In this article, In a Judgmental World, She Was Ashamed of Getting Sick, the author writes about her mother who died of emphysema. She had been a heavy smoker, and felt shame about her death.

I wonder if this kind of shame is why lung cancer, or other lung diseases linked to smoking, gets far less public attention than other forms of cancer, like breast cancer and prostate cancer. It bothers me that when I tell people that my mother died of cancer, they often jump to the conclusion that it must have been breast cancer, even though far more people die every year of lung cancer than of breast cancer. And then when I tell them that it was lung cancer, they ask me if she was a smoker. Does it matter if she was a smoker? I wonder why people ask. Does it make them feel better somehow if the person was a smoker? Is it easier then to blame the person for her own death?

I ask too, when I hear that someone has lung cancer. Earlier this year, when a friend of mine died of lung cancer, I also wanted to know if he had been a smoker. It was disturbing to me - very disturbing - that he had not been a smoker. Since he wasn't a smoker, perhaps that meant that I - also not a smoker - might be vulnerable to lung cancer. It seems to me that being able to point to a definite cause - smoking - makes it easier for people to blame others who get lung cancer for their own illnesses, and simultaneously distance themselves from the sick person. It gives one a sense of having some control over one's death.

But should we gain this sense of control at the expense of shaming another human being? And what is more, what do we gain for ourselves by turning away from the fact that we will all die, from one thing or another, and that in the end, we don't have control over whether we will die?

Once again, Avi Shafran, the "Director of Public Affairs" of Agudath Israel, the ultra-Orthodox Jewish group, tries to claim in this letter to the editor of the New York Times - Judaism and the Pope - that ultra-Orthodoxy is more than 3,000 years old, even though it, like the Reform movement, is a creation of the 19th century.

To the Editor:

A word of clarification regarding the contention of Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, that "our religious traditions led us to different conclusions" than Pope John Paul II's regarding gender roles, abortion and homosexuality ("People of All Faiths Recall Pope With Fondness," news article, April 4).

The religious tradition to which the rabbi referred is the less-than-200-year-old Reform theology.

Traditional Judaism, which is more than 3,000 years old and continues to be embraced by Orthodox Jews worldwide, is much closer on all those issues to the stances taken by John Paul II.

(Rabbi) Avi Shafran
Director of Public Affairs
Agudath Israel of America
New York, April 4, 2005

It continues to amaze me how spokesmen for ultra-Orthodoxy can continue to maintain, against the historical evidence, that Judaism has never had a pluralism of views on various controversial issues, and that the current views of ultra-Orthodox rabbis are the only correct Jewish ones. Shafran is correct that ultra-Orthodoxy and Reform differ on these issues - but he is incorrect to think that all of Jewish history corroborates his view of Judaism. If we were to step back 3,000 years, approximately to the time of the building of the First Temple, I think we would find a very different religion than the one practiced by Jews (of any stripe) today. (For one thing, of course, Jews no longer sacrifice animals as part of worship). If we stepped back 2,000 years we would find evidence of some synagogues where women were leaders (see Bernadette Brooten's work, "Women Leaders of the Ancient Synagogue"). If we stepped back a thousand years we would find Jews in the Middle East who rejected the authority of the Talmud and the midrash (the Karaites).

This scary story in Thursday's Haaretz tells about a "High alert amid warnings of Temple Mount attack."

The Shin Bet security service has raised the level of alert in Jerusalem amid indications that extremist Jews are planning to carry out an attack on the mosques of the Temple Mount, and on the basis of new intelligence has beefed up police and security around the site in the heart of the Old City....

Police on Wednesday announced plans to close the Temple Mount compound to Jews on Sunday, when a right-wing extremist group called Revava was planning to hold a mass rally there. Police fear the activists could clash with Muslim worshipers. Public Security Minister Gideon Ezra and Police Commissioner Moshe Karadi have approved an operational plan meant to prevent Revava activists from holding the event. Police will prevent Jews from ascending to the mount Sunday, and will work to prevent any friction between Jews and Muslims in the Old City's alleys. Jerusalem's police chief, Ilan Franco, announced several days ago that Revava activists would not be allowed to enter the Temple Mount compound. The statement came after reports in the Arab media expressed dismay at intentions of Israeli authorities to grant the right-wing activists permission to approach the compound, revered as holy by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. Channel One reported Wednesday night that these security concerns have been made known to the political echelon. The radical rightists apparently aim to attack the mosques in the hope that will disrupt the execution of the disengagement plan.

