They Are 'a Changin: After this video, he was transfered out of Fresno by Roger Mahony. We never found out what was in the basket:



I doubt there was ever a time when the above video didn't creep out a lot of people....

Appropos of this week, three different opinions concerning The Boy Who Lived.

David Beckham, injury-prone? Often unable to earn his paycheck due to nagging ailments, especially at critical moments? Who knew?

The Legend of Gagger Vance: Now, this is a nasty headline....

Live from the Octogon: It's not William F. Buckley threatening to punch out Gore Vidal, but this morning's battle between Senators Webb and Graham on MTP was about the best thing I saw all weekend.

I'd be interested to hear what prosecutors and defense attorneys think of this, and especially whether or not it's true that blacks are being effectively kept off juries in the post-OJ era. Voir dire has always had the potential of being a real poison to our criminal justice system, as it squelches the possibility of having a jury of true peers empaneled at trial. Having sat through two days of jury selection earlier this year, only to be sent home at the end, I can say that a lot of the dismissals of prospective jurors were arbitrary, at least to the untrained eye, and probably did little to assure either the defendant or the People their right to a fair trial. What results isn't a fair and impartial jury, but a jury that has been gamed by the lawyers to produce an unfair result.

Those biases of prospective jurors that work in favor of or against the accused (or any party in a civil action, for that matter) are not necessarily inconsistent with getting a fair and accurate result. The random selection of twelve+ people to sit on a jury, with the exclusion only of those who are acquainted with the defendant or the witnesses, those who may have a pecuniary interest in the outcome, and those who have an avowed prejudice, should be the goal, not to have a jury that reflects some demographic ideal chosen by a jury consultant.

Glenn Greenwald finds that the low approval numbers from Congress come from a very surprising source: liberal Democrats who feel the body has been too passive in going after the President.

Sorry, Mr. Nyhan, but after all the stonewalling, lies, and claims of "executive privilege," the burden of proof over any accusation is on George Bush, not Josh Marshall. There are things the President can do and say in this instance that would indicate he was never involved in the leaking of a covert CIA agent's name, and that, in both word and deed, he opposed the actions of that cabal of executive office staffers who conspired to out Valerie Plame. He has not done so. Do the math.

As sentient human beings, we are not obligated to adhere to the same standards of proof on this issue that a juror would. We don't need proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Just a hunch will do, and when our gut has told us in the past that the Bushies were up to no good, it was almost always correct.

I think you'll agree; this is gassy:

The Return of the Fisher King: D-Fish is back with the Lakers.

One of the most unbelievable comebacks in rock history is at hand: Roky Erickson (of 13th Floor Elevators fame) is touring again, and will play his hometown of Austin this Friday, which is his 60th birthday. He earlier played the Coachella Festival last February. Here's a vintage clip of the man who "invented" acid rock:

But Are They Real? The paper of record in the City of Angels botches another big one.

Obstruction of Justice? Harriet Miers' likely non-appearance before Congress tomorrow, at the behest of the White House, may provide both the legal rationale and the political motivation to begin impeachment proceedings against the President and Vice President. The public already backs removing Cheney from office, and it wouldn't be hard to convince a third of the GOP contingent in the Senate to abandon him; I wonder if this open defiance of a subpoena will break the damn concerning Bush as well.

Indiginous People of Peace: A lot of people are having fun with this ridiculous Michael Fumento post, complaining about how Hollywood doesn't scare up enough wartime bigotry they way it did in the 40's. In particular, his observation that in the recent Die Hard sequel, the FBI ally of John McLane "looks decidedly Arabic," is generating quite a bit of scorn from those whose anti-Islamafascism is decidedly on the muted side.

In fact, the character he is referring to, "Bowman," is played by Cliff Curtis, a thirty-nine year old actor from New Zealand. Curtis has done several major American films, but is best known for his work in movies like Whale Rider, The Piano, and Once Were Warriors. That's right: Curtis is from that hotbed of revolutionary jihad, the noble defenders of the Caliphate, the Maoris. Never mind the chador or the burqa, maybe we should outlaw the haka. Lomu Akbar !!!

UPDATE: Fumento's response is even lamer. He's no racist, he claims, because:

1. How my saying he looked Arabic has anything to do with racism is unexplained.
2. Arabs are Caucasian. That's my race.
3. The actor is an aborigine descendant, hence his dark skin. He actually PLAYED an Arab in the movie Three Kings.

If Arabs are white like him and I, and the actor in question is a dark-skinned Maori, how does that make the character look "decidedly Arabic"?

Three of the smarter lights of the blogosphere, Susie Madrak, James Joyner, and Marc Danziger, debate the best way to make blogging something more than a rich man's hobby. Danziger, I think, has the better of the argument; until we figure out a way to allow the individual blogger to get a piece of the action the Queen Beez of the blogosphere are getting, regardless of ideology, it is fruitless expecting assistance to come from ideologically sympathetic cohorts.

I suspect this is going to be a recurring issue, what with three major bloggers (Cathy Seipp, Steve Gilliard and now Jim Capozzola) dying in the past three months of natural causes, all before reaching their fiftieth birthday. Most successful bloggers are able to devote the time and hours necessary to pimping their site and reaching a large audience without having to worry about the mundane folly of "making a living." That is because most bloggers fall into one of a few categories, which I list in order of their non-precariousness: wealthy people with a lot of free time on their hands; lawyers; people whose job it is to be near a computer terminal all day; college professors and students; people who get paid to write for a living; and, most precarious of all, political activists, both actual and wannabe.

When political blogging first started to make headway in our culture, the major players were disproportionately from the world of journalism, academia and computers. Blogging supplemented their real world jobs, and if financial insecurity began to rear its ugly head, their on-line hobby complemented what they did for a living. Eventually, when the ease of creating your own website combined with the narcissistic pleasure of having your opinions thrust on the world became apparent to more and more, the blogosphere began to include greater numbers of people, like myself, who loved to write and had either the free time or the inclination to devote several hours a day to their blog. Some of us had the money to subsidize this hobby, but many did not.

Increasingly, perhaps inspired by the success of Daily Kos and MyDD, we are seeing more and more bloggers emerge from the latter category of would-be political activists. Madrak's complaint, as I see it, is that people who work their asses off getting Democrats elected to office should reap some of the material benefits of that success, and that blog readers should be less passive when it comes to helping the scribes who toil away for hours fighting for the better tomorrow. To those bloggers, their website isn't a hobby, it's their calling, and it is difficult to appreciate the amount of time that goes into creating a high-traffic blog.

It is an unfortunate reality that the very power of the blogosphere, that it includes so many different and disparate voices, is the one thing that will keep the Susie Madraks of the world impoverished, at least for the time being. None of us, not Kos nor Prof. Black nor Ms. Madrak nor Digby, nor, especially, myself, is irreplaceable. We may each have a unique voice, but the blogosphere as a whole generates hundreds of new "unique voices" each day, and any political entity, whether it be the Democratic Party or Move On, can always find a different Unique Voice to raise funds or encourage activism online. Since we are fungible commodities, we aren't marketable to them. Our supply greatly exceeds their demand.

So the only solution is not ideological, but structural. Until bloggers can find a way to profit from the Long Tail (and until a "Long Tail" actually emerges from the wake of the Queen Beez at the top, like Kos and Instapundit), blogging will remain an activity for hobbyists with lots of time on their hands, and for those would-be activists with not a second to spare.

