose body was found in a suitcase in an irrigation pond.

This reminded me of several other recent reports of murders, for example, the man in Binghamton, NY who went on a shooting spree in an immigrant community service center or the man in Pittsburgh who seems to have ambushed and murdered several police officers for no apparent "reason." The information on the California arrest is sketchy, but it appears that they have likely found at least one person involved in the murder.

My anger at such perpetrators is palpable, but I eventually get to thinking about the challenge of predicting or preventing such crimes. It has become cliche to read the statements of people who knew such murderers: "s/he was quiet," "he kept to himself," "never would have imagined s/he would do something like this."

As I contemplated the whole "Sunday School teacher" aspect of the CA story, I began thinking of my own children and my own church. Given the protocols and circumstances of our church, I don't really have any concerns about my children when they're in the care of our learning center. For example, I know that our church does background checks on volunteers, and there is a requirement that at least three people be present at any given time, especially when using "the facilities." But I also know how "desperately" we have to recruit people willing to serve in the learning center. And in a small church, those protocols would be difficult to implement.

I worry that in our culture it has become increasingly difficult to avoid becoming a victim to such crimes. It has become more difficult (a) to avoid crossing paths with criminally-inclined people and (b) to even know that someone is criminally-inclined. I don't know what the "push back" is. I think we must be wise about allowing someone too much "access" to our lives without a basis for trusting them with that access. I also think that a right-to-carry permit can be a useful "hedge" against those in our society who are demonstrating an increasingly bold appetite for violence.

Bush responsible for hate murders in Iraq

Comcast.net: Gays killed in Baghdad as clerics urge clampdown: "Homosexuality is prohibited almost everywhere in the Middle East, but conditions have become especially dangerous for gays and lesbians in Iraq since the rise of religious militias after U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein six years ago."