The secret service created a ranking from 1-10 with 10 being the highest security risk. Three months ago, the Shin Bet was ranking the security threat at 7, meaning that "there are signs of planning for an attack," and that there are activists "talking about what to do and as soon as possible." Now, however, the ranking has moved to an 8 - and it is based on much more solid information.... A senior security source said recently that the mosques of the Temple Mount, known to Muslims as Haram el Sharif, have become a "hot topic" among radicals, on the assumption that an attack on the mosques would shock the Muslim world, drag Israel into a new war and prevent the disengagement. The source defined the chances of the threat against the mount being actualized as greater than the threat to the prime minister's life, where the security risk remains stable at 6, largely because of the difficulty of protecting the mount....

Jim Davila at Paleojudaica has been following this story much more carefully than I. It does sound dangerous. Before Israel's pullout from the Sinai Peninsula in the early 1980s there were plots by an armed Jewish underground to blow up the mosques on the Temple Mount. They were caught before they could do anything - I hope that the Shin Bet will manage to catch these folks too, this time around. (The 2002 Israeli movie Time of Favor dramatized this story, adding [of course] a romantic plot to spice things up).

Another great Op-Ed piece by Nicholas Kristof on Darfur - The Pope and Hypocrisy. As he says, "'Throughout the West, John Paul's witness reminded us of our obligation to build a culture of life in which the strong protect the weak,' Mr. Bush said. Well, what about that reminder? What kind of a 'culture of life' is it that allows us to shrug as Sudanese soldiers heave children onto bonfires?" Or that allows us to stand by as Sudanese soldiers rape girls and then imprison them for adultery when they get pregnant (after their families have thrown them out of their huts in the refugee camps)?

For two of my classes, I (and hopefully the students as well!) have been reading two fascinating new books - one by Arthur Green, Guide to the Zohar, and one by Harvey Goldberg, Jewish Passages: Cycles of Jewish Life.

The first one is assigned for my Jewish Mysticism class as an introduction to the Zohar. It is a beautifully, lyrically written induction into the Zohar, seducing the reader into loving the text of the Zohar as Green does. He explains the symbolism of the sefirot, traces the history of Kabbalah before the Zohar, and describes the midrashic and narrative techniques of the Zohar. I would recommend it for anyone who wants to know what the Zohar is. It was written as an introductory book to the new translation of the Zohar that Daniel Matt is doing (the Pritzker edition of the Zohar) but certainly stands very well alone.

The second one is an introduction to Jewish rituals of the life-cycle by an eminent Israeli anthropologist. It is also beautifully written and accessible to undergraduates. He traces the history of Jewish rituals (for example, circumcision), beginning with the Bible, going into rabbinic and medieval developments, and talks about how the ritual is practiced today. He explores the meaning of Jewish rituals within a wide range of Jewish cultures and brings in his own experiences as a Jewish ethnographer. He provides as well the relevant anthropological theoretical framework - for example, from Arthur van Gennep's Rites de Passage or from Victor Turner's The Ritual Process. He engages the material with a full awareness of his own personal role as an anthropologist/ethnographer. He is also admirably non-judgemental, thus allowing the reader to make up his or her own mind about the information he is providing.

Both of these books provide much information delivered in an effortless manner. I think they are challenging to undergraduates but ultimately very rewarding.