More good stuff from The Terrorist's Dictionary:

commute - verb
To correct the misapplication of sentencing guidelines to the ruling class.

And from earlier this month:

oppo research - noun
Abbr. "Opposition research." Training for civil service.

Peace, love and...your video of the week:

The Story the past few days in Los Angeles has been the revelation that our mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, has been carrying on an affair out of wedlock with a local TV reporter, Mirthala Salinas. California being a state in which being a marital miscreant is not only not a barrier to high elected office, but practically a necessary credential (ie., Reagan, Unruh, Feinstein, Schwarzenegger, and the last two mayors of San Francisco, just to name a few), it doesn’t appear likely that this will hinder Villaraigosa’s long-term political ambitions.

But a more telling question is whether “sex scandals” have ever been as crippling to a politician as has been assumed. We needn’t look at recent examples involving Gov. Schwarzenegger and President Clinton to indicate the public’s tolerance for a potential leader’s betrayal of his marital vows; even in the 19th Century, the public was willing to set aside rumor and conjecture in electing men to the highest office. Thomas Jefferson’s alleged relationship with a slave, Sally Hemings, was not something dug up by recent scholars: it was first aired publicly in 1802, and although Jefferson never publicly denied the charge, he easily won reelection two years later. Andrew Jackson won two terms as President, even though he was involved in a bigamous relationship with his wife, a fact the voters were well aware of (as well as the fact that he had killed a man in a dual over that fact) when he ran for office. Most famously, Grover Cleveland twice won election to the Presidency after it had become known that he had fathered a child out of wedlock.

For a time, it was thought that divorce would prove to be debilitating to a politician’s career, after Adlai Stevenson and Nelson Rockefeller fell short in their bids to be President. But considering that Stevenson’s best region in his two defeats to Eisenhower was the Bible Belt, and that Rockefeller’s defeats in 1964 and 1968 had more to do with his being unwilling (and unable) to court his party’s base on a host of other issues, that factor was overstated even then. It is safe to say that Ronald Reagan’s divorce and subsequent remarriage clearly didn’t upset his party’s base, and even as the Rove Machine was throwing every bit of garbage at John Kerry last time, the fact that he had been divorced did not play a perceptible role in the last election.

Nor is there any evidence to suggest, as the LA Times editorial page did last week, that Democrats tend to be judged more harshly by the voters than Republicans. Besides Bill Clinton, who won terms as President in spite of almost continuous frenzied speculation concerning whom he was sleeping with, and whose approval ratings went up every time a new allegation was made, other Democrats, including Barney Franks and the late Gerry Studds, have also been able to weather the media storm even when the allegations concern homosexuality. By itself, sexual indiscretions by male politicians have never been anything but background noise, important only to those people who didn’t like the politician in the first place.

Even the examples the Times raised only prove the rule. Gary Hart’s popularity went through the roof after it was revealed that a reporter tailed him while investigating his private life; had he stayed in the race, he would probably have been the Democratic nominee in 1988. Henry Cisneros survived the initial revelation of his affair with a staffer in 1989, and was strong enough politically to get confirmed as Clinton’s first Secretary of H.U.D.. His troubles happened not because of an affair, but because he lied to FBI agents years later about the amount of hush money he had paid the former mistress. And Gary Condit’s troubles stemmed not from the fact that he had an affair with Chandra Levy, but from the fact that he many had suspected him of being her killer.

More to the point, it can well be argued that far from hurting political careers, the perception that a male politician is getting some on the side may well be beneficial, particularly for liberal Democrats, as long as the proper pieties are spoken and the acts of contrition seem genuine. Nothing reinforces the perception of the Alpha Male more than the belief that the dude in question is a Sex Machine, and when a political leader whose public principles include compassion for the underclass and support for women’s rights is also perceived as being a ruthless Don Juan to the ladies, any undercurrents that he might not be “man” enough for the job dissipate. And should the media see fit to expose that aspect of his character, the public will invariably rally around the politician, defending his right to privacy, while subconsciously cheering him on. For a liberal Democrat, it's a no-lose situation, a fact that the Mayor probably knew when he preemptively announced his adulterous relationship this week.

When Marilyn Monroe sang “Happy Birthday” to President Kennedy at a 1962 fundraiser, there probably wasn’t a person in the room who didn’t have some idea that the two were an item, and the later revelations about JFK’s betrayal of his marital vows do not seem to have appreciably damaged his public standing, where he remains one of our most popular Presidents in history. If Villaraigosa goes down in flames, it won’t be because he’s been sleeping with beautiful TV reporters, but because some other scandal gets him first.

A perspective on the Libby commutation:

Keep in mind that Scooter Libby would undoubtedly have served his time at a minimum security facility. I have visited the federal minimum security prison at Lompoc, California, and while it’s not a “country club,” it’s not what most people think of when they think of “prison,” either. Most of the prison is outside. There are no walls or fences; you could simply walk out of prison if you wished. (Prisoners don’t, typically, because the consequences of getting caught include a transfer to the maximum security facility.) Inmates play softball, milk cows, and sleep in dormitory-style accomodations. I’m not saying it looks like a fun life, because it doesn’t. But it’s not 23 hours a day locked in a jail cell with someone named Bubba.

In California, misdemeanor defendants face mandatory jail time for repeat offenses of driving on a suspended license — one of the lowest-level crimes on the books. And they go to L.A. County Jail — a far less pleasant place than minimum security federal prison.

Paris Hilton went to jail. Scooter Libby couldn’t serve even one day?

--Patterico

When I first started blogging (a little over five years ago), there weren't a lot of ideological cohorts of mine doing this newfangled medium, so what few of us there were had to take great pains to get noticed, network, etc. The first person who ever saw fit to contact me and offer encouraging words was a blogger from back east named Jim Capozzola, whose blog, The Rittenhouse Review, was an early fave. In particular, I remember that when Blogger began putting rather tacky-looking ads at the top, he made a small contribution toward removing it, a decent, generous act by someone who never met me, done at a time when I considered getting 40 visitors a day to be an avalanche.

If you wrote something he liked, he would link to you, and plug you for a week. If you praised something he wrote, he would e-mail the most profuse thank you note by the end of the day. He had an impeccable sense of fairness and decency, was wicked funny, and had a vast catalog of interests, so it was quite a loss when he started blogging less and less over the past few years. About a month ago, I e-mailed him, asking how he was doing, wondering if like so many other early bloggers, he was distancing himself from the monster the blogosphere had become.

Today comes word that Jim Capozzola passed away last night. As it turns out, I wasn't the only person touched by his generosity of spirit; Susie Madrak, who lives in the same city (Philadelphia), also had her Blogger ad removed, courtesy of the Baron of Rittenhouse Square, and has a detailed obit of her friend, here.

It must be obvious by now that the judicial branch of government is powerless to rein in this Adminstration. With the exception of his father, no President in a century has pardoned fewer people in office* than this one; no two-term President has granted as few clemency actions since Thomas Jefferson, who presided over a country about a twentieth its current size. Yet like his father, when he finally decides to wield one of the few powers for which the Constitution actually does give him absolute authority, he doles it out to his cronies and loyalists, not to the deserving.

