Government Shutdown hampering freedom of religion

The Catholic Church maintains something called Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA to ensure that Catholic serving in the US military are able to gain access to priests and religious services. They are chronically understaffed. 25% of the military is Catholic while 8% of military chaplains are. To fill that gap, priests are brought in on contract and from outside the military but in the government (GS priests). According to the General Counsel of the Archdiocese in an October 3rd release, these supplementary priests face legal penalties if they continue to serve even on a volunteer basis.

You can't get much dumber or more illegal than this. Priests do their work as a job but they also do their work as a vocation. No priest has the financial resources to defend themselves against the Feds. They are being denied the right to practice their vocation with their accustomed flock. That means weddings, baptisms, confessions, all these things are put on hold or must be done with care to avoid arrest.

This is outrageous. This is evil.

It's Sally Jewell's fault old dying vets are denied access to the WWII Memorial

According to National Park Service representative Carol Jonson "We are part of the Interior. Interior gives us our instructions." which means that the travesty of increasing spending during a government shutdown to close down normally open to the public 24/7/365 monuments is Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell's fault

This is the face of the lady that likes to beat up on our aging veterans:

She's a true innovator in attempting to injure the people to coerce political compliance from the other party. Shame on her. 

Obama Administration illegally forcing private businesses closed

Today's absurdity is the news that profitable businesses that lease federal land are being forced to close. These are campgrounds and day use parks that receive no federal funds, no government workers are employed there, and have contracts to pay rent to the government for the use of the land. In the dozen plus previous shutdowns that the US has had in the modern budget age, these facilities have remained open. At this point, they are being forced to close.

This is unjust. It serves no legitimate public policy purpose. It costs the government money it can ill afford to lose and reduces the faith in government being a reliable business partner. Profit making private businesses operating under lease cannot be shut down merely because the landlord is having some internal trouble with their budgeting process. That's no less true if the landlord is the federal government.

Giving up on Volokh Conspiracy comments

In the past 48 hours I've had over a dozen comments swallowed up over at the Volokh Conspiracy. That's enough. I'm giving them a rest, especially after reading another commenter complaining about the same thing.

Most fatuous government shutdown hostage analogy ever

Reportedly the Democrats are criticizing Republican efforts to fund popular parts of the government as a "release-one-hostage-at-a-time strategy". For a second, let's accept the premise that this is a hostage situation and the hostage taker decides to let a hostage go as a freebie. In what insane world would it be acceptable for the police to force the hostage back into the hostage taker's hands? It certainly isn't this one.

Hostage release negotiation is inherently a take what you can get peacefully first sort of deal. Police negotiators never turn down no-strings-attached hostage releases. The Democrats did, which raises the question of who, actually is holding these programs hostage?

Seth Godin does another right angle surprise today, taking on the crowd dynamics of events and trashing the 10 person banquet table. It is perfect for the servers, for the venue, and for efficient service but it absolutely subverts the purpose of the meeting. Instead he suggests that we seat five people at a table for four to promote conversation and connection. Proximity promotes conversation. The downside is that there will be scant room for the dinner rolls.

Who cares about the dinner rolls?

Occupy Monuments

I don't think that this is exactly what the occupy movement had in mind but it looks like we're occupying monuments. The World War II Memorial is closed and barriers were up but the ongoing program to fly veterans to visit their war's memorial kept up operations. The barriers were moved aside and veterans came to visit the WWII Memorial with hardly a hiccup. After all, who is going to get paid to stop them?

Now's the time that conservatives have to start stepping up and putting in stop gaps for the government operations that are legitimate and not getting funded during this standoff. Let it burn has to be replaced by something more sophisticated, more productive.

The left is tagging the tea party as a bunch of anarchists who want to blow up society, a bunch of terrorists. That has to get answered lest it starts to gain ground as conventional wisdom.