I cannot say the same of a book I used last semester for my Hebrew Scriptures course - John J. Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible. The book is marketed as an introductory Hebrew Bible textbook suitable both for undergraduate and graduate courses. I found that it was not appropriate for my 100-level course, which has many first and second-year students in it. They complained that it often assumed too much knowledge on the part of the reader. I agreed, and think it is much more appropriate for a introductory Bible course taught at a seminary, in other words for first-year graduate students who have probably already studied the Bible as undergraduates. In many respects it does not work very well as an introduction - for example, it would have been very helpful if each chapter had summarized the biblical book (or part of biblical book) that it dealt with and outlined the main points it was going to deal with. It was a good summary of contemporary scholarship on a given biblical book, but I found that more useful for preparation for my lectures, rather than for the students to read. In addition to these drawbacks for an undergraduate course, I objected to Collins' political slant that popped up at various points in the book, in particular what seemed to me to be his dragging in contemporary politics to the biblical text. I particularly objected to what he said about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, but there were other tendentious political remarks that I also disliked. This aspect of the book seemed to embody what I often find obnoxious about liberal Christian academics' approach to politics.

Previous to using this book I used another introductory textbook, Reading the Old Testament, by Barry Bandstra, which was written at the right level for my undergraduates, but also had occasional superficial excursions into contemporary liberalism that I objected to. If the author of a textbook for undergraduates wants to introduce contemporary politics into the book, I think that he or she should somewhere in the book justify that importation of politics, rather than simply citing his or her political views as if they had the same authority as the scholarship that the book presents.

I just read the article in today's New York Times Magazine about the Dutch-Somali ex-Muslim member of the Dutch Parliament, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and found it very disturbing for what it says about the relationship between liberalism and extremism. The author of the article, Christopher Caldwell, argues that it was Dutch liberalism that permitted the growth of an alienated Muslim immigrant population in the Netherlands that now includes many people who have embraced the ideology of Al Qaeda and militant Islamism.

Until recently, the Netherlands adhered to a national policy cumbersomely known as ''integration with maintenance of one's own identity.'' It arose partly out of unspoken guilt over the country's failure to save many Jews under German occupation during World War II and partly out of a modish multiculturalism. But letting ethnic communities go their own way also had a long history in the Netherlands. The ''Pacification'' of 1917 formalized a system in which different groups - Catholics, Protestants, secular citizens and others - lived in separate institutional universes, or ''pillars.'' A Catholic would typically attend a Catholic school, read a Catholic newspaper, join a Catholic trade union and social club and vote for a Catholic political party.

The system withered in the 1960's, but many Dutch clung to the hope that its virtues could be revived for an age of immigration. In the early 1990's, Frits Bolkestein, then the leader of the country's pro-free-market party, the VVD, warned in articles and speeches that they could not. He argued that certain identities, unlike the old Catholic and Protestant ones, would, if maintained, undermine the individual rights that are at the heart of the Dutch constitution. He cited the practice of bigamy, for instance. Where clashes occurred, Bolkestein insisted, Dutch norms must prevail. For this observation, he was condemned as a rightist and a racist. Today, most Dutch accept the validity of Bolkestein's critique, even if they can't agree on what to do about it.

Hirsi Ali says that it is not just militant Islam that is the problem - it is much of traditional Islam as well. She began to speak up after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001: " She took the floor at a conference in an Amsterdam political club to say that what Islam needed was not understanding from others but its own Voltaire. The national daily Trouw had her write an op-ed on the matter. Asked her opinion of Pim Fortuyn's characterization of Islam as a 'backward religion,' Hirsi Ali replied that by certain measures, including the treatment of women, Fortuyn's statement was not an opinion but a fact."

Eventually, she and Theo van Gogh, an outrageous Dutch filmmaker, made a movie called "Submission" - "It presented four fictional episodes. All involved violence against women and the Koranic verses that had been, or could be, used to justify it. These verses were written on the skin of the actresses' seminaked bodies." Van Gogh was murdered by an Islamist terrorist, and "Hirsi Ali says she felt guilt over van Gogh's death - guilt that van Gogh's mother publicly insisted was misplaced -- but she continues to reject any suggestion that the film they made was sensationalist, or gratuitous in its use of see-through clothing. 'Maybe Americans think, "This is a naked body,''' she says. 'But this body is why half the nation in Saudi Arabia is not allowed to drive.'''

