Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Osama bin Laden is Dead

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Osama bin Laden (FBI File Photo)
Osama bin Laden (FBI File Photo)

Osama bin Laden, head of al-Qaeda and mastermind of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, is dead and his body is in possession of the United States government. His death was confirmed late this evening by President Barack Obama (D) in a hastily organized press conference at the White House around 11:35pm EDT.

According to Obama, bin Laden was killed in a U.S. operation at a compound outside of Islamabad, Pakistan earlier today. No Americans were harmed in the operation, but bin Laden was killed in a firefight before he could be brought into custody. His body was taken into U.S. possession and confirmed to be that of the terror mastermind. He had been hiding out in a mansion compound near the Pakistani capital at least since August of last year, not in the tribal areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan as previously believed. Cooperation with the Pakistani intelligence agencies was instrumental in finding and killing bin Laden.

Bin Laden was head of al-Qaeda, a radical Islamic terrorist group responsible for countless acts of mass murder, including the September 11 attacks, the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, embassy bombings, train bombings in the U.K. and Spain, and more.

Hundreds of people have already gathered at the White House in Washington, DC, in jubilant celebration with American flags and chants of, “U.S.A.”

Website 22.2 Revision

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I’ve just launched a minor revision to the site, which brings the version to 22.2. This update brings a number of minor tweaks and improvements to Website 22. Here are some of the things that have changed:

  • Better Social (Facebook) Integration: I have established an Off on a Tangent page on Facebook, which you can find at this link. Click ‘like’ (either on the Facebook page itself, or in the right sidebar of the site) to follow the site. In addition to being notified of new Off on a Tangent content on your wall, you’ll also get a stream of interesting articles and stuff worth sharing.
  • Mobile Improvements: I’ve made some improvements to the mobile site. First, you’ll notice that the title bar now has photos behind it just like the desktop site. Second, your font size settings will now be shared between the desktop and mobile sites (in case you like to switch back and forth). Third, if you visit the desktop site on a browser with a small screen (like a mobile phone), it will give you a more obvious link to the mobile version. You can choose to dismiss the message, or set the site to always redirect that browser to the mobile site automatically. It’s up to you.
  • Improved Quotes Widget: The quotes widget in the right sidebar has seen some big improvements. You now have controls (back, pause, next) to flip back and forth through the quotes at-will, or stop on one you really like. The widget will also follow you down the screen as you scroll. You can turn this off in the settings by turning the ‘Pin Menu & Quotes’ option to ‘false.’
  • Browser Support Changes: The major change is that now, since Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 has been officially released, I have dropped official support for Internet Explorer 7 (I generally support only the most recent two versions of IE). If you are still using IE7 (or, God forbid, IE6) please upgrade to a newer IE version or to Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Opera.
  • Miscellaneous: There have been a number of other little changes, bug-fixes, and improvements throughout. If you use Internet Explorer you will probably notice less weirdness with dynamic content because I’ve fixed an AJAX request bug, there have been some adjustments to the default font list to make things look better on more OS’s default configurations, the holiday list on the site policies page now shows the dates for each holiday, and so on.

As always, keep an eye out for any problems and let me know if you find any!

Obama: Eligibility and Faith (Updated)

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Barack Obama, Certification of Live Birth
Barack Obama, Certification of Live Birth

I’m not one of those radical right-wingers who thinks President Barack Obama (D) is a Kenyan-born Muslim bent on the destruction of America. No. It is possible that Obama is accelerating our national destruction, but he is doing so with failed Keynesian economic policies and his own apparent lack of historical knowledge. I do not believe he is doing it on purpose, or that there are any diabolical conspiracies behind it all.

But the festering claims that circle through the far right—that he was born in Kenya and is thus ineligible to be president, and that he is a Muslim—just won’t go away. I have ignored these two controversies, for fear of giving them any additional attention, but they have continually boiled near the surface anyway. It is time to address them head-on. Here are the facts:

Is Obama a ‘Natural Born Citizen’?

The State of Hawaii, through its official process, has certified that Barack Hussein Obama II was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. While the U.S. Constitution never specifically addresses what level of faith the federal government must place in the decisions of the states, it does require that states trust one another’s documents: “Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State” (Article IV, Section 1). Considering that the states are the keepers of birth records, it stands to reason that the citizenship requirement is satisfied when one of the states certifies it as being satisfied. Hawaii’s official certification of Obama’s place of birth is the final word on the matter unless accusers can present some kind of indisputable proof that Hawaii’s records are in error.

