Jason's hanger shots

"In the Hangar"

Our pal Jason (aka 13 Stoploss) somehow got access to the old blimp/helicopter hangers in Tustin (on Tuesday). He took some seriously cool pictures. Check out the massive doors, the cavernous interior!

"Door"

An enormous dog, sitting.

"Massive Sliding Door"

Who could dream of such a thing? Did he start with a blank slate? "Here," he said. "Make this."

"Beware Rotor Blades"

How many Marines and sailors were Vic Morrowed?
Not many, I bet. They heeded the sign.

"Sliding Door"

This one provides some sense of the hanger's size.
The building in back: so damned small! The man at bottom is an ant.
(Is that palm tree dead or alive?)

Llewellyn: combating the Left’s dreams of “one-world domination”!

They seem like us, and yet they are not.

Hey, just who is this David Llewellyn, the lawyer Raghu Mathur hired to defend the district in the SOCCCD “prayer” lawsuit?

Well, among other things, Mr. L is on the staff of a Sacramento radio show and webpage called In the Public Square.

IPS's website offers a handy and informative “statement of purpose”:

IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE … is a talk radio program hosted by John Snyder that is broadcast on KTKZ 1380 AM in Sacramento … It is also a webpage organization aimed at engaging secular audiences in conversation about contemporary issues, culture and politics.... In the Public Square exists to provide an intelligent and genial forum for the discussion of important issues in contemporary life from a Christian perspective….

CIVILITY 'R' US. Sounds good. IPS also embraces “civility,” “eschewing ad hominems and invectives and slander.”

IPS host John Snyder is described as having a “country-fried attitude imported from the red states.”

Beyond Snyder, IPS has a staff of a dozen or so, including someone named “Mr. Curmudgeon,” who is described as “abrasive and irascible.”

And Mr. L? David Llewellyn is called “Mr. Constitution,” and he is IPS’s “declared ‘generalist’ and commentator on all things legal and cultural.”

THE LAW AND EVOLUTION. On the IPS website, I found one “paper” and two commentaries written by Llewellyn. The paper, entitled “Evolution, Public Education and the Law” (9/12/08), lays out the history of what L calls the “Lincoln-Darwin Debate” as it has played out in the U.S. courts.

Lincoln, says L, embraced noble “self-evident” truths and rights provided by God. Darwin, on the other hand, spurted forth a very different ideology, one that has also had immense social impact.

What is that ideology? Well,

[Darwin discovered] the scientific principle of natural selection, thereby establishing the theory of evolution, which has become the prevailing scientific explanation of the origins of the universe, life and human life, without need for the intervention of a Creator God.

In today’s America, says L, the debate continues to rage between the Lincolnian “conceived in liberty”-“created equal” philosophy and “the social influence of the central tenet of evolution, ‘survival of the fittest.’”

LLEWELLYN DOESN'T GET IT. Uh-oh. Already it is evident that L doesn’t understand Darwin’s science. “Natural selection” (or evolution, the phenomenon that natural selection helps to explain) is not an attempt to explain “the origins of the universe, life and human life.” It is, rather, a mechanism to account for the apparent fact of evolution (i.e., the apparent fact that species change over time).

How can L not know that?

Darwinian biology does not exclude God, for it has a limited scope. It does not offer a view regarding that which it does not seek to explain, e.g., the origin of life or the universe.

And in what sense is “survival of the fittest” the “central tenet” of evolution? (By the way, the phrase is not Darwin’s.) It seems to me that “survival of the fittest” is a rough approximation of the result of natural selection, a mindless process of change driven by random variations in the context of competition for survival.

Well, whatever.

At one point, L declares that “People can and do believe in biological evolution who reject the philosophy and cultural influence of social Darwinism.”

“Social Darwinism”? My Mac's dictionary defines the phrase as follows:

the theory that individuals, groups, and peoples are subject to the same Darwinian laws of natural selection as plants and animals. Now largely discredited, social Darwinism was advocated by Herbert Spencer and others in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and was used to justify political conservatism, imperialism, and racism and to discourage intervention and reform.