The predicament of individual Muslim women has become a public concern in the Netherlands. In February, the daily Volkskrant ran an expose of widespread bigamy among Dutch Moroccans. Muslim views on virginity have led to other clashes. There are clinics that specialize in the surgical repair of broken hymens, a practice that was often covered by national insurance until the ministry of health blocked it last May. Genital mutilation, of the sort practiced on Hirsi Ali and 98 percent of girls in Somalia, has been illegal in Holland since 1993 but still occurs.

Hirsi Ali says of herself, "I confront the European elite's self-image as tolerant,'' she says, ''while under their noses women are living like slaves.''

Hirsi Ali raises the question of whether a liberal society that values multiculturalism must accept all possible values in order to be tolerant. Are there certain liberal principles, such as the belief in the equality of human beings, or the emphasis on individual rights, that must override tolerance for the principles of other cultures? In the U.S., this has certainly been true. For example, Utah was only able to become a state when it outlawed polygamy, which had previously been permitted by the dominant Mormon church. If people come to the U.S. from countries where polygamous marriages are permitted, they can't continue to engage in polygamy here. The Supreme Court has generally upheld the ability to hold different religious beliefs, but frowned on accepting different religious practices that collided with the dominant Protestant model of what religion is - for example, not upholding the rights of Native Americans to eat peyote as part of a religious ritual. [My former colleague, Eric Mazur of Bucknell University, is the person who taught me this approach to religious freedom in the United States - see his recent book, Religion on Trial: How Supreme Court Trends Threaten Freedom of Conscience in America.]

Zachary on the washing machine

Zachary on the washing machine
Originally uploaded by reb-lesses.

And here's the man himself, lazing around as usual (when not catching mice, birds, or bats!)

I was out working in the garden today. I dug up all the old vegetables from last year, including some extremely large kale trunks, which were starting to stink. I also cleared out all the old tomato vines, and discovered things starting to grow underneath them. It's still a chilly early spring here in Ithaca, but the crocuses are starting to bloom - I have a couple of little purple ones putting their heads out. The daffodils and tulips are starting to come up. When I cleaned up everything, I discovered that in one vegetable patch, the oregano was coming back, and it looked like (smelled like too) there were little garlic shoots coming up. Other things starting to peek above the ground were the beginnings of day lilies and irises, and possibly some pansies (if the hard winter didn't kill them).

Other signs of spring are that the cat has taken to staying out all night and stalking little creatures. For the last few days I've gotten up in the morning and discovered a new mouse carcass on the kitchen porch (fortunately not inside the house!)

The Canadian geese are flying north in big v-shaped formations. We've had songbirds for about a month, now, if not longer, and I think that there are cardinals around too. Also crows, although I'm not sure they've ever left.

Now that the sun is setting later, it's more hazardous driving home from work. A couple of weeks ago I nearly hit a deer crossing the road at dusk.

And, we just had Purim! Lots of masks & funny costumes - one friend dresses as Mr. Potato Head. I came as an elegant flapper - my hair in a black and magenta wig, wearing my party dress & feather boa, as well as my grandmother's mink coat (which I probably wouldn't wear any other time in Ithaca, certainly not out walking around, given the presence of some fairly militant animal rights folks here).

Another good Washington Post editorial about Darfur: Don't Move On

The best shot at breaking this cycle of violence and hunger is to put a serious peacekeeping force into Darfur. But all sides are engaged in an outrageous pretense of seriousness. The African Union, which has provided about 2,000 peacekeepers when 25,000-plus are necessary, is infatuated with rhetoric about "African solutions for African problems"; the United States and its powerful allies defer to this slogan, partly out of a virtuous desire to see Africa develop its own capacity to manage crises but mostly out of a base desire to pass the buck. The Bush administration's policy is to draft U.N. resolutions and dispatch humanitarian assistance. But it refuses to spend real military or diplomatic capital to stop killings that, by its own admission, amount to genocide.

