There’s been a great deal of discussion lately, triggered by the claims of James Cameron that the bones of Jesus have been discovered, about whether Jesus ever actually existed at all.

In the interest of furthering that discussion in a serious, fact-based manner, I issue the following challenge: Prove that Jesus existed.

By proof I mean this:

1. Provide evidence that Jesus actually lived, and is not just a legendary character
2. Prove Jesus really lived beyond a reasonable doubt. That means that a reason-based argument could not refute your proof, not just that most sensible people would agree with you.
3. “Scripture” is not to be considered as evidence. After all, what the word “scripture” means is just something that somebody has written. Some people have written that Santa Claus really exists, and that doesn’t make it so.
4. Faith and other forms of subjective experience are not proof.
5. Failure to accept alternatives to the existence of Jesus is not proof. For example, saying “Well, I can’t imagine what else could have led people to write the Bible and found Christianity” is not finding proof. It’s only showing that you can’t imagine something.

One more reminder for the discussion: The topic is whether it can be proved that Jesus really existed. The topic is not whether it can be proved that Jesus did not exist. That’s a different question.

So, any takers?

A bill to promote the national security and stability of the economy of the United States by reducing the dependence of the United States on oil through the use of alternative fuels and new technology, and for other purposes.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? So reads S. 133, a bill sponsored by Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, and currently co-sponsored by Senators Tom Harkin of Iowa, Richard Lugar of Indiana and Ken Salazar of Colorado. Illinois, Iowa, Indiana and Colorado are all corn producing states.

If you read the text of S. 133, it turns out to be pretty much exclusively about the domestic production of alternative fuels, the most prominent of which is ethanol, a product of corn.

The politics of ethanol-based fuel is pretty transparent: states with high corn production are predictably gung-ho about it. But the science of ethanol as a fuel is a lot less clear to me, and I’d like to be better educated about it. Tell me what you know about the value of ethanol production — to the economy, to national security, and to the environment. Based on what you know, do you think the use of ethanol fuel is a good idea?

Read The Green Man for a first take.

To great fanfare and with much righteous admonition directed at presidential contenders of the two parties, Unity08 rolled out its Clean Money Pledge on January 1, 2007:

I will only vote for a presidential candidate who has raised more than half of his/her funds through small contributions of $250 or less.

Today, on its promised schedule for the first time in organizational history, Unity08 disclosed the names (although not the addresses, occupations, employers or cities of residence) of those who contributed more than $200 to it.

Those individuals donated a total of $47,000. $46,000 of the $47,000 in disclosed donations — 97.9% — came in what Unity08 itself would term “unclean” amounts of more than $250. Indeed, 95.7% of these contributions came in the largest possible amount, $5,000. 97.9% unclean comes very close to the opposite of the Ivory soap standard of purity.

Of course, since Unity08 did not disclose the total number and amount of donations under $200, we cannot state with certainty that Unity08 failed to meet its Clean Money Pledge for January. But we can say what Unity08 would have had to accomplish in order for it to meet its own ethical standard. In order for Unity08 to be Clean in January, it would have had to have collected $45,000 in donations of less than $200. This is unlikely given Unity08’s track record of success in attracting small-dollar donations: in the 4th quarter, Unity08 attracted only an average of $7,848 a month in small donations. But hey, it’s possible, if Unity08 garnered 226 donations of $199, or 450 donations of $100, or 900 donations of $50.

I can’t tell you much of anything about the people who donated in January, because the full IRS disclosures for January won’t be filed until the spring. But among the few handfuls of donors are John H. and Kathy Kissick, rich from “private and public equities, transition and mezzanine financings, distressed debt securities, and nondistressed bank and high-yield debt investments.” Then there’s Eden Rafshoon, wife of Unity08 co-Founder Gerry Rafshoon, just a normal Jane Doe everyday American like yourself who found herself snapped as part of a political glitter trio with Ann Jordan and Terry McCauliffe by the chronicle of the DC elite, Washington Life, which asks on its newest cover: “The Guest List: Are You On It?”. (Terry McCauliffe is the former head of the Democratic Party, and Ann Jordan is part of the insider political power couple, Ann and Vernon Jordan.)

Yep, people just like you.