No surprise there. Those familiar with the historical philosophy of Social Darwinism are aware that it is not to be confused with Darwin’s science, which, as Darwin himself understood, was incapable of justifying some action or practice (such as racism or exploitation).

But L seems to use the phrase to refer to the alleged Darwinian philosophy in the above debate or to modern evolution-based biology.

Could it be that L is unaware of the meaning of the term “social Darwinism”?

Maybe he thinks that there's some other influential philosophy, which he mistakenly labels "social Darwinism," that is erroneously associated with Darwin's science. Maybe so. But then what's his beef with Darwin? (It seems to me that the one group who can be counted on to misinterpret Darwin is L's own anti-evolution bunch.)

I have not read the rest of this lengthy paper, though, in perusing it, I gather that L is sympathetic to the idea that “evolution” isn’t science but is in fact an ideology or religion.

Good grief. It's science. (And insisting that it's "just a theory" is just confused.)

They know nothing, and yet they are confident.

SARCASTIC CIVILITY? One of L’s commentaries on the IPS website is pleasantly entitled “Thank God for the Disdainful Mouthiness of the Left” (9/12/08). Despite IPS’s professed fidelity to civility and eschewery of ad hominems, their man L here discusses the “MSM” (aka “main stream media”) and its “snarling” contempt for Sarah Palin. The “Left,” says L, responded to Palin’s prayers about the war in Iraq as follows:

"There is no God, to have a will, to favor a war, to free the oppressed — and all of the biblical prophets to the contrary be damned," they [the Left or the MSM] have pontificated. (Author’s free translation.)

L snidely suggests that the Left/MSM sees itself as God:

they believe that they are god…, that their Creation myth pronouncements of "Let there be President Barack Obama, and it was so" and "they saw President Obama, and it was very good," are the words of god, that all people must bow down before them and worship the one-eyed glowing idol in their living rooms upon which they appear….

I think he's pissed.

The ever-civil Mr. L ends with: “Well, at least the Left still have their irreligion and anti-gun moral superiority to cling to.”

In another commentary (Thirteen Reasons to Hate Governor Sarah Palin [9/5/08]), L directs still more sarcasm at the “left” and the “media”—again for their criticism of then-VP candidate Sarah Palin, whom L clearly admires. (He thinks she’s smart.)

Some leftists, alleges L, have criticized Palin’s decision to carry on with the campaign despite her responsibilities to her newborn and to her pregnant daughter.

L fumes:

Imagine that Chelsea Clinton got pregnant and someone suggested that Senator Hillary Clinton was disqualified to run for President because she had an unmarried, pregnant daughter. Preposterous, right? But the blind rage of the Left makes that argument unabashedly, and idiotically, against Governor Palin. ... Should all women quit their jobs if their daughters get pregnant? That’s what the Left and its media commentators are saying, apparently unconcerned for their runaway hypocrisy. It’s insulting to all women, liberal as well as conservative, and dangerously lunatic. Who can trust these people to think rationally on any controversial social or political issue?

The left, says L, is blind, idiotic, hypocritical, lunatic, and irrational.

And that’s just one paragraph! How’s that for civility?

Mr. Pyne seemed mean and rotten. He did not reach the age of 50.

Who can explain him?

Mr. L's logic ain't so hot either. In making his charge of hypocrisy against the left, remarkably, Mr. Llewellyn ignores two facts: (1) Palin herself has a new child and (2) though Chelsea Clinton is nearly 30 years old, Palin’s daughter is a teenager.

Same difference, I guess.

L also notes that Palin has a 19-year-old son in the military who is ipso facto “better qualified than Barack Obama to be commander-in-chief.”

Wow. That's some logic.

Mr Llewellyn believes in strong finishes. He ends his commentary with a real doozy:

“The Left ignored Alaska , and now the wicked Queen of the West has arisen to trouble their dreams of one-world domination.”

Yeah, that's my dream. I wanna dominate. Just one world though. Don't need two.

Choi is right but Wagner is way righter

If Allan Bartlett of Red County/OC is to be believed (here), soon, Don Wagner will be facing some new and significant competition in his bid to become Assemblyman (70th). Says Bartlett, the buzz is that Republican Irvine Councilman Steven Choi will be joining the race any day now.