Don Cheadle and John Prendergast say about the genocide in Darfur: Enough excuses. The time to act is now. Reading this article, which criticizes the U.S. government for all the excuses it's making about not really doing anything to stop the genocide, reminds me of an article republished earlier this year on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, from the Dec. 11, 1942 edition of the (UK) Guardian. The article discusses the newly available information about the ongoing massacres of Jews in Poland, which the Polish government in exile in London made known to the countries of the United Nations and goes on to say:

The situation obviously calls for something more than a reaffirmation of principles or a condemnation of the indescribable deeds being done in fulfilment of a predetermined policy. There is a growing feeling that in spite of all the difficulties involved practical measures of help must be sought and found.

But it would seem that a change of outlook and approach to the problem must precede any undertaking of the kind. There should in the first place be a relaxation in the official methods which have hitherto so impeded the work of rescue as to make it almost impossible. In the case of countries still liable to an illegal influx of Jewish refugees certain assurances should perhaps be considered. It should be made clear to these States that they will not be left responsible for chance immigrants indefinitely but that provision will be made for them in the general reconstruction after the war.

The German scheme for total extermination can only be combated by radical means, and any plan of rescue must be evolved on a really broad and constructive basis. It is clear, therefore, that whatever body may be chosen to put into practice decisions made by the United Nations must start with a generous mandate, unfettered by petty limitations.

The Polish Note forms an important contribution to the documentation of this black chapter in history. The situation as outlined in the Note has already taken a turn for the worse, according to the most up-to-date information. It is feared that of the weekly average of 25,000 Jews reaching Eastern Poland from the countries of occupied Europe the vast majority are going to a ghastly death.

Emphasis mine. The article also says that since the German invasion of POland in 1939 over one million Polish Jews have been murdered and mentions "new methods of mass slaughter" - probably a reference to the death camps.

This article, if anything, shows that U.N. indecision in the face of genocide has a long and inglorious history, not that the U.S. has any better record. When will it be possible for us to learn from history, rather than simply babbling about "never again"?

This is a good editorial on the Terri Schiavo case - Support for life, politics and money. The author points out that in a case in Texas last week, a boy named Sun Hudson was taken off life support against the wishes of his mother, because she didn't have money to pay for the care. "She also had to deal with a Texas law that allows the withdrawal of life support from terminally ill patients, even against the wishes of the family, if they don't have money to pay for the care. Ironically, this law was created with the signature of then-Gov. George W. Bush, who made an emergency trip back to Washington this weekend to sign a bill to help restore life support to Schiavo. Congressman Tom Delay called the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube "medical terrorism." But what would the congressman from Texas say about Sun Hudson? Wanda Hudson would like to know." So much for Bush's statement about Schiavo: "In cases like this one, where there are serious questions and substantial doubts, our society, our laws and our courts should have a presumption in favor of life."

As I said before, when has he ever had a "presumption for life" except where it helped him politically?

For extended analyses of the situation in Darfur and what is (not) being done to save people, read Eric Reeves. From the reading that I have done in the last few days for my class discussion of Darfur, it seems that the only way to stop the genocide will be an extensive military intervention of around 50,000 troops, in order to protect civilians and fight off the Janjaweed and Sudan army troops. Eric Reeves is arguing for this, as is Brian Steidle, the former U.S. Marine who was a ceasefire monitor in Darfur for several months. In order for this intervention to be approved by the U.N., the U.S. will have to exert vast pressure on the other members of the Security Council (including Russia and China, both of which have economic interests in Sudanese oil and don't want to see them threatened). Senators Sam Brownback of Kansas and Jon Corzine of New Jersey have introduced the "Darfur Accountability Act" which has gone the farthest toward advocating military intervention of this type, essentially by strengthening the presently-existing African Union force in Darfur (currently only at about 2,000 troops, and without a mandate to protect civilians).

And will this happen? The lives of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, hang on what we are willing to do.

Kevin Drum has a good post on "Terri Schiavo and the limits of cynicism," where he reports that of two recent polls, by ABC News and CBS News, large majorities of the American population oppose Congressional and Presidential interference in the case, and agree that Congress has gotten involved to advance its own political agenda. Feh.

