Smythe's World

I have not been able to access the English language site for Al Jazeera since late last week, and Salam Pax has been silent since last Monday. Neither is a good sign.

The best thing this blog has ever done to attract more readers was asking last week's trivia question. Not only did I get to pound a few back with a real-life philosopher (David Johnson), who won the contest, but my unique visitors doubled over the weekend, making last week the most successful in the history of Smythe's World. Thank you, Tanya Ballinger and Kitana Baker, and thanks to all of you who visited my site for the first, and probably last, time.

Tanya Ballinger (more)

Lord Haw-Haw is in fine form, blaming Peter Arnett for stating the obvious.

UPDATE: Score one for political correctness. TalkLeft is reporting that Mr. Arnett was fired by NBC, and will be leaving Baghdad. Those of us who want real journalism in the future are going to have to rely on Al Jazeera for the war.

I used to know this guy as "Detroit Jerry", a Red Wings/Lions/Wolverines fanatic who usually habituated Sports Harbour in Marina del Rey, but occasionally made forays to my home tavern, Joxer Daly's. He was a bit loud, and could get peevish if his team wasn't winning (which, in the case of the Detroit Lions, was all-too-frequent), but he seemed like a nice enough guy. He usually brought his girlfriend with him, and he always a smart take on the teams he followed. I had no idea that he and I were in the same profession.

Well, I also had no idea that Gerald Scotti was a) a legendary fixture among local defense attorneys; b) a former DEA agent, whose testimony helped exculpate John DeLorean; or c) so emotionally unstable that he would kill his best friend, then commit suicide, after he found out his friend was embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from his lawfirm. According to the police, Mr. Scotti left a note indicating that his actions were pre-meditated; for whatever reason, the fact that a friend of his had stolen money from his business was enough to send over the deep end, into criminal activity. There has to be more to this story, right? Battling clinical depression over the course of my life, I have had periods where I genuinely wished I could feel nothing(which may explain my drinking), but I have never honestly hoped for my life to end. Yesterday I asked a friend to call me if she ever wanted to kill herself, and I would do the same to her. Anything beats a total rejection of life.

With the start of the baseball season only hours away, here's an oral history published by the LA Times this morning, on the best baseball game of the past decade, the Sixth Game of last year's World Series. The Times seems to be all over the Halos, a team that usually generated fodder for the inside of the sports section until last season. The notion that they have supplanted the Dodgers in the local zeitgeist is pure unadulterated bullshit, though; surely the Times can't be suggesting that the attendance or TV ratings for the Angels is going to be anywhere near the Dodgers, for this season and into the future. The Dodgers remain a cultural touchstone in the city, especially with the Latino community, and are second only to the Lakers in terms of popularity in the area. The Angels should attract more attention this year, but are usually on a level with the Kings and maybe Club America in terms of local following. Once the club returns to earth, the bandwagoners will depart forthwith.

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the nomination of Priscilla Owen yesterday. This time, we pretty much know where she stands: somewhere to the right of Scalia. To the barricades.... [link via TalkLeft]

America's favorite xenophobic punditress is back, with an attack on the humanitarianism of Helen Thomas. Let it be said that concern for the human rights policy we follow at G-mo is not the same thing as joining the Republican Guard.

Probably not a Natalie Maines fan either: This picture really speaks for itself.

On Matthew Yglesias' site, he's picked up on a thread started elsewhere, which is to identify the point in time that a person first began to notice the events in the outside world. Reading his post, and the comments attached thereto, gave me an unpleasant reminder that I'm starting to get old. Yglesias has one of the best blogs out there, consistently thoughtful and erudite, and yet the first major event he remembers really getting into was Operation Desert Storm. Of course, he's only 21. Other comments generally recited events in the '80's and '90's, with a couple posters mentioning the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis. I was well into high school when the Ayatollah captured our embassy; I even remember arguing with my dad over whether we should support the Shah! And Mr. Yglesias, who basically called me out as a geezer for identifying the assasination of RFK as my turning point, wasn't even born when Ted Kennedy ran for President, was barely a bundle of id when I first started matriculating at Reed College, and claims to have no cognitive memory of world event prior to my second year practicing law. I feel like John Stockton. My life is crap !!

"Michael Kelly" is apparently an embedded pundit these days. Lord, he's funny. Another satirist, Neal Pollack, writes about how his blog has changed the way this war is covered, and the uncanny success of his predictions.

QUICKIE TRIVIA: What are Kitana Baker and Tanya Ballinger famous for? Again, the first person to answer gets to accompany me on a night of pub crawling through Santa Monica...

UPDATE: Props to David Johnson, for correctly answering that Kitana Baker and Tonya Ballinger are the stars of a by-now famous Miller Lite ad. (more)

Interesting Wall Street Journal article about soldiers' blogs, giving better than real time coverage of the war. Unfortunately, the article doesn't link to any of them, so we're going to have dig them out ourselves. Embedded journalists can be fascinating to watch, but it can seduce the viewer in the same way a video game might; the women and men who are in harms way 24-7 can instruct us as to what it really means to be in the middle of a war, and right now happen to be a better use of the b-sphere than pseudo-pundits like myself.
UPDATE: Found one. He's a Lileks' fan (sigh). Check it out, anyway. This guy, too.

