Driving to work after my morning run earlier this week I saw the above sign. David Hannagan is the president of a non-union contractor, Green Country Interiors. The sign is courtesy of the Tulsa Local 943 of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters. As discussed earlier and as reported by the Tulsa World the union is using homeless people to do the picketing for them. I don’t know if they are using homeless people because real carpenters cannot be bothered or are too busy or some other reason.

The thing about the sign above is that it is not located at a construction site or a business. It is located at the entrance to Mr. Hannagan’s subdivision in south Tulsa.

I think that is wrong. They may have the legal right to do that, sure. But that doesn’t mean that they should do it.

I get it, we have free speech and picketing as a means of protest has a long history in this country. But don’t take it to somebody’s home! Especially with homeless stand ins who stand to gain nothing from this tactic.

I think this “Shaming” campaign may backfire on the union big time. After the truth came out in paper I have not found anybody sympathetic to the union’s cause.

There has been a lot of news and discussion about torture in the news lately. President Obama released some torture memos recently that shocked many people. You can read them here.

Pretty grim stuff, suits in Washington providing legal cover for torturing prisoners held in in secret prisons overseas. Basically they were saying that we just declare that the prisoners are not subject to the protections of the Geneva Convention. Also, we don’t call it torture, call it “Enhanced interrogation techniques.” That doesn’t sound so bad does it. What the memos also say is that Americans taken prisoner in those same areas would not be subject to the same protections. Hey, that’s not the suits problem though, they aren’t going anywhere near the war zones.

The American torture method of choice is waterboarding. I’ve had people tell me that it isn’t that big a deal. You can read about it here. It sounds absolutely awful to me. The CIA was using a proven torture technique, endorsed by the Spainish Inquisition and the Khmer Rouge among others.

Now, a big question is, “Does it work?” That is where things get a little fuzzy. You Google that, and there is all sorts of information out there. The politicians and political appointees during the Bush Administration seem to insist that it does work and that all sorts of attacks were prevented by its use. The experts in intelligence are much less definite about it. This seems to be a fairly balanced article about it. The consensus is that waterboarding makes people talk. They will tell you anything, even if they don’t know anything about the subject.

It turns out that the use of official torture methods was more widespread than what the Bush Administration claimed publicly. For example Abu Zubaydah, who the Administration claimed was waterboarded for only 35 seconds total, was actually waterboarded 83 times. Also, he did not give up any more information than he did before the torture started. I’m not trying to generate sympathy for these thugs. They deserve far more punishment than what we can give to them, but torture?

Now on top of this comes a report from the Pew Research Center on the religious dimensions of the torture debate. They surveyed a cross sample of the American population on attitudes toward torture with startling results.

It looks like the more religious a person is, the more likely they are to support the use of torture. People who are unaffiiliated with a religion, are the least likely to support torture. I find this incredible. Where have we Christians gone wrong? Is Christianity just a matter of going to Church, tithing, and reading your Bible? Is there anything else to it?

Why are we even having a debate on whether torture is wrong? I always thought that the United States of America was special. We had a higher standard than other countries. We stood for what’s right. Are we special? What do you think?