One wishes that an equal amount of political attention could be devoted to the thousands of people who are dying in Darfur each week, as well as the thousands of other people in the Congo who are dying each week, not to mention the thousands of people in South Africa who are dying each week - almost all of them of PREVENTABLE CAUSES!

The triviality of American politics and American culture knows no bounds.

I've just browsing the Net to find more information on Darfur for my Judaism class, which will be discussing Jewish responses to the genocide in Darfur this week (last week we discussed Elie Wiesel's Night and in both sections had very rich discussions that touched on contemporary issues as well). The United States has spent about $588 million since 2003 on Darfur. According to a report from USAID, we have given money to CARE, the World Food Program, the International Rescue Committee, and other groups for many different needs - for food security, health, shelter, management of refugee camps, emergency relief supplies, environmental protection (water safety), etc. The USAID information can be found at USAID: Sudan: Darfur Humanitarian Emergency. The latest report can be download in PDF format.

The latest report from Passion of the Present on the Crisis in Sudan. This is the transcript of a report on PBS's Newshour on Darfur - a conversation between Senator Sam Brownback and Refugees International President Kenneth Bacon.

And then let us consider this article from the Week in Review section of today's New York Times - Beyond the Bullets and Blades. In the last few years, 3.8 million people have lost their lives in the Congo. 2 million people have died in the southern Sudan in the 21 years of fighting between rebels and the government. In Darfur, around 300,000 people have died in the last two years (and 2 million people are displaced and living in refugee camps). 100,000 people have died in northern Uganda. And this is not to speak of the many thousands of people in other parts of Africa who have died of preventable diseases like malaria, AIDS, dehydration from diarrhea.

Have we no shame? Our government is exercising itself to "save" the life of one poor woman in Florida who should be allowed to die quietly, in dignity - and ignoring the many Africans who are dying horrible deaths, much too young. Of course, it's not just our government that is to blame. Why are Catholic bishops and the leaders of other conservative Christian groups seemingly so much more upset about the life of Terry Schiavo than they are about the killing and dying in Africa? Why is Randall Terry, the leader of Operation Rescue, the radical anti-abortion group, in Florida advising her parents, rather than trying to save lives in Africa?

For some of the details on the consequences of the wars in Africa, read on:

Horrible though the genocidal spasms in Rwanda and the aerial bombings in Sudan have been, the vast majority of those who die in African war zones are not done in directly by warriors. Rather, it is the disruption that a few thousand armed men in ragtag militias can create in the lives of millions of civilians that send so many innocents to their graves.

In recent months, aid workers have begun providing a clearer picture of exactly why so many Africans die when conflict flares. Studies of two different war zones, by Physicians for Human Rights and by the International Rescue Committee, concluded separately that the major blame lies with the conditions created by wars in extremely fragile societies.

The first killer is flight. Desperately poor people are driven from their subsistence existence into even more hostile environments as they seek safety - deep into the forest in the case of eastern Congo, across the desert into Chad to escape the unfolding violence in Darfur. Typically, the few hospitals that may exist are emptied, their supplies are looted and members of their staffs are forced to run, alongside everyone else. Fields that once fed families lie fallow. Livestock die. Relatives and neighbors who depend on each other become separated.

Dependency and depression can come to many who find their way to the relative safety of camps, and when these uprooted souls return to razed villages, there is little time to rest from the trauma. Life begins again, and now their social network of neighbors and health workers and people to trade with - the thin fibers that knit lives together for survival - may have been torn beyond repair. The numbers who die in Africa's wars are almost too high to contemplate. The fighting in Congo - an amalgam of rebel insurgencies, tribal rivalries, competition for resources and just plain butchery without a cause - has taken an estimated 3.8 million lives since 1998, making it the most deadly conflict since World War II, the International Rescue Committee estimated. Another two million lives have been lost in southern Sudan, where a war between the government and rebels ground on 21 years before a peace deal was signed in January. And Sudan's Darfur region, in the west, has lost more than 200,000 additional lives over two years of tribal pillaging. Fighting in northern Uganda, where rebels who purport to fight for the Ten Commandments abduct children to reinforce their ranks and chop off the lips and ears of those who dare resist, has taken an estimated 100,000 lives.