I’m left with two questions. If in one year’s time Unity08 is really going to run the nation’s first secure online presidential nomination, and if it already has a “vast army of lawyers throughout the country” how can it possibly do so with contributions of just $47,000 a month from those giving $200 or more? Is Unity relying on a vast undisclosed army of small contributors, or a small cadre of vastly wealthy people giving it loans?

“Sure, we’ve built up some debt,” Unity08 COO Anya T. Harris explains. But she won’t say how much, or from whom, or on what present or future terms.

You know, two weeks ago on February 14 Unity08 Chief Operating Officer Anya T. Harris said the following about me:

We know that Jim is profiling our $5,000 donors and we have invited him to profile our smaller donors who are many times in number and deserve the same or more visibility as our major donors.

Let’s be nice and call that a misrepresentation, on two counts:

1. As anyone who reads here regularly knows, I am in the process of providing profiles (based on already public information) on ALL 4th Quarter 2006 donors that Unity08 has disclosed. ALL of them, including the 8% who are small donors of $250 or less. I’m going straight from the top to the bottom.

2. It is untrue that Unity08 has invited me to profile all of its donors. However, on February 15, I publicly interpreted Harris’ words as the invitation she never gave me, and asked for the appropriate information on all of Unity08’s donors so that I could do as Harris asked me to do and profile them. I got no response from the website post (and we know she reads Irregular Times), so on the morning of February 16 I wrote her the following request to her e-mail address:

I have no record of an invitation for me to profile all the small donors to Unity08, which I presume includes donors of amounts below $200, since your reference to my receiving such an invitation says that the small donors I am invited to profile are “many times” more in number than the $5,000 donors. This can only be true if you’ve invited me to profile donors including those donating less than $200.

That, in turn is impossible currently since, as you know, those individuals are undisclosed. I look forward to you sending me the necessary information — names, dates, amounts, employers and occupations — from the IRS reports. Surely you have this in a database. To select the appropriate fields, export them into a comma-delimited file, and send that information as an attachment should take approximately 20 minutes. I look forward to the prompt receipt of this information.

It’s been twelve days since I asked for the information Unity08 says it wants to provide me. And I haven’t gotten a word back on the subject.

I’m left wondering why Unity 08 COO Anya Harris would ask me to do those profiles if she didn’t want to send me the information necessary to meet her request.

Thanks to Republican Mitt Romney, now I know that “Hillary=France”. We really need to take this charge from the Romney campaign seriously, I think, because of course Mitt Romney is going to be our president and as such would never, ever engage in campaigns of falsehood. So what does it mean that “Hillary=France”?

Apparently, Hillary Clinton’s brow was converted to Christianity in the 3rd Century. 2005 riots in the suburbs of Clinton’s hairline can be traced mostly to individuals of North African descent. You really shouldn’t miss the wine pouring out of Clinton’s ear and nostril. And of course, the beaches running from Hillary Clinton’s jaw around to the nape of her neck are prime territory for celebrity watching.

But please, if you’re going to visit Hillary Clinton, do be polite and try to learn the language. A little bit of effort goes a long way.

I wrote a bit about it earlier today, but let me urge you more explicitly to go read the Boston Globe’s article about a document leaked from the Mitt Romey for President campaign. The document, which details Mitt Romney’s campaign strategy, shows that Romney’s presidential campaign is getting increasingly desperate in the face of strong criticism of Romney’s flip flop politics on abortion and equal marriage rights.

The most remarkable, and sadly unsurprising, revelation from the document is that Mitt Romney’s campaign is planning to respond to the criticisms of Romney’s unreliable, erratic swings in social policy by trying to equate Hillary Clinton with France.

No kidding. The Mitt Romney for President campaign has been planning to release bumper stickers that read, “First, Not France”, as if France is some kind of major threat to American power. France. How could I have missed the France crisis?

The brilliant consultants working for Mitt Romney came up with the following slogan to combat doubts about Mitt Romney’s moral reliability: “Hillary = France”. I’m not making that up. I’m not speaking metaphorically. That’s a quote straight from the Mitt Romney for President campaign consultants: Hillary = France.

