The Zen master Hakuin was praised by his neighbors as one living a pure life.

A beautiful Japanese girl whose parents owned a food store lived near him. Suddenly, without any warning, her parents discovered she was with child.

This made her parents very angry. She would not confess who the man was, but after much harassment at last named Hakuin.

In great anger the parents went to the master. “Is that so?” was all he would say.

After the child was born it was brought to Hakuin. By this time he had lost his reputation, which did not trouble him, but he took very good care of the child. He obtained milk from his neighbors and everything else the little one needed.

A year later the girl-mother could stand it no longer. She told her parents the truth - that the real father of the child was a young man who worked in the fishmarket.

The mother and father of the girl at once went to Hakuin to ask his forgiveness, to apologize at length, and to get the child back again.

Hakuin was willing. In yielding the child, all he said was: “Is that so?”

One of the things I found so distasteful about the Bush Presidency was the slipperiness of the people involved. Sure, they could be brought before a Senate committee, subpoenaed or not, but their answers always left a bitter taste in my mouth as they more or less dodged every important question. Yesterday was the Senate confirmation hearing of President-elect Obama’s choice for Attorney General, Eric Holder, and I’ll tell you what, I like what I heard.

Now, I’m not happy with some of the policies that Obama is going to be putting forth, but I am fully in support of how he and those who will presumably be in his administration go about their business. They’re more open and direct in their answers to questions and while those answers are still slick and practiced, they aren’t obvious deflections.

Case and point is the confirmation hearing yesterday. Sure, Eric Holder isn’t perfect (especially as he is from the Clinton White House), but it’s a breath of fresh air from listening to Albert Gonzales at a hearing. I’m about to quote extensively from a Slate article about yesterday’s hearing to emphasize my point, but I recommend reading the rest of the article along with some not-as-obviously-left-wing reporting that Slate gives. (I just browsed Fox News’s website and all I can find about the hearing, outside of flak from before the hearing, is an AP article.)

I’ll let Dahlia Lithwick take it from here:

Remember back when Gonzales was asked in July 2007 about whether water-boarding violated the Geneva Conventions? His response:

There are certain activities that are clearly beyond the pale and that everyone would agree should be prohibited. And so, obviously, the president is very, very supportive of those actions that are identified by its terms in the executive order. There are certain other activities where it is not so clear, Senator. And, again, it’s for those reasons that I can’t discuss them in the public. …

When Barack Obama’s nominee for attorney general, Eric Holder, is asked the same question today the response is this: “Water-boarding is torture. … It would violate the international obligations that all civilized nations have agreed to—the Geneva Conventions.”

Remember when Michael Mukasey was asked last January whether the president could override laws passed by Congress? “I can’t contemplate any situation in which this president would assert Article II authority to do something that the law forbids.”

Here’s Holder responding to the same question today: “No one is above the law, the president has a constitutional obligation to faithfully execute the law of the United States.”

Ah, sanity, you have come back into the conversation.

Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity

-Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adonai, LII

“Change is certain. Peace is followed by disturbances; departure of evil men by their return. Such recurrences should not constitute occasions for sadness but realities for awareness, so that one may be happy in the interim.”

-I-Ching

Some of us are born and
then some of us are born again
Some of us are scared of death and
some just don’t believe in it
Something’s always wrong
There’s a lie, An idea i can’t get behind
No one knows what’s right
Some try, Some just try to find a king

They sing “Who will save us now?
It’s our life but we don’t want to live it”
We want to be told how
By something or someone who’s better than us
We know who we can trust
Who will always protect us
But keep us scared to death, So we never ask questions
Who’ll dictate the consequences of our actions
And give us peace of mind about our miserable lives
Confined and content
All we want is a place we can hide!”

So we’ve always fought our wars for
What we’re told is worth dying for
Land and love and god and wealth
but men in charge protect themselves
You can rest assured
It’s the young and the poor who’ve fought all our wars
Led to death by men who they chose
and hoped would protect them

And “who will save us now?
It’s our life but we don’t want to live it!”
And all you’ll get is down
Because the people you elect to protect your best interests
Will just protect themselves and all their investments
Even the few with the best of intentions
Will just push their views
What they think is right for you and everyone else
You can’t think for yourself
Because you’ve chosen to let someone else do it for you

So we’re left to drift between our waking life
and all of our dreams
Reality is relative and all that’s all the advice I’ll give
Life and death are hard
They’re such strange and complicated issues
So listen and listen well for insight
But no one knows what’s right for you

“Who will save us now?”
It’s a wrong and irrelevant question
Because we figure it out with the people who love us
Who call us their brothers
Through lessons we learn from out fathers and mothers
Not looking for someone to find our solutions
To fight all our battles or show us what truth is
It’s by working hard to find our own peace of mind
Living and learning till we know what’s right for our lives

-Straylight Run, “Who Will Save Us Now?”