When I read articles like this I just feel despair. What can we do? What can I as an individual begin to work for to alleviate this vast human suffering? Any suggestions would be welcome!

Let us consider two articles in today's New York Times. On the front page is an article about Terry Schiavo, the woman in Florida who has been in a "persistent vegetative state" for over a decade after a heart attack. The U.S. Congress is in the process of passing a bill to "save" Mrs. Schiavo by restoring the feeding tube that has kept her alive all these years, and which a Florida court permitted to be removed on Friday.

Representative Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas and the House majority leader, who is at the center of the Congressional intervention, said on Saturday: "We should investigate every avenue before we take the life of a living human being. That is the very least we can do." In Crawford, the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, said: "Everyone recognizes that time is important here. This is about defending life."

The hypocrisy of these men's statements is simply stunning - they have the unmitigated chutzpah to claim that "defending life" is their highest value, after having gotten the United States into a war that seemingly has no end, where over 1,500 American soldiers have been killed, hundreds of American civilian contractors have been killed, and many thousands of Iraqis, many of them just as innocent as Mrs. Schiavo. (And we don't even allow our military to try to figure out how many Iraqis have been killed, as if their lives had no meaning for us!)

(And I say this as a person who supported the Iraq war and I still - barely - think that at least we aren't as bad as Saddam Hussein and have done some good in Iraq, amid the suicide truck bombs and the shootings and the barbers in Baghdad who are being killed by Islamist hooligans because they are shaving off men's beards!)

Here's a voice of reason on the results of removing a feeding tube:

To many people, death by removing a feeding tube brings to mind the agony of starvation. But medical experts say that the process of dying that begins when food and fluids cease is relatively straightforward, and can cause little discomfort.

"From the data that is available, it is not a horrific thing at all," said Dr. Linda Emanuel, the founder of the Education for Physicians in End-of-Life Care Project at Northwestern University.

In fact, declining food and water is a common way that terminally ill patients end their lives, because it is less painful than violent suicide and requires no help from doctors.

Terri Schiavo, who is in a persistent vegetative state, is "probably not experiencing anything at all subjectively," said Dr. Emanuel, and so the question of discomfort, from a scientific point of view, is not in dispute.

Patients who are terminally ill and conscious and refuse food and drink at the end of life say that they do not generally experience pangs of hunger, since their bodies do not need much food. But they can suffer from dry mouth and other symptoms of dehydration that can be treated effectively.

Once food and water stop, death usually comes in about two weeks, and is caused by effects of dehydration, not the loss of nutrition, said Dr. Sean Morrison, a professor of geriatrics and palliative care at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. "They generally slip into a peaceful coma," he said. "It's very quiet, it's very dignified - it's very gentle."

For more information on the dubious quality of Ward Churchill's academic writing, see this article from the Denver Post: CU prof's writings doubted.

University of Colorado officials reviewing Ward Churchill's writings and qualifications will find questions about his scholarship and accuracy dating back at least eight years.

"If he is going to get fired, it is going to be for making up data, and that's one thing you can't get away with in the academic community," said Thomas F. Brown, who holds a doctorate from Johns Hopkins and is an assistant professor of sociology at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas.

...But today, Churchill's intellectual rigor is the third area to face scrutiny in the academic and political world since his views about the Sept. 11 attacks - he called some of the victims "little Eichmanns" - became widely known.

It's about time his intellectual rigor is being questioned.

On a completely non-political note - I'm sitting here in the quiet evening and listening to the calls of the Canadian geese flying high above, returning south for the spring. Yesterday I saw a big v-formation of geese flying south. And today it got up to about 60 F, and I could smell the wet, saturated soil! It's supposed to snow tonight and tomorrow, but spring is on the way!

More on Ward Churchill

More on the Ward Churchill controversy. It is becoming ever more clear that Churchill's "Indian" or "Native American" identity is very doubtful, and that his "scholarship" is even more dubious. An editorial in Indian Country Today, a Native American news service, casts doubt on Churchill's Indian identity and condemns his harsh language about the victims of the 9/11 attacks - Churchill's identity revealed in wake of Nazi comment.