If there was any doubt that these guys could give a rat's ass about upholding the law, the events of today should put it to rest. Congress must either initiate impeachment proceedings, at the very least against Dick Cheney, or it should formally pass a resolution saying that it doesn't intend to do a goddamn thing about executive branch lawlessness.

*And that one was James Garfield, who was assasinated only four months into his term.

Nothing gets me in a karaoke mood more than this, my all-time favorite song:

WANKERS !!! Heh. Indeed.

It wouldn't be a baseball season at Smythe's World without at least one reference to the whereabouts of my all-time favorite player, Jose Offerman. This year, it's Long Island, where he has returned to the league which gave him succor during the 2003 and 2006 seasons, the Atlantic League, His teammates on the Ducks include Carl "Jurassic" Everett, Pete Rose Jr., Donovan Osbourne, Edgardo Alphonso, and other former alums of the Show. He's hitting a healthy .317 and four home runs for his division-leading team (to put that number in context, Rose is hitting .360 with six homers, Everett .284 with 10 knocks, and Alphonso an anemic .264 with three home runs). Hey, it's baseball, so don't knock it.

For a jawdropping example of Rudy Giuliani's complete unfitness for the White House, check out this passage from a recent interview, concerning the "surge":

And you would give Petraeus all the time he needs?

Sure, if I thought he was right. I had a similar, on a lesser scale, issue with the police department or the fire department or whatever. If No. 1, that's General Petraeus's advice; if No. 2, you believe it's the right evaluation of the situation, which I guess the administration is going to get some separate views on this--which is a good thing--but if they come to the conclusion that he does need a year or two more, and it makes sense to invest in that, then the political part of that comes second, and that's what you have to explain to the American people.

"...or whatever"? [link via Josh Marshall]

Boom. Discovering the joys of deep thinking, a blogger goes beyond the vapidity of "Wankers" and "Wheeeeeee !!!," in commenting on this morning's non-story about a car-bomb attempt in Great Britain:

My main beef remains that much of the cable news media reacts to this nonsense like a fifty year old guy on Viagra or Cialis--they pop major wood. And the same warnings are appropriate--an erection lasting more than four hours may be harmful. Amen.

--Atrios. That's probably the best analogy I've heard for the cable news phenomenum of providing saturation coverage of the non-story, whether it be "terrorist plots" or "kidnapped teens." Is there any better description for the CNN/FoxNews treatment of Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan than that they "pop major wood" when those teen vixens appear, or that such stories can become harmful to the public after four hours of exposure? Anyways, read the whole thing....

Now that the immigration bill is dead, it's time to engage in some post-mortems. As both Kos and Tim from Balloon Juice note, the debate was, from a political standpoint, an unqualified blessing for the Democratic Party. Its contingent in the Senate got to take the high road, mainly supporting the compromise, but with enough defectors opposing the bill on non-xenophobic grounds to scuttle any chance of overcoming a cloture vote. And there's no reason a bill with as many unpleasant compromises as this needed to be passed this year, when the prospects for an even better bill await in 2009.

Republicans, on the other hand, felt the full wrath of the talk radio wingnuts, who aren't going to easily forget the fact that their leaders in the Senate actually showed compassion to a bunch of Mezkins, but will get not any benefit from Latino voters, who now see the party as too captivated by some of the uglier elements in our society. Texas and Florida, two states that have been the bulwark of the Republican majority since 1972, have large populations of native Spanish speakers, and the loss of either state will doom the party to a permanent minority.

As you can see, my week-long, Gentile-version of Shiva has ended, and I have returned to my post. Thanks to all of those who sent their thoughts, including the commenters below, but particularly people like Mike from Berkeley, Matilda from London, and a whole bunch of others too numerous to mention. Just as I was blessed by my grandma, so too am I blessed by having some of the most wonderful readers on the planet.

Shouldn't the headline to this story be not "White House Does Contortions to Defend Cheney Privilege Claim," but instead "White House Refuses to Issue Unqualified Support for Cheney." When a press flack for the White House says repeatedly that she "will not opine" on his argument that he's part of neither the executive nor legislative (or is it both executive and legistative) branch, that's obviously not the same thing as saying that the President backs his Veep; in fact, it's awfully close to what Ron Ziegler was saying publicly about Nixon's position on the criminal charges against Spiro Agnew.

And apparently, I'm not the only one who caught these signals....

I have never known a day in my life without my grandmother, Clara Alice Robinson. Every child who is blessed with a grandparent knows the unique joy that relationship brings. An older, loving figure you can put on a pedestal without any of the fears or anxieties you have with your parents; love and affection without discipline or question. In my life, “Grandma” was always that person.

I have lived in a house with her, or in a house she owned, for most of my life. When I was four, my parents were going through some hard times, and she and her late husband, Jim Robinson, invited me and my siblings to live with them until things got sorted out. One year became two, then four, and so on, until the next thing we knew, we were under their roof for more than twenty years, long enough for my mom and dad to send me and my two sisters and brother to college (and me to law school). And for much of that time, our household also included her mother (my great-grandmother), as well as the family of her other daughter, after they moved here from Wigan.

It wouldn’t be accurate to say that she taught me how to read, or to add, or gave me my passion for current events and for American history. I have a lot of teachers to thank for that, as well as my mom and dad. But Grandma was always there to read me a book when I was little, or to help me count to a hundred, or what was the correct pronunciation of “Czechoslovakia” when I was browsing the encyclopedia when I was six. Every night, without fail, she would pour me a bowl of cereal before I went to bed; that went on ‘til I was about 16. To this day, the best reason I’ve ever been able to come up with for having children of my own is to expose them to this great, sweet lady.

She had a sharp wit, and until recently, did not look or act anywhere close to her age, which was 92. She watched "The Price Is Right" and "Young and the Restless" each morning, and any Grand Slam event in pro tennis, but other than that, she was a CNN junkie, and had an opinion about everything. She never got over the fact that the people of her home state elected an Austrian bodybuilder to be their chief executive; she was still amazed than an actor could get elected President.

During WWII, she had worked in a factory on the home front, a genuine Rosie the Riveter. She never tired of telling me the story about how her father, an immigrant from England (by way of Edmonton, Alberta, where she was born), ran afoul of the KKK when they were marching in the mid-1920’s, refusing to doff his hat at the American flag they carried when they paraded by. He had taught her the lessons she would later teach her daughters, and then her grandchildren: that prejudice is a fool’s game, and we should take people as they come, not as we wish them to be.

Her idiosyncrasies were legendary in our family. She never learned to drive a car. She hated being photographed, which was especially odd since she wasn’t a bad-looking woman even at the end. She ate sparingly, and every day would down at least one hefty-sized bourbon and ginger ale; let’s just say she preferred her bourbon dry.

Two years ago, she fell at her house, suffering a cracked knee cap, and I don’t think she was ever the same physically. She began using a walker to go everywhere, and after awhile, a wheelchair, and a lot of the enthusiasm she had for life suffered. She could still perk up when my nephew (now almost four) came by to visit, and she adored her pet dachshund/Chihuahua hybrid, “JR” (named after my granddad), but mostly, she just sat, meditating on her long life, and probably, those loved ones who had passed on before her. Regardless, she always had time for visitors, and her big heart ensured them that they would always have a welcome place in our home.