Matt Welch has a pair of must-link posts (here and here) on two SoCals killed in Iraq, fighting for the country they loved, even if they weren't citizens. And, of course, there's this story, about another brave soldier.

Today, Altercation made this announcement:

Oh, and thanks again to Jeralyn Merritt of the invaluable Talk Left Weblog for recalibrating Altercation’s links to the rest of the blogosphere. Don’t complain to me, complain to her. But if you want to keep your link, I’d plug the hell out of (What Liberal Media)?...I’m just saying… some of those old links are sleeping with the cyberfishes..(emphasis mine)

Hey, pally, that's my site you're talking about. And I plugged your stupid runaway best-selling book. Repeatedly. I even went to your book signing in LA, and thanked you for putting me in your permalinks. And what do I get? Ingratitude !! Oh yes, and having you tell me that you had never visited my website, and that Jeralyn Merritt was the one, and I quote, "whose ass I should be kissing."

Springsteen sucks. Chipper Jones was right about Mets' fans.
Never mind. Please disregard.

Pardon me if I don't get all weepy about the Academy Award given to Roman Polanski. And if I hear another one of his media shills blame the judge for his having skedadled out of the country to avoid a harsh sentence for raping a thirteen year old girl...I mean, what planet do these people live on? The prosecutor backs away from going after Polanski's hired guns in court and offer him an easy sentence, and the judge doesn't accept that. OK, so the girl in question has now forgiven him; one of the reasons child molestors get sent away for awhile is so they don't do it again a few months later. In the Dwarf's case, he was bonking the teenage Nastassia Kinski (before the Snake Poster and the humiliating performance on Letterman, back when she was still an "actress") as soon as he landed in France.

When the D.A.'s office chickened out on going after Angelo Buono a few years later, the judge hearing the Hillside Strangler case rejected that ploy too, and the State A.G. took over. If Polanski wants to return to the U.S., he should make sure he's carrying his toothbrush at all times. And besides, it was a weak year for films anyway.

A blog that you definitely do not want to miss right now is Daily Kos, published by a veteran of Desert Storm and a liberal. This morning, he puzzles over the significance of the non-destruction of bridges over the Euphrates, and whether the Iraqis have planned something more nefarious for our soldiers once they cross.

I have added the following sites to my blogroll, for those who would like to get up-to-the-minute info on the war, and not just the half-informed commentary you get here: The Agonist, Owens War Blog, and Al Jazeera (English). They beat imbedded reporters any day of the week.

FASCISM ALERT: First, it was the book-burners in Deliverance Country that went after Natalie Maines. Now, it's Steve Nash of the Dallas Mavericks who's being told to shut the f*** up and play ball. What these two incidents have in common is that they both involve people who are a part of cultural activities closely associated with conservativism (country music and sports) taking perfectly mainstream positions at odds with that culture. When a country musician calls for the extermination of A-Rabs in response to 9/11, he's viewed as a patriot; when David Robinson demands that all dissenting voices to the war be squelched, he gets a pat on the back from the media. But when Nash and Maines take positions shared by hundreds of millions of people, that the war is wrong, or that Bush is a disgrace to his office, the right wing P.C. crowd freaks out.

Does this picture make me look distinguished?

"We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where we have fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons."
For all the reaction that caused, I have yet to hear anyone say that a single word of what Michael Moore said last night was false. Maybe it's politically incorrect to remind people of the fact that Bush lost the popular vote. Certainly, I could have done without the idiotic smirk on his face, and would have preferred a political speech more in keeping with the point of his documentary(ie., gun violence). Ironically, for someone who has become a best-selling writer and documentarian by playing fast and loose with the facts, Michael Moore got booed last night because he told the truth.

Another faux-feminist backs the war, as a crusade to "liberate" Iraqi women. Considering how obsessed this Administration is with shutting down birth control programs for Third World countries, it is amazing to see the myopia of those who believe there will any progressive consequence arising out of our victory in Iraq. It ain't going to happen, just like it didn't happen in Afghanistan, and it won't happen in Saudi Arabia. And just because you make six figures as a web-designer and believe that using the Pill should not be a felony does not make you a "feminist".

Some random thoughts on tonight's Academy Awards, from someone who has yet to see any of the nominated movies:
1. Far sadder than any scene he has ever directed was the expression on Martin Scorcese's face when he lost the Oscar to that perverted little dwarf;
2. I had no idea that Jack Palance, Celeste Holm or Olivia de Havilland were still alive: it's like finding out George Sanders was still around;
3. When they had the pageant of past winners, where was Timothy Hutton? Mercedes Ruhle? Anna Paquin? Diane Wiest? You have to figure it's not because they had anything better to do on Oscar night;
4. When did Steve Martin quit being funny? When did Jennifer Connally stop being thin--she's almost as chubby as Anna Kornikova. Hell, she's almost as chubby as Catherine Zeta-Jones;
5. For all the talk about how the Oscars are dominated by senile, middle-brow voters, it's amazing that they were somehow able to honor Marshall Mathers, and the Grammys weren't;
6. Michael Moore being booed by the crowd was as "shocking" as Vanessa Redgrave receiving the same treatment in 1978, or Peter Davis being heckled in 1976. One of things you have to remember is that this is an "industry" event, and for all the talk about the liberalism of Hollywood, it is a distinctly conservative town when it comes to the bottom line, and even more so when it comes to the Middle East. Michael Moore is not from, or of, Hollywood, so his harsh attack on the President and the morality of this war would never be well-received by an audience consisting largely of studio executives, attorneys, and producers (he later got an ovation from the entertainment press, which has less to do with his populism and more to do with his congeniality over the years with the Fourth Estate; in that respect, he's not unlike the current President).

