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May 31, 2007
Maybe It's A CD-R?
(I confess that I did buy "The Essential Daryl Hall and John Oates," however. It's a two-disc collection, which is a disc too many. There are a handful of killer tunes on there, though. When they were at the top of their pop game, they were quite good at what they did.)
Posted by Eric at 11:08 PM | Comments (2)
May 27, 2007
Borders And The Lives Of Nations
The thesis of the op/ed -- that the current approach to immigration reflects the fear and anxiety of an aging and collapsing polity rather than the confidence and optimism of a young and healthy one -- echoes an idea in "Are We Rome?", a book I'm currently reading that explores the extent to which the United States may be usefully compared to the Roman Empire, especially in its long dying phase.
Posted by Eric at 10:33 AM | Comments (4)
May 23, 2007
Really.
UPDATE: Ann Bartow responds.
Posted by Eric at 8:52 PM | Comments (8)
What Makes A Person "Too Liberal" To Work for the Justice Department?
I'd love to hear an answer to that question.
Posted by Eric at 8:33 PM
May 18, 2007
... But I Wouldn't Want to Live There.
Posted by Eric at 1:37 PM | Comments (1)
May 17, 2007
"Blow All Ballast Tanks . . . Dive, Dive"
I've caught some flack about my choice in a recent post to use the word "ballast" ironically in describing Dick Cheney's threats to Iran from the deck of the U.S.S. John C. Stennis. Ballast, aside from its nautical usage, is sometimes understood to mean something that lends moral stability.
I noted parenthetically that I intended "ballast" to be understood as "load." I tried to be polite and not say "load of bullshit." I noted in an update that "ballast" also means roughage -- a particularly apt definition for my initial, ironical use because roughage is a great ingredient for bullshit.
Dick Cheney may be on the correct side of many issues. He may have been right that changing the Middle East dynamic is critical to our long term security. He may have been correct that for too long -- starting with Reagan and through Clinton -- the U.S. was too timid in responding to terror attacks, so we needed to make a show of force in the Mid-East.
He may also be a perfectly charming dinner guest.
That said, I have -- after his years as VP -- come to find nothing politically redeeming about Dick Cheney's cavalier attitudes about leveling with the American people, his views on using torture, his disdain for the Bill of Rights, his indifference to America's relationships abroad, and -- most definitely -- his role in running the Office of the President as an enterprise above and beyond the rule of law. [His fingerprints would seem to all over the car in which Gonzales and Card drove to the hospital three years ago to get John Ashcroft to approve the administration's illegal domestic wire-tapping.]
I intended an ironic use of ballast because Dick Cheney lends nothing morally stable to our government or our country. What he said then, and often, is a cow's end-product of chewed and digested roughage.
Posted by shertaugh at 12:32 PM | Comments (4)
May 16, 2007
"You will never see him pointing the finger of blame for failure."
It's so sadly ironic that this line from Cheney's speech may be the most prescient thing he said almost 7 years ago.
I re-read his speech and was overwhelmed by the distance between what Cheney said and what Bush and Cheney have done.
Here are a few quotes:
We can restore the ideals of honesty and honor that must be a part of our national life if our children are to thrive.* * *
George W. Bush will repair what has been damaged. . . . On the first hour of the first day, he will restore decency and integrity to the Oval Office.* * *
He will show us that national leaders can be true to their word and that they can get things done by reaching across the aisle and working with political opponents in good faith and common purpose.* * *
Read the whole speech. It's worth remembering what America was promised in 2000 and what America has received since.
No doubt there are many who still believe that Bush/Cheney is better -- in terms of core economic, political and constitutional values, and their execution -- than a Gore/Lieberman administration would have been. I don't see it. Not because I'm a registered Independent. I don't see it because of the deep wounds they've caused to America around the globe and to our self-image as the "city upon a hill".
Posted by shertaugh at 6:20 PM | Comments (1)
May 15, 2007
I Have An Idea . . .
[Shades of the Life Cereal commercial from the mid-'70s starring Mikey, the kid who'd eat anything: "I have an idea, let's get Ashcroft to sign it; people in the hospital half out of their minds in pain will sign anything."]
The background is here, thanks to Marty Lederman.
But just exactly who in the White House was sitting around with Gonzales and Card before going to the hospital?
Posted by shertaugh at 5:12 PM | Comments (3)
Who Was "DeepThroat" on HospitalGate?
As the stories up on the NYTimes and WaPo websites note, the fact that Gonzales and Card had tried to get Ashcroft to override Comey from his hospital bed had been previously reported last year.
But those stories did not identify the source or sources (at least as I recall and I can't find them on the web at the moment).
