Coming soon: the Bible TV network

The History Channel has been airing a mini-series called “The Bible” for the past few Sunday nights and quite a few people have been watching.  More than 50 million people have tuned in to some part of the broadcast over its first three episodes.

A little controversy doesn’t seem to have hurt the ratings, either.  It seems that the actor playing the part of Satan in the series bears a striking resemblance to an aged version of our current President.  Given the likely target audience of the series, I’m not surprised that the resemblance doesn’t seem to have turned away too many potential viewers.

The only thing that is surprising to me about this series is the fact that anyone is surprised by its popularity.  There are a lot of Christians in this country and they like to be entertained as much as anyone else. 

There aren’t exactly a whole lot of viewing options for devout Christians being offered by Hollywood, so when a decent religious-themed movie or television program comes along it shouldn’t be a shock that people show up to buy tickets or tune in for it.

In fact, I think there is huge untapped potential with Christian audiences that someone could turn into a very lucrative business venture.  The Bible is chock full of good stories, and I don’t think the 10-hour miniseries the History Channel has produced even scratches the surface of the potential programs that could be produced based on material in scripture.

I think one could easily launch a whole television network filled solely with shows inspired by the Bible.  And I’m not just talking about shows that rehash stories we’re already familiar with and have seen before like the story of Noah or Moses or Jesus. 

The writers for the Bible Television network (BTV) should think outside the box a bit, and give people a fresh look at some of the people and places from scripture.  Here are a few ideas for Bible-based series off the top of my head.

- Leaving Eden (Mondays at 8 PM): Follow the adventures of the original “first family” as Adam and Eve learn to cope with life after the fall.  The drama is sure to be intense as they are forced to learn to fend for themselves in a suddenly hostile world.  Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Adam, Vanessa Hudgins as Eve, Morgan Freeman as the voice of God, and Alec Baldwin as the serpent.

- Solomon Knows Best (Wednesdays at 9 PM): It’s not easy being the wisest king ever.  People are always bringing you their toughest problems and they expect you to have the answer.  But Solomon always comes through before the end of the hour, and his solutions are always delivered with a healthy dose of his trademark acerbic wit.  Starring Hugh Laurie as Solomon and Beyoncé as the Queen of Sheba.

- James the Less (Thursdays at 8:30 PM): Jesus had 12 apostles, and two of them were named James.  One James was a member of Jesus’ inner circle and the first of the 12 to be martyred.  The other James has always been something of a mystery as little is said about him the Bible.  Until now, that is!  Follow the hilarious misadventures of “the other James” and find out why a Gospel writer was once rumored to have said “the less known about James the Less, the better.”  Starring Rowan Atkinson as James the Less, Bradley Cooper as James the Greater, and special guest star Jim Caviezel as Jesus.

- The Real Revelation (Fridays at 12 AM): For the true Biblical literalists out there comes this animated series that tells Revelation as it is, straight up with no interpretation.  See the seven-headed Beast of the Sea, the red-eyed Dragon, the terrifying Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and even the scorpion-tailed locusts brought to life in colorful high definition images sure to keep you awake for many nights to come.  Sure to become a cult classic!

The sequestration blues

I don’t know of any context in which being sequestered is a good thing.  Until recently I associated the term with being held prisoner in a hotel room while serving jury duty for some high profile case.  Now the word has an even worse connotation for me and a lot of other people in Middle Georgia, as the federal government’s version of sequestering us might result in a 20% pay cut for the rest of this fiscal year.

Those of us who work for Uncle Sam are starting to feel like we are suffering from battered employee syndrome.  We’ve already had our pay frozen for several years and that could go on for some time.  Like everyone else we also got hit with higher Social Security taxes at the beginning of this year.  And now it is very possible that we will be sent home without pay one day a week from late April through late September.

Factor in inflation and it’s obvious that federal workers have been losing ground financially for some time now.  In a town like Warner Robins, where the salaries of Robins AFB workers pretty much drive the economy, the pain is going to be felt by every business in the area as many of us have less and less money to spend.

I’d like to take this opportunity to recognize all of the players in Washington who had a hand in this fiasco, from the President on down to every single member of Congress in both parties, for the role they’ve played in screwing over not only federal workers but the entire country.  You are all, every single one of you, a disgrace to the office you hold.