In mid-April, when I was over at her house, she fell face first in the kitchen. We took her to the local hospital, where they stitched her up, but the toll had weakened her. What we didn’t realize at the time was that she had suffered a stroke. When she continued to seem lethargic and unresponsive after she returned home, we booked her into a hospital bed at Providence-St. Joseph’s Hospital in Burbank, where the doctors’ diagnosis turned out to be our worst fears.

For the last four weeks, she battled, showing a reservoir of physical strength we didn’t imagine she possessed as various tubes and oxygen masks were tried on, in an effort to rehabilitate her strength. Slowly, she came back to us, in spite of what must have seemed to her like a torture right out of the Inquisition. Always, her repeated goal was for us to take her home, and on Sunday, the doctors told us that the chances for her were good; that she would be moved to the rehab unit, and arrangements could be made to bring her home shortly. Even in that false spring, it was clear that her time at the hospital had taken a great deal out of her, and she would never be that same person whose self-deprecating wit and rambunctious laughter brightened the lives of all around her.

Early this morning, she took her leave. Her last hours were spent surrounded by her family, in the comforting bed of her home. When she returned for the last time, her eyes seemed to sparkle, as if she knew she was finally going to get some peace and quiet.

I suppose in the traditional obit, it would mention she was a widow who was survived by two daughters, eight grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren (and another one on the way), as well as numerous other nieces, great-nephews and what-not. But like so many other people whose names never make it into a newspaper at the end of her life, she touched so many other people, too numerous to count.

She will be missed. I know there will be times of joy in my life, to go along with this day of sadness. But it strains me to think about how not having her with me, in the present, will temper any happiness. It won’t be the same without her.

Clara Alice Robinson (1915-2007).

The Fourth Estate: Not the press, according to the Vice President, but himself. When he's trying to avoid public disclosure requirements, he claims he's not part of the executive branch, but when he's trying to cover up kickbacks received by his "Energy Task Force," it's Executive Privilege all the way, baby.

This should not be considered an endorsement of her campaign (it's early yet), but this is amusing on so many levels....

The Path to Hell: From declassified documents at the National Security Archive:

However, I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?

--Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (12/2/2002) making a funny concerning a recommendation that more coercive interrogation techniques, such as forcing prisoners into "stress positions," ie., standing for long periods of time (see p.6, section 4(d)), be permitted for military personnel.

The memo itself is full of legal weasel words, like "specific intent," to justify circumventing longstanding Constitutional denunciations of torture and cruel and unusual punishment, not to mention international treaties to which the U.S. is a signatory, including the Geneva Conventions. Remember, this memo predates the invasion of Iraq by four months, so any doubts that Abu Ghraib was somehow beyond the pale of American policy should be squelched. As far as reacting to what this government has done, the ticking time bomb went off a long time ago. [link via Andrew Sullivan]

In these politically correct times, it is a shame we are deprived of seeing pop groups with goose-stepping back-up vocalists:



Speaking of which, whatever happened to Ken Layne & the Corvids?

The Trial of Tony Blair: Well, I saw it, and I can't say I was overwhelmed. The actors, particularly the Blogmuse, were terrific (saying "Phoebe Nicholls was superb" is like saying "water is wet," or "the San Antonio Spurs are spirit-crushingly dull"), but the story itself left a lot to be desired. If you intend to make the case that Blair, Bush, Cheney et al., should be held accountable before a legal tribunal for the mendacity in which they took their countries to war, a case which I wholeheartedly endorse, it might make more sense not to make your "villain" the only person in the movie who acts out of a sense of principal and conviction, nor to invest everyone who advocates putting him on trial as motivated only by cynicism. I suppose the filmmakers might respond by saying that the only way a fairy tale notion that a Western leader could actually face what has traditionally been "victor's justice" is for his erstwhile allies to believe that political expediency leaves them with no other choice, but it doesn't do the cause of international law any good when its advocates are portrayed as a bunch of conniving a-holes, and the process itself as little more than a formality before a guilty verdict is imposed.

I also had the impression that a lot of the film had been cut out for its American debut, on BBC America. Like ESPN Classic, BBC America is a cable channel that is inexplicably bad; other than its news broadcasts in the early morning, and the occasional showings of "Little Britain," its programming leaves a lot to be desired. I have the impression that PBS gets dibs on all the really good programs from the U.K., while BBC America gets stuck with reruns of "Footballers' Wives," "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" or what it aired tonight, which ironically wasn't even shown on the BBC in Great Britain, but was instead on the cable off-shoot of Channel Four, a competing network. If BBC America is an attempt to convince Americans that the vast majority of British television is stale and schlocky fare, it is succeeding beyond anyone's wildest dreams.

The CW on the final episode has gone from WTF? to Brilliantly ambiguous !! to Tony got whacked, and now it seems to be settling back down to the second reaction. Since the most important message any work of art can express is not what the artist intends, but what the audience perceives (which is why "Born in the U.S.A." will always be an upbeat patriotic fight song, not an anti-war jeremiad), let me give my two cents on how the Sopranos ended last Sunday.

As in every TV show, there is an invisible character at the table munching onion rings with Carmela and A.J.: the viewer. Since the beginning, we have been living vicariously through this mob family (both Tony's crew and, of course, his blood family), and we have had even better luck than Tony Soprano, who never went to jail and survived a bullet to his gut. We may have been taken by surprise on occasion, and there are some missing pieces we've never been able to sort out, like the whereabouts of that Russian, or who raped Dr. Melfi, but we've always escaped unscathed.

In that final scene, our luck ran out. Bobby Bacala told Tony at the beginning of the season that you probably never hear the shot that kills you, a clue that others have taken to mean that the sudden ending Sunday was the final moment of Tony Soprano's life; after all, didn't he flashback to that scene at the end of the penultimate episode. I agree that this was a clue, but not the heavyhanded one the consensus has taken it to be.

It is our perception that suddenly goes black at the diner. The scene is not shot through the eyes of Tony, or any of his family, but from our eyes (we even see Meadow trying to parallel park across the street, a vantage that is denied Tony). When the screen went black, and Journey's chorus was stilled, it was the viewer that was confused, just as a person shot in the brain must feel in the bewildering milliseconds before death. David Chase has allowed us to indulge our dark fantasies about living within the underworld, only to show us in the final moments that no one gets out alive.

We got whacked last Sunday. Probably by the guy in the Members Only jacket.

Like a seven-year old on Xmas Eve, I impatiently await the return of Phoebe Nicholls to American TV, in a little over 24 hours. In the meantime, here's a bit of musical sherbet to cleanse the pallet:

On why likudniks and neocons are privately celebrating Hamas' victory in Gaza, here.

Spurs win one-in-a-row for fourth time in decade: Does anyone still follow the NBA?

In spite of writing a book decrying organized religion and scoffing at the faith of believers, Christopher Hitchens ends up proving the existence of God after all, here.

Tom Lantos, for many years the principal foe in the Democratic caucus to recognizing that the "unfortunate human tragedy" that befell the Armenian people ninety years ago amounted to genocide, has gone all lieberman on Gerhard Schroeder and Jacques Chirac. His beef: that those ungrateful little weasels didn't back our adventure in Iraq. No doubt Sarkozy and Merkel are just chomping at the bit to involve ourselves in Bush's next big crusade in Iran.