What’s next? Is Mitt Romney going to try to bring back freedom fries again? Romney needs to update his rhetoric. This is not March 2003. It turns out that the French were right. The Iraq War was an idiotic blunder - a blunder that Mitt Romney supported. Does Romney really want to bring that up again with a new round of France bashing?

If this clownish campaigning is a flavor of what’s to come from the Republicans in the 2008 presidential race, I am going to savor this campaign season like a good French wine.

Oh, how Republicans fume when they get a taste of their own medicine. I posted the video you see here, accusing Republican Mitt Romney of being flip-flopper, about a week and a half ago.

I also posted the video on You Tube, where Republican activists searching for information on Mitt Romney found the video. My, did they get upset. They called my claims “crap”, and retorted that no one would see Romney as a flip-flopper. One viewer wrote, “…labeling Romney a flip-flopper ala John Kerry will not work for the democrats…”

It won’t work, huh? Well, some people disagree. Some people, like the people working for the Mitt Romney for President campaign.

Today, the Boston Globe reports that the Mitt Romney campaign itself has concluded that Romney is perceived as a flip-flopper whose propensity to make major switches on important issues for the sake of political gain makes him appear to be unreliable. If Mitt Romney’s own employees think that the flip-flopper image sticks, how can other Republicans complain when we point out the obvious flaw?

Mitt Romney flip-flopped on abortion. Romney flip-flopped on same-sex marriage. The record is clear. Romney will flip flop back and forth to whichever way he thinks the wind is blowing at the time. It’s not clear that Mitt Romney stands for anything but his own ambition.

Whether you’re a right wing activist hoping to impose fundamentalist Christian religious law on America or a progressive who wants to preserve the Bill of Rights from such attacks, you cannot trust Mitt Romney. Romney has a history of saying that he’ll do one thing, and then turning around and promoting exactly the opposite policy.

When even Mitt Romney’s campaign admits that everyone sees Romney as an unreliable flip flopper, it becomes difficult to argue that the label doesn’t stick…

…unless you’re a flip-flopper. Will Romney’s campaign now flip flop and claim that Mitt Romney is a man of resolve and certain character? Bet on it.

Today is the twelfth day (for review, see parts eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two and one) in which I look at Unity08’s 4th Quarter donors, straight down in order from top to bottom of Unity08’s 4th Quarter IRS report. My intention is to provide some context to claims by Unity08 about itself. If you visit http://www.unity08.com/believe, you will find that Unity08, the president-electing corporation, makes this bold assertion:

Unity08 intends to fix this broken system by electing a bipartisan “Unity Ticket” to the White House in ‘08 funded solely by small-dollar donations from everyday Americans. As a result the Unity08 President and Vice President will enter office not with favors owed to lobbyists and special interests but with a clear mandate from the American people to cooperate and provide courageous leadership on the most crucial, complex issues facing our country.

“Small-dollar donations” from “everyday Americans” and “people like you”? It’s easy to say that. It sounds good on paper. But does reality match the claim? That’s what I’m trying to figure out.

So here’s the next set. Are they “everyday Americans”? Are they “people like you”?

1. Hilda Ochoa-Brillembourg, $5,000 donation. Ochoa-Brillembourg shares a home with Arturo Brillembourg in Easton, Maryland. Their home is not listed in the Zillow database, but its nearest neighbor lives in a mansion of over 10,000 square feet with an estimated value of $4.1 million. Their neighbor on the other side lives in a 3,575 square foot house with an estimated value of $1.3 million. Ochoa-Brillembourg is part of the elite DC social circuit: click here for pictures of Ochoa-Brillembourg at a private dinner thrown by the Brazillian ambassador to the U.S. as well as two charitable gala events. Also on that page is a charming shot of Hilda Ochoa-Brillembourg arm in arm with Supreme Court Justice Steven Breyer, who showed up to celebrate Arturo Brillembourg’s birthday. Oh, look: the former President of Bolivia and the Moroccan, Jordanian and Colombian ambassadors were there too. You can catch a shot of Ochoa-Brillembourg’s fancy residence on the shore there as well.

Ochoa-Brillembourg has an additional home in Georgetown, mentioned by Diplomatic Pouch as it reports on a candlelight dinner thrown there for a departing ambassador to Chile.