It's pretty typical for bloggers to take weekend breaks, but I have to admit everytime there is a time gap between posts on Where's Raed?, I am going to be concerned. His last post from Baghdad was close to a day and a half ago, just before the "Shock and Awe" campaign started.
UPDATE: He returned to the b-sphere Monday, after his internet connection had been cut off. Check his site out, and check out The Agonist, which is the best up-to-the-minute source of news on the war anywhere in Christendom.

By now, I'm sure many of you have heard that before the President went on the air Wednesday night to announce the onset of hostilities, he pumped his fist and said, "Feels good," before the cameras went on. As much as I have criticized W in the past, I think I'm going to let him off the hook on that one. A speech, particularly an Oval Office speech announcing that the nation is at war, is a high-charged, adrenaline-pumping event. If you're going to do it well, you have to get pumped up beforehand; every actor, football player, and rock star goes through the same process. Oratory is a form of acting, and being able to convince an audience of the truth of what you are saying, and to make them act upon that truth, requires the speaker to get into character. Bush's pre-speech quip is no different than Kevin Spacey shouting "let's kick some ass" before going on stage. [link via CalPundit]

The Lord Haw-Haw of the blogosphere is in fine form, proudly claiming that anyone who opposes the war is in league with the forces of evil.

My latest hangout is a bar about a half-mile from where I live, the Sherman Oaks Lounge. It's one of the best live-music lounges in LA, plus it has enough TV's to show the full NCAA Tournament, including a high-definition set. The beers on tap are extraordinary; all micro-brew or high-end import; it's not a place to go if you just want to suck down a Bud. After a night of hoops (no Laker game, unfortunately), they had all-acoustic bands, highlighted by the incredible Annette Summersett, perhaps the closest thing to Patsy Cline Faith Hill I will hear in my lifetime. She's pretty, too.

"From now on it will be tanks and missiles, but the blogs will be right behind." I've been visiting several of the other blogs on my permalink list, and as you might expect, they are mainly posting about the "war", and what sick and twisted fucks the French are for not being willing to appease George Bush, and that the Saddam tape last night was probably a fake, etc. What I said yesterday about how most of the media coverage of what's going on should be disregarded in the early days, since most of the journalists covering the war are basically getting our propaganda, and the "experts" they are relying on tend to worship at the Church of Moron. That goes doubly true for anything you might read in a blog. If there's anything less trustworthy than the spin you get from a war reporter at this stage of the hostilities, its the second-hand excretions that are coming from the blogosphere.
Well, unless the Homeland is hit, I've said all I'm going to say about the war. Go CAL !!
UPDATE: Well, there are warbloggers, and then there are bloggers who actually have a take on the war that's worth reading. Check out Where's Raed?, by a blogger who actually lives in Baghdad, and Kevin Sites, a CNN correspondent in Northern Iraq who has a personal blog.

D-Hour has passed, and our country is about to go to war. Here are a dozen things we need to keep in mind:
1. Saddam Hussein is bad, and he has bad intentions;
2. Iraq has not attacked us, and is not presently attacking its neighbors;
3. Iraq has not been shown to be involved with the attack on September 11;
4. For the first time in our history, we are attacking a nation that is not engaged in hostilities with us or its neighbors; in fact, we are not even claiming a pretext that they are, as we did with Mexico and Spain in the nineteenth century;
5. There has been no failure in the inspection regime under Resolution 1441 to require that we go to war this instant;
6. The U.S. withheld evidence from the inspectors that might have made discovery of WMD’s possible, but didn’t provide it so as to not minimize the case for going to war;
7. The difference between the relative strength of the US and Iraqi armies is enormous; we are literally going to be tearing the wings off of a fly;
8. Many thousands of civilians will be killed;
9. Most of what we will hear being reported on American television will be untrue, especially in the first few days of conflict; overseas reporting, even Al Jazeera, will be more accurate;
10. No matter how lopsided the battles will be, each soldier and sailor has family back home, who will be worried no end over the fate of their loved ones, EVERY DAY OF THIS WAR;
11. We will discover the full extent of Hussein’s brutality and tyranny when Baghdad is “liberated”;
12. History will not look kindly at us for our prevarications used to justify going to war, for our manipulation of the tragedy of 9/11 to justify these acts, and for the bloody-minded lust that this Administration has pursued this war.

Letters to a Young Grovelarian: If the President were to stop moving, do you suppose Mr. Samgrass' nose would break?

A science fiction great receives the warm valedictory he deserves, from Avedon Carol.

