Roberts and Obama both flub the oath of office.

People who are nervous and excited, at one of the most important events of their lives often have trouble speaking or reading clearly. Especially in front of thousands of people in person and millions more watching via media.

So I'm willing to give them both a pass, and assume the oath is taken as required by the Constitution.

However, I'm going to predict that someone, somewhere, is going to throw a fit. Over the next few months, the "Obama can't be President" crowd is going to claim that because Barak Obama didn't take the oath of office as precisely required by the Constitution, that means he was never sworn in as President. Others are going to claim that he never took the oath, and so isn't going to be bound to it, and is going to become some sort of tyrant. Likely, a few will claim that Chief Justice Roberts deliberately screwed it up, so that Obama wouldn't be sworn in, or so that Obama wouldn't have to adhere to the oath.

I believe that to be nonsense. Eight years of the Bush administration have shown that in this country, the President will freely disregard the principles of the Constitution, its dictates and limitations. And the other branches of government will not call him on it. Obama doesn't need some contrived avoidance of the oath of office to do what he wishes.

I also strongly suspect that if Chief Justice Roberts intended to not swear in Obama, he would have explicitly refused to do so. There would be no reason to intentionally screw it up to set up some sort of legal wrangling - if he'd really wanted to, he would have said something like, "Senator Obama, I cannot in good conscience administer the oath of office today."

We don't need the conspiratorial interpretations today. Never attribute to malice that which is more obviously attributable to human failings.

Taking it elsewhere: Iran and nuclear ambition

[Editor's note: I have been a follower of the Steve Jackson's Games corporate online forum for some years now. Recently, a conversation has been begun there that I'd like to add some outside commentary on. You can find the original conversation here.]

I believe there are a few key points that have been forgotten here:

1) Iran self-identifies as an "Islamic Republic". Its government is to a certain extent a representative democracy, albeit one whose candidates are all vetted and approved by the ruling Theocratic Guardian Council. In the late 1990's, that council was increasingly experimenting with permitting moderate, pro-western candidates to run and win elections. This was in response to thawing Western relations, and a growing educated, pro-Western, pro-secular young adult demographic within Iran itself.
This experiment with political moderation ended in 2002, with a return to hard-line, anti Western and pro-Ayatollah candidates, including current President Achmadenijhad. This backlash was almost certainly induced by President Bush's choice to include Iran in the "Axis of Evil."

2) President Achmadenijhad is not quite the nutcase that the Western and U.S. media portrays him as being. In nearly every instance where he has been demonized for threatening Israel (whose close relation to the U.S. is a matter much too large for this posting), a deeper inspection of the transcript of his remarks usually shows such threats in the context of a hypothetical attack by Israel on Iran. Responding to attack with a counter-attack, while damaging to world peace, is still usually considered the perogative of a nation-state.

3) Gas centerfuge enrichment of uranium is both a step towards development of nuclear weapons and a step towards a non-weapon nuclear power program. This sort of peaceful program is what Iran asserts it is pursuing (whether or not anyone believes it). Iran has been cooperating with the IAEA off and on, seeking the IAEA's certification that their program is peaceful. Unfortunately, with every period of saber rattling by the U.S., Western Europe, or Israel, Iran balks and halts its cooperation. It is entirely plausible that Iran is primarily intedning to move toward nuclear power, with the possibility of developing nuclear weapons as a reserve for if the believe themselves threatened with attack.

4) The current U.S. administration is the primary source of the claims that Iran is intending to develop nuclear weapons. As we saw in the run-up to the Second Gulf War, this same administration main any number of claims about Iraq's nuclear weapons program, a nuclear weapons program that -in retrospect- did not exist, and was asserted not to exist by the IAEA. In fact, as something of a snub to the U.S. and it's administration, the head of the IAEA was later named for a Nobel Peace Prize. In my view, the current Presidential administration (as of this writing, #43) simply does not have the credibility to make any sorts of claims.

So, the blustering in Iran's direction has the appearance of the consciuos villifying of an otherwise indifferent nation. That villification and following provocations are used to trigger a defensive response from that nation. Such defensive measures are used as a justification for further provocations, and as rationalization for already decided upon war plans. We saw all of this in 2003, and there is simply no reason to allow it to happen again in 2009.

Jewish studies 101 for Conservatives

Okay people, let's go over this one more time. If you want to posit a global zionist conspiracy, let's get the history correct:

In the first century CE, the Roman Imperium instituted a policy of diaspora of the Hebraic residents of Palestine to many other regions of the Empire. As a result, the Jewish people settled in many places in Europe and North Africa. Other Judaic peoples were spread throughout the Near East and East Africa; most were the Iraqi Jews, a result of the Babylonian Exile. Others were the result of various migrations out of Palestine over the centuries since the rise and fall of the kingdoms of Israel and Judea.

When the Islamic Empire overran the Near East, most of Persia, North Africa, and Spain, it more or less cut the former Roman Empire into two worlds: Christendom and the Islamic Caliphates. This essentially divided the Jewish population of Europe and the Mediterranean in half. The Jews of Northern and Central Europe became seperated from the Jews of Spain, North Africa, and the Near East.

The Jewish people throughout the Middle Ages grow then into two fairly distinct groups. The Jews under Christendom become the Ashkanazi Jews, cut off from the teachings and studies of the great Jewish theological centers of Alexandria and Abassanid Iraq. Those Jews living under Islam become the Sheppardic Jews, who follow different traditions than the Ashkanazi.

Legend holds that a central Eurasian tribe called the Khazar converted to Judaism sometime in the 8th or 9th century CE. Historical confirmation of the exisistence of this tribe is scanty, but it does explain the origin of the Polish and Russian Jews. These people are Jewish 'by adoption' as it were: genetic and cultural evidence suggests that they are not directly related to the Askanazi or Sheppardic Jews.

So, when underinformed talk show hosts proclaim that the Ashkenazi "aren't really Jews, anyway," they are mistaken. The Askenazi are the Jews of France, Germany, Italy, and Central Europe. They are as Jewish as the Sheppardic Jews. I suppose one could make the claim that the Kazar Jews aren't "really" Jewish, a claim I would suggest is foolish. The Khazar certainly self-identify as Jews.