Now, from Comey, we know this much. He was there. Ashcroft was there. Card and Gonzales were there. FBI chief Mueller was on his way and there for part of the time. Associate AG Patrick Philbin was there. Assistant AG for the Office of Legal Counsel Jack Goldsmith was there. Former Solicitor General Ted Olson was brought into the fray by Comey after Card demanded a show down.
There may be others.
So who gave this story to the NYTimes and WaPo last year?
Who was their source(s)? And why?
Posted by shertaugh at 4:29 PM | Comments (1)
Trafficking in Justice.
Incidentally, the system has a perverse and debilitating effect on people who move to North Carolina from other states where the speeding laws are enforced more or less as written. When I lived in Wyoming, I got two speeding tickets, both for excessive speed on the open (and I mean really open) highway. I had no defense to either, so I paid them. That's what you do in Wyoming, or at least what you did when I lived there. My insurance rates went up a little, but not a lot, and I was not even in the ballpark of losing my license.
Then I moved to North Carolina. My two speeding tickets moved with me, as it were -- but the consequences in North Carolina were absurd. At first the insurance agent was not even certain I was insurable. Then, once she determined I was, she told me that I'd have to be placed for the first couple of years into the highest-risk category, and pay exorbitant amounts of money for auto insurance.
Of course, if I had lived in North Carolina when I got the speeding tickets, I would never have paid them; I would have played by North Carolina's rules, hired a lawyer, and gotten the tickets dismissed.
Crazy.
Posted by Eric at 9:57 AM | Comments (8)
May 14, 2007
It's About Clavicles.
Talk about me, blog about me, say what you like but talk about me. How frighteningly must I cause my bones to protrude to get you to talk about me? Blog about me, dammit!It's not the clavicle I like so much, but the vortex just above it.
Posted by Eric at 7:29 PM
May 13, 2007
Live. Err. Forget. Repeat.
(From today's NYT review by Walter Isaacson of Cullen Murphy's book "Are We Rome?")
UPDATE, May 14: It turns out that this isn't plagiarism, but it's in the neighborhood. I bought "Are We Rome?" yesterday and started it at bedtime last night. And there on page 13 of the prologue I find this sentence: "The famous Santayana maxim about what happens to those who forget history is drilled into you by the sixth grade, and everyone who learns it is condemned to repeat it."
Surely it can't be kosher to steal the lede of a book review from the book you're reviewing.
Posted by Eric at 11:10 AM | Comments (3)
May 11, 2007
Congenital Liar
Okay. So today Veep Cheney was on an aircraft carrier projecting America's power at Iran again. [It was the USS John C. Stennis -- who's worth about five posts all by himself.]
Reading Cheney's ballast (as in "load") made me long for Safire . . . and another column about someone who's really a congenital liar.
Update: A commenter quotes one of the definitions for ballast from the Oxford English Dictionary as: "3. That which tends to give stability in morals or politics..." Then the commenter asks if I was actually stating the truth. The answer is "no," I was correct in my intentionally ironic use of the word ballast which, while it can mean what the commenter said, also means -- according to Webster's Third International Dictionary -- "roughage," a particularly useful ingredient for making bullshit.
Update: Thank you for the spelling corrections.
Update II: "Ballast." No spell check on this sight.
Posted by shertaugh at 5:43 PM | Comments (7)
May 9, 2007
Reality Is Subjective: Theory Confirmed
I began to approach him from some distance away in order to offer help. As I approached, I noticed a woman also approaching the scene from a slightly different direction. She was a few steps closer to the man and his dog than I, though we were both perhaps 25 feet away.
As we got closer, the dog took the man into the low wall for a third time. The man spoke reproachfully to the dog with a raised voice, and pulled sharply on the dog's leather harness, slightly jerking the dog's head and shoulders.
Now the woman was perhaps 10 feet from them, and I perhaps 15. I was about to shout, "would you like some help, sir?" but the woman spoke first.
"Excuse me!" she shouted. "Are you abusing that dog, sir?"
I stopped dead in my tracks.
"No, I'm not," the blind man said, as he continued to tug on the dog's harness.
"That is animal abuse, what you're doing right there," the woman said.
I was speechless.
"No, it's not, I'm doing what the training says ..." said the man. He continued to try to get the very confused dog pointed toward the gap in the low wall about 10 feet from where they stood.
I turned and walked away as the woman began to threaten something about calling Animal Protection.
I should have stepped in, but I didn't. I was too astonished by the woman's reaction and intensity.
I felt like a subject in an experiment on human perception: two strangers saw a blind man growing angry while being led repeatedly into a wall by his seeing-eye dog. One stranger gave the scene his meaning: "A blind man is in distress and needs help." Another stranger gave the scene her meaning: "A dog is in distress and needs help."
A very odd moment.