My sister Jennifer is usually very soft-spoken and moderate, so when she does speak out on issues, it has more of an impact. This is the e-mail she sent to MSNBC tonight, regarding their "Countdown to War" gimmick:

I am really offended by the timeclock that counts down to the war. Do you realize that you are basically counting down the hours until we start killing people. This isn't Times Square on New Year's Eve - we are not all going to shout "Happy War Time!" when your little clocks ticks to zero. I truly believe that when your programming people have a little perspective in the next few months/years they will question what type of wartime hysteria led them to make such a crass decision. This truly lacks moral fiber. Think about it and try to have just a little compassion for the innocent people in Iraq that will be the true victims in this ego battle.

I think this is the lowest form of journalism. I will never watch again.

Jennifer A. Smith

Why can't I be that measured when I blog?

FASCISM ALERT: The largest national chain of radio stations in the country, ClearChannel, has pulled the songs of the Dixie Chicks off their playlists, due to the anti-war and anti-Bush statements of Natalie Maines last week. If this bothers you (regardless of your taste in music), give the group your support, and let the corporate pinheads know that it will be more costly for them to silence dissidents than to allow the Nazis to control our music.
UPDATE: Actually, the article mentions two Clear Channel stations in Florida, among hundreds of others across the country, that have joined the blacklisting, not the whole corporate empire. I guess I was too eager to assume that Clear Channel would choose the path of darkness, so I screwed up in alleging that this was part of a corporate-wide policy. Don't harass its executives, and don't dump its stock from your IRA, unless you have other good reasons for doing so.
Elsewhere, in Deliverance Country, Cumulus, Inc., a regional network of 300 music stations has decided to follow the demands of their bedsheet-wearing, Confederate Flag-waving, moonshine-drinking, knuckle-dragging listeners and ban the Chicks. Let these Necks know how you feel !!

QUICKIE TRIVIA QUESTION: Who was the last 16 seed to win a game in the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament? First to correctly answer this question wins a night of pub-hopping with yours truly.

For those of you who still respect the law, here's the full text of U.N. Resolution No. 1441, and precedent Resolutions 678 and 687. Since the Coalition of the Willing (or the Axis of the Bribed, depending on your fancy) has now decided that further Security Council action would not be helpful, and might even be counterproductive, the rationale now being offered for going to war immediately is that Resolution 1441 provides enabling language for the use of force that was authorized in both of the earlier U.N. resolutions. Will all due respect to my legal colleagues, in both the U.S. and U.K., who formulated that approach, and without commenting on whether Iraq is, in fact, complying with UN Resolutions, your argument is bunk, and I would say further that you are a disgrace to the profession for putting the lives of soldiers and civilians into harm's way on such a flimsy pretext.

First, some background. Resolution No. 678, passed November 29, 1990, demanded that Iraq comply with an earlier UN Resolution (No. 660) to withdraw from Kuwait by a date certain, or that the member states could "use all necessary means" to make them withdraw. That's all it says. There is no other language extending beyond the liberation of Kuwait.
Resolution No. 687, passed April 3, 1991, was essentially the peace treaty between Iraq and the U.N. Among other things, Iraq had to respect Kuwait's borders (pursuant to a 1932 agreement), unconditionally agree to disarm and to allow U.N. inspections, to disavow terrorism, pay reparations, and do all manner of things to suggest that it was willing to rejoin the civilized world. Well, other than Ramsey Clark, Noam Chomsky and a few benighted souls, I don't think anyone believes that Iraq has fully complied with that resolution. However, there is no language in that particular resolution that authorizes force, in the clear language that Resolution No. 678 did a few months earlier.

So last year, the Security Council again met, and passed Resolution No. 1441. The UN, "deploring" Iraq's non-compliance, again demanded that Iraq disarm, comply with inspections, etc., and required that Iraq submit to a more comprehensive inspection regime. This time, however, the U.N. included an enforcement clause. Paragraph 4 of the resolution states:

(The Security Council) (d)ecides that false statements or omissions in the declaration submitted by Iraq pursuant to this resolution ad failure by Iraq at any time to comply with, and cooperate fully in the implementation of, this resolution shall constitute a further material breach of Iraq's obligations and will be reported to the Council for assessment in accordance with paragraphs 11 and 12 below.

Paragraphs 11 and 12 set out what the consequences would be if Iraq again failed to comply with the resolution: that the head inspector (Mr. Blix) would report any perceived breaches to the Security Council, which would "convene immediately...in order to consider the situation and the need for full compliance with all the relevant Council resolutions in order to secure international peace and security."

In other words, the Security Council reserved to itself the right to determine whether Iraq complied with its resolutions. Nowhere in Resolution 1441 does the Security Council grant any nation the power to unilaterally judge the issue of compliance, much less to punish the Iraqi people. More to the point, the use of Resolution No. 678 as a rationale for war is one of the most staggering instances of intellectual dishonesty I can recall in my lifetime, by an administration that ran for office on a platform of knowing what "is" meant. The only reference to that resolution in 1441 is a statement that it had earlier authorized member states to go to war to liberate Kuwait. No sincere reading of that language gives any nation the power to invade Iraq again, without UN approval.

