Who is Rozita Swinton?

A little over a week ago, a trial date was set for Rozita Swinton in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The charge against Swinton is only part of the story:

During a hearing in Colorado Springs, Colo., on Friday, a judge scheduled a May 19 jury trial for Rozita Swinton on a misdemeanor charge of making a false report. She is accused of calling authorities in February 2008, pretending to be a 13-year-old girl drugged, chained in a basement and being sexually abused.

But that's not the case that interests everyone. Here's what happened a couple of months later in 2008:

March 22: A caller to a Washington battered women's shelter gives her name as "Sarah Jessop" and describes physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her husband, Dale Barlow, who she says lives in an Everett, Wash., apartment complex. She calls 27 more times in the next three weeks.

March 29-30: A caller to the NewBridge Family Shelter crisis hot line in San Angelo [Texas] also giving her name as "Sarah Jessop" describes abuse and underage marriage at the YFZ Ranch in Schleicher County and says she is married to Barlow, who she says lived at the ranch.

This then launched the raids at the YFZ Ranch, but "Sarah Jessop" could not be found. However, the calls continued:

April 10: "Sarah" calls again to the Washington shelter, this time detailing her allegations on a three-way call with a Schleicher County deputy sheriff. She also says her "sister wives" are instructing her to lie about her identity to caseworkers interviewing the women and children removed from the ranch. Each time the deputy asks how he can identify her, she hangs up.

April 12: Texas Rangers meet with [Dale] Barlow in [Colorado City,] Arizona but do not act on the arrest warrant filed against him.

April 13: A request to the FBI for phone records of the number used on the three-way call is returned, showing the number registered to someone in the household of Rozita Swinton, who has been accused of making numerous false reports to police and women's shelters. The records show she called NewBridge 16 times between March 22 and April 12. A second number also traced to Swinton called NewBridge seven more times.

April 16: Swinton is arrested at her Colorado Springs home on a charge of making a false report to authorities in an unrelated case. Texas Rangers accompany authorities on the arrest and seize evidence from her home, calling her a "person of interest." She has not been charged with any crime related to the FLDS raid.

So who is she? Someone who suffers from a multiple personality disorder? Someone with a grudge? Digital Journal mused on this:

The psychotics and sociopaths among us rarely stand out as unusual characters. Most are actually quite socially affable and hide their mental illnesses well. For the most part. Until you hear the sensational news stories and the interviews of shell-shocked friends, co-workers, relatives and neighbors saying in disbelief, "he/she was the nicest, quietest, most sane person you'd ever want to meet.'...

The Dallas Observer blog 'Unfair Park' raised the following question on April 18th:

'How does a mentally disturbed Colorado woman become aware of a secretive polygamist sect hundreds of miles away in Texas? More importantly, how does she get the phone number of Flora Jessop?'

You could also ask, how did she obtain very hard-to-get stacks of FLDS materials, names and phone numbers, which Flora Jessop stated the Texas Rangers found during their search?

That blogger, Jesse Hyde, obviously never had to deal with an obsessed person. Every woman who's ever had to deal with a persistent stalker, or psychotic ex-husband or boyfriend, knows exactly how resourceful an obsessed psychotic can be....

Somehow she got the information, but Rozita Swinton's obsessions went far beyond the hoax 'Sarah' calls to the YFZ ranch, which continued long after the April 3 raid. Flora Jessop stated that 'Sarah' had called her AFTER she posted bail for last week's arrest, and finally admitted that her name was 'Rose.'

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Merril Jessop - Normally you don't associate an FLDS leader with a fifth, but there are exceptions

I've been remiss in my Merril Jessop reporting. This story comes from January:

Citing federal conspiracy and Mann Act investigations, YFZ Ranch leader Merril Jessop invoked his constitutional right against self-incrimination more than 250 times....

So why did he refuse to answer the questions?

The deposition was conducted principally by Denton family law attorney Natalie Malonis, who has said she sought information about the sect's finances in the hopes of providing financial means for her 17-year-old client, a daughter of Jeffs who sect documents say was married at age 15 to Raymond Jessop, Merril Jessop's then 36-year-old son.

Jessop refused to answer all questions relating to the sect's finances - including those apparently based on sect documents referring to efforts to create a trust in Texas with funds taken from the Utah-based United Effort Plan trust.

When all else fails, go for the money. Remember that Al Capone was eventually brought down on tax evasion charges.

Oh, and I do stand corrected - Jessop's first name only has one L. Or at least Wikipedia says so, for what it's worth.

And by the way, the FLDS case has diminished significantly, according to this March 13 article:

The state's Child Protective Services agency has dropped a 17-year-old mother from its investigation of alleged abuse at the YFZ Ranch, leaving just one child of the 439 initially removed from the polygamous Schleicher County compound....

The only child remaining in the case is a 14-year-old girl that sect documents and pictures show having been married to sect leader Warren Jeffs at age 12.

CPS on Thursday filed a request that the girl, who has struggled to adapt to outside life with two foster families since 51st District Judge Barbara Walther gave the agency custody of the girl last summer, be placed with a distant relative, Bandera resident Naomi Carlisle.

Carlisle, 52, is an FLDS member but has never been a resident of the YFZ Ranch, and five of her 11 surviving children have left the sect upon adulthood, according to investigation documents filed Thursday with the agency's request.

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And I thought the Jolt cola was bad - NASHE "youth group" executes denial of service "defense"

When I hear the phrase "youth group," I end up thinking of things such as church youth groups. I was a member of one when I was a youth, and later as a young adult I was a counselor for another such group. The worst situation that I ever had to deal with as a counselor was when one of the junior high kids drank some Jolt cola before coming to youth group. Afterwards, we decided that this particular youth should be banned from drinking Jolt cola before meetings.

Well, youth groups can do a whole bunch of things, as HS Daily Wire noted in its story 2007 cyber attack on Estonia launched by Kremlin-backed youth group.

Now that's heavy.

A country being outwitted, overwhelmed, and paralyzed by a group of teenagers? Apparently, yes. Members of a Kremlin-backed youth movement have claimed responsibility for May 2007 cyber attacks that crippled Estonia's Internet in the midst of a diplomatic argument with Russia....

Russia has consistently denied any involvement. Yesterday, however, Konstantin Goloskokov, a "commissar" in the youth group NASHE, which works for the Kremlin, told the Financial Times that he and some associates had launched the attack, which appears to be the first time anyone has claimed responsibility. "I wouldn't have called it a cyber attack; it was cyber defense," he said. We taught the Estonian regime the lesson that if they act illegally, we will respond in an adequate way."

For the record, the Russians were defending themselves from Estonia's belligerent act of...um...removing a Second World War Soviet memorial from Tallinn. Considering the way in which Estonia joined the Soviet Union in the Second World War, Estonia's cool feelings about the memorial are understandable.

HS Daily Wire also discussed the technology used in the cyber attack - I mean cyber defense.

Jose Nazario of Arbor Networks, an Internet security company, is an expert on the Estonian attacks and said they measured about 100 MB per second of traffic, compared with the largest recorded attacks of 40 GB per second. He said that generating such an attack was quite simple, requiring "just a lot of people getting together and running the same tools on their home computers".

Sounds like a fun way to spend an evening. Back to Konstantin Goloskokov of NASHE:

"We did not do anything illegal. We just visited the various Internet sites, over and over, and they stopped working. We didn't block them: they were blocked by themselves because of their own technical limitations in handling the traffic they encountered."

Well, I guess that's one way to look at a distributed denial of service attack - I mean defense.

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Gaithersburg (Maryland) History Park

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Clinton 2.0

The President of the United States isn't the only government official trying to display some electronic communication savvy. Look at what's on the Department of State website.



Yes, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is waiting for your texts.

Wonder if Barack recommended that she use a Blackberry.

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Fundamental rights, one more time - can two fathers marry their two sons?

I've previously blogged about this on October 25, 2008 and December 23, 2008, and it's time to revisit it.