I especially enjoyed the fact that Congress took an extended vacation right before sequestration took effect.  I couldn’t be more disappointed in each and every one of you, and yes that includes the men who represent my district.

Maybe you think I’m being too harsh, especially if you lean towards one party or the other and would like to lay the blame at the other side’s feet.  That is (for lack of a more family-friendly term) nonsense. 

Our representatives in Congress should have been standing on their desk in the Capitol building, refusing to eat or sleep until both sides came together and passed a budget that really dealt with the deficit issue and gave us a long term financial plan.  Well, I hope they enjoyed their vacations.

I think we’d all be able to live with the financial hardships this sequestration thing is going to cause for us if it was part of a plan that was actually going to solve our nation’s financial problems.  But it’s not going to do that.  Not even close.

It does not touch the entitlement spending that is the real driver of our runaway expenses.  That problem is still hanging over our heads.

What’s more, because of the ham-handed, poorly planned way in which the budget is being cut, there will be strong repercussions in the business world that will have the effect of lowering tax revenue in ways we can only guess at.  We can’t really be sure how much money these cuts will really save the government when all the repercussions are felt.

What we do know is that these budget cuts are being forced on government agencies with no time to plan how to make them intelligently.  It was set up that way, to be so unpalatable that Congress and the President would be forced to come up with a better way of trimming the deficit before it took effect. 

It turns out it was a dumb idea, because it made the assumption that our government is not completely dysfunctional and is able to accomplish its most basic task.  That was obviously a very bad assumption.

Do not be too eager to deal out death

In one of his recent opinion pieces, columnist Thomas Sowell had this to say regarding people who have an issue with the federal government’s policy of attacking US citizens who are suspected of terrorist activities in foreign countries using drone strikes:

”If an American citizen went off to join Hitler's army during World War II, would there have been any question that this alone would make it legal to kill him? Why then is there an uproar about killing an American citizen who has joined terrorist organizations that are at war against the United States today?”

We hear this same kind of reasoning anytime there is a protest raised against any action the government takes in response to suspected terrorist activities.  It doesn’t matter if the issue is the detaining of people indefinitely without due process, wiretapping without a court order, or blowing people into tiny pieces, the reasoning is pretty much the same. 

These people are terrorists, the argument goes, and they deserve no mercy.  And if you aren’t doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about.

People who make those kinds of statements are making a huge assumption, one that is very dangerous to make.  They are assuming that the government bureaucrats who “pull the trigger” on eavesdropping on, detaining, or even killing American citizens are always motivated by the purest of intentions and don’t make mistakes.

You see, just because some high-ranking government official claims that someone is a terrorist does not make it true.  Being suspected or accused of something and being guilty of it are not the same thing. 

Giving anyone the kind of power we have invested in certain government officials without oversight is a bad idea.  The whole reason we have due process is because we hold it as a first principle of governing that a citizen should not be deprived of their life or liberty until an effort has been made to establish that they are guilty of the crime that they’ve been charged with committing.

I don’t think most people have a problem with the idea that sometimes it’s acceptable to attack terrorist cells with drone strikes, even when US citizens may be killed as a result.  But what process is being followed to insure that the potential target is, in fact, a terrorist actively plotting violence against our country and not someone who is a victim of mistaken identity or someone who the individual giving the order to shoot has a personal vendetta against?

The answer is we don’t know what process is being followed, because it’s all being done in secret.  However, a recently leaked white paper on the subject that the Justice Department provided to Congress suggests that there really isn’t much of a process.

The paper states that if an “informed, high-ranking official” decides someone is involved in terrorist activities they can make the call to have that person taken out.  I guess the question is – do you trust a faceless, unelected official in the Obama administration (or any administration in the future, Republican or Democrat) to have unchallenged authority to sentence US citizens to death without any form of oversight?

I’m not that trusting.  I believe the government needs to have the ability to strike against active terrorist cells to prevent attacks on US interests and of course these things have to be done with some secrecy to be effective.  But there needs to be a process of review by the judicial and/or legislative branch so that the power to take the lives of American citizens does not lie in the hands of one unaccountable individual.

Congressional officials are demanding more information on the drone strike program from the White House and we should get behind them, not question their patriotism.  Checks and balances between the branches of our government are a key principle in our Constitution, and we shouldn’t let the specter of terrorism scare us into ignoring that principle.