Maybe an argument can be made that the U.S. does not wish to pay lip service anymore to international law, and to working with other nations to protect the common good. Maybe we should withdraw from the U.N., as many on the right seem to wish. As I've said before, I generally support policies turning the screws up on Saddam Hussein, and would not oppose a war at all costs. But don't use legally tendentious reasoning to rationalize an attack on another country. That's the sort of history we don't need to see repeated.

I don't know what's more pathetic, the fact that the bookburning tactics of Joseph Goebbels are now being directed against those arch-foes of democracy, the Dixie Chicks, or the neck who decided to beat up a spectator at a rodeo because of his refusal to stand and salute while the Lee Greenwood "classic", I'm Proud to Be an American, played over the loudspeaker. Paul Begala was right.
UPDATE: Surprise, surprise, it turns out that the hate campaign against Natalie Maines, et al. didn't simply bubble out of the spontaneous anger of the redstaters, but was instead orchestrated by a white supremacist site, Free Republic, a particular favorite of men who take the song "Goodbye Earl" very personally.[Link via Cursor]

As I see it, Bush has painted himself into a corner. Abandoning even the pretext of adherence to international law, he and our remaining allies (eg., Bulgaria and Angola) are now demanding that Saddam leave Iraq by the start of the first round of the NCAA Tournament, or "suffer the consequences". Our best case scenario would have Saddam go into exile (or killed by his army) before CAL tips off with the Wolfpack Thursday morning. There would be no war, minimal casualties, and Bush would look like a genius, having forced his enemy from power by acting tough and going it alone: kind of like Clinton in Haiti. Of course, if Hussein calls our bluff, then any other result would be horrifying, both from the standpoint of civilian casualties and of American prestige overseas. As even the backers of the war concede, we are picking this fight because the enemy is weak, not because it is strong. Even a quick victory over a wicked foe will damage our national honor, and make America little more than a typical imperial bully.

Well, now that Selection Sunday is over, I can go back to obsessing about war and justice, at least until the play-in game Tuesday. Go Bears !!

Perhaps the easiest thing to do to show your opposition to the President is to buy this. Or this. Send them a message; you don't even have to leave your computer !!

Since the GOP caucus in both houses of Congress is currently whiter than a Jim Ladd playlist, it ill-behooves them to spend a great deal of time speculating on the motives of Senators opposing Miguel Estrada. It's not only unseemly, it looks desperate, and it convinces none of the people they're trying to sway. A much more reasonable defense for their position is that the filibuster is anti-majoritarian; however, because their own hands are bloody in this matter from the practice of "blue-slipping" Clinton's nominees (a practice that only works if the threat of a filibuster is present), it is not totally surprising that they are hesitant to use that argument.

As I noted yesterday, one way to end this predicament is to compromise: renominate (and confirm) a significant number of Clinton nominees to the appeals courts, in exchange for ending the practice of filibustering judicial nominees. In the meantime, this press release, issued by the notorious consigliere for Clarence Thomas, C.Boyden Gray, makes a pathetic effort to argue that the Democrats are motivated by anti-Latino spite, but instead only shows that the President does, on occasion, nominate people with superlative qualifications. In other words, if you have a nominee who has practicing law for six more years, and has a full decade of experience as a law professor, is not being plugged for the Supreme Court by ideologues within the Administration, plus has done everything else the other nominee has done in his professional career, it is not unreasonable to treat that candidate with greater deference.

It's Phoebe Nicholls' world; I just live in it.

Now that Elizabeth Smart has been found, do you suppose Samaki Walker might be the next missing person to turn up?

Must have been something in the water: Trent Lott apologized for past GOP mischief on judicial nominations, following the second unsuccessful cloture vote on Miguel Estrada. Well, it's a start, but actions would speak louder. How about if Bush were to renominate two of Clinton's picks in each judicial circuit. In exchange, the Democrats would agree not to use the filibuster on Bush's other picks, including any future Supreme Court nominee. Giving up two nominees per circuit would gut any attempts to pack the federal courts with ideologues, while allowing otherwise qualified conservative picks a chance to be approved.

Having stalled the momentum of Miguel Estrada's march to the Supreme Court, the Democratic minority now senses blood. Today, filibuster leader Harry Reid of Nevada blocked five more nominees from coming to the floor, pushing aside the view that the Democrats were not going to challenge other ideologues when their time came. Speaking of Estrada, Nat Hentoff has finally found a beneficiary of affirmative action he can support....

When Kirby Puckett made the Baseball Hall of Fame a few years ago, one couldn't help but wonder whether his public relations mojo impacted the voting. He had solid but not spectacular numbers, had a couple of big playoff games (incl. a game-winning homer in Game 6 of the 1991 World Series), and was a perennial All-Star, but the same could be said of many other players who are not in the Hall of Fame. We (the fans) were told about the "intangibles" he brought to the game, and off-field "contributions" to the community. He even won a Roberto Clemente Award one year, given to the baseball player who best exemplifies the Pirate great's service to the public, as well as being enshrined in something called the World Sports Humanitarian Hall of Fame.