In June 2008, the Obama campaign produced a copy of his Hawaii ‘Certification of Live Birth’ document. This is the kind of document that is usually provided when people request a copy of their birth certificate from their respective state authorities; it is not an original, but an official document stating that the original exists and providing its most important information. This document is good enough to certify your citizenship for the purposes of getting a U.S. passport, so I don’t see why it shouldn’t be good enough for anything else.

Read more . . .

On Holy Saturday: Silence

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Today a great silence reigns on earth, a great silence and a great stillness. A great silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. . . . He has gone to search for Adam, our first father, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow Adam in his bonds and Eve, captive with him—He who is both their God and the son of Eve. . . . “I am your God, who for your sake have become your son . . . I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead.”

– from a Holy Saturday homily
Second Century AD

I love the introductory text from this quote: “today a great silence reigns on earth.”

Yesterday, Good Friday, we remembered the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. We remembered his false condemnation. We remembered his suffering on the cross—a sadistic Roman torture device designed to inflict the maximum pain and humiliation possible. We remembered his prayer for the forgiveness of those who were putting him to death. We remembered his mother, Mary, looking on as her son suffered, being commended by Christ to the care of St. John the Apostle (of note, the only one of the twelve Apostles not to die a violent death) and to becoming the spiritual mother of all the faithful. We remembered him giving up his spirit and dying, to be interned in-haste in a pauper’s tomb before the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath. We remembered that, in Christ’s death, all of our sins—no matter how awful they may be—can be forgiven. It is a day of expectant sorrow.

Tomorrow, Easter Sunday, we will remember Christ’s triumphant resurrection from the dead. We will remember the women discovering the empty tomb. We will remember Christ appearing to his Apostles, so unexpectedly that at-first they do not even recognize him. We will remember that, through Christ’s triumph, we all now have the opportunity to receive the gifts of resurrection and eternal life. It is a day of joyful celebration.

But today? Today is quiet. The King is asleep. Christ descended to the dead, to free the worthy souls that had gone before and triumph over death and evil, but none of that was happening here on Earth. The action moved from the natural to the supernatural, from life to the afterlife. On Earth, the Apostles waited in silence, expecting the triumphant resurrection but somehow not really sure if it was going to happen. This is a striking parallel with our daily lives today: We hold out hope but, like the Apostles themselves, our faith is weak. The final triumph is still somehow unexpected; it still lies beyond our comprehension.

Today, we remember our position in the story of man’s salvation. The deed is done; good has triumphed over evil in the death and suffering of Christ. But we are still here on Earth, suffering, sinning, and disbelieving. We are unsure of what we have seen, or what will happen next, and we doubt the truth of what we have been told. We live somewhere between Good Friday and Easter, somewhere between the earning of our salvation on the cross and our receipt of its spoils. Today, we contemplate what we have seen, and fall woefully short in our human frailty of properly understanding it, or even believing it. In the middle of an epic story of miraculous, supernatural events, today is quiet . . . because today we look inward, at ourselves.

Senator Ensign to Resign May 3

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Senator John Ensign

Senator John Ensign (R-NV) announced this afternoon that he is resigning from the U.S. Senate effective May 3. Ensign admitted in June 2009 that he had an affair with Cynthia Hampton, the wife of one of his top campaign aides, and has since been under investigation for a number of possible criminal or ethics violations. The alleged violations each related directly to the affair, including $96,000 in payments to the Hampton family and conflicts of interest relating to Doug Hampton’s lobbying firm.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Election Commission both dropped their investigations in late-2010, but the Senate Committee on Ethics appointed a special council in January to continue its work. Ensign announced in March that he would not seek reelection in 2012 and suspended his campaign committee, but claimed that the scandal had no bearing on his decision. At the time he stated, “If I was concerned about [the ethics investigation], I would resign.”

States have the authority to set their own procedures for replacing a U.S. Senator who leaves office during his term. Under Nevada law, Governor Brian Sandoval (R-NV) will have the authority to appoint a replacement to serve out the remainder of Ensign’s term. Some are already speculating that Sandoval will appoint Representative Dean Heller (R-NV 2nd), as Heller was already running to replace Ensign in the 2012 election. If Sandoval appoints Heller to the Senate, that would trigger a special election to fill Heller’s seat in the House of Representatives.

Update 4/27/2011: Governor Brian Sandoval (R-NV) has appointed Representative Dean Heller (R-NV 2nd) to fill Senator John Ensign’s (R-NV) seat in the U.S. Senate. There will be a special election to fill Heller’s seat in the U.S. House of Representative.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.