Nielsen’s Nook

Mark Traphagen just started a thread at Conn-versations which should shape up to be interesting:

Here’s what I would like to discuss with my fellow Conn-versation bloggers and all you gentle readers. Not why or why not Obama or McCain is the best candidate, but the far more interesting (to me, anyway) question of can one be a true Evangelical in all the usual earmarks (Deity of Christ, salvation by faith in him alone, Bible is the Word of God, etc.) and vote for Obama? And to get the 50,000 pound elephant out into the open, what about the Big A, abortion? For those of you who oppose Obama, is that the biggest reason why? For those who, like me, plan to vote for Obama, how do you “handle” the abortion question when it comes up? Is that the make-or-break issue for Evangelical Christians? Should it be?

Read the whole post.

I was at a lunch recently with some who seemed taken by the recent Republican rhetoric leveled at Barack Obama. As I listened to the conversation and the regurgitation of all the lines we all heard at the Republican National Convention, one claim in particular stood out to me as questionable:

Barack Obama has not passed any bill into law.

First, I thought, “Neither had George W. Bush.” After all, Mr. Bush went from co-owner of the Texas Rangers with an MBA from Harvard to the first back-to-back two term governor in Texas History to back-to-back terms as President of the United States (more on Bush).

Obama goes from working closely with the poor and disenfranchised (read oppressed), gets a doctorate in law from Harvard and serves two terms in the US Senate, not to mention passing significant legislation as an Illinois State Senator. Hmm, we’re selective in whose legislative record we consider (more on Obama)

Next, the Executive Branch is not generally the originator of bills. So comparing the legislative experience between McCain and Obama does not seem to be considering experience that is required for the Office of President.

Regardless, I would encourage you the reader to take a moment to get a nuanced presentation of Obama, one like Obama: From Promise to Power, by David Mendell of the Chicago Tribune. If you don’t vote for Obama, at least you’ll know why for yourself.

Whether your voting for Barack Obama or not, the fact that America is at a place where she can nominate a Black man for presidential candidacy seems to indicate the sort of progress by which all Americans can be encouraged.

“What you see happening here tonight is the down payment of the fulfillment of dream of Martin Luther King,” he said. “Just a few short years ago in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, many people of color could not even register to vote and now, these people are voting for an African-American.”

“It was an amazing moment — not for African-Americans — for Americans,” CNN contributor Roland Martin said.

Read the full article at CNN.

Xavier Picket, at Reformed Blacks of America, has the first part of a thought provoking review of a new book out by Anthony Carter entitled Experiencing the Truth: Bringing the Reformation to the African-American Church. As a white guy in a global communion that is mostly not white but in a local church that is generally white, I found this review helpfully disturbing.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The Bush administration has launched a “significant escalation” of covert operations in Iran, sending U.S. commandos to spy on the country’s nuclear facilities and undermine the Islamic republic’s government, journalist Seymour Hersh said Sunday. … [It is reported that] Congress has authorized up to $400 million to fund the secret campaign, …

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have rejected findings from U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran has halted a clandestine effort to build a nuclear bomb and “do not want to leave Iran in place with a nuclear program,” Hersh said.

“They believe that their mission is to make sure that before they get out of office next year, either Iran is attacked or it stops its weapons program,” Hersh said.

… [read the whole article on CNN]

Do we really need a third front in the Middle East? Is it wise to start a war which one’s administration will not be able to oversee? How will we afford a three-front war when can’t afford the two-front one? I’m ready for a different theme, myself.

To follow up on the post I wrote this morning on the Supreme Court decision to strike down the death penalty conviction against a father who raped his 8 year old daughter, I thought it was encouraging to see Barack Obama making public statements against the decision today.

The New York Times reported today that those convicted of raping children may no longer be executed for their crime. I am generally not very excited about the death penalty as a form of punishment; however, the reasons given in this article made my stomach turn.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down a law that allows the execution of people convicted of a raping a child.

In a 5-4 vote, the court said the Louisiana law allowing the death penalty to be imposed in such cases violates the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

”The death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his majority opinion. His four liberal colleagues joined him, while the four more conservative justices dissented.

There has not been an execution in the United States for a crime that did not also involve the death of the victim in 44 years.

Patrick Kennedy, 43, was sentenced to death for the rape of his 8-year-old stepdaughter in Louisiana. He is one of two people in the United States, both in Louisiana, who have been condemned to death for a rape that was not also accompanied by a killing.

The Supreme Court banned executions for rape in 1977 in a case in which the victim was an adult woman.

Forty-five states ban the death penalty for any kind of rape, and the other five states allow it for child rapists. Kennedy’s case is the only time a state has sought to execute someone. Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas allow executions in such cases if the defendant had previously been convicted of raping a child.

Did you catch it? If you don’t kill someone’s body, the taking of your life is not permitted because to take your life when you have not killed another’s body is cruel and unusual.  I suspect that these justices have never been raped, certainly not as children - and certainly not by their own parents!

While I have never been raped either, I have dealt with those who have been raped as children. People, who in their fifties, are still trying to pick up the pieces, fighting suicide every moment of every day. It seems cruel and unusual to rape a child. It seems light-weight to give such a perpetrator the death penalty. Rapists may spare the body, though sometimes they don’t do that either. However, they take what cannot be returned, they lacerate the soul and only miracle surgery can heal such wounds and even then the scars are more than many can bear.

I would suggest that a materialist world view has circumscribed this Supreme Court decision. One that sees death as merely a material bodily matter, and has turned a blind eye to the psychological and spiritual suffering that will accompany the rape victims for the rest of their lives.

Lord have mercy upon us, especially those who suffer in ways we’ll never know.