Well, as it turns out, he was an even bigger fraud than Joe DiMaggio; a violent misanthropic abuser who couldn't have been more different than his image. According to Sports Illustrated,

Puckett’s ex-wife, Tonya, divorced him in December, barely a year after she told police that he threatened to kill her during a telephone conversation. Over the years, she told SI, Puckett had also tried to strangle her with an electrical cord, locked her in the basement and used a power saw to cut through a door after she had locked herself in a room. Once, she said, he even put a cocked gun to her head while she was holding their young daughter.

His abuse of his family was matched by the contempt he showed for others. According to one of his mistresses,

they were together when Puckett said he had to leave to visit a sick child who was waiting to meet him.
“That’s great, you get to make that kid’s day,” (she) told him. “That must make you feel good.” But she said Puckett just snapped back at her.
“I don’t give a s---,” he said. “It’s just another kid who’s sick.”

Puckett, who declined to be interviewed for the article, currently faces charges that he assaulted a woman in the men's room of a restaurant last year.

The case of Kirby Puckett is as a clear a case as any of the perils of judging people by how they come across in public, rather than their objective accomplishments. When Puckett was elected to Cooperstown, there was much discussion about how his numbers were inferior to those of Albert Belle, who was on the verge of shutting it down, yet no one conceived that a "bad guy" like "Joey" could make the Hall: too abrasive, too vulgar, too mean. Puckett, on the other hand, was practically viewed as a saint, both on and off the field. Ironically, Belle turned out to be less of a lowlife than the man who made the Hall.

It's nice to know that grown-ups are in charge: the person most likely to be appointed our satrap in Baghdad next month was the same incompetent bureaucrat who bungled the USS Cole investigation. [link via SKimble]

I need a "Freedom Kiss"! Our very special leaders in Congress have just ensured that the whole world won't simply hate us, but laugh at us too. If there actually is a fifth column in the decadent enclaves of the Blue States, where can I enlist?

His guest columnist this week exposes the "real" Neal Pollack. What a bastard !!

Sources are now denying that Gwyneth Paltrow will be getting married soon to the poor man's Liam Gallagher, Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin. Damn it; that's a marriage you just know would last forever. I wonder if there's any truth to the rumor that Gwynnie is going to take up acting again.

My long-awaited, oft-delayed article in Off-Wing Opinion is finally up. It's on the St. Bonaventure basketball team, and what I feel has been unfair (and even racist) criticism of the team.

It seems that Senate Democrats were not simply misinformed in their filibuster of Miguel Estrada; according to this commentator, they were positively evil. Oh, well, bring on the next nominee. There's no rest for the wicked.

This weekend I made yet another attempt to include a box for your comments. I really enjoy using the feature on other blogs, and it will be a chance to get your feedback on what I post. Also, the program I'm using, SquawkBox, allows me the option of removing the tag. So, let me have it !!

Cry havoc! and let slip the Dogs of War: Adam Felber takes apart William Safire like a child pulling the wings off a butterfly.

Over at Condredge's Acolytes, I have my takes on the first schools to gain entry to the NCAA Tournament, among other things. If anyone would like to contribute, please feel free to let me know.

Since I started blogging last April, I've tried to keep a diversified blogroll, one that reflected a wide spectrum of opinion. Since I'm an unabashed liberal, most of my links are to like-minded sites, but I have always been on the lookout for good conservative bloggers. What I look for in a conservative site is an ability to raise and present an opinion that I may disagree with, but which still forces me to engage that opinion; to wit, a certain civility of tone. I'm not looking for right wing versions of Smythe's World, or blogs that are obsessed with Howell Raines, Bill Clinton, or the patriotism of anti-war demonstrators.

Anyways, one of the best blogs, liberal or conservative, is Volokh Conspiracy, a collaborative site led by the noted law professor, Eugene Volokh. His legal takes are challenging, and often convincing, and would be a conservative I would whole-heartedly support for a Supreme Court nomination. Everyone who blogs might like to copy this passage and live by its philosophy. If you don't visit his site at least once a day, you're wasting time at the office computer.

I missed the press conference last night, as I had another engagement to attend to, but one critic in particular wasn't following the same obsequious script that the rest of the press corps seemed to have been reading. Tom Shales observes

Have ever a people been led more listlessly into war? It's tempting to speculate how history would have changed if Winston Churchill or FDR had been as lethargic as Bush about rallying their nations in an hour of crisis. There were times when it appeared his train of thought had jumped the tracks.

Occasionally he would stare blankly into space during lengthy pauses between statements -- pauses that once or twice threatened to be endless. There were times when it seemed every sentence Bush spoke was of the same duration and delivered in the same dour monotone, giving his comments a numbing, soporific aura. Watching him was like counting sheep.

Later, he speculates that the President might have been "medicated", whatever that means; I might have taken that same medication myself awhile back. All in all, a disaster.

Comparatively speaking, filibustering Estrada was the hard part. The contemptuous renomination of Priscilla Owen should be handled with the same deliberate speed by Senate Democrats. [link via TalkLeft]

Pity, that we spend so much time in designing the new $20 bill, and have not thought to remove the repugnant slaveholder and war criminal whose face is on it.