But enough about the sparkling elite social life of Hilda Ochoa-Brillembourg. There’s more to her than that. You see, she is also on the board of directors of McGraw-Hill, which features this biography of her:

Hilda Ochoa-Brillembourg, age 61, is the founder and has been since 1987 the President and Chief Executive Officer of Strategic Investment Group, a group of affiliated investment management firms, and Managing Director of Emerging Markets Investment Corporation and Emerging Markets Management, LLC. From 1976 to 1987, she was Chief Investment Officer of the Pension Investment Division at the World Bank. Prior to joining the World Bank, she served as an independent consultant in the fields of economics and finance, as a lecturer at the Universidad Catolica Andres Bello in Venezuela and as Treasurer of the C.A. Luz Electrica de Venezuela in Caracas. Ms. Ochoa-Brillembourg is a Director of General Mills, Inc., the World Bank/International Monetary Fund Credit Union and the Harvard Management Company, Inc. Ms. Ochoa-Brillembourg is Founding Chair of the Youth Orchestra of the Americas and a Trustee and Executive Committee member of the Washington National Opera. She is also a Trustee of the Executive Committee of the National Symphony Orchestra and an Advisory Board member of the Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University.

Hilda Ochoa-Brillembourg may be a stellar human being. But she is hardly an “everyday American,” and unless you are fixed in the DC firmament yourself, she is not a “person like you.”

2. Scott Smallwood, $5,000 contribution. Mr. Smallwood lives in a house in Arlington, Virginia with six and a half bathrooms, measuring 5,664 square feet and with a tax-assessed value of $1.9 million. The Unity08 disclosure report fails to disclose an employer and an occupation for Scott Smallwood, but a quick search of the Federal Election Commission database lists Scott Smallwood as Executive Director at Morgan Stanley.

3. William C. Eacho, $5,000 donation. William Eacho is CEO of Carlton Capital Group, Llc., an investment firm for wealthy people. When Eacho joined the board of directors of Tibersoft, the company offered this biography:

Eacho is CEO of Carlton Capital Group, a private equity investment firm in Washington, D.C. In 1998 he was executive vice president of Alliant Foodservice Inc., a $6 billion national food service distributor based in Chicago, with primary responsibility for technology and acquisition strategy.

Eacho joined Alliant in 1997 when he sold the company his business, Atlantic Food Services, a $200 million regional food service distribution company based in Manassas, Va.. In 1989 Atlantic was recognized as the industry’s innovator of the year by ID Magazine, and in 1994 it received ID’s great distributor organization award.

Prior to that Eacho was a founding co-chairman of UniPro Foodservice Inc., the food service distribution industry’s top procurement and marketing cooperative, with combined member sales of over $20 billion. From 1996-1997, he served as chairman of ComSource, a $9 billion cooperative, until helping to negotiate a merger with its leading competitor, EMCO, to create UniPro Foodservice.

Eacho serves on the boards of directors of Capital Transportation Inc., Stanley Martin Companies Inc., Systems 4 Inc. and Bialek Healthcare Environments Inc.

4. James V. Kimsey, $5,000 donation. As is sadly typical, Unity08 does not report an occupation or employer for James V. Kimsey. His typographically-incorrect address, “170 Penna Ave. Mw Suite 900 Washington, DC 20006,” does not result in any listings even in google, even when corrected to Pennsylvania Ave. NW. There is a “170 Pennsylvania Avenue” in Niantic, Connecticut, but as a mapquest query verifies, there is no 170 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC.

Fortunately, a Fundrace search for James V. Kimsey identifies his correct address as 1700 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington DC 20006 (and identifies him as a contributor to both George W. Bush and Al Sharpton). Now, 1700 Pennsylvania Avenue is not a normal address. It is literally across the street from the White House, and just down the block from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Who is James V. Kimsey to maintain an office at such a high-powered location? The International Crisis Group, where Kimsey serves on the board along with fellow $5,000 donor Joanne Leedom-Ackerman and former Filipino President Fidel Ramos, provides this biography of Kimsey:

Mr. Kimsey is best known for creating the largest company ever started in the Washington, DC area – America Online, Inc. He currently serves as Chairman Emeritus. Mr. Kimsey left AOL to focus his energies on philanthropy, and in 1996, he launched the Kimsey Foundation which provides grants that benefit the Washington, DC community in areas from arts to education.