Posted by Eric at 3:57 PM | Comments (7)
May 8, 2007
Yes, I Am Still Grading Exams.
Lo and behold, it turns out that
| You Inner Gender is Female |
 You make friends easily, and you enjoy all sorts of conversations. You understand most people you meet - better than they understand themselves. You're totally a woman... or at the very least, your soul is female. |
But -- and this is a very important "but" -- it also turns out that
| You Are 12% Girly |
 And for you, that's probably the ultimate compliment. |
I'm seriously low on the girly scale.
That's a relief.
Still looking for the "How Much of a Lumberjack Are You?" quiz...
Posted by Eric at 4:45 PM | Comments (3)
May 7, 2007
The Risks of Partisan Supreme Court Blogging?
[J]ournalists portray themselves as neutral and strictly governed by professional standards. Meanwhile, bloggers can do anything. But nothing stops a blogger from reporting the work of the courts in a neutral way, following a journalistic approach. And journalists have their biases. Bloggers may provide opinionated commentary, but we may expose the places where the traditional reporters are displaying bias. Isn't it better to have more voices in the mix?On balance, probably yes.
On the other hand, in a world without bloggers, chances would have been much better that the Court's Kelo v. City of New London decision of a couple of years ago would not have been so absurdly (and successfully) mischaracterized.
Posted by Eric at 10:04 PM | Comments (3)
Chocolate Babka!
UPDATE: Success!
Posted by Eric at 10:05 AM | Comments (7)
May 5, 2007
"No matter how small the number may be."
Posted by Eric at 9:59 AM | Comments (1)
May 4, 2007
The Past And Partisan Posturing in North Carolina
Posted by Eric at 4:33 PM | Comments (6)
May 1, 2007
What Was Manischewitz Thinking?
Yesterday, as I was munching, I happened to notice that this box was one of a special set that Manischewitz marketed this year -- a set of "specially marked, limited edition" boxes that featured "Historical American Passover Stories" on the back.
Here's the American historical vignette that this box featured:
CIVIL WAR (1861-1865)Let's just let this settle in for a moment, shall we?Following is a letter written by a Jewish Confederate soldier, Isaac J. Levy of the 46th Virginia infantry, from camp in Adams Run South Carolina, describing to his sister how he and his brother Ezekiel ("Zeke") observed Passover while in the army.
Adams Run April 24, 1864.
Dear Leonora,
No doubt you were much surprised on receiving a letter from me addressed to our dear parents dated on the 21st which was the first day of Passover. We were all under the impression in camp that the first day of the festival was 22nd and if my memory serves me right I think that Ma wrote me that Passover was on the 22nd. Zeke was somewhat astonished on arriving in Charleston on Wednesday afternoon to learn that that was the first Seder night. He purchased Matzot sufficient to last us for the week. The cost is somewhat less than in Richmond, being but $2 a pound. We are observing the festival in a truly orthodox style. On the first day we had a fine vegetable soup. It was made of a bunch of vegetables which Zeke brought from Charleston containing new onions, parsley, carrots, turnips, and a young cauliflower; also a pound and a half of fresh beef, the latter article sells for four dollars per pound in Charleston. Zeke E. did not bring us any meat from home. He brought us some of his own, smoked meat which he is sharing with us; he says that he supposes that Pa forgot to deliver it to him. No news in this section at present. Troops from Florida are passing over the road enroute for Richmond. 'Tis probable that we will remain in this department and were it not for the unhealthy season which is approaching, [we] would be well satisfied to remain here. We received this morning Sarah's letter of the 18th and are truly sorry to hear that her sight is affected and trust that in a few days she will have recovered entirely her perfect sight.Love to all,
Your affectionate brother
Isaac J. Levy
Passover is the celebration of the Jews' delivery from bondage in Egypt.
To mark the occasion, Manischewitz presents -- without any hint of irony -- the story of the Passover Seder that a Southern Jew celebrated while fighting to defend his state's power to maintain chattel slavery.
Shameful.
To be sure, the story of the Jews of the Confederacy and their feelings about slavery and state power is complex. Certainly many Confederate Jews owned no slaves, and many did not support the continuation of slavery (even as they supported their state in its struggle with federal power). Not every Jew felt the need -- as did Rabbi Illowy in Baltimore in January of 1861 -- to argue that Jews had no special religious or historical mission to oppose the enslavement of non-Jews.
If you think hard enough about it, Isaac Levy's letter on the back of the matzoh box might present -- through negative example -- an opportunity for poignant questions around the Seder table about human freedom and our responsibilities to protect it and advocate for it. But somehow I doubt that's what the folks at Manischewitz had in mind.
If they did, you'd think they might at least have printed one of those questions on the box.
Posted by Eric at 3:40 PM | Comments (12)