As you may know, California's Proposition 8 is being challenged in the California courts, and a hearing will be held on March 5, 2009. One of the arguments against the proposition is worded as follows:

Proposition 8 Is An Ultra Vires Amendment Because It Abrogates Fundamental Rights Protected By Article I, Section 1 Of The California Constitution Without A Compelling Justification.

There are those words "fundamental rights" again. For the record, here is how Article I, Section 1 of the California Constitution reads:

CALIFORNIA CONSTITUTION
ARTICLE 1 DECLARATION OF RIGHTS

SECTION 1. All people are by nature free and independent and have
inalienable rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and
liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing
and obtaining safety, happiness, and privacy.

Note that this states that all people may pursue happiness - not just all straight people, and presumably the 2008 decision of the California Supreme Court is based upon this idea that "all people...have inalienable rights...[for] pursuing...happiness."

Um...all people?

On February 23, Randy Thomas linked to an MSNBC article by Kathleen Lewis. The title of the article? "I have two husbands."

...My first husband was Alan.

We fell together like a couple of old shoes, somehow instantly comfortable with each other. We had similar opinions about plural relationships, and neither of us was averse to the idea. Around a year and a half after we were married, we met Eric. He and I were instantly attracted to each other and, as Alan had no objection, we began getting to know each other better. Over time, I found myself falling in love with Eric. Alan certainly wasn't blind to this, so we all got together to discuss it. This turned out to be one of the most important conversations of my life, and led to an increase in my family’s size.

Alan and Eric let me make the sleeping arrangements, and I worked to make sure I spent time with both of them. To all outward appearances we were a married couple with a male friend living with us. While some found it awkward when the three of us occasionally attended parties and such together, very few people attempted to pry. To avoid legal troubles, I remained legally married to Alan, and we all decided a larger house was in order when we met Leslie.

Fast forward to today, and our family is now composed of Alan, Eric, Leslie, Amber, and myself, plus our children: Todd, Steve, Jennifer, Lisa, and Amber is currently pregnant.

The MSNBC article goes on to describe the logistics of the marriage, and then criticizes the restricted worldview of "Big Love":

When ‘Big Love’ came out, we all thought it was pretty silly. To start with, we all consider ourselves to be one family, not three separate but connected families. The ideas that plural marriage is restricted to the one man and several wives model — and that it has to have a religious basis — are both ridiculous. We also don't consider the political jockeying, the backbiting, and the attempts to get more of the husband's attention or money, to be loving behavior.

Lewis then concludes:

With all the traditions we have coming from other cultures and various parts of the country, who's to say what is or isn't mainstream? Kind of makes "non-traditional" lose its meaning.

So presumably this family has a fundamental right to be recognized as such in the state of California. And anyone who disagrees is an oppressor.

But let's take this a step further. What if the two dads - Alan and Eric - decide that they want to marry a couple of the children - let's say Todd and Steve?

After all, why not? It's not like Leviticus 18 has any binding force in the state of California. And anyone who would try to apply Leviticus 18:6 and the rest would be extremely insensitive. Take Barney Frank:

"Mr. Warren compared same-sex couples to incest. I found that deeply offensive and unfair."

Or, in other words, Barney Frank is displaying his hateful attitude toward people who, in the words of the California Constitution, "have inalienable rights...[for] pursuing...happiness." Sounds like a fundamental right to me. You know, if people would just be accepting and not be such haters, Michael Jackson might still be living in Neverland today.

But let's go back to Randy Thomas, who has a different view:

Because I am a Christian I believe a family should be a Husband and Wife coming together as one. Both Husband and Wife have very specific, wonderful roles and responsibilities that complement each other. The blessing of their unique gender roles and giftings add to a level of healthy interdependency that helps both become more together than they would ever have been alone. They don’t mirror each other in bland “gender neutral” definitions. They celebrate each other’s equal capacity to bear the Image of God uniquely as well as when they bear His Image together. Their union is transcendent in that it bears the Image of God in a way that no other union can. If the Lord chooses to allow them to have children or adopt … great! The family increases to Gramps, Gramma, Mom, Dad … Punkin’ and Dot! And of course it goes without saying … uncles, aunts … cousins. I believe that God created that to be His ideal “version” of family so, I am biased.

Thomas concluded his post as follows:

My question is this, do same sex couples condone polyamorous/polygamous relationships? I will offer my view (from my past experience and current ear to the ground) either in the comments below or in a follow up post. But I want to give you all some time to respond too. Don’t be shy :). Oh and I hope that there may be other things in this post you might want to chime in on so … go for it.

As I write this Thomas has only received one comment to his post, but a spirited discussion has broken out in this FriendFeed thread. In the conversation, Mark Trapp pointed out how the California Supreme Court may evaluate different proposals to limit marriage:

The ruling also provides two standards by which the state must determine any (not just same-sex marriages) marriage validity: "Under the strict scrutiny standard, unlike the rational basis standard, in order to demonstrate the constitutional validity of a challenged statutory classification the state must establish (1) that the state interest intended to be served by the differential treatment not only is a constitutionally legitimate interest, but is a compelling state interest, and (2) that the differential treatment not only is reasonably related to but is necessary to serve that compelling state interest."

Of course, it all depends upon what the compelling state interest is. For example, if the compelling interest is to encourage procreation, then gay marriages may not be valid, but marriages of eight teenagers who have hit puberty may be valid. After all, as I've noted before, marriages of young people existed well before the California Constitution was written. If, on the other hand, the compelling interest is to create stable relationships, then the only valid marriages may be ones in which people have certain beliefs opposing divorce, and in which the married participants have income levels that lend themselves to stable relationships (not too poor, not too rich, but just right).

This will be an interesting ruling when it comes out.

P.S. If you have comments specific to polygamy and polyamory and whatever other poly- word you can conceive of, you may want to enter your comments into Randy's post directly.

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If he had used the name "John Doe," no one would have suspected anything

Normally I don't post work-related stuff in my personal blog, but this one was too good to pass up. Put this in the dumb crime category.

From the Manchester, New Hampshire Police Blog:

Manchester Police Officers conducting a routine traffic stop on Hanover St. [on the afternoon of February 15, 2009] were greeted by a local man who provided the name John Brown and claimed to have a Maryland driver's license. When no record of the license was found, the man was arrested and brought to the Manchester Police Department. Despite his insistence that he was giving his true name, the officers sensed a problem.

Now I don't see why the police were jumping to conclusions. Just because a local guy claims to have a Maryland driver's license, which he doesn't have, is no reason to think that any hanky-panky is going on. After all, he gave his name, John Brown. What more do you want?

Well, for whatever reason, the police decided to investigate a little further:

They then brought the man over to the department's Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) machine and entered his fingerprints. The officers then made contact with NH State Police, who were able to provide an immediate identification of the subject. As it turns out, the officers' instincts were correct and the subject had in fact provided a false name. He was identified as:

John Hilliard DOB: 9-7-1973 of 45 Bradley St. Manchester

Through further investigation, it was found that subject Hilliard had two outstanding Bench Warrants and an active Arrest Warrant for a Parole Violation. Along with the warrants, Hillard was charged with Disobeying a Police Officer and Unsworn Falsification.

Oops.


View Larger Map

As you can see rom the map, Brown's - I mean Hilliard's residence is right next to Nutts Pond.

Sounds about right.

P.S. While there have been cases over the years that have challenged the accuracy of fingerprint searches, it should be noted that tenprint searches - i.e., searches in which a person's complete set of prints is compared to a previously captured complete set of prints - are very accurate. The cases that have come under question, such as the Brandon Mayfield case, have involved searches of latent prints, or prints (or partial prints) that are recovered from crime scenes. Since the criminal is not courteous enough to leave a high quality print at the crime scene, these prints are much more difficult to search. Chris in Utah explains the difference:

While it is pretty technical, CSI isn’t really rocket science. And while fingerprint evidence isn’t nearly as reliable as DNA, it IS reliable. What your article was talking about is what is called a partial fingerprint. If you are lucky enough to find what is called an "AFIS" (Automated Fingerprint Identification System) quality fingerprint, and it matches your suspect, it is so close to the reliablilty of DNA that the difference is not worth mentioning. But we very very rarely get that quality of fingerprint. We do find partial prints. They say that they are of comparison quality, if you find a suspect, you can match it to that person, but you can’t run it through the AFIS system. Those prints are not nearly as reliable as DNA. Those prints are the ones that cause problems.