Over the years, Mr. Kimsey has received numerous entrepreneurship awards. He received Presidential appointments to the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees and the West Point Board of Visitors. In 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell named Mr. Kimsey as Chairman of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), an organization dedicated to identifying hundreds of thousands of missing from conflicts and natural disasters around the world, through DNA research. Mr. Kimsey also serves as Chairman Emeritus of Refugees International, an independent advocacy group which works to protect refugees and end the cause of displacement. He also serves as a member of the board of the International Crisis Group (ICG), an independent, non-profit, multinational organization committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflict.

James Kimsey is a member of the board of several companies including the JER Investors Trust, and Thayer Capital. He is on the board of directors of the American Film Institute, Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, Business Executives for National Security, and the Department of Defense Business Board. He serves on the Executive Committees of the Washington National Opera, and on the National Symphony Orchestra.

===

Are these “people like you”? If so, I’d love to hear more about your very interesting life. Learn more about the interesting lives of other “everyday Americans” who are funding Unity08 in our next installment, coming soon.

I was looking at an article a Texas newspaper called the Victoria Advocate this morning about a claim by director James Cameron that the bones of Jesus have been found along with the bones of Mary Magdelene in a family crypt, suggesting the two were married, or at least in-laws of some sort. Cameron has made a documentary, entitled The Lost Tomb of Christ, based upon what he says is evidence proving that the bones are almost certainly that of the religious leader whose life story became the foundation of Christianity.

Most of the content was rather tedious, with unreflective arguments from Christian believers saying that the bones of Jesus could not possibly have been found because, after all their religion teaches that Jesus was lifted up into the air after being resurrected. That’s what they believe happened, these believers said, so any claim to the contrary must be false.

Well, one of these quotes caught my attention, but not because of what the person being quoted was saying. Rather, it was the name of the person being quoted:

Pastor Brick Wall of Victory Christian Life Center said he doesn’t hold stock in the film’s premise. “For me, personally, as a believer, I have complete faith that Jesus’ body doesn’t exist on Earth because he went to Heaven.”

Pastor Brick Wall? That name caused me to suspect that what I was reading might not be the straight article it appeared to be, but some kind of satire instead. After all, what kind of person would be walking around with the name Brick Wall?

Well, the Brick Wall kind of person, apparently. It took a bit of research, because Brick Wall isn’t the sort of pastor to gain a lot of attention on the Internet, but I did find several articles and resources referring to a man named Brick Wall who lives in Victoria, Texas.

It seems that Brick Wall really is a pastor. He regards his calling as teaching people how to gain victory in life, as he believes God wants them to do.

It’s kind of ironic, then, that when Brick Wall ran for City Council in Victoria last year, he lost, with just 32.2 percent of the vote, to his competitor, consultant Paul Polasek.

Perhaps Brick Wall needs to change his ministry to reflect the teaching of Jesus that it’s the people who are defeated in life that are the most blessed. Maybe it’s time for him to accept that he’s just another brick in the… oh, you get it.

Vice President Dick Cheney is well, and everybody except the resurgent Taliban who were trying to kill him with a suicide bomb attack today are breathing a sigh of relief about that. Some others were not so lucky in Afghanistan today, however.

For example, there was the civilian driving a car in the city of Kandahar who was killed by NATO soldiers of unspecified nationality. The NATO soldiers were uncomfortable about how close the civilian was driving his car to their convoy, so they just shot him dead.

It’s the third time that a civilian has been shot dead for tailgating in Afghanistan this month.

The incident should serve as a lesson of the unexpected ways in which a foreign military occupation of a country can heighten resentment and create new enemies for the occupying country. When people live in a country where they can be killed for nothing more than bad driving habits, it tends to set them on edge.

Dick Cheney is lucky. He can fly out of Afghanistan. The Afghans are not so fortunate as Dick Cheney.

So James Cameron is putting out a documentary asserting that the tomb of Jesus Christ has been found, and that Jesus was married to Mary Magdelene. That’s cute and all. But what’s really cute is the objection to Cameron’s documentary. See, his claims about the nature of Jesus just aren’t credible because there isn’t sufficient evidence for them.

