Via Talking Points Memo, Ted Cruz: “I Stand With Kim Davis.” Davis, of course, is the woman now sitting in jail for refusing to do her job of issuing any marriage licenses because she is offended by the idea of same sex marriage. Cruz and Mike Huckabee are coming down in the same place on this one. Davis is supposedly a Christian martyr. Cruz said, “Today, judicial lawlessness crossed into judicial tyranny.” It’s pretty boilerplate stuff coming from a “Constitutional” conservative. They love to throw around the word “tyranny” because it was in the Declaration of Independence. But the way they use it makes it meaningless. It’s just a word they use whenever the government does anything they don’t agree with.

Cruz made an analogy between Davis and San Francisco Major Ed Lee (for the sanctuary city) and President Obama (for immigration law enforcement). These are false analogies, but I don’t feel like going into them right now. The main thing is that this is being made out like a religious freedom issue. And of course that’s the way they are going to play this. But as German Lopez noted, the government actually offered to accommodate her by letting her pass the job on to a willing subordinate. But she refused.

I heard her husband on NPR earlier talking about how “the gays” want their rights recognized, but they don’t want to recognize the rights of Christians. Well, here we have it. Davis didn’t need to be involved with this. But she won’t be satisfied unless she is actually able to stop same sex couples from exercising their secular rights to marriage. It’s all about bigotry. And this could not be more clear. When last I wrote about this, I noted how strange it was that Christians like Davis didn’t just say, “Sure the government can ‘marry’ whomever they want, but God doesn’t accept those marriages!” But Davis isn’t standing up for God’s word; she’s standing up for her cultural privilege.

I’m not a legal scholar, but I do know a bit about drug law. For a very long time, drug users of various kinds of been making the argument that the use of this or that banned substance is part of their religious practice. And the courts have always said the same thing, “Nice try!” Similarly, people could say, “My religion forbids me from allowing African Americans to eat at my diner.” Or they could say, “My religion forbids me from paying income taxes.” It doesn’t matter; your religion could say anything at all. And that is why the courts have decided that you still have to follow the law.

Kim Davis is doing a great service to same sex marriage. In a different article, German Lopez wrote, Republican Candidates to Kentucky Clerk: Follow the Law and Marry Same-Sex Couples. Admittedly, the three candidates he highlights are on the less-crazy side of the crazy party. But still: Davis isn’t fooling anyone. She’s just making a big deal out of her religion and most people see it for what it is: narcissism. Most people I’ve talked to find it exhausting. Their response is, “Oh, just do your job!” It doesn’t matter whether they are for or against same sex marriage, they understand that the issue has been settled and Kim Davis is just an annoyance.

Meanwhile, if God exists, he, she, or it approves of this:

There is a Polish legend called the Nazi gold train. Supposedly, at the end of World War II, some Nazis filled up three train cars with gold and other valuables and then hid it in a tunnel under the Owl Mountains in southwest Poland. It is said to contain 300 tons of treasure. The reason I bring it up is because there are two treasure hunters who claim that they have found it. This is despite the fact that there is no actual historical record of it, and when Poland was under communist rule, the government did a lot of work trying to find it.

But who cares? Well, for one: an employer of mine. I’ve been working on a project that relates to this. But it puts me in a difficult position because I just ain’t buying it. Just check out the story here. Recently, someone who was supposedly involved in burying the train died. That was 70 years ago, so we are talking someone really old. And on his death bed, he revealed where the train was hidden. So these two treasure hunters went out and used ground penetrating radar and discovered a train. But that’s as much as we know at this point.

More recently, the two men — Andreas Richter and Piotr Koper — came forward. Maybe they think this is the real thing — or at least that the train must contain something of value. They offered the location of the train to the Polish government for a 10% cut. Of course, I’m even skeptical of this. It is a way of getting the Polish government to pay the bill for a speculative dig. Is the probability good or bad? It doesn’t matter to these guys. Even if there is just a 1% chance, it’s worth it to them!

It’s also interesting that the location of this train is not consistent with the local legend. The train was supposed to be in a tunnel. Instead, it was found simply buried under ground near a rail line. That doesn’t encourage me. On the other hand, maybe the reason no one has ever found the train is because the legend got it wrong. But that’s not the only issue. Maybe this is a train that the Nazis buried for other reasons. Or it is just a train that crashed and got buried in the course of the war. I find it fascinating, but not really from the treasure angle. Treasure never much interests me — just the stories that go along with it.

I really wonder about this dying Nazi too. Why didn’t he go to the Polish government and collect the prize? This is my guess: he didn’t think it had gold in it. He was involved in burying a train. He’s an old man. A couple of treasure hunters heard something about this guy talking about a buried train. So they go to him and get the information. No one has reported that the guy said there was gobs of treasure to be found. All we know is that he provided the location of a buried train.

One thing I am pretty sure of: this train doesn’t contain the amount of treasure of legend. If it had 300 tons of gold, that would be worth roughly $15 billion. I doubt that legends tend to make treasure troves smaller over time. So I’m skeptical. But the best thing for me is that it is a huge treasure find — because it means more (paid) work. That kind of treasure I am interested in.