On this date, nearly equidistant between 9-11 and Election Day, 2004, George Bush now trails "unnamed Democrat" in this poll.

As expected, the GOP was unsuccessful in their cloture attempt this morning on the nomination of Miguel Estrada, 44-55. This defeat was completely avoidable for President Bush, who could have easily picked up the five necessary votes had he either released the legal memos Estrada wrote in the Justice Department in an edited form, or prepared summaries of the positions Estrada took in those memos. Asserting a variation of work-product privilege made it seem like they were trying to hide behind a technicality to prevent his opinions from going public, and his wing-nut friends did him no favors.

Some nuggets of crap from America's worst sportswriter...speaking of which, I will have my next article up on Off-Wing Opinion later today, on recent developments in college hoops.

I'm sure most of you have heard about the man who was arrested in an Albany, New York shopping mall this week for wearing a "No War in Iraq" t-shirt, then refusing to leave when asked (there is some dispute as to whether he was aggressively proselytising his views on the issue; see here for the actual complaint [linked via Volokh], and the supporting affidavit, which makes it seem as if the man in question, a 61-year old attorney, was merely defending the views expressed on his shirt in public, as opposed to getting in anyone's face, passing out leaflets, etc.). In any event, the mall owners, while perhaps having a legal right to do so, look like narrow-minded idiots, and I strongly suggest that any visitors to Smythe's World who live in upstate New York (where are you, Danyelle Price?) consider boycotting this mall until its owners are made aware of the fact that "freedom of speech" is not simply a constitutional right.

However, I have a hard time taking MWO seriously when it refers to those events as "fascistic", especially since it was only two weeks ago that it attempted to spread the rumor that Miguel Estrada was gay, without any evidence or proof.

Speaking of Orrin Hatch, it seems that he has a rather cozy relationship with the pharmaceutical industry, particulary with the makers of the diet drug ephedra, linked recently to the deaths of athletes Steve Bechler and Corey Stringer. More to the point, his son Scott Hatch is one of the principal lobbyists for the manufacturers of ephedra, at a time when the Utah Senator is not only the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman but has also played a leading role in sponsoring legislation to make ephedra and other dietary supplements free from regulatory oversight.
According to the Los Angeles Times,

"among other things, the Utah Republican co-wrote the 1994 law that lets supplement makers sell products without the scientific premarket safety testing required for drugs and other food additives. That law has proved a major obstacle to federal control of ephedra. For its part, the supplements industry has not only showered the senator with campaign money but also paid almost $2 million in lobbying fees to firms that employed his son Scott.

From 1998 to 2001, while Scott Hatch worked for a lobbying firm with close ties to his father, clients in the diet supplements industry paid the company more than $1.96 million, more than $1 million of it from clients involved with ephedra.

Since Scott Hatch opened his own lobbying firm last year in partnership with two of his father's close associates, the firm has received at least $30,000 in retainers from a supplements industry trade group and a major manufacturer of ephedra. Both clients came from the old firm.

Sen. Hatch said the new firm, Walker, Martin & Hatch, was formed with his personal encouragement. He said he sees no conflict of interest in championing issues that benefit his son's clients. Neither Senate rules nor federal laws forbid relatives from lobbying members of Congress."

There may be a good reason for ephedra, or other dietary supplements, to be treated differently than other drugs. How anyone can say with a straight face, that having a son or spouse of a Senator directly lobby Congress on legislation does not create a questionable appearance is stupefying.

Like many other opponents of the nomination of Miguel Estrada, I pretty much roll my eyes everytime I hear the standard attacks on my position. There is probably no member of the U.S. Senate, with the possible exceptions of Trent Lott or Jeff Sessions, who has less credibility in calling someone else a racist than Orrin Hatch. If a President is going to use the ideological views of the judge as the sole criterion for nominating him, than of course Senators may critique that position, and if necessary, use any and all means necessary to defeat that nominee. The last thing this country needs is another Lawrence Silberman or David Sentelle. And frankly, I don't care if there is a shortage of judges on the appellate courts. As far as I'm concerned, it's a lifetime position, with a good pension and access to special interest perks that would be the envy of most politicians, so maybe working forty-hour weeks is an acceptable alternative.

But I have to admit, this is good: according to Marvin Olasky, the opposition to Mr. Estrada is not based on partisanship or bigotry, but on the fact that a cadre of "neo-marxists" has captured the Democratic Party. This pundit believes that "Estrada, like Clarence Thomas, infuriates liberal interest groups because he challenges the neo-Marxist ideology that now dominates the campuses that Democrats revere." The "long march through the institutions" having been successful, the forty-odd members of the minority caucus in the Senate are actually a communist front, a real-life "Fifth Column" that threatens to sabotage our society from within by exercising its Constitutional obligation to provide advise and consent on judicial nominations.

My question is, how was our plot compromised? Who told?

This isn't an Onion article, but should be.

I know this is an Onion article, but you just know this will happen at some point.

The Democrats are going to the mattresses Thursday on the Estrada nomination.

This doesn't have much to do with anything, but I came upon this whilst doing a Google search of a high school classmate, Ben Sherwood. It's a particularly nasty review of a book he wrote a couple of years ago, and his response thereto.