If you're interested in the subject of latent print examination, from both a forensic and a legal basis, I highly recommend Ed German's website at onin.com/fp.

Disclosure - my employer provided the Automated Fingerprint Identification System to the state of New Hampshire, but this case would have resulted in the same outcome had John Brown - I mean Hilliard lived and committed crimes in a state with an AFIS from another company, such as Massachusetts, Connecticut, or New York.

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Senator Ontario Emperor, revisited #DYSP

In case you missed it, I previously blogged about my unrealistic goal that I set for myself on December 31, 2008:

I want to become a U.S. Senator from Illinois in 2009. (Even though I haven't lived there since 1970, I'm not rich, and I'm a registered Republican.)

As time went on, however, Rod Blagojevich appointee Roland Burris became more and more acceptable both inside the Beltway and inside the Land of Lincoln, I was forced to concede that my chances of realizing my dream were becoming increasingly unlikely.

But that was January. This is February. And now Burris is running into a little bit of trouble. Outsanity tweeted about it this morning:

#Chicago's #Roland #Burris is in hot water. #DYSP

AMERICAblog linked to a Chicago Tribune editorial. Here's an excerpt:

Let’s see if we have it right: Burris had zero contact with any of Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s cronies about his interest in the Senate seat being vacated by President Barack Obama— unless you count that conversation with former chief of staff Lon Monk, and, on further reflection, the ones with insiders John Harris, Doug Scofield and John Wyma and, oh yeah, the governor’s brother and fund-raising chief, Robert Blagojevich. But Burris didn’t raise a single dollar for the now ex-governor as a result of those contacts because that could be construed as a quid pro quo and besides, everyone he asked refused to donate.

The story gets worse with every telling.

Enough. Roland Burris must resign.

So this may work out after all. I'd better start following the Cubs and/or White Sox or something.

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The Finnish right to privacy?

This is a followup about something I last discussed in March 2008 - namely, the case against Susan Ruusunen, formerly Susan Kuronen, who was hauled into court after publishing a tell-all book about her former boyfriend, Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen. (You'll recall that Vanhanen dumped then-Kuronen via text message, which may be the thing for the younger crowd, but is not often seen in older people.)

Here's the update, again from Finland for Thought:

A woman writes an autobiography about her life which happens to include dating our Prime Minister. Finland’s PM makes an ass out of himself after their breakup and decides to get his revenge by taking her to court. The lower courts rule in her favor, but he’s wealthy and powerful so he decides to appeal to the upper courts, and wins...

So, if my publisher's reading this, I think we're going to have to put that "tuna fish pizza" book on hold.

More information on the Ruusunen case is here. Thankfully, it's in English.

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Revisiting Charles Sophy's medical degree

Back on June 22, 2007, I wrote a post on Charles Sophy that noted, among other things, that Sophy is a D.O. and not an M.D. This was taken from a Radar Online post:

Sophy has been mistakenly referred to as an M.D. (specifically by Men's Health). He's a D.O., a doctor of osteopathy, a slightly different classification, though D.O. schooling and training mirrors that of M.D.s. Osteopaths focus on alternative treatments, prevention, and patients' total wellness rather than specific symptoms. And osteopathic psychiatrists make up about 10 percent of the American Psychiatric Association, of which Sophy has been a member for more than a decade.

My post just prompted the following comment:

Anonymous said...

You might want to do your research a little more responsibly and profesionally. Dr. Sophy is the Medical Director of Los Angeles County D.C.S.F. (Dept. of Children and Family Services) He is most certainly an M.D. I know; he was my son's psychiatrist at the L.A. County D.M.H. (Dept. of Mental Health) for two years.

Your ramblings are absolutely pathetic.
06 February, 2009 01:05

So, what does Interactive Dad Magazine say about Sophy's degree? Nothing. Here's the relevant portion:

His professional training includes medical residencies in family practice at Metropolitian Hospital (Philadelphia), and adult psychiatry at Norristown State Hospital, and a fellowship in child/adolescent psychiatry Hahneuman University Hospital ( Philadelphia), as well as, other massive government-run psychiatric institutions around Philadelphia.

And HealthGrades has a listing for Dr. Charles J. Sophy, MD, but with this interesting wrinkle:

Medical School, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Med

Now perhaps I should be...um...professional and specifically investigate how many MD degrees the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Med grants, but there are better ways to spend one's time.

But does it make any difference? Here's what [CORRECTED 2/19] the American Osteopathic Association says:

DO's and MD's are alike in many ways:

* Applicants to both DO. and M.D. colleges typically have a four-year undergraduate degree with an emphasis on science courses.

* Both DO's and MD's complete four years of basic medical education.

* After medical school, both DO's and MD's can choose to practice in a specialty area of medicine such as psychiatry, surgery, or obstetrics. They both complete a residency program, which takes typically two to six years of additional training.

* Both DO's and MD's must pass comparable state licensing examinations.

* DO's and MD's both practice in fully accredited and licensed hospitals and medical centers.

* DO's comprise a separate, yet equal branch of American medical care. Together DO's and MD's enhance the state of health care available in America.

* However, it's the ways that DO's and MD's are different that can bring an extra dimension to your family's health care.

DO's bring something extra to medicine:

* Osteopathic schools emphasize training students to be primary care physicians.

* DO's practice a "whole person" approach to medicine. Instead of just treating specific symptoms or illnesses, they regard your body as an integrated whole.

* Osteopathic physicians focus on preventive healthcare.

* DO's receive extra training in the musculoskeletal system - your body's interconnected system of nerves, muscles and bones that make up two-thirds of its body mass. This training provides osteopathic physicians with a better understanding of the ways that an injury or illness in one part of your body can affect another. It gives DO's a therapeutic and diagnostic advantage over those who do not receive additional specialized training.

* Osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT) is incorporated in the training and practice of osteopathic physicians. OMT allows physicians to use their hands to diagnose injury and illness and to encourage your body's natural tendency toward good health. By combining all other medical procedures with OMT, DO's offer their patients the most comprehensive care available in medicine today.

Of course, these are only my pathetic ramblings. What are your thoughts?

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Latest from the Obameter, and the meaning of representative government

Back on January 24, KChristieH shared some information.

I don’t think I’ve made 500 promises in my whole lifetime, but apparently that’s about how many promises Barack Obama made before he took office.

The St. Petersburg Times’ Politifact.com is tracking President Obama’s progress toward fulfilling his promises.

As of the January 24 post, Obama had already fulfilled 6 of his promises.

I just checked the Obameter, and here are the latest results:



As you can see, current statistics are as follows:

• Promise Kept 6


• Compromise 1


• Promise Broken 1


• Stalled 1


• In the Works 18


• No Action 483

I don't know if anyone's attempted this before, and obviously such a measure is open to interpretation, but it's fascinating.

Just out of curiosity, I wondered which promise Obama broke.

To reduce bills rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them, Obama "will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days."

So, what happened?

[T]he first bill Obama signed into law as president -- the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act -- got no such vetting.

In fact, the Congressional Record shows that the law was passed in the Senate on Jan. 22, 2009, passed in the House on Jan. 27, and signed by the president on Jan. 29. So only two days passed between the bill's final passage and the signing.

The legislation was not posted to the White House Web site for comment in any way that we could find....

Obama signed the measure at 10:20 a.m. About two hours later, the White House posted the bill on its Web site with a link that asks people to submit comments. But the bill was already signed at that point.