Two-thirds support citizenship avenue for illegal immigrants, according to the latest poll. Since racists and xenophobes have historically been more passionate about their cause than the more-inclusive majority (hell, it took a century to pass a civil rights bill worthy of its name), the backers of the current bill before the Senate still have their work cut out for them, but it is reassuring to know the scare tactics about "terrorists sneaking across the border" and the Mezkins plotting La Reconquista aren't working, even among Republicans. Too many people outside the South know immigrants whove worked their asses off in this country, or known of those who've volunteered to fight and die in the Persian Gulf, and thereby proved themselves to be more worthy of being an "American" than the a-holes who whine about "illegals."

From a another era, a long, long time ago:

You don't have to be a Richard Dawkins or a Christopher Hitchens to find this disturbing. Belief in creationist superstition is a bipartisan problem, too: while Republicans overwhelmingly reject the theory of evolution, Democrats only back the cause of science and reason in the field of paleontology by a slim majority. Yahooism didn't make the U.S. a great power or a beacon of freedom in the world, and it won't defeat terrorism, prevent pandemics, end poverty, or make sure the levees don't get topped in New Orleans the next time a hurricane hits.

UPDATE [6/12/2007]: Steve Benen disagrees, noting that independents back reason over mythology by an even greater margin than Democrats. I would note that considering how divided Dems are from GOPs on the war in Iraq, abortion, tax cutting, and even whether torture is an acceptable tactic in interrogation, the fact that 40% of the Democrats polled believe in the literal truth of Genesis shows how relatively unified the parties are on this issue. If a Republican can get 40% of the Democratic vote (or an "independent," like Joe Lieberman, they win.

Not surprisingly, Abu Gonz still has a friend in the Senate Democratic caucus. If Lieberman were the Democratic nominee for President, and Ahnold was the Republican, how would you vote?

Is nothing sacred?

The Final Episode: WTF?

UPDATE: Now that I've had a couple of hours to meditate, I've concluded that it was an ingenious ending, one that will have creators of Sopranos fan fiction going into overdrive. Was Tony whacked at that moment? Will he be indicted? Does he take over the Leotardo crew, or will there be further bloodshed? Sets up the long-rumored movie nicely....

UPDATE [6/11/07]: "Horror Davidowitz" spots a number of blatant lefty attacks subliminally hidden in last night's episode, concerning the nefarious Osamamobile.

What does this Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Vietnamese children running from a napalm attack...












...have in common with this picture, taken last week of a notorious celebutante headed back to prison?














Answer here.

And now, for your Sunday morning viewing pleasure:

Plotinus Strikes Again:

asymmetric – adjective

1. Immoral; unjust; unfair; illegal. 2. Cowardly.

USAGE: The detainee's suicide was an act of asymmetric warfare, the Gitmo commander said. (Source)

COMMENT: The word is typically applied to unjust acts, tactics and strategies in war. Examples include international treaties, judicial processes, and terrorism (see highlighted portion of U.S. National Security Strategy).

On the established principle that "might makes right," the weaker actor in war, faced by overwhelming force, cannot but act immorally – that is, unless that actor is principled and accepts his slaughter (or torture). Critics claim morality couldn't possibly sanction such an advantage to one side. S uch critics fall into confusion by assuming morality is symmetrical.

And he's got a lot more of those....

Something to think about when watching Wimbledon, or for that matter, any other professional sporting event:

The point of the exercise was to identify exactly when a seasoned player knew where the ball would head. (Damian) Farrow established five possible windows: First, he blackened the goggles just as the ball's flight path over the net was determined; second, as the server's racket made contact with the ball. Then he gave players less and less information — cutting off the image when the server's arm was cocked, as it was being drawn back, and, finally, at the very start of the toss.

Not surprisingly, receivers were better at guessing the ball's direction the later their vision cut out. But the results also revealed something more interesting. Graphs of the amateurs' reactions showed that they could anticipate where the ball would go only if they witnessed the racket making contact with it. Experts knew what would happen roughly a third of a second earlier, when the server's cocked arm was still unfolding.

What happened in that fraction of a second? A lot, Farrow reasoned. Up to a point, he theorized, the direction of a serve was fundamentally unpredictable: Whatever clues existed weren't ones that an opposing player could discern. By the time the ball had been hit, on the other hand, even a novice could make a plausible guess at its trajectory. What separated the pros from everyone else was the ability to pull directional information out of the early stages of a swing and therefore to predict a split second earlier where to head. This fraction of time is game- changing. A serve going 120 miles per hour takes approximately a third of a second to travel the 60 feet from baseline to service line. This means that an expert, who doesn't have to wait until contact, has twice as long to move, plant his feet, and swing.

This discovery fit with something Farrow and other tennis researchers had already suspected: Reflex speed is not the key factor in returning a serve. "People have tested casual players and experts, and their reaction times are essentially the same," Farrow says. The fact that Roger Federer can drill back a 140-mile-per-hour serve is partly a matter of muscle control. But it's also about processing subtle visual cues to predict where the ball will go and get to the right spot.

Dr. Farrow is an Australian sports scientist who is a pioneer in the study of "field sense," the ability, long thought to be innate, of an athlete to perceive his surroundings during a game. Read the whole thing.

Regnery Bulletin: Congrats to Matt Welch, who's putting ink to paper on a soon-t0-be-published blockbuster about a certain straight-talkin' Senator from the Southwest.

I have never understood the mentality of the sub-human thug that delights in the death of another. All I can say is that the wheels of justice grind slowly, and exceedingly fine.

Something I'd like to do more of: Attend "Eating Liberally" get-togethers. A good cross-section of the local lefty blogosphere, including Kevin Drum, David Ehrenstein, Mark Kleiman, and "Cactus" from Angry Bear, at Farmer's Market in Hollywood, where the food is excellent and the conversation sparkles.

Remember when Monica Goodling's lawyer was shedding crocodile tears over Congress' insistance that his client, who was then still an employee of the Justice Department, testify under oath about her actions in the firing of several U.S. Attorneys? Well apparently, when the issue is really important, like, say, whether baseball players have the right to remain silent before the Commissioner's Officer over their alleged use of anabolic steroids, he's much more flexible in his devotion to the Fifth Amendment:

The lawyer who headed baseball's investigation of Pete Rose wants commissioner Bud Selig to suspend players who don't co-operate with the steroids probe spearheaded by former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell.

John Dowd said Selig should try to overturn the 1980 arbitration decision in a case involving Ferguson Jenkins, a native of Chatham, Ont. The ruling upheld a player's right to refuse to answer questions from baseball management if it jeopardized his legal position in a criminal case.

"I tell you what, it's time that stuff was challenged," Dowd said Tuesday in a telephone interview during which he criticized the players' union. "They already have too much power on this whole (steroids) issue anyway, in my opinion. And they've abused it. It's really disgraceful what the union's done here."

Dowd's a real piece of work. He was also the hired gun for Senator John McCain awhile back, defending him during his Keating Five problems, and when McCain's wife was under legal investigation for an addiction to pain killers, induced a prosecutor in Arizona to begin a baseless extortion inquiry into her chief accuser. And he was also co-counsel defending Vernon Jordan during the Clinton Impeachment inquiry. So the man does have an understanding of who the Bill of Rights is supposed to protect: powerful D.C. insiders and government officials.

