News from other countries

Every once and awhile you catch news from other countries which reminds you how different they are from your own.

I caught a couple of news stories from Ireland this past week in this category.  In one, a member of the Dail, the Irish parliament, was discussing a law that would require listing fathers on birth certificates, but in arguing her point in favor of it, she noted that "Celtic Tiger" immigrants had improved the looks of the Irish and the country needed to be mindful of expanding its gene pool.

What?

I can't imagine a member of Congress saying such a thing.  Shoot, I can't really imagine any rational politician, no matter what a person's view of the proposed law may be, making that particular argument.

The second article noted that an Irish politician had recently accused the IRA of having shot individuals who it suspected (rather, probably knew) abused children.  I don't know the details of this, and if that meant its own members or what.  Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the political party that basically is the IRA, denied the claim, but his denial was in the from that essentially made it an admission.  He noted in his denial that one of the reasons that it was the wrong thing to do is that it failed to take into account the financial and social consequences of such murders on the families of the children.

Well, the IRA is a terrorist organization, so that it would use violence is not surprising, but that it used it in this rough policing fashion is.  And it also demonstrates how persistent the "old law" is.  Not the written law, but the harsh primitive law that all humans seem to have deep within them somewhere, and which seems to recognize the death penalty as the penalty for every serious transgression.  Now, I'm not advocating that by any means, but its interesting how quickly people seem to resort to it either in their hearts, or by their actions if they actually can.