The whole issue gets into the tension between a republic and a democracy. As political students know, we are not a democracy, since in a political sense the term implies that all people are involved in making every decision. In a republic, people are appointed to make the decisions that need to be made. Specifically, in my case I'm represented by Joe Baca in the House of Representatives, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer in the Senate, and Barack Obama in the White House. (For brevity's sake, I'll refrain from further commment on my representatives.) So when we get the need to pass something like the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, Baca, Feinstein, Boxer, and Obama can take care of this for me.

Citizen review of legislation can occur at various parts of the process, but the idea of reviewing legislation after the legislative branch has passed it, but before the executive branch has signed it, is definitely a novel idea.

Perhaps when Obama found himself in the Oval Office, he determined that citizen review of passed legislation was silly, and decided to can the idea.

Even if it meant that he broke a promise.

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I'm talking to you now - the Electronic Biometric Transmission Specification

On Saturday, January 24, I wrote a post entitled Talk to me - barriers to communication affect everybody. As part of that post, I reproduced some of the jargon that I spout every day:

BCA needs ESB support, and since we know this now, we don't need to CCB it in. We can start with FEC and write the appropriate STRQs and MRs to get us to M-11. Of course, we'll follow P_RGP in the SPP to do all this. And of course BCA will need all the ANSI/NIST and EFTS stuff we do - you know, WSQ and all that. But the ADS handles that with no problem, as does the DES, of course.

Now that was probably cruel of me to spout all that stuff and not explain a word of it. Following Elvis Google's mandate of "Don't be cruel," I'm going to be a little less cruel about it. I'm not going to explain every one of those acronyms, many of which are only meaningful in a particular office building in Orange County, but I'm going to take a few minutes to explain the acronym EFTS, and why you should never use it again.

You see, the EFTS is the Electronic Fingerprint Transmission Specification, which has since been superseded by the EBTS, the Electronic Biometric Transmission Specification. Both of these specifications were written by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, and (to simplify things) dictate how the FBI's criminal system will receive and transmit biometric data that is used in solving crimes, and for other purposes.

And there's a definite need to receive and transmit biometric data. You see, the FBI isn't the only police unit in the United States. There are state organizations, county organizations, city organizations, and various other kinds of organizations that are all occupied in taking fingerprints, palmprints, facial images, and other types of biometric data. And all of these organizations, or many of them, take all of this biometric data and store it in a biometric system (the common term used is AFIS, or Automated Fingerprint Identification System, although many of the systems store more than fingerprints).

And guess what? There are multiple manufacturers of AFIS (I work for one of them), and the FBI system (currently called IAFIS, or Integrated AFIS) is manufactured by another company.

Let's say that my home city of Ontario, California gets some fingerprints at a crime scene, searches its AFIS (which includes fingerprints from previously arrested criminals), and can't match the crime scene prints to any person's prints. The regular procedure is that Ontario will then submit the prints to the state of California, so that California can search its AFIS. If California can't match the prints, they'll go on to the FBI's system. Well, those three systems are manufactured by three different vendors, and the FBI needed to set some rules to make sure that the systems can communicate with the FBI system, and send the right data in the right format to the FBI system.

Hence we have the standard now known as the Electronic Biometric Transmission Specification, which is available for your reading pleasure at http://www.fbibiospecs.org/. But this web site doesn't only have the EBTS, but also has a lot of related standards from a lot of related agencies. If you want to know how to format XML for fingerprint transmissions, then this is the place to go.

Oh yeah...XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language. But that's a whole other topic...

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It's the publicity, stupid - why any economic stimulus package will target big business

You probably haven't heard the story of the U.S. firm that decimated nearly FIFTY PERCENT of its workforce by a combination of actions:

• The outright layoff of full-time workers.


• The outright layoff of part-time workers.


• The reduction of full-time workers to part-time status.

There are three reasons why you haven't heard the story of this U.S. firm.

First, this U.S. firm is not a publicly traded company, and thus does not fall under SEC disclosure regulations. (If Steve Jobs headed this firm, you'd know less about his health than you do now. This may or may not be a good thing.)

Second, this U.S. firm is actually a non-profit. As far as public perception is concerned, non-profits don't do real work, so when economic devastation hits them it doesn't count.

Third, and most importantly, this U.S. firm is very small, probably no more than a dozen employees. Thus the devastating losses to this firm are easily discounted in the mind, since I'm only talking about a few employees here. And because this firm doesn't have a high-powered marketing department, no one is hearing its story.

So bear this in mind when you think about the carnage of the last few days. The New York Times story that documents the layoffs of 75,000 people at Home Depot, Caterpillar, Sprint Nextel, "and at least eight other companies" was good, as far as it went. But even the Times didn't bother to name eight of the large companies impacted by the layoffs. And New York Times reporter Catherine Rampell, as good of a reporter as she is, doesn't have the...um...time to document the complete total of economic devastation.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease. General Motors and Chrysler can send their chiefs to Capitol Hill. Even if the head of this non-profit could afford the trip to Washington, the only way that head could get to Capitol Hill would be to join one of the tours for the public. Even Feinstein and Boxer can't get this non-profit head into a hearing.

And it's not just a Democratic thing to satisfy the unions. The Republicans also are only going to listen to the heads of large organizations - organizations whose job losses (and, truth be told, political contributions) are easy to quantify.

So bear in mind that the words being spoken on Capitol Hill and the White House are only part of the story. Save for some numbers that will appear in statistical reports after the fact, the true picture of our economic meltdown is invisible from within the Beltway.

But perhaps we can see it in the world around us.

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Change...23 cents' worth

From Premier Label Water Company, http://plwc.net/

See followup.

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Who should respond to questions about an employee's health?

The whole Steve Jobs/Apple thingie has raised interesting questions about key employee privacy, and whether an employer or the key employee is responsible for providing information about health to the public.

I've talked about Jobs and Apple before; see my posts from 1/5, 1/7, 1/14, and 1/16. The whole episode has now caused someone to initiate an action within the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Silicon Alley Insider links to a Bloomberg article:

Apple Inc. faces a government review of its disclosures about Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs’s health problems to ensure investors weren’t misled, a person familiar with the matter said.

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s review doesn’t mean investigators have seen evidence of wrongdoing, the person said, declining to be identified because the inquiry isn’t public.

So what is the potential nature of the review? Bloomberg reviews the disclosures that were made:

The company’s stock whipsawed this month after Jobs, who battled pancreatic cancer in 2004, said he would remain CEO while seeking a “relatively simple” treatment for a nutritional ailment. Nine days later, Jobs said he would take a five-month medical leave after learning his health issues were “more complex.”

“The good news flipped by the bad news makes one wonder what Apple knew,” said James Cox, a law professor at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina....

To bring any case, the SEC would probably have to show the company tried to benefit by withholding information about an unambiguous diagnosis, said Peter Henning, a former federal prosecutor and SEC lawyer who now teaches at Wayne State University Law School in Detroit.

From the information that we have, it's unclear whether the SEC is only investigating the information that Apple did provide, or is also looking at the information that Apple didn't provide.

Regardless, the issue in general has prompted a couple of FriendFeed threads that have touched on the issue of employee privacy. The most extensive thread is the one that Kevin Fox started last Friday. In this thread, Fox and other FriendFeed users such as Alex Scoble have discussed the corporate obligations, if any, to disclose health issues regarding key employees. Here's a sampling of the discussion:

Medical privacy is our strongest privacy. (Kevin Fox)

Investors have a right to know the health of top execs and other key personnel in a company that they are investing in. When someone takes a position like that, they have no reasonable expectation to privacy in matters that can affect shareholder's investments. (Alex Scoble)

Without knowing about this thread, I started a different thread based upon the Silicon Alley Insider post about the SEC review. Scoble and Fox joined that conversation also, and Kevin Fox made an interesting observation. In response to a statement I made about how Apple could answer the question "Is Steve healthy?" Fox replied:

I think the best answer to the question "Is Steve healthy?" would be "We respect the privacy of all our employees. If you have questions about an employee's health you should direct those questions to the employees personally, though we encourage you to respect their right to privacy as well."