Steve Gilliard, one of the most passionate voices in the blogosphere about sports and politics, has passed away at the ridiculuously young age of 41. Whether you agreed or disagreed with him, or more likely, agreed and disagreed with him at the same time, you always knew where he stood, as he was utterly fearless and unapologetic in expressing his views. His News Blog was a daily habit for me for the past few years; much like Pauline Kael, I would read him just to find out how he was going to piss me off on whatever the big story of the day was, even though our political views were similar. Anyone who has checked out his site recently knows about his health problems, and his prolonged, agonizing stay at the hospital was the stuff of nightmares. My condolences to his wife Jen, his mother, and the rest of his family. Blogging won't be as much fun without him.

Presented, without passion, prejudice or editorial comment:

It's safe to say that bashing Andrew Sullivan has become a stale endeavor on lefty blogs, evidence in large part by this piece, a brief history of the term "enhanced interrogation techniques." He concludes with this devastating point:

Critics will no doubt say I am accusing the Bush administration of being Hitler. I'm not. There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn't-somehow-torture - "enhanced interrogation techniques" - is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death.

(h/t via Plotinus) Again, it seems a pity that a workable international tribunal doesn't exist to put the reigning junta on trial after 2009.

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today: That we celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the Beatles' fifth-best album.

If this is what we can expect from the Republican front-runnner, it will be hard not to be overconfident next year.

Blue-eyed soul meets the Osmonds:



There's a local oldies station, KRTH, that plays this song three or four times a day, seemingly, and I still haven't found who the core audience they're trying to appeal to here. But I guess that's why the IPod was invented.

A Farthing for Your Thoughts: Judging by her notoriety, as well as the fact that it's incredibly easy to win a libel suit in the U.K. (even Roman Polanski was able to win there), being awarded less than $6 thousand in damages seems almost insulting. I doubt Keira paid her attorneys less than that to prosecute the action in the first place.

Desperately trying to distract the attention of a rapt nation from today's volcano eruption, and/or the Stanley Cup Final starting on Monday (Go Ducks !!!) Mickey Kaus is now doing Immigration Reform 24-7, and asks:

Remember when the respectable, bipartisan policy types routinely tarred those who favored welfare reform as bigots who scapegoated blacks and the poor? That didn't really work for them in the end, did it?

Actually, for a long time, "welfare" really was a wedge issue, geared at scapegoating blacks and the poor, but mainly blacks; it was the focus of Reagan's 1976 challenge to Gerald Ford, and it was clear at the time that his intentions weren't to end a program that created stifling dependency and encouraged out-of-wedlock children, but to speak code to the party base. Since there wasn't any substance to his arguments, attempts to reform welfare went nowhere during Reagan's Presidency, in spite of his popularity. It wasn't until those who were sincere about the issue disassociated themselves from the bigots that welfare reform gained traction, and it wasn't until a sympathetic Democratic President got elected that any change in the system became possible.

I suspect that's why conservative opponents of illegal immigration are losing this argument. There may be a liberal argument for tightening the borders, based on protectionist sentiment or on opposition to using low-wage, low-skill immigrant workers to flatten wages, but it's the Tancredos and the Malkins of the world who get the attention. Having them on your side is not unlike having the Trotskyites at ANSWER be the ones organizing anti-war rallies. Sometimes you have to police your own ranks to purge the people who support your cause for the wrong reasons.

One of the pet gripes when I first started blogging five years ago was the lousy nature of ESPN Classic, so I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the station has actually gotten worse since then. It's gone from unimportant, unmemorable college games it aired because it happened to have them in the vault, to replays of bowling, poker, NASCAR and Arliss reruns. Jeez, the same people own ABC, so you'd think it wouldn't be a problem to show old Monday Night Footballs or Cosell-announced title fights, but apparently the folks there would rather own the distinction of broadcasting the world's worst cable channel.

USADA v. Landis: Reading between the lines, it's a fair bet to say that the prosecution has pretty much given up trying to justify the "science" behind the positive doping tests, or legitimate the procedures used by the various labs, and are instead trying to prove that because Floyd Landis' manager made a cruel phone call to a possibly unhinged witness, the 2006 Tour de France champion must have been on the juice. The LA Times headline, "Landis Asked About Wardrobe" (a reference about how a good deal of the cross-ex yesterday centered, swear to Kobe, on the color of tie Landis chose to wear last week), on a day when the prosecution had an opportunity to challenge his statements on direct about how he had never doped, but failed to do so, says about all we need to know about who has made the more persuasive case.

Joementum: Why does anyone take this story seriously? His departure won't switch control of the Senate (that was decided when the Senate voted to organize back in January, and it can't be undone unless the GOP can invoke cloture on a potential filibuster), and he rarely votes with the party when it counts anyways. He won office as an independent, so there's no moral claim that Democrats have on him to stay onboard. Reid should tell him to get lost, and not have the door hit his ass on the way out.

Some decent songs here, but frankly, Sugar Ray, Oasis, the Proclaimers and the Rembrandts were about as "alt-rock" as the Spice Girls. Sadly, Matthew Y.'s taste in music is as lily white as Augusta National.

More daily wisdom, from The Terrorist's Dictionary:

testify – verb

1. To fail to recall; forget.
2. To misremember.
3. To smile blandly.

A good, Kenneth Anger-esque primer on l'Affaire Pellicano, in of all places, the New York Times, here. Since his arrest on wiretapping charges a few years back, the raging juggernaut associated with the world's most infamous private detective was supposed to grind Hollywood's Power Elite into dirt, and it obviously hasn't turned out that way; the only people caught in the backdraft so far have been some peripheral figures, like a director and a couple of entertainment lawyers. No Bert Fields, no Michael Ovitz, no Tom Cruise; it's a bunch of nobodies, as far as the public can tell, which is far more interested in the trial of Phil Spector.

It's as if James McCord and John Dean had fallen on their swords in 1973, rather than bringing down the President. But the story is there, and this piece allows the outsider a chance to unlock the code, to see how the various pieces fit together, even if law enforcement can't figure out a way yet to build viable prosecutions against important Hollywood muckety-mucks. The recent revelation that Pellicano did a bit of work for producer Stephen Bing several years ago may revitalize the story, though, particularly as it may shift attention to work the detective allegedly did for certain friends of the Bing a few years before.

The article is co-written by Allison Hope Weiner, with whom I went to law school back in the day, and whose appearance on a panel before the LA Press Club on the "stalkerazzi" caused quite a buzz among the bloggers and freelancers in attendance (and it's already on YouTube; as far as her moot courts skills are concerned, she hasn't lost an inch off her fastball). It's a sign of how disinterested the local paper of record is in entertainment journalism that she's doing freelance work for the New York Times, rather than owning the same beat for the LA Times, but there you have it. She writes about The Business the way Bill James writes about baseball, with a take-no-prisoners approach and an unwillingness to be accept as gospel whatever cliche or cant is peddled. Back when she wrote for Entertainment Weekly, she was the sort of writer who would take a Hollywood "truism", like "all actresses are unemployable after they reach forty," or "bad reviews make no difference at the box office," and actually examine whether it's true. She'd make a kick-ass blogger, if she wanted to get her fingernails dirty and join the fray.