Triumph of the Will: I've read this Jim Pinkerton column twice now, and I still don't know whether he's being serious or attempting satire (ie., the references to "Carlyle"). If it's the latter, he's a f*****g genius, comparable to Charles Baudelaire, Neal Pollack, and "Michael Kelly". [link via Atrios]

Dog Bites Man, Part 2: Who'd've thunk that on the same day the Clippers fire their coach, a grand jury would indict half the government of Compton. And those are just the local authorities; the federal government also has a pair of investigations which involve even more serious allegations.

Dog Bites Man, Part 1: Let's see, the Clips have had Paul Silas, Gene Shue, Jim Lynam, Don Chaney, Gene Shue (again), Don Casey, Mike Schuler, Mack Calvin, Larry Brown, Bob Weiss, Bill Fitch, Chris Ford, Jim Todd, and now Alvin Gentry. That's fourteen (14) coaches the Slumlord has run out of town. DJ should get his resume out immediately.

The worst blog posting ever, according to Ted Barlow.

Interesting Times has a different perspective on the arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

One of the guiltier pleasures about the Estrada filibuster has been to see the Washington Post whine about the tactics of the Democratic Party, especially Charles Schumer. Two weeks ago, the now-predictably conservative paper attacked the Democrats for even asking questions about the assumed ideology of Estrada, and had the audacity to quote Lawrence Silberman, one of the more odious of Reagan's appointees to the Federal Court, as its principal source. After the laughter stopped, the Post, perhaps chastened, has now come out with an editorial saying that the Democrats weren't aggressive enough in questioning Estrada the first time, and arguing that

The question at stake in the Democratic filibuster of Mr. Estrada's nomination ultimately has nothing to do with race or with Mr. Estrada's allegedly inadequate answers. It is simply whether a conservative president can reliably place on an appeals court a qualified conservative against whom no serious complaint has been made.

Of course, the ultimate rejoinder to that silly argument, is "TOUGH S***". Or perhaps it would be useful for Democrats to remember that the conservative President in question wasn't elected by the American people. For that reason alone, opposition to his efforts to impose his ideological views on the federal judiciary is not only appropriate, but a patriotic duty.

I knew Irina was up to no good !!

Anyone interested in a spoiler for tomorrow's episode of Six Feet Under can go here. Frankly, the show slipped last season, and having heard from my sister that the jerks who run the show are sexist a-holes didn't help. I'm watching Alias.

C-SPAN 2 is airing the Eric Alterman book-signing I attended last Friday at 1:30 p.m. PST. I'm the follically-impaired near-sighted gent who asks him about "working the ref". It will be replayed at 4:00 a.m. Monday, so set your alarm clock and your VCR's.

For someone who is actively lobbying for a highly coveted Begala Award nomination (I wouldn't even dare dream of winning a Sontag), being in agreeance with Andrew Sullivan is probably not the wisest course of action, but on the issue of Sandy Koufax' right to a private life, I have to admit he's correct. I was astonished to see a number of supposedly progressive writers attack Koufax for his refusal to have further dealings with Rupert the Mad, on the grounds that it reinforced the insecurity that gay athletes possess; if a legend like Koufax won't come out of the closet, than the world of sports is truly homophobic.

Such a willfully blind opinion ignores the fact that in most of the articles covering this story, the issue hasn't been whether the New York Post falsely accused Koufax of being gay, but on Koufax' dignified assertion of his right to privacy (and also whether Koufax extorted his biographer to keep such information out of the book). The tone of these stories has not been of outrage that a baseball legend was defamed, but that a public figure was not able to keep some aspects of his life to himself. I have yet to see a column ridicule the notion that Koufax might be gay, nor a current or former member of the Dodgers quoted as laughing at the very idea. The more common reaction has been that even if the story is true, it shouldn't have published in the manner it was: as a blind, unsourced gossip item in a tabloid. Much like last year's story about Mike Piazza, the critics had already written the story about the unkind homophobia of SportsWorld, even if it didn't exactly reflect the reality of how the story was actually covered.

To be honest, for a variety of reasons I'm not opposed to outing public figures. If a sportswriter wants to take the time to interview Koufax' friends and associates and check into the rumors (and yes, there are rumors; one of the more disappointing aspects of Leavy's biography was the fact that those rumors were never commented on, if only to knock them down if they were false), then an article about a gay Hall-of-Famer would be perfectly appropriate. This was a blind item in a tabloid, referring to someone who was obviously Koufax as threatening to withhold his cooperation from a biography if his sexual preference was investigated by the author. Like the snarky reference in MWO last week to Miguel Estrada's sexual preference (which, btw, hypocritcally attacked the NY Post on this subject), in which the judicial nominee was listed with four other gay conservatives under a heading asking what each of these men had in common, this is a cowardly, and, perhaps more importantly, unreliable journalistic technique, one that must be condemned no matter who is its subject.

Instapundit reveals a very weird fetish !!

Some interesting takes on the pending war, by Michael Kinsley, Mickey Kaus, and Neal Pollack. Let these tide you over for the day, as I am the recipient of a dreadful hangover. Ruiz, in the fourth round Jones, by decision.