This response interested me, for a couple of reasons:

• While corporations usually like to control statements about themselves, Fox's formulation means that the health of a key employee (or any employee) is specifically outside of the area of interest of the corporation.


• It also means that employees, who are usually insulated from the press by a corporation's communications organization, now become responsible for their own communications.

In the FriendFeed thread I cited a theoretical extreme example of how this could be applied.

In the theoretical extreme, reporters could ask every worker entering an auto plant if they have a hangover.

Yes, it's an extreme example, but often the outliers help to illustrate potential ramifications of this proposed policy, both for the employee and for the corporation. On the one hand, the so-called unwashed masses may be inexperienced in dealing with the press, and may respond, "Yeah, I have a hangover, but I just smoked a couple of joints before I got here. Let's build some cars, man!" On the other hand, the corporation, who decided that they didn't want to breach their employees' privacy, suddenly discovers that they are faced with something that IS a corporate issue.

My argument throughout this is that if a key employee is engaged in day-to-day operations, and is unable to perform his/her day-to-day duties, then that is a material issue that should be disclosed. (Therefore, when Jobs was actively engaged in Apple day-to-day issues, his health was an issue; now that he has taken a leave of absence, it is not.)

Then again, why not take my formulation to its theoretical extreme? Let's say that Kevin Fox and Alex Scoble are the co-leaders of a pop band called the FriendFeeders, and that they had a scheduled gig in San Francisco on January 20. They're late to the gig, and the press asks why. Rather than insisting that this is a private matter, Kevin Fox concludes that the late arrival to the gig is a material issue, and he replies, "Well, we would have been on time, but Alex insisted on finishing a game of Fallout 3, which made us late."

Unfortunately, let's say that the FriendFeeders' gig was sponsored by EA, a competitor to Bethesda Softworks (publisher of Fallout 3). The EA rep, angry at the mention of a competitor's product, refuses to book the FriendFeeders ever again. Eventually the band is reduced to performing at kids' birthday parties...all because Rose [WHOOPS, "FOX"] was forced to disclose something that should have been kept private.

OK, so we've explored the outliers, and I've personally concluded that extremism in the defense of a blog topic is no virtue. (Yeah, I stole that from my boy Barry.)

So I'll ask you:

Should questions about a key corporate employee's health be directed to the corporation, or to the employee?

SUBSEQUENT POSTSCRIPT: So I wrote this whole dang thing, and then read something else on FriendFeed:

I'm honored that you confused me with Kevin Rose in that post. :-) - Kevin Fox

Yes, at one point I did type "Rose" instead of "Fox." I've corrected it.

Perhaps before I post this, I'd better scan the post for the word "Robert"...

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Rick Warren's prayer - Why should the Muslims have all the good phrases?

Decades and decades ago, Larry Norman released a song "Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?" that basically said that yes, Christian music can have loud guitars and stuff. And while there are some pockets of objection, most Christians have agreed that the existence of an amplified musical instrument does not necessarily mean that a Christian is prohibited from using said instrument.

Earlier today Rick Warren spoke a prayer at the inauguration of President Barack Obama. Perpetua of Carthage linked to a YouTube video of the prayer.



While there are some who objected to the presence of anyone praying to God at a state event, and while there are probably some who don't really want to hear the Lord's Prayer, there was another thing that Rick Warren said that angered some.

The Scripture tells us, "Hear, O Israel: the LORD is our God; the LORD is one." And you are the compassionate and merciful one....

Yes, Rick Warren used the "c" and "m" words. John at True Discernment points out the significance of the words:

“The compassionate, the merciful” is, of course, a reference to the invocation at the beginning of every chapter of the Qur’an except one: Bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim, “In the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful.”

Making sure everyone feels included — terrific. But the prayer indicates yet again that there is little general awareness of the reasons why the term “Judeo-Christian-Islamic values” is a misnomer.

John's point, which I believe is valid, is that the Muslim god is in no way to be equated with the Christian God.

And yes, I believe that Warren probably included the words "compassionate" and "merciful" to make the words sound inclusive.

But, in the old Lutheran phrase, "what does this mean?"

Personally, I have no problem using the words "compassionate" and "merciful" in prayers to my God, the Christian God. Just because someone came along a few hundred years later and applied them to his god doesn't mean that I have to quit using them. Or that I have to take verses such as this out of my Bible for fear that Christians may be offended by them:

Exodus 33:19 (New International Version) And the LORD said, "I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.

Psalm 51:1 (New International Version) Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.

James 5:11 (New International Version) As you know, we consider blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job's perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.

Next thing you know, people are going to complain if Rick Warren uses the term "Christian." "Ah, an obvious attempt to incorporate the philosophy of Mary Baker Eddy," they will proclaim.

Of course, we need to ask the question - where is Rick Warren going? Over the past century, there have been several Christian pastors - Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell come to mind - who have tried to maneuver themselves into the role of "America's pastor." Rick Warren is apparently following in their footsteps. One can ask whether Warren, or Falwell, or Graham, or whoever is doing this to promote the kingdom of God, or to promote the kingdom of America, or perhaps both. I can't read Warren's heart, so I guess we'll have to see.

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25 things (it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood)

To keep things succinct, let's just say that the first 14 items in this post came from three previous posts. But now that FriendFeed has upped the ante and people are posting 25 things about themselves, it looks like the 14 items that I had previously posted were insufficient. So I've taken those 14 items and added 11 more. This allows me to compete with the other 25 things crowd, such as the Bohemian Sparkly Penguin, alphaxion, pea, Helen Sventitsky, and probably everybody else on FriendFeed. Yes, I'm getting to this late. No, I'm not trendy.

Incidentally, I have made minor edits to the original fourteen points (wow, sounds Wilsonian), including combining items 2 and 6 from the first post. And to get the links that I originally embedded in the first 14 items, you have to go back to the original posts; I was too lazy to reproduce them here.

1. About twenty years before I became "Ontario Emperor," I was hobnobbing with Presidents. Sort of. I didn't tell the whole story when I referenced this back in 2006, so I'll tell it now. During the 1977 Virginia governor's race, the Republican candidate got some heavy hitters at one of his campaign rallies. Not only did he get Bob Dole, U.S. Senator and former Vice Presidential candidate, but he also got former President Gerald Ford. I got a chance to shake Ford's hand that day (left hand, if I remember correctly). Hey, how many Presidents have YOU met?


2. I was probably using the Internet before Al Gore was. As I've mentioned in a couple of MySpace posts, I had access to Usenet while at Reed College. Reed was one of the pioneers on the Usenet network (scroll down to the summer 1980 map in this article), and Professor Richard Crandall included Pascal and UNIX use in his labs for freshman Physics. I didn't really do a lot of physics work on that DEC PDP-11/70, but I acquired some experience that has stood me in good stead to the present day. And it's been more useful to me than Professor Nicholas Wheeler's lectures on the 17th dimension. While on Usenet, one of my favorite Usenet groups was alt.non.sequitur. A sample post is here (my contribution is at the bottom of the post; true to alt.non.sequitur, it is not a sign). I eventually left Usenet after an unfortunate pizza delivery accident, and have never returned. Paddy O'Furniture is probably sad about my departure.


3. Let's continue with an explanation of the "audio artist" phrase that I've thrown around here and there. When I started as "Ontario Emperor," I used the name to post various synthetica songs on the web - originally MIDI songs generated on the Mac, then mp3 songs generated on the Mac (and released on CDs via the old mp3.com), then MIDI songs generated in Windows after I moved away from the Macintosh platform. Since mp3.com changed formats in December 2003, the only mp3 of mine that remains online is the song "Non Sequitur 15," available here. This song holds the dubious distinction of being the only Ontario Emperor song that is not an instrumental. MIDIs, by the way, can be found here, although since MIDI is (like HTML) dependent upon the presenting device, the MIDIs that were composed on the Macintosh don't sound that good on Windows. (Frankly, the MIDIs composed on Windows may not sound that good on Windows, but that's another matter entirely.)