Wankers: It's not hard to see why so much of the punditocracy holds the blogosphere in such low esteem. From a Daily Kos post this morning, on what it described as a "love letter" by The Voice of the People to the Commander in Chief:

But Broder's admiration for these two men knows no bounds. They are "driven by the nightmare" of terrorist attacks that "armed both men with a conviction" to battle evil-doers. Blair spoke "brave words," while Bush "spoke from his heart." All this in the face of knowing the "awful price" that Blair has paid for standing with Bush, and even as Bush is "humiliated daily," by the press. The humanity.

And Bush is not only the victim of a vicious press corps:

...but also by the incompetence of his own appointees.

Why, the way Bush's adversaries act, you'd think that Bush was responsible for appointing the incompetent jackasses.

Broder finishes this love letter by saying:

History will record that both of them saw the threat to the West posed by terrorism and responded courageously.

Only if Broder writes the history books.

And here's how Broder actually concluded said "love letter":

While the American president cannot be forced out of office against his will, he can be humiliated daily -- not only by his political adversaries but also by the incompetence of his own appointees. While standing with Blair, Bush was asked about recent disclosures of the wayward actions of two of them, World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and he responded lamely to both questions. The fragile structure of his administration makes Bush's bragging sound delusional. He told reporters that he and Blair have "filled a lot of space together," because "we have had a unique ability to speak in terms that help design common strategies and tactics to achieve big objectives."

History will record that both of them saw the threat to the West posed by terrorism and responded courageously. The wisdom of their policy and the conduct of their governments are not likely to be judged as highly. (Emphasis added)

It shouldn't be that hard to do a hatchet piece on David Broder without having to wilfully take his comments out of context. Most "love letters" I've read usually don't accuse the subject of being "delusional," or note that the subject "lamely" responded to tough questions. And they certainly never conclude with a judgment that history will not hold their actions in high regard.

Why can't the kids today perform in v-neck sweaters?

I had a brief conversation with another blogger about a month ago. He used to post frequently back in the day, but in recent years, his work imposed a greater and greater burden on him, to the point where he'd post perhaps once a month. He told me that he often would be inspired to write something, only to go to Kevin Drum's site and find that he'd already written the same thing. I know what that feeling's like.

Two opinions on the death yesterday of Jerry Falwell:

The Reverend Jerry Falwell and I were arch enemies for fifteen years. We became involved in a lawsuit concerning First Amendment rights and Hustler magazine. Without question, this was my most important battle – the l988 Hustler Magazine, Inc., v. Jerry Falwell case, where after millions of dollars and much deliberation, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in my favor.

My mother always told me that no matter how much you dislike a person, when you meet them face to face you will find characteristics about them that you like. Jerry Falwell was a perfect example of that. I hated everything he stood for, but after meeting him in person, years after the trial, Jerry Falwell and I became good friends. He would visit me in California and we would debate together on college campuses. I always appreciated his sincerity even though I knew what he was selling and he knew what I was selling.

The most important result of our relationship was the landmark decision from the Supreme Court that made parody protected speech, and the fact that much of what we see on television and hear on the radio today is a direct result of my having won that now famous case which Falwell played such an important role in.

--Larry Flynt

The empty life of this ugly little charlatan proves only one thing, that you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country if you will just get yourself called reverend.

Who would, even at your network, have invited on such a little toad to tell us that the attacks of September the 11th were the result of our sinfulness and were God's punishment if they hadn't got some kind of clerical qualification?

People like that should be out in the street, shouting and hollering with a cardboard sign and selling pencils from a cup.

The whole consideration of this -- of this horrible little person is offensive to very, very many of us who have some regard for truth and for morality, and who think that ethics do not require that lies be told to children by evil old men, that we're -- we're not told that people who believe like Falwell will be snatched up into heaven, where I'm glad to see he skipped the rapture, was found on the floor of his office, while the rest of us go to hell.

--Christopher Hitchens (both links via Hit and Run)

John Ashcroft, the Voice of Reason, Defender of Civil Liberties, Face of Time, Picture of Life, etc., blah blah blah...whodathunkit?

President Bush intervened in March 2004 to avert a crisis over the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program after Attorney General John Ashcroft, Director Robert S. Mueller III of the F.B.I. and other senior Justice Department aides all threatened to resign, a former deputy attorney general testified Tuesday.

Mr. Bush quelled the revolt over the program’s legality by allowing it to continue without Justice Department approval, also directing department officials to take the necessary steps to bring it into compliance with the law, according to Congressional testimony by the former deputy attorney general, James B. Comey.

(snip)

Mr. Comey, the former No. 2 official in the Justice Department, said the crisis began when he refused to sign a presidential order reauthorizing the program, which allowed monitoring of international telephone calls and e-mail of people inside the United States who were suspected of having terrorist ties. He said he made his decision after the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, based on an extensive review, concluded that the program did not comply with the law. At the time, Mr. Comey was acting attorney general because Mr. Ashcroft had been hospitalized for emergency gall bladder surgery.

(snip)

Mr. Comey said that on the evening of March 10, 2004, Mr. Gonzales and Andrew H. Card Jr., then Mr. Bush’s chief of staff, tried to bypass him by secretly visiting Mr. Ashcroft. Mr. Ashcroft was extremely ill and disoriented, Mr. Comey said, and his wife had forbidden any visitors.

Mr. Comey said that when a top aide to Mr. Ashcroft alerted him about the pending visit, he ordered his driver to rush him to George Washington University Hospital with emergency lights flashing and a siren blaring, to intercept the pair. They were seeking his signature because authority for the program was to expire the next day.

Mr. Comey said he phoned Mr. Mueller, who agreed to meet him at the hospital. Once there, Mr. Comey said he “literally ran up the stairs.” At his request, Mr. Mueller ordered the F.B.I. agents on Mr. Ashcroft’s security detail not to evict Mr. Comey from the room if Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card objected to his presence.

Mr. Comey said he arrived first in the darkened room, in time to brief Mr. Ashcroft, who he said seemed barely conscious. Before Mr. Ashcroft became ill, Mr. Comey said the two men had talked and agreed that the program should not be renewed.

When the White House officials appeared minutes later, Mr. Gonzales began to explain to Mr. Ashcroft why they were there. Mr. Comey said Mr. Ashcroft rose weakly from his hospital bed, but in strong and unequivocal terms, refused to approve the eavesdropping program.

“I was angry,” Mr. Comey told the committee. “I had just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man, who did not have the powers of the attorney general because they had been transferred to me. I thought he had conducted himself in a way that demonstrated a strength I had never seen before, but still I thought it was improper.”

Let the Eagle soar....

One of the funniest books of the last ten years, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, is set to become a movie, with Simon Pegg (of Shaun of the Dead fame) slated to play former English expatriate Toby Young. On his blog, Young also announced that Kirsten Dunst will co-star (it's not yet on IMBD), although it's unclear whether she will play his ex-girlfriend, future wife, or Sophie Dahl, or, even better, a character that won't require her to use an English accent (and further checking confirms the latter).

"The Terrorist's Dictionary," a blog straight out of Brooklyn that figures to give Ambrose Bierce a run for his money, looks to be a keeper. Some examples:

stem cell - noun

1. a human being.
2. a person.

