Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Ash Wednesday and Lent

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Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, the day that most of Christianity marked the beginning of the season of Lent. Lent traditionally lasts forty days (not including Sundays, so actually 46 days) and ends at Easter, when we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Lent is traditionally a season of repentance and represents the forty days that Jesus was tempted in the desert by Satan (Matthew 4:1-11). Christians who celebrate Lent and honestly try to live a Christian life generally mark the season with some form of  sacrifice and/or fasting, contemplation of their sin, and efforts to repent and live a more righteous life.

Churches that have retained elements of traditional liturgical practice—essentially Catholic, Anglican/Episcopal, Lutheran, and churches in the Wesleyan tradition (United Methodist, Wesleyan, Church of the Nazarene, African Methodist Episcopal, etc.)—typically kick-off Lent with an Ash Wednesday church service where the faithful are marked with an ashen cross on their forehead. You probably saw Christians walking around yesterday, especially if you were out in the evening, with a black smudge on their foreheads. This is an outward sign, at least in theory, of an individual’s faith and their personal efforts to rise above the sin in their lives. The ashes are usually made from the burnt palms from the preceding year’s Palm Sunday.

For me, this season is among the most touching in the Christian calendar. Some might look at the negative, criticizing the supposed focus on sinfulness, solemnity, fasting, and so on. I look at the positive. This season is about becoming better people and better followers of Christ, and it culminates in the central celebration of the liturgical year: Easter. We don’t give things up for Lent to look good to those around us (and, if we do, we’re doing it wrong). Churches like the Catholic Church have prescribed specific things—fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday and abstinence from meat on Fridays—while other churches leave it entirely to the individual to ‘give something up’ if they choose, but in all cases the point is to remind you to personally examine who you are and whether you are living as you should and, if you aren’t, fix it. It’s not supposed to just make you feel bad, it’s supposed to motivate you to live better.

Christians everywhere should take this opportunity to self-examine through prayer and sacrifice. Even if you’re in a non-liturgical Christian community that does not formally celebrate Lent, it’s still a good time to individually join with the millions of others in the worldwide Christian community who participate in this important lead-up to Easter. The most important single element of Christianity is that—because of Jesus’s sacrifice—salvation is open to us all. We, however, have to accept it by striving to live the Christian life. Lent, through our own small sacrifices, is an opportunity for us to remind ourselves of this and start moving in the right direction.

God bless.

The ‘Designated Survivor’ Convoy?

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I have been watching President Obama’s (D) address, Governor Bobby Jindal’s (R-LA) response, and the various related proceedings on television since 9pm. About 11:05pm, I heard an impressive commotion outside. It sounded like helicopters, much like those that pass by regularly on police patrol or hospital flights, but they were much louder than usual.

I headed outside to my porch to see what was happening and, squinting into the night sky, made out the outlines of several virtually-unlit helicopters flying low. I believe they were UH-60 Blackhawks, but I may be mistaken. It was dark  and they didn’t have hardly any lights on so my military aircraft identification skills were at a major disadvantage. I am sure there were at least three individual aircraft, and I think there were probably five or six total. As a military aircraft junkie, I thought it was pretty cool.

My suspicion? I think they were returning the designated survivors to Washington. The designated survivors, despite their unfortunate title, are an important part of the continuity planning of the government of the United States. During presidential inaugurations, State of the Union addresses, and other major events, most of our elected leaders are gathered together. Tonight, the President, Vice President, Speaker of the House, President Pro Tempore of the Senate, essentially the entire cabinet, and essentially the entire Congress all stood together in a single building. If, God forbid, the Capitol had been subject to a terrorist attack or natural disaster, there is a small possibility that the government would lack any legitimate successors to the office of president and we would end up with a dangerous power vacuum.

To prevent this unlikely calamity, authorities have long ensured that at least one member of the cabinet eligible to be president is at a remote, undisclosed location during these kinds of major events. Since the 9/11/2001 attacks, several members of Congress have been similarly sequestered. If the Capitol had collapsed tonight killing everybody inside, Attorney General Eric Holder (tonight’s designated survivor) would become president and several yet-unnamed members of Congress would form an interim legislature until the government could be reconstituted.

Interestingly, the Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center—a facility known to be an important part of the government’s continuity plans—is located in Blumont, Virginia. If you draw a straight line from Mount Weather to Washington, DC, you might notice it passes right over my home town of Herndon. Coincidence?

Obama to Address Congress Tonight at 9pm

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President Barack Obama (D) is scheduled to address a joint session of Congress tonight 9pm EST. This is not an official Presidential State of the Union address, as new Presidents traditionally give their first State of the Union address after having served nearly a year in office. Traditionally, this initial address is referred to as an ‘annual message’ or other similar, generic title. Obama’s address will be followed by a Republican response to be given by Governor Bobby Jindal (R-LA).

As always, I recommend watching C-SPAN for unfettered, uninterrupted coverage of both.

The Constitution requires that the president report to Congress annually on the state of the union, but does not specify the method or form of this report. The in-person State of the Union address has been a tradition since 1913 (transcripts 1945-2008 available from C-SPAN).

Washington Post Juxtaposition Fail

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Juxtaposition FailI dropped in to one of the news sites I visit regularly, the Washington Post site, and found the juxtaposition of the headline and ‘lead’ photograph quite hilarious.

On the left, the Post was running a cycling slide show of images related to tonight’s Oscar awards, including one of Heath Ledger portraying The Joker in ‘The Dark Knight’. Meanwhile, the headline story on the right was a fluff piece about how the recently-passed ‘stimulus’ plan will potentially benefit government workers.

When you put it all together (especially on a small screen, like that on my Eee PC, which cuts off any/all Oscar related captions), I find it funny.

Everybody Grab Your Ammo

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As my regular readers know, my wife and I have been gun owners since the middle of last year and now have a few handguns between us for purposes of self defense. Like all other responsible gun owners, we hope and pray every day that we will never need to use our guns in an emergency. But, if we are threatened by criminals who intend to harm us, we do not intend to be made into victims.

These days, lots of people are buying guns and stocking up on gun related supplies. In fact, gun, gun accessory, and ammunition sales have been through-the-roof for several months now. The reasons are twofold.

First, people who believe that the right to ‘keep and bear arms’ is a fundamental human right are honestly concerned that the Democratic Party leadership in Congress and the White House will roll out new counterproductive restrictions on civilian firearm ownership. There has been talk of bringing back Clinton-era laws that unnecessarily limited ‘high capacity magazines’ and certain guns that, primarily because of how they looked, got branded as ‘assault weapons’. These laws, like most ‘gun control’ laws, had little or no effect on the criminals (who don’t care if something is illegal) and unlawfully infringed on the right to bear arms for law-abiding, responsible gun owners like myself. We gun owners are stocking up on things that might get restricted, like the 17-round magazines for my Smith & Wesson M&P 9mm, just in case.

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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.