We will defend a good Indian argument in these pages any time. But, again, there is no evidence that Churchill is Indian. Further, Churchill's statements are obviously devoid of even the most basic humanity that American Indian peoples hold dear. In no way does his insult reflect the views of Indian country. To know the response of Indian country to the 9/11 tragedies is to reflect on the humanitarianism shown by Eastern Native communities: from the Mohawk to the Oneida, the Pequot, Mohegan and many others who immediately put their people - ironworkers, ferry-boat crews and medical personnel - into the rescue and recovery operations, to the California Indian nations that expressed their solidarity with America and donated generously to the rescue efforts, to the Lakota families who brought their Sacred Pipe to pray at the site, leaving their quiet offerings early one dawn. This is always the preferred way of human beings - to understand the kind of empathy required to belong to the human race is essential in all political and economic discourse. To call the people who were murdered on Sept. 11 ''little Eichmanns'' is a hideous expression that when combined to Churchill's mistaken Native identity can only poison the public discourse concerning American Indians.

In an opinion piece in the Rocky Mountain News, Truth Tricky for Churchill, Professor Paul Campos of the University of Colorado law school points out how academically weak Churchill's position is.

Consider: Churchill has constructed his entire academic career around the claim that he is a Native American, yet it turns out there is no evidence, other than his own statements, that this is the case.

Churchill has said at various times that he is either one-sixteenth or three-sixteenths Cherokee, yet genealogical reporting by the Rocky Mountain News and others has failed to turn up any Cherokee ancestors - or any other Native Americans - in Churchill's family tree.

Why should we care one way or another? We should care because Churchill has used his supposed Indian heritage to bully his way into academia. Indeed Churchill lacks what are normally considered the minimum requirements for a tenure-track job at a research university: he never earned a doctorate, and his only degrees are a bachelor's and a master's from a then-obscure Illinois college.

Campos also cites evidence found by two other scholars of fabrications by Churchill in his scholarly work:

Thomas Brown, a professor of sociology at Lamar University, has written a paper that outlines what looks like a more conventional form of academic fraud on Churchill's part. According to Brown, Churchill fabricated a story about the U.S. Army intentionally creating a smallpox epidemic among the Mandan tribe in 1837, by simply inventing almost all of the story's most crucial facts, and then attributing these "facts" to sources that say nothing of the kind. . . . (Brown's essay can be read here).

Similar charges have been leveled against Churchill by University of New Mexico law professor John Lavelle, a Native American scholar who has documented what appear to be equally fraudulent claims on Churchill's part regarding the General Allotment Act, one of the most important federal laws dealing with Indian lands. (Lavelle also accuses Churchill of plagiarism).

This is the full citation for LaVelle's article on the General Allotment Act:
“The General Allotment Act ‘Eligibility’ Hoax: Distortions of Law, Policy, and History in Derogation of Indian Tribes” Wicazo Sa Review 14 (Spring 1999) (reference taken from Brown's article mentioned above).

Lavelle also wrote a scathing review of Churchill's book, Indians R Us, in the American Indian Quarterly 20/1 (1996). Lavelle says, among many other things:

Through the course of all his writings, Churchill gradually has emerged as a spokesman of sorts for those persons derisively referred to as Indian "wannabees"-individuals with no American Indian ancestry or tribal affiliation who nonetheless hold themselves out to the public as "Indians" by aggressively inserting themselves into the political affairs of real Indian people. Churchill's appeal among the "wannabees" lies both in the boldness with which he expresses contempt for Indian tribes, and in the scholarly facade he gives his anti-tribal propositions; indeed, many Churchill fans appear to have been won over by the mere fact that Churchill's books contain an abundance of endnotes. By researching those copious endnotes, however, the discerning reader will discover that, notwithstanding all the provocative sound and fury rumbling through his essays, Churchill's analysis overall is sorely lacking in historical/factual veracity and scholarly integrity.

One does wonder how the man ever got tenure!