Ferguson

Hope is a four-letter word
Make that money, watch it burn 
--Counting Stars, One Republic 

I the Lord your God am a jealous God,
visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children
to the third and the fourth generation
of those who hate me
--Exodus 20:5 

For there is but one essential justice
which cements society, and one law
which establishes this justice.
This law is right reason, which is the true rule
of all commandments and prohibitions. 
--Cicero
 _______________________

America's distraction du jour is the police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. The Grand Jury decided not to indict, as the officer did not shoot Brown in a premeditated act.

Life is supposed to be sacred, and anything with a whiff of heresy in contravention of that belief makes us feel uneasy, at best. Yet what did we feel when our President ordered a very premeditated drone strike which killed a 16-year-old American teen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki in Yemen?

After the targeted kill, former Obama Secretary Robert Gibbs stated that the boy's father was to blame for the young man's murder ("should have [had] a far more responsible father.") Where is the responsibility in the face of that convoluted, biblical argument?

Is death by drone a Presidential prerogative not subject to court oversight, and is a police shooting something different? Dead is dead, right? Further, how many children have been killed as collateral damage to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Do we weep equally for them?

When a cop kills, he may be subject to a Grand Jury investigation. The President is the same fallible man -- why is he not held to the same legal standards?