4. As my old biography indicates, I have been published in the dinosaur traditional media. This occurred when I wrote something or another to Inland Valley Daily Bulletin columnist David Allen, who proceeded to publish it in his September 13, 1998 column. I'm vague about what was published because I have since forgotten what wise words I provided, the article is no longer available online, and I haven't taken the time to go to the library and look it up in the archives. I'm sure it was fascinating, however.


5. Ditto with my call to Poorman's "Anti-Radio" show that was referenced in my old biography; can't remember what I said. Jim "Poorman" Trenton originally came to fame by writing "poorman" restaurant reviews. He eventually became a deejay at KROQ, most famous for his participation in the "Loveline" program. He parted with KROQ, not on friendly terms, and has drifted from radio station to radio station since. In 1999 he was championing the idea of a radio show for unsigned bands; the only song that I remember from that show was the classic "I Gotta Poo." He's still around somewhere on local radio or TV, but I'm not sure where.


6. You may know that mrontemp is not my original blog, and that I've created a number of other blogs since October 2003, most notably the Ontario Empoblog. But did you know that I was a contributor to a blog that was reading through the New Testament? The blog was called Word Search, and although the blog itself no longer survives, the posts are still available as part of A Human Bean's blog. Although the identities of the individual post writers are no longer preserved (we'd rotate amongst ourselves), I found a post that was obviously written by me (it links to a bad joke in one of my old blogs).


7. I am an actor who regularly appears on stage, performing for thousands. It's true. There is a southern California performing arts organization called Children's Theatre Experience, and after my daughter had performed in several shows with the Claremont group, she let me know that they needed adult men for their production of "Fiddler on the Roof." Apparently a lot of kids approached their fathers, because several of us formally joined the cast at that point. In addition to appearing in "Fiddler on the Roof," I have also appeared in "Big River", "The Music Man", "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat", and other productions. Our performances are at the Bridges Auditorium in Claremont, California, which does hold well over 2,000 people and has played host to a number of more prominent people than myself.


8. I have found that once I am at an area, I am just very very happy to stay there and not move at all. I moved into my current home in 1997 and have no desire to leave, but if I do, and I end up in Olten, Switzerland, I'll probably never want to leave there until I have to move and end up in Barrow, Alaska, and I'll never want to leave - I'll just buy bright lights in the winter.


9. We didn't get our Christmas tree up until mid-December, and wouldn't have done it except for my daughter who just started dragging it out.


10. Some of you may already know that my employer is selling my division to another company. The potential sale was announced in October, but hasn't happened yet.


11. I did not attend my usual church right before Christmas. It was still a Lutheran Church Missouri Synod church, but it was a different congregation, a different pastor, and a different type of sermon. I missed my regular pastor, who always makes a great point of having us look at the Bible reading during the sermon itself. This pastor showed a video, and while Charlie Brown is meaningful, it wasn't the same.


12. Despite my pseudonym, I have not been to Canada in a few years. Previously I would make fairly frequent business trips to Canada - mostly to Ottawa, but I have also been to Toronto, Montreal, and Orillia. Having not been there in a while, Tim Horton's actually sounds like an exotic place. You may laugh now.


13. My home computer disk was over 90% full, but we've worked on reducing it.


14. I've mentioned that I didn't avail myself of the chance to see Depeche Mode (and OMD) at the Rose Bowl, but I also missed a chance to see Jonathan Richman, even though I could have seen him for free by taking a thirty-second walk. This is again a Reed College story, but it's outside of the classroom or the lab. Every year Reed closes its spring semester with a Renaissance Fayre which has hardly anything to do with the Renaissance, but it does emphasize the "Fayre" part. One year Jonathan Richman was scheduled to play at the event. This was years after his ground-breaking work, and occurred at about the time he was singing about being a little airplane, but it was certainly a show worth seeing. Unfortunately, there was a Ferris wheel at this Ren Fayre, and after going around the wheel one time...the operator decided to send us around a second time. After that experience I wasn't up to doing anything, so I missed my chance to see Richman.


15. So how did I get to Reed College? In first class! For some unfathomable reason, when I flew out to Reed College for a campus visit, they flew me out first class. The plane was pretty much a local, because after Minneapolis it stopped in three different cities in Montana (this was the only time I ever visited Bozeman, whose airport is even smaller than the 1980s-era Ontario, California airport).


16. While that was my most interesting westbound trip, my most interesting eastbound trip was made by train in May of 1980. I left Portland and took the train to Chicago, where I visited my childhood home during a brief layover (I would not return to my boyhood home until the summer of 2008), then took the train from Chicago back to my home, arriving on Saturday. The next day Mt. St. Helens blew up.


17. I previously mentioned my early involvement in UNIX, but I was a little confused about who did what in the UNIX arena. I was first exposed to the operating system before the AT&T breakup, so the phrase "UNIX is a trademark of Bell Laboratories" was embedded in my brain. However, the ramifications of this didn't penetrate said brain. A few years later, I was at some trade show looking at some UNIX material, and an AT&T salesman walked up. In his salesman-y way, he said something like "I'm from the company that brought you UNIX." A little confused on the concept, and thinking of the PDP-11/70 hardware, I replied, "DEC?"


18. I mentioned this in a comment to a Queen of Spain blog post, but if I say it again here I'll be one step closer to my 25 items total. My cluelessness about things goes way back. In elementary school, we were given an assignment to interview someone. I (and another girl in my class) hit upon the idea of interviewing President Richard Nixon, who lived a few miles away from us at the time in a white house in the city. I think we seriously believed that the President would sit down and talk to us, but all we got is an official letter of regret from the White House.


19. My greatest regret in life is that I didn't go to the Depeche Mode/OMD concert at the Rose Bowl (the "101" concert).


20. I was an active BBS'er in the early 1990s, visiting several Inland Empire blogs such as Deep Thought in Mt. Baldy (the first BBS I ever joined) and the Grotto in Rancho Cucamonga. I've lost touch with Starfish who ran the Grotto, but her daughter is now a webmaster for the union in which her stepfather (Bloose) works. See these posts from 2007 and 2008 for related information.


21. I have attended United Methodist and Lutheran churches during my adult life, but for a couple of years in college I attended a Pentecostal church known as World Outreach and/or Gospel Outreach. The senior pastoral family, Scott & Ellie Snedeker, had their roots in the Lighthouse Ranch, and have apparently since left Portland and gone to Eureka. The most famous member of the church was former Guatemalan President Efrain Rios Montt, who was either a hero or villain depending upon how you looked at him.


22. I'm running out of ideas, so I'll close with my attendance at games from the four major American sports. Unless there's a Cubs game in my early childhood that I don't remember, the first major league baseball game that I attended was a Washington Senators game. Frank Howard didn't get a hit.


23. Not too long after that, I attended a Baltimore Bullets game in Cold Feet House.


24. It took me a while to make it to a National Hockey League game. In fact, I didn't go to one until 2004, and that was primarily because we were hosting a Finnish exchange student who really liked hockey. The L.A. Kings lost the game.


25. Which brings me to the NFL. I have never seen a National League Football game live. Of course, I have two excuses: (1) when I was growing up, Redskins games were always sellouts, and (2) the closest NFL team to me is the San Diego Chargers.

Well, there's 25 items (unless I counted wrong). I just hope that nobody comes up with a 50 items meme.

P.S. I'd tell you the story behind the title, but that story really doesn't have to do with me.

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Here the LCMS stands on Warren, Robinson, etc. Part Three

part one | part two | part three

In the last post I linked to C.F.W. Walther's argument that the Evangelical Lutheran Church, known today as the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, is the true visible church.

And while Lutherans are fond of asking "What does this mean?" it's also appropriate to ask "What does this not mean?"

Cyberbrethren:

[E]ven some Lutheran pastors seem a bit confused...for when they hear that the Lutheran Church alone teaches the Gospel in its truth and purity [which is true!] they assume this must also mean that a person is declaring the Lutheran Chuch to be the alone-saving Church [which is not true!].

