Saturday, March 29, 2008

Swiftboating - Scum Tactic Revisited

"I saw a guy with three Purple Hearts and a Silver Cross turned into a weak, wimpy, lying coward, in order to make sure that a weak, wimpy, lying coward who went to Margaritaville instead of the Mekong Delta during the Sixties could be portrayed as some sort of macho tough guy, and thus steal another four years in the White House."
-- Prof. David Michael Green

I know little about the Hon. John Kerry. Yet I believe that partisan mud thrown by Swiftboaters instead stained the military and its commendation system. Yes, attention was deflected from weaknesses in President George W. Bush, but at great cost.

Sunday, March 02, 2008

Non-violent = disloyal = fired

Open letter to Cal State East Bay University
Office of the President

Here in far-off South Korea it has come to my attention that employees of California State University East Bay must sign a loyalty oath for employment, and that Marianne Kearney-Brown was recently fired for wishing to make modifications to the text of that oath.

She'd worked successfully for some weeks in her job, and agreed to sign a modified text promising to nonviolently support and defend the U.S. and state Constitutions, but was still fired. The job she was doing was not law enforcement, but teaching remedial mathematics.

Her faith as a Quaker (Society of Friends member) precludes her from taking up arms. She is 50 years old.

Perhaps I do not know the entire story, but the story as repeated here (and around the world) smacks of blind loyalty, foolish bureaucracy, and / or odd censorship. I hope this is a wrongful dismissal that quickly can be rectified.

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Incident reported in SF Chronicle:
http://tinyurl.com/38w8kx
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Cal State East Bay sent me a letter (5 March, in response to agitation) justifying the dismissal.
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A few days later, she got her job back!