COMMENT: Many people falsely believe that an embryo is a person. In fact, a mere four-to-five-day-old blastocyst contains 50 to 150 stem cells (read: persons), rendering abortion murder with special circumstances.


habeas corpus - noun

Law - a writ requiring a suspect to be brought before a court, so that his torture may be legally sanctioned.

[Origin: Latin: lit., "have the body (so that it may be tortured)."]

COMMENT: As the Latin of the phrase suggests, this is an outmoded legal protocol that has fallen into disuse. The courts have ceded their authority over torture as a violation of the constitutional separation of powers and as a wartime inefficiency.

Killing Sparrows with Howlitzers: Easily the worst contribution the blogosphere has made to our culture has been its obsessive media bashing. Fact checking and exposing the latent biases of the Beltway Punditocracy is cool and all that, but do we really need essay-length jeremiads about how Thomas Edsall is completely, totally, massively stupid for stating that David Broder is the "Voice of the People.," as if that's what he literally meant. It's fine and dandy to "work the ref" in service of a higher ideological end, but even Bobby Knight does some real coaching on the side.

I always thought the "Oil-for-Food Scandal" was one that was hyped by the right wing to provide an ex post facto rationalization for their little adventure in Iraq, but little did I know that the real scandal was "Oil-for-Rice."

The oft-excellent Avedon Carol has a good post tying together Girls Gone Wild, predatory student loan practices, and Justice Kennedy's recent decision on late-term abortions, that's worth reading.

Like many other conservatives, Mickey Kaus has made a bugbear out of teachers' unions, without providing much in the way of support for why he feels breaking the union will bring about a paradise on earth for those concerned about education. Matthew Yglesias calls his bluff, and Kaus, rather than putting up, instead refers people to a blog called Eduwonk, which from my brief review seems to blame much of the woes of our educational system on the quality of teachers, but while critical of the unions, doesn't seem to provide much in the way of evidence that the union representing teachers is responsible for the quality shortfall or any other defects in our educational system.

I probably have more close friends who are public school teachers than I have lawyer pals, so what I write is clearly anecdotal, but from what I have seen, they work 24-7 at their jobs. There may have been a time when teachers everywhere earned poverty-level incomes, and the only people who could possible want the jobs were either affluent zealots who felt they had a calling or those who weren't bright enough to get into graduate school, but that isn't really true anymore, in large part thanks to the economic gains the unions have helped teachers make. Insofar as I've seen no evidence that the educational system is better in states where there are no collective bargaining entities negotiating teacher pay and working conditions, I fail to see how "busting" the unions will solve all of the problems.

Moreover, it would seem that the public is somewhat disinclined to blame the teachers for the perceived failings of the educational system. The favorite conservative policy, school vouchers, has been poorly received whenever it's appeared on the ballot, even though there's always some deep pocket ready to finance any initiative that would hurt teachers' unions. It's hard to see how vouchers constitute a "solution," in any event, since the public will inevitably demand that the tax dollars going to private schools be supervised, most likely by the same bureaucrats who run the public schools (it also raises the obvious question that if private or parochial schools are doing so well, why do they need vouchers in the first place?).

This seems to be an old argument, anyway. Was there ever such an Edenic Age when the public didn't think it had a problem with the educational system? You can boil down whatever gripes you might have with public schools, and toss up whatever solutions you might think are workable, and in the end, the only really important factor is whether a student is motivated to learn. That requires good teaching, to be sure, but infinitely more are the values that are stressed at home. A child who is raised to believe that a good education is important and is valued by his parent(s) will be more likely to succeed in school, no matter how rotten his teachers are and no matter how much power the unions have.

Who said Free Trade doesn't benefit everyone:

This article is a few years old, but I thought it worth sharing: it's the story of William Zantzinger, one of the subjects of this song:

The Joys of Netflix: Sinking a presidential campaign is now only a mouseclick away...but lets hope the MSM is more aggressive this time than they were in 2000, when they let this story slip through the cracks.

A good example of why you should never combine drinking with blogging, here. Apparently, the writer believes that the reason the Lakers didn't win the NBA Championship this season is that Kobe is a lazy n*****.

The Netroots, in a nutshell:

The most significant fact of American political life over the last three decades is that there is a conservative movement and there has not been a liberal movement. Liberalism, to be sure, has all the component parts that conservatism has: think tanks, lobbying groups, grassroots activists, and public intellectuals. But those individual components, unlike their counterparts on the conservative side, do not see one another as formal allies and don't consciously act in concert.If you asked a Heritage Foundation fellow or an editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal how his work fits into the movement, he would immediately understand that you meant the conservative movement. If you asked the same question of a Brookings Institute fellow or a New York Times editorial writer, he would have no idea what you were talking about.

The netroots have begun to change all that. Its members are intensely aware of their connection to each other and their place in relation to the Democratic Party. The word "movement" itself--once rare among mainstream liberals--is a regular feature of their discourse. They call themselves "the people-powered movement," or "the progressive movement," or, often, simply "the movement."

--Jon Chait, TNR [May 1, 2007] Chait touches on all the reasons I feel uncomfortable with "the movement," even as I appreciate the gains it has helped progressive politics make in the last few years: the tendency towards group-think and the party line, the vapid sloganeering, the disinclination to discuss (or write about) public policy, and the vilification of those with whom you disagree (and TalkLeft has a good critique of some of Chait's specific points).

Perhaps the most telling observation Chait makes is that the netroots are the mirror image of the propoganda machine that brought the right wing to power (minus, of course, a liberal version of Fox News). We forget at our peril that it isn't simply Republican policies that have damaged America, both internally and in our world standing, but also its destructive philosophy of governing and campaigning. There is nothing to prevent the Democratic Party from becoming as corrupted and discredited as the Republicans unless they repudiate the destructive behavior that has become rewarded by the system in the last twenty years. Instead, the netroots seem more inclined to emulate that behavior.

My nephew, Charles Ruderman, attended his first Dodger game last night, and it seems he had a good time...







Pics compliments of his Uncle Jimmy...the mess on his face can be blamed on the Dodgers, who beat Arizona, 2-1.

Today is the fourth anniversary of the official end to the war in Iraq, the date that America "accomplished" its "mission." Where will you be commemorating Uno de Mayo?

Kevin Drum points out something that has been obvious to me for a few years: kids today are just smarter than I was at the same age. Or, they have earned a heckuva lot more credentials in the academic sphere than I had when I got accepted to Reed College twenty-six years ago(with Berkeley as my "safety school," available when I divorced myself from all Portland ties after my freshman term). I was a B-student at Harvard High, with good-but-not-spectacular SAT's, letters in track and cross country, and special distinction ranking in forensics. My community involvement was minimal, to say the least; other than volunteering on a couple of political campaigns, there wasn't anything worth mentioning.

Today, those credentials would barely get me into a state college, at best. Of course, I would be more motivated to improve my qualifications were I a teen today, but the spectre of incurring close to a half million dollars in student loan debt might have soured my ambitions in that regard. In any event, the closest I could get to Berkeley now is watching the Golden Bears at 14-Below.

Presented, without editorial comment:



Speaking of which, last week we heard the heartbreaking news that Natalie Nelson is engaged. And not to some rich fratboy a-hole, neither, but to SC's starting center last season, who was just picked up in the second round by Carolina. Congrats to the lucky couple, and CRAP !!!