Cyberbrethren then quotes from...you guessed it, C.F.W. Walther:

May God keep you from becoming entangled with this false teaching concerning the Church, viz., that the Lutheran Church is the true visible Church of Jesus Christ in the sense that one can be saved only in this Church! The Lutheran Church is indeed the true visible Church; however, only in this sense, that it has the pure, unadulterated truth. As soon as you add the qualification “alone-saving” to the Lutheran Church, you detract from the doctrine of justification by grace through faith in Jesus Christ and confound Law and Gospel.

And if you'd like to read some more about the visible church, here's a post from Don McMaster:

The Church is holy, though some of her members are not. Likewise, the Church is visible...

Ah, the visible church.

...though some who appear to be Catholic are not so in heart and mind.

Wait a minute. Was that a capital C?

A logical fallacy--the "fallacy of composition," if I recall correctly--would be involved in doubting the visibility of the true Church as a whole on the basis that some people who appear to be part of the Church are not truly so in the sight of our Father who sees in secret (while others are).

A further logical fault appears in the effort to establish a real doubt about the visibility of the Church on the basis of merely conjectural doubts about unspecified people who, to all outward appearances, are Catholic. Merely conjectural doubts arise from the fact that we do not know all that God knows about who is a Catholic at heart and who is not. It doesn't follow that there is any real doubt that the Catholic Church is the one, true, visible Church of Christ, for this can be ascertained without knowing all that God knows.

The quote above is taken from the Traditional Catholic Forum, and happens to respond to a question from a Lutheran seminarian (from a discussion over a few drinks; Lutherans and Catholics agree that abstinence is not mandated for all in Scripture). Interestingly enough, later in the thread DJR discusses the concept of the invisible church.

The concept of an "invisible church" is not taught anywhere in Sacred Scripture; therefore, it should be problematic to someone who claims to believe in Sola Scriptura.

Our Lord taught that the Church is quite visible.

DJR then quotes from Daniel 2:44, Matthew 5:14-16, and other verses.

And the argument that the Roman Catholic Church is the true visible church is obviously not unique. Phil Porvaznik:

The resolution I will be defending is "The Roman Catholic Church is the true Church of Jesus Christ according to the Scriptures."...

So in Catholic understanding the Church is a visible society and organization on earth, but has spiritual and heavenly components; she is both hierarchical and the Mystical body of Christ. And according to the Bible, there is only one Church and one Faith (Matt 16:18f; Eph 4:4f), not multiple churches teaching different doctrines and contradictory faiths....

While there are many local churches (e.g. "the church of God in Corinth," 1 Cor 1:2; 2 Cor 1:1; "the churches in Galatia," Gal 1:2; etc), they are united as ONE universal or Catholic Church according to Christ, teaching ONE universal or Catholic Faith (Eph 4:5; Jude 3). That is the Church Christ founded against which He promised the powers of death (or gates of hell) cannot prevail. There are not many Christian "faithS" -- division and schism is sin and utterly intolerable in the universal Church according to the Scriptures (Matt 12:25; John 17:20-23; Acts 4:32; Rom 16:17ff; 1 Cor 1:10ff; 3:3f; 14:33; Gal 5:19ff; Philip 1:27; Titus 3:9f; etc).

Porvaznik was opposed by Jason Engwer:

We're told by Catholic apologists that an oak tree grows from an acorn. Nobody denies that it does. The question with the teachings of Catholicism, in some cases, is whether an oak tree can grow from an apple seed or no seed at all. In other cases, the question is why Catholic apologists are looking for an acorn where the Catholic Church tells us we should see an oak tree.

When we read the Bible, do we find the Roman Catholic Church? Do we find a papacy, private confession of sins to a priest, and a sinless Mary, for example? No, we don't. But the modern Catholic apologist will tell us that such differences between the Bible and Roman Catholicism are consistent with Catholic teaching. We're told that if we can find an acorn, or just something that might be an acorn, then the oak tree of modern Catholicism is thereby justified. If you can't see the alleged acorn, or it looks more like an apple seed to you, you'll be told that you can't trust your own fallible eyesight. You need the hierarchy of the Catholic Church to look into the microscope for you and infallibly assure you that it's an acorn.

And the LCMS obviously does not agree that the Roman Catholic Church is the true visible church.

Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, Lutherans do not believe that the office of the papacy as such has any divine authority, or that Christians need to submit to the Pope's authority to be "true" members of the visible church.

And obviously there are other churches that claim to be the true church. Take this statement:

Why are we members of the only true Church? Even though I cannot answer this question for all 13 million members of the Church, I would like to express from my heart some answers....

The author, Elder Enrique R. Falabella, continues:

Riches were not a part of my childhood. We were a family of five: my father and four siblings. My mother had passed away when I was five years old. My father’s meager income was used to buy our food....

As time went by, a pair of missionaries taught us the riches of the restored gospel, of the doctrine of the plan of salvation, and of eternal families. We were baptized, and when my father began his calling as district president, his first objective was to journey to the temple and receive the blessings which would come because of that sacrifice....

Upon arriving in the city of Mesa, Arizona, we headed down an avenue at the end of which we could see the house of the Lord, gleaming and beautiful. I remember the joy which filled our hearts; we all broke out in songs and praising, and tears ran down the cheeks of many Saints.

Later in the temple, we knelt as a family to hear the beautiful promises about an eternal family, with the certainty that our mother, though absent, was now our mother forever, and we felt the peace which comes from knowing that we are an eternal family.

The promise of life eternal thus gave us the riches of eternity! “Behold, he that hath eternal life is rich” (D&C 6:7).

"D&C," by the way, refers to "Doctrine & Covenants" - which is part of the LCMS issue with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints:

[T]he official writings of Mormonism deny fundamental teachings of orthodox Christianity. For example, the Nicene Creed confesses the clear biblical truth that Jesus Christ, the second Person of the Trinity, is "of one substance with the Father." This central article of the Christian faith is expressly rejected by Mormon teaching -- thus undermining the very heart of the scriptural Gospel itself. In a chapter titled "Jesus Christ, the Son of God: Are Mormons Christian?" the president of Brigham Young University (Rex Lee, What Do Mormons Believe? [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1992] summarizes Mormon teaching by stating that the three persons of the Trinity are "not... one being" (21), but are "separate individuals." In addition, the Father is regarded as having a body "of flesh and bone" (22). Such teaching is contrary to the Holy Scriptures....

And then there's Darwin Fish:

If you are involved with the kind of Christianity that views the "church of Christ", or Billy Graham, or Rick Warren, or Joel Osteen, or James Dobson, or Pat Robertson, or John MacArthur, or Tony Evans, or Greg Laurie, or Charles Stanley, or Chuck Smith, or Fred Price, or J. Vernon McGee, or Charles Blake, or Chuck Swindoll, or Gene Scott, or Harold Camping (Family Radio), or John Piper, or T. D. Jakes, or David Jeremiah, or Charles Spurgeon, or Dave Hunt, or David W. Cloud, or Perry F Rockwood, or Neil Anderson, or Robert Schuller, or Jack Hayford, or Benny Hinn, or Miles McPherson, or Ray Comfort, or Jim Cobrae, or Chuck Colson, or C. S. Lewis, or Pope John Paul, or Hank Hanegraaff, or Paul Chappell, or any of the like (or any of the likes on "Christian" TV or radio) as godly men, you are not saved. Why? Because, you are on the broad way (Matthew 7:13; 2 Peter 2:2; 2 Timothy 4:3). You have not the characteristic of Christ's sheep (John 10:5). And, men such as these are wells without water (2 Peter 2:17).

And what's wrong with - well, with everybody? Let's look at a few examples:

Spurgeon lies and speaks the exact opposite of Christ when he says, "the road to heaven may be sufficiently wide to have several different paths in it." Spurgeon believed both Calvinists and Arminians were on this wide path to heaven (see our report Spurgeon, An Ecumenical False Teacher). Jesus says it's narrow. Spurgeon says it's wide. Such teaching is damning....