Bartlett notes that Choi will be a strong candidate with good name recognition (in the 70th). On the other hand,

He won't be able to lay claim to being the consensus conservative/constitutional choice in this race. That honor is going to Don Wagner and it's not really even close. That point will be important as we get down to brass tacks in this race. All you have to do is look what happened back in 2004 when the liberal Republican Christy Christich ran against Chuck DeVore. Chuck was the consensus conservative choice back then and he ended up beating Christich by 20 points.

Does Bartlett know what he’s talking about? I have no idea.

Praying man v. "atheist professor" and "leftist secular group"

MORE DASTARDLY "LIBERAL" MEDIA COVERAGE. This morning, the Chronicle of Higher Education finally covered the SOCCCD “prayer” lawsuit. Their report appears to be a truncated version of the OC Register story. It mentions the notorious “Christ” video.

WAGNERIAN RED-MEAT SPINNAGE. Well, it was bound to happen. Don Wagner, Republican candidate for the 70th Assembly, is spinning the “prayer” lawsuit for all it’s worth. According to Allan Bartlett of OC/Red County (Wagner Defends Religious Freedom), Wagner’s campaign has issued a press release:

Wagner Defends Religious Freedom
Leftist secular group American United for Separation of Church and State sues Don Wagner

Irvine, California - The leftist secular group American United for Separation of Church and State, announced … that it is suing Don Wagner … in an effort to ban invocations and any mention of religion at certain college district functions….

The lawsuit alleges that Wagner and the college district's board of trustees ignored repeated demands from atheist professor Karla Westphal and others to stop invocations at district functions. However, Wagner is accurately quoted in the lawsuit as having recognized that, "[h]istorically, at events such as [graduations, award ceremonies, and board meetings,] we . . . take the opportunity to offer a moment of thanksgiving to God." Wagner also noted "that America's founders invoked the name of God, and encouraged and participated in religious ceremonies in government facilities."

American United has filed numerous lawsuits around the country trying to ban mentions of God or religion from the public square. "If you don't believe in God," Wagner said in a speech quoted in the lawsuit, "that's fine. The government has no business trying to convince you otherwise. . . . But if you do believe, I would ask you, personally and not on behalf of the government, to take a moment to thank Him for the many gifts you believe you have received from Him, including the opportunity to pursue an education in a country explicitly founded on the belief that we are endowed by our Creator with the gift of liberty."

Wagner said he is looking forward to defending the principles of religious freedom under assault from the plaintiffs and the so-called "Americans United" group in this case. Constitutional law scholar and Dean of the Chapman University School of Law, John Eastman, is representing Wagner….

John Eastman, eh? That's interesting.

I visited Wagner’s campaign website and, oddly, I could not find the above press release (here) in the “press release” section. Whatever.

Is, as Don suggests, “Americans United” a “leftist secular group”? I would argue that the principle of separation of church and state is neither left nor right, and I suspect AUSCS would agree.

Is it secular? Well, this is more spin. Unsurprisingly, many of AUSCS’s members, including its Executive Director, are theists. The same can be said for some of the plaintiff’s of “Westphal v. Wagner.” I believe that only two of the eight plaintiffs identify themselves as atheists. (I checked: two atheists, two agnostics, one Deist, a devout Jew, a person “raised Jewish,” and someone who is “not religious.” See lawsuit.)

Wagner’s press release (as Bartlett quotes it) fails to mention that, among the incidents cited in the lawsuit are those in which an undeniably Christian—and not just theistic—message was communicated (in a video) and in which student scholarship recipients were compelled to attend a prayerful scholarship event.

Evidently, Wagner also neglects to mention the obvious defiance of trustees in response to polite requests to cease the prayers out of sensitivity to the diversity of faculty, students, and the community. (Don encouraged John to “give ‘em hell” in his prayer. See lawsuit.)

MAYBE THE “MISTAKE” WAS A FAKE? Recently, David Llewellyn, the district’s new “prayer” lawyer, asserted that the showing of the “Jesus Christ” video during the Fall “Chancellor’s Opening Session” was an inadvertent “mistake.” Supposedly, nobody actually watched the video to see what was in it before they showed it.

I’m not buyin’ it.

