Doctor Why

United States Attourney General declared that no member of the CIA should be prosecuted for engaging in torture of prisoners, and further that any defense they had to make and losses they suffered in court would be paid for by the U.S. government. To quote: "It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department." Link:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090417/ap_on_go_pr_wh...

To me, this seems like an odd thing to say. If government officials are to be lauded for doing ANYTHING that they are asked without regard to the ethical consequences, how is that to be distinguished from the machinery of tyranny? In the U.S. military, solders are instructed that they are obligated NOT to follow unethical orders, and can even be prosecuted for doing so (though admittedly, that military doesn't always live up to that ideal).

But maybe I am misunderstanding Holder's position. Is there some line that cannot be crossed? How should government officials know where that is? What is the U.S. citizenry's responsibility in all this?

Curious. Thank you.

As you may or may not have heard, Microsoft is still very determined to purchase Yahoo. Here's a link:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080201/ap_on_hi_te/mi...

One of their first moves on aquiring Yahoo would be to fire a bunch of Yahoo staff and they will not even commit to retaining anything from Yahoo.

IF Microsoft did buy out Yahoo, would this make you less likely to use any aspect of Yahoo or more likely? Hypothetically, of course.

Dig this. Here's part of Genesis 11 for you:

'...Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

'But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them."

Now take a look at that. God doesn't say in there, "What a ridiculous bunch of jerks. I'm going to smack them for their arrogance." He in fact says exactly the OPPOSITE - that their plans would be unstoppable unless he intervened.

Does this mean that God was afraid men would come and seize Heaven? Does it mean that God is intrinsically opposed to the aims of unity and hard-earned reknown? How can a person who believes in the goodness of this god and the truth of the Bible make sense of this?

A lie, pretty much by definition, is something that isn't true.

A really good lie is one that SEEMS true, but still isn't.

The best of lies makes the actual truth look false.

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Assuming for the moment that gods that are out there communicate with people (either directly or through works), how can we tell a truly perfect god from one that is just a perfect liar?

Many people say that God is omnibenevolent. Which is to say all-good. Whatever the best thing there is to do is, God is doing it.

The problem with this viewpoint is that it means that God has no choice. Whenever there are options, God MUST always take the most good one. If God ever failed to do this, it would be possible to exceed Him, something which most religious folks tell me is RIGHT OUT.

Without free will, God becomes an automaton. A force of nature. God cannot change His mind, because the decision about whether to do good or not is already made for Him - He ALWAYS will do it.

This leaves me between a rock and a hard place. If God is really omnibenevolent, then it makes Him seem more like an alien space robot (JHVH-1?) than an actual god. If God is not omnibenevolent, then how can we actually trust that He's going to carry through on the things He promised?

Any ideas?

Genesis 7:20 indicates that the waters of the Biblical flod rose so high that they covered all the mountains. That means that the ark was at an elevation equal to or greater than the higherst mountain-tops.

Now, when people climb Mount Everest, they wear high-tech thermal gear and carry oxygen tanks. Even so anyone who makes an ascent returns the same day or probably dies. It's not because snow and hiking wears them out! It's because at that elevation, there is simply not enough atmosphere to retain heat or to breathe.

Noah, on the other hand, was at that elevation for 150 days (Genesis 7:24)! How is this even possible? Was the ark air-tight and equipped with enough oxygen for himself and all the animals? They can't even burn things to keep warm or it will make their oxygen problem far, far worse! Even if Noah was endowed with an almost superhuman respiratory ability, what about the multitude of animals?

If I recall correctly, Bush entered office with a budget surplus. Now, not only do we have a deficit, but Bush has single-handedly run up half as much debt as all the other presidents in history combined. These are facts.

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/faq.html

Now here's the confusing part... Republicans seem to assert that the economy has never been better, yet no efforts so far have paid even ONE dollar back into the debt. Now, if -I- had a debt which was always growing larger and never growing smaller, it would think that was a pretty serious problem.

I mean, it's nice if the stocks are high (if you're richer than me and can afford stocks), and it's nice that people have jobs and all, but if the sum of that equation brings us closer to bankruptcy every day, why DOESN'T that mean the economy is sick?

I was watching TV and I saw from a commercial that someone around here knows how to produce a chemical capable of restoring life to the deceased:

http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=88d518ee83ea...

Whoever you are, could you share your secret with me? I, too, wish to reanimate the dead. Thank you.

We've had judges thrown out because of obvious prejudice. We've had entire teams of defense lawyers kidnapped, shot, and assassinated. And that's when they're not being thrown out of the courtroom for even trying to make objections.

Don't get me wrong here... I'm not saying Saddam Hussein should be allowed to run free and play with butterflies. What I'm wondering is what is the point of an obviously screwed up trial? Should Iraqis abandon the pretense and just shoot him? Is there something they can do to restore repectability to the process? Should they ship the whole thing to more neutral territory as they do with many accused of war crimes? Or is there really nothing wrong with what's going on?

What do you think?

I'm serious!

Polythelia (having extra nipples) occurs in as much as 5% of the population of some areas. And the nipples are often poorly formed, so they're not always obvious. It has a higher diagnosis rate in women because sometimes the only reason a woman knows she has one is that it starts trying to produce milk when she becomes pregnant!

So is there a definitive way for a male to tell without a biopsy?

To quote the Catechism of the Catholic Church, "...by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood."

It seems to be the Roman Catholic position that this sacrament is not merely symbolic, but that the substances involved undergo a real (if invisible) transformation into flesh and blood. But if they are REALLY flesh and blood, doesn't that make all Catholics cannibals?

Lets try to leave aside, for the moment, the question of whether all the other denominations that participate in symbolic cannibalism are also symbolically guilty of it.

Genesis 6:13 And God said to Noah, "The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and behold, I will destory them with the earth."

Okay. I can see how men and women can be corrupt and evil. Natch. It's not too hard to imagine violent children, I suppose. But after that it gets really hard.

Did all the babies deserve to die? Or, for that matter, the unborn? Noah isn't asked to save so much as one of them.

I don't understand how this can be interpreted as a sort of Divine Justice. Seriously. Nobody else is left alive to teach lessons to. And no effort is even attempted to save those who could not possibly have been part of the problem. Help?