False teachers...[hold] to some form of creed, creeds, essentials, fundamentals, or core belief that supposedly unifies all true believers. If one stays within the bounds of this central belief, often called "orthodox Christianity," or "historic Christianity" (e.g. Christianity In Crisis, p. 31, 43), then a person is considered to be in the truth. And, other doctrines that the Bible addresses are counted as peripheral issues (or "secondary" or "non-essential") and are perceived as matters that do not pertain to salvation (e.g. ibid., p. 47). As the phrase that's been attributed to the Catholic of old (Augustine) puts it,

"In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; and in all things, charity. (Christianity In Crisis, by Hank Hanegraaff, copyright 1993, p. 47)"

These words well sum up the broad way (Matthew 7:13).

For what Fish's church does believe, you need to see their statement of faith. For the record, here's what they say about Holy Communion (see my first post):






That's right, there's nothing in their statement of faith about what we are supposed to do in remembrance of Jesus Christ.

For more on Darwin Fish, see my Ontario Empoblog post from July 26, 2005.

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Here the LCMS stands on Warren, Robinson, etc. Part Two

part one | part two | part three

Continued from previous post.

But a more interesting point can be found in the official Lutheran view of the world. To most non-Christians, and in fact to most Christians, Lutherans are considered as the vanguard of the Protestant movement. But we Lutherans consider ourselves unique among Christian groups. Regarding Holy Communion, for example, everybody else is wrong.

The Lutheran church believes, teaches and confesses that the Lord's Supper is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, under the bread and wine, given to us Christians to eat and to drink. We hold that the bread and the wine in the Supper are the true body and blood of Christ and that these are given and received into the mouths of all who commune. Those who believe the promise: "Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins," receive forgiveness of sins, life and salvation. This promise, along with the bodily eating and drinking, is the main thing in the Sacrament.

The Lutheran church rejects and condemns incorrect understandings of the Lord's Supper, such as the view that the sacrifice of the Mass delivers man from his sins, or that the substance of the consecrated bread and wine is actually changed into the body and blood of Christ. We also reject and condemn the view that in the Lord's Supper the true body and blood of Christ is not received by the mouth of the communicants, under the bread and wine, but is received only spiritually in the heart by faith, or that the bread and wine are only symbols of the far-distant body and blood of our Lord.

In essence, the Lutheran worldview assumes that there are Lutheran, Roman Catholic, and Reformed views about the Lord's Supper, and that the other two views (addressed in the second paragraph above) are wrong.

Not that Lutheran belief can be rightly called consubstantiation. C.F.W. Walther (note: when an LCMS person cites Walther, he or she is supposed to pause and observe a momentary reverent silence):

First of all, what do these terms mean? Consubstantiation, as the word indicates, means a combination of two substances in such a way that by being mixed together they are fused into one substance or mass, consisting of different ingredients. For example, pouring the substances of water and wine together produces a watered wine (Weinwasser); blending honey and water produces mead; mixing meat and flour produces meat pies. Hence, in the Lord’s Supper consubstantiation would involve the concept of a spacial combination, mixture, and fusion of the body and blood of Christ with the consecrated elements as a new dual mass, as Eutyches once asserted the fusion of both natures in Christ into one nature.

Impanation signifies the spacial inclusion, concealment, incapsulation of an item within the bread, as in a capsule containing and enclosing the item. Hence, in the Lord’s Supper impanation would express the idea that the body of Christ, compressed into a very small body, lies concealed under the consecrated bread and is enclosed by it as by its container.

These conceptions of the presence of Christ, that is, of His body and blood, in the Holy Supper are thoroughly unbiblical, materialistic, unworthy, and self-contradictory, and they are equally un-Lutheran and in contradiction to the Confessions of our church....

Our church. This brings us to a Lutheran doctrine, that of the true visible church. Walther (pause) wrote a series of theses that touched upon both the invisible church and the visible church. The invisible church is described in Thesis I:

The one holy Christian Church on earth, or the Church in the proper sense of the word, outside of which there is no salvation, is, according to God's Word, the total of all that truly believe in Christ and are sanctified through this faith.

After discussing various visible churches and their possible beliefs (e.g. churches "erring obstinately in fundamentals"), Walther gets to Thesis VIII:

Though church-writers sometimes call communions holding God's Word essentially true, i. e., real, churches over against non-churches, yet over against erring churches, or sects, a true visible Church in the absolute sense is that only in which God's Word is preached right and the holy Sacraments are administered in accordance with the Gospel.

So which church does C.F.W. Walter, the accepted founder of what became the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, believe is the true visible church? You could read Theses X through XXV, or you could take a wild guess. Hint: it's not the United Methodists.

So, what does this mean?

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Here the LCMS stands on Warren, Robinson, etc. Part One

part one | part two | part three

There was a story that Red Stick Rant (obviously) picked up on, but it also appeared in two Lutheran blogs, CyberBrethren and Steadfast Lutherans (I hadn't heard of the latter). And a couple of these religiously conservative blogs link to...a story in the New York Times.

President-elect Barack Obama has asked V. Gene Robinson, the openly gay Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire, to deliver the invocation at an inaugural event on Sunday on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

But that isn't the part that got to the religiously conservative bloggers. This is what Gene Robinson said:

Bishop Robinson said he had been reading inaugural prayers through history and was “horrified” at how “specifically and aggressively Christian they were.”

“I am very clear,” he said, “that this will not be a Christian prayer, and I won’t be quoting Scripture or anything like that. The texts that I hold as sacred are not sacred texts for all Americans, and I want all people to feel that this is their prayer.”

Bishop Robinson said he might address the prayer to “the God of our many understandings”....

The most interesting reaction to this came from the aforementioned Steadfast Lutherans:

The big stories leading up to the inauguration...have surrounded President-elect Obama’s choices for which clergy will be involved in inaugural festivities. Purpose-Driven Life author Rev. Rick Warren is doing the big one but in a sop to gay rights activists, Obama just picked Bishop Gene Robinson to kick things off.

When you add in the other two clergy who will be participating, it’s a uniquely Protestant affair, which is sort of interesting.

But note how Steadfast Lutheran defines the word "Protestant":

I never realized how different Lutheranism was from American Protestantism until the weeks and months following the horrendous acts of terrorism on New York City, over the skies of Pennsylvania and in my city of Washington, D.C.

Lutheran Church Missouri Synod people know where this is going. There was one 9/11-related event that caused a big furor in my denomination:

When the Atlantic District President prayed a nebulous civil religion prayer at the Oprah Winfrey-led interfaith “Prayer for America” service at Yankee Stadium — with the full blessing and approval of President Gerald Kieschnick — it wreaked havoc on the Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod. When those with a proper understanding of the confessions called the syncretizers on their commandment breaking, noted theologians such as Bill O’Reilly took the syncretizers side and questioned whether the LCMS could rightfully be called Christian.

It was a shameful and difficult period and it’s hard not to lose respect for President Kieschnick for just how poorly he handled the situation — from a managerial or leadership position even if not a doctrinal one.

Interestingly enough, the author equates "American Protestantism" with "civil religion." I'm sure that there are some old-line Baptists and some Quakers that take deep offense at the insult, and in fact would say that it's hardly proper for a Lutheran to be lobbing the civil religion criticism, considering the state of many Lutheran churches in Europe.

And the LCMS view of the 9/11 interfaith service did not escape the attention of a Huffington Post commenter using the name ArthurTwoShedsJackson (heh):

Now, look at the other end of the religious spectrum: the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS - not to be confused with the much larger Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, ELCA). The LCMS forbids -- repeat, FORBIDS -- interfaith prayer with non-LCMSers. The LCMS calls this "syncretism." When an LCMS representative participated in the interfaith service shortly after 9/11, the LCMS hierarchy suspended that representative for "syncretism"! It gets uglier than that -- google LCMS 9/11 yankee stadium when you can.

To be continued...

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