As it happens, less than two weeks after the Opening Session, there was a board meeting. You can view the meeting yourself by going to the streaming video archives section of the district website. (Click on the link for the video for the August 31, 2009 meeting.)

During the “public comments” portion of that meeting, three faculty raised the “prayer” issue, referring disapprovingly to the August 18 “Christ video” incident. Their comments can be found from 07:30 to 12:54 in the video.

Almost immediately after these comments (at 15:30), Chancellor Mathur responds, explaining that he was not offended by the video and its sectarian message. If, as Llewellyn now claims, the Christian message was an inadvertent mistake, surely Mathur would have made that point then.

He did not. See for yourself.

A few minutes later, trustees gave their reports. Trustee Wagner, who had MC’d the “opening session,” mentions the session in his report (at 18:48), but he makes no mention of any mistake or problem. On the contrary, looking at the Chancellor, he declares the event a “job well done.”

Tsk, tsk.

FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH, here are the comments to the Chronicle article thus far:

• Good.
• And I would counter that prayer at a public event goes AGAINST the founding of the country. You want to pray, go to church, nobody's stopping you, not even us Godless northeastern intellectual liberal Fake Americans.
• So, in this time of deadly budget cuts, the trustees are going to incur large legal expenses on a crusade they are bound to lose. That will be a fine educational experience for the district's students!
• Glad to hear about the suit. Makes me wonder if their god can only hear prayers that are spoken aloud in groups so non-believers have to sit through them. I kinda thought that God was omnipotent and could hear the most silent of prayers. And all are able to pray silently anytime they want.
• unbelievable!
• It is a reproach to ALL sides in this argument that it continues to go on. If the plaintiffs and defendants in this suit would consistently follow the ideals they cite, they would communicate sufficientl to accomodate, rather than litigate.

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: "Our dreams drink coffee with us"

A little poetry, a little thanks.

This one is featured on the website of the Poetry Foundation:

A poem by Joy Harjo
Muskogee Creek heritage
born in 1951

Perhaps the World Ends Here

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on. 

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

***

Thanks also to The Chronicle of Higher Education: click here.

“The showing of that video was a mistake,” Llewellyn said.

A new wrinkle!

In this morning’s Inside Higher Ed (Religious Meets Litigious), the SOCCCD’s new lawyer, David Llewellyn, acknowledges that his clients committed an error:

Llewellyn did make one concession about an incident specified in the suit.

At the Chancellor’s Opening Session [8/18/09], an event at the beginning of the academic year that gathers students and faculty, a slide show was displayed with the song “God Bless the USA.” The suit states that “the presentation concluded with two images of uniformed service members carrying a flag-draped coffin, with superimposed text reading: Only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you. Jesus Christ and the American G.I. One died for your soul, the other died for your freedom.”

“The showing of that video was a mistake,” Llewellyn said. “It was purely an accident. The district wasn’t aware that was in the video, and it was not intended to be an expression of anything other than patriotism.”

As we reported after the August Board meeting (8/31/09),

Some faculty came [to the board meeting] to object to that seriously in-your-face Christian message stuck at the end of the Chancellor’s silly patriotic video for his Opening Session (nearly two weeks ago).

Jesus Christ, we were informed, died for our souls.

Some faculty said that that nakedly Christian message failed to respect the diversity of the community....

A few minutes later, Chancellor Raghu P. Mathur made a “brief statement.” “It was,” he said, “a diverse chancellor … who was not offended.”

No apologies or admissions of error were offered. (View video of the 8/31/09 board meeting here. See especially "pubic comments" and Mathur's response to them.)

IHR also quoted Trustee Don Wagner’s remarks at the 2008 Saddleback College Scholarship awards ceremony:

“Historically at events such as these we also take the opportunity to offer a moment of thanksgiving to God — if He exists,” said Wagner, according to a transcript of his remarks included in the suit. “And I’m not here to say that He does. That would be wrong for an elected official, I am told. No matter that America’s founders invoked the name of God, and encouraged and participated in religious ceremonies in government facilities.