My favorite objection:

…you can believe Cameron if you want, but believing in his version of events seems at this point to be more a leap of faith than reason.

My second favorite:

I wouldn’t build a theory of the most important person of the first century on statistics.

Leaps of faith? Horrors! I mean, you wouldn’t want to build a theory of the most important person of the first century on leaps of…

It seems that some of the readers of Irregular Times are more literal-minded that I have counted upon, and have concluded that I actually believe that a quail might have been behind the suicide attack of the Bagram Air Base. A person named Barry has left a comment on the the article that I wrote about the attack in Afghanistan earlier this morning, complaining about my paranoid consiracy theories. “I can’t believe that you people are so paranoid. When will you stop with the conspiracy theories?” the skeptical Barry writes.

For the record, let me state that I have no reason to believe that a quail, a duck, or a bird of any other species that Dick Cheney has shot a gun at, was part of the conspiracy to launch a suicide bomb attack against the Vice-President of the United States today. Of course, I don’t have any evidence that it was not a quail who planned the attack. Still, I don’t regard that lack of evidence as sufficient cause to seriously state that it could have been the quail who was behind it all.

The thing is, I never meant anyone to take the allegation of quail-linked terrorism seriously. It was intended to be a joke, something so absurd that it would make people roll their eyes at the mere thought of it. As Barry has taught me, however, there are people who do not roll their eyes at the thought of a quail planning a terrorist attack against the United States. I have misled these good people, and I apologize to them.

It was my intention for bit about the quail to be the item that tips off readers that I was writing in an irreverent mood, saying silly things that would bring a bit of levity to a very serious story. So, the point was to show that yes, I understand that it’s extremely unlikely that Harry Wittington, a 79 year-old man in Texas, would launch a secret conspiracy to create a suicide bombing mission against Dick Cheney in Afghanistan as revenge for a clumsy hunting accident. That’s why I filed the story under the category “humor”.

Obviously, it was probably not Harry Wittington or a quail who was behind the attacks.

It could have been Mary Cheney’s lesbian lover, though, seeking retribution for Cheney’s support of a Republican Party that has made it illegal for the couple to gain legal recognition for their partnership before their baby is born.

Dick Cheney has a lot of enemies, after all.

As I read the news about the suicide attack against the air base in Afghanistan where Vice President Dick Cheney was visiting this morning, I puzzled over the claims by the US military that the attack was certainly not an attempt to send a message to Cheney. If the attack was not a statement, then what was the purpose of the attack?

What about revenge?

Suddenly, it all becomes clear. It was about one year ago that, while out hunting quail, Dick Cheney suddenly pointed his shotgun at Harry Whittington and pulled the trigger.

Sure, Mr. Whittington got out of the hospital, and said all was forgiven, but what if Whittington was just waiting, planning, preparing, biding his time? Whittington could have his revenge against Dick Cheney, and make it the perfect crime by having the attack appear to be just a typical Afghan suicide bombing. No one would suspect. Well, no one except me.

Of course, it might not have been Harry Whittington behind the attack at all. It might have been the quail.

In the aftermath of the explosive attack today on the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan while Vice President Dick Cheney was at the base, this much is clear: We are not getting a straight story about what really happened.

Military spokespeople have told reporters that two people were killed in the attack. The Governor of the province where Bagram Air Base is located tells a different story. The Governor says that nineteen people were killed in the attack.

19 people dead and 2 people dead. Picture those numbers of dead bodies in your head, and you’ll see that there’s no way that an honest mistake between the two can be made.

Either we’re being given information by people who don’t know what really happened, or we’re being lied to. I have no way of knowing whether the story with 2 people dead or the story with 19 people dead is the right story, or if both of these numbers are wrong.

This mystery illustrates the general problem for the American people with the war in Afghanistan. We’re not getting accurate information about the war in Afghanistan, and the American government has lost its credibility.

Alisa Tang for the Associated Press writes, “It was unclear why there was such a large discrepancy in the reports.” That’s a generous understatement.

How can we support a war being fought in our name without knowledge of what’s happening in that war?