"No matter that the overwhelming majority of our fellow citizens believe, or they have no objection to religious mention at public gatherings. No, no matter to the special interest group that has contacted this college to pursue its agenda of driving God from the public square. No matter to those too uncertain in the strength of their own views that they cannot abide any mention in public of the divine, and that would prefer instead to censor and silence free speech.”

“If you don’t believe in God, that’s fine,” Wagner continued. “The government has no business trying to convince you otherwise. You’re welcome to sit down. We invited you to stand, but no one made you. But if you do believe, I would ask you, personally and not on behalf of the government, to take a moment to thank Him, for the many gifts you believe you have received from Him, including the opportunity to pursue an education in a country explicitly founded on the belief that we are endowed by our Creator with the gift of liberty. If you would, take that moment now, and then if you’re so inclined, say a simple ‘Amen.’ ”

As the lawsuit explains, student scholarship recipients were required to attend the ceremony. For the ceremony that occurred a year later, college officials sent them the following:

You are expected to attend the award ceremony held on Thursday, May 14th and to arrive at 5:00 pm in the Saddleback College Gymnasium. You may forfeit your scholarship if you are not there. If you absolutely cannot attend the ceremony you must send an adult who will represent you.

COMMENTS:

Anonymous said...
A mistake?

They all defended it! - as did some of their supporters on this blog!
7:17 AM, November 24, 2009

Anonymous said...
I attended the subsequent board meeting, and no one said that a "mistake" was made. They did, however, defend the video.
8:15 AM

Anonymous said...
Does Wagner really believe this stuff, or is he just feeding into the local voting demographic?
10:44 AM

Anonymous said...
Check out Matt Coker's latest on the OC Weekly: God's Lawyer
11:11 AM

Anonymous said...
It was a "mistake," yes, like when Fox "news" shows old footage of crowds to imply that the teabaggers have bigger turnouts. An inadvertant "mistake" in the editing of news footage. Right.
12:03 PM

Anonymous said...
I half expected the clock tower here to be replaced by a cross...
12:47 PM

Anonymous said...
Where'd they GET the video? Who produced it? Who obtained it?

Nodbody screened it beforehand?

Come on. I don't believe it. 

I bet one of them saw it at some gathering somewhere and thought "perfect."
4:09 PM

Anonymous said...
Yes, we need to find out about the origins of the video - and who chose it,, etc.

Can you imagine if one of us showed something in the classroom - and then defended it with the lame ass excuse by saying we hadn't screened it before and were unaware of content?

Come on, indeed.

I think they're lying.
5:03 PM

Anonymous said...
When told by an audience member that the video failed to respect the diversity of the community, the Chancellor responded with “a diverse chancellor … who was not offended.”???? Your chancellor and Board of Trustees are in serious need of diversity/sensitivity training.
5:21 PM

Anonymous said...
Come on, of course they WATCHED the video before they showed it to an auditorium full of college employees. For all they knew it could have showed a naked lady in the last slide -- and you know THAT would have been a major problem for Raghu, so of course they knew the video's contents. They looked at it and ok'd it. Ridiculous.
8:14 PM

Anonymous said...
They're lying - to their lawyer and to us and to everyone.
8:55 PM

The OC Reg reports on the "prayer" lawsuit

The OC Register has at long last noted the SOCCCD “prayer” lawsuit:

Prayers land college district in legal dispute

The article covers mostly familiar ground, but it does explain some of the history leading up to the lawsuit:

[Plaintiff Karla] Westphal, who has been a professor at Saddleback College since 2001, said the frequency of public prayers at school events began in 2004 when a trustee led a prayer at the beginning of a scholarship ceremony.

Westphal wrote to trustees expressing her opposition to the public prayer.

A week later a prayer was said at the opening of commencement. She said she was so angry she can't remember what was said.
…
It was in that year that Westphal got in touch with Americans United [For Separation of Church and State] and the American Civil Liberties Union.

"When the prayers initially started I hoped to get it settled without a lawsuit and that just didn't happen," Westphal said. "The suit is a culmination of a long process. I've been working with Americans United for a long time. They wrote letters to the board formally asking for the change. For me there wasn't any particular event. I've been ready for several years. It was a question of whether Americans United felt it was a good time to bring the case forward."

Photo: OC Reg