And the Beat Goes On

Patrick McHenry (R-NC) on the bicycle:



OMG, $1 millllllllion dollars to cyclists. And lord knows there's nothing so injudicious as that in the ideal GOP budget. Not that McHenry's taking a principled stand against earmarks that benefit only his own congressional district or anything shady like that.

HT.

Passing the Torch

And just now, Bonds speaks, the stadium still echoing with the mellifluous and generous message Henry Aaron recorded in honor of the occasion, congratulating Bonds. Congratulating Bonds. You'd think I'd be tarred and feather for making the suggestion. But I love the game of baseball, and I won't be deterred from honoring one of the greatest hitters in the history of the game, in company with Ruth and Aaron and Mays, men whom I lack the arrogance to compare.

I watched the first at bat tonight, catching it (deliberately) between other pursuits. Barry roped a double 400 feet to right center field, centering a good breaking ball perfectly but failing to get under it. Barry's second at bat coincided with my going to bed, and I ran in from the bathroom, toothbrush in hand and a mouth full of foam, to watch him lash a single to right field.

It was clear that he was hitting the ball well, very well -- hitting it like Barry hits it. Adjusting during lengthy at bats in those minute increments that are familiar to those who have watched Barry over the years and know what they're seeing, taking a breajing ball inches out of the strike zone on a 2-2 count, fighting balls off that weren't quite in the right location.

And then instead of reading for five or ten minutes and lying down, as I usually would, I decided to mute the television, read a little longer, and see how quick the Giants' line-up came back around. It was fast enough for me to linger, reading a good novel with my glasses on, looking up every so often to check on things.

I have tickets to see the Giants when they visit PNC Park on Monday, and as Barry slumped and time passed I allowed myself a sliver of hope that he would come to Pittsburgh still at or below 755. But when he tied the record over the weekend, I knew it wouldn't last until the thirteenth. Tonight as Barry came up for the third time, I found myself impatient, knowing in my heart that he would hit 756 this week in San Francisco, as it should be, and preferring it to happen when I could watch live.

And so as the count went to 2-0, then to 2-1 (looking) 2-2 (swinging) and 3-2, Barry then fouling off one, and another, I watched his battle, his focus, and I didn't doubt for a second that he would swing for it with two strikes, as he always does, missing far too rarely for the force and majesty of his swing. His sweet swing.

And he hit it, sky high into cavernous right center field, and what I imagine was an ugly scrum in the stands -- as much at least hinted in the video replay -- ensued.

Perhaps portions of Barry's career have been improperly enhanced by steroids, Human Growth Hormone, or amphetamines. History increasingly teaches us that athletes will do anything to exceed their peers, to reach what they imagine is their peak potential, sacrificing their own safety and their integrity, for the ephemeral incidents of dominance, or simply to push themselves over the hump, to make themselves competitive in a crowd of athletes with greater natural gifts. Barry's case is hardly unusual to the sport, or the person. That we do not know the breadth of the problem, that we may never know, does not entitle us to burden one man with the sins of an entire sports-media complex -- and yes, I impeach the whole establishment, for reasons that may or may not be self-evident, but which in any event are too lengthy to consider now.

If it was true of him, it was true of the pitchers whom he always dominated throughout his career, and if true of them than true as well of the outfielders who chased his flyballs, the infielders who reached balls that might otherwise have slipped under their gloves.

In the past weekend, Alex Rodriquez hit his 500th homerun and Tom Glavine pitched his way to his 300th victory. Earlier this season, Frank Thomas hit his 500th homerun, and that threshold, once itself rather rarefied, came closer to reach, as it will continue to do as the big hitters of the past twenty years, steroid-fueled perhaps; more effectively physically conditioned and video- and computer-aided no doubt; beneficiaries of modern medicine and nutrition, diluted pitching talent, shrunken modern ballparks, maple bats, certainly -- as this class of hitters and those who follow retire.

And what other records coincide with the steroid era? Sosa's and McGwire's three-year epic battle for the homerun title, of course; but so does Ripken's 2157th consecutive game played, several perfect games and myriad no hitters, Clemens' dominant rush past 300 victories, Kerry Wood's twenty strikeouts on a hot day in Chicago -- the Boston Red Sox winning the championship that had eluded them for decades upon decades. What of these will remain, what feats can we recognize justly, if we refuse to honor Barry Bonds' achievement?

None, an entire era ripped from the history books baseball adores like no other sport even begins to emulate, an entire batch of American legends, none more venerated than the sluggers, the men who bat fourth in the order, who can change the complexion of a game, of a season, with one perfect swing.

In order to reach 755 homeruns in a 20-year career, one must average 37.75 home runs per season. Taking into account physical and mental development, injury, external conditions like the ballpark one calls home, the hitters who line up behind you, distracting personal problems, this is an astonishing thought, especially in light of the fact that when I was young and learning to love this game, when Barry was just entering the game to much fanfare in My Adopted Fair City Pittsburgh, gangly and fast and more of a scrapper than a slugger, 40 homeruns was a plateau that no one reached for entire seasons on end, a very different time than the pumped up, power-focused era that has coincided with my majority.

Whatever happened happened; and with or without chemical assistance, Barry would have finished his career honored among the same handful of legendary hitters to whom he is compared now, even mired in suspicion and invective. And isn't it telling that only a few of the loudest and least informed naysayers seriously maintain that he ever was not destined to be one of the great hitters, or deny that this event, this night, was something that fits a pattern of mastery established long before anyone has suggested any impropriety on Bonds' part. Whatever Bonds has chosen to do, he's done.

At home plate, Barry's son, Nikolai, stood alone, waiting for his father, his complicated, standoffish, embattled father, professional teammates at a discrete distance ringing the dirt at home plate. The real celebration, Barry's embrace of his son, his elevated hands and his upturned face, having passed in a few seconds, the for-the-cameras festivities ensued. The sound of fireworks past center field, over McCovey Cove, visible eventually on camera, Willie Mays on the field (whom Bonds gestured toward repeatedly, honoring his Godfather and legendary predecessor, perhaps his better), Aaron on the Jumbotron making the only appearance he was willing to make, but doing so with dignity and grace.

And then one of the announcers put Barry Bond's thoughts, pensive on the bench in the wake of the crowd's loving display, to words: "It's over." Until the next time, when I'll be watching if I'm able.

Thanks, Barry, for the memory.

To Market

I am obsessed with my hometown, Montclair, New Jersey, bedroom community for the outrageous wealth newly generated in New York City in the past decade, land of tiny fifties ranches torn down or expanded to more than double their original size, Mercedes and Volvos and Jags (oh my!), no scrap of land undeveloped as the opportunistic (and well-financed) seek to insert interstitial McMansions among the ranches and tudor revivals, no curb uncobbled, no boutique too moderately priced, no sidewalk un-tabled, no BoBo unbeautiful.

When I'm back -- and not infrequently -- whether by bike or by car, I find myself turning spirals around the perimeter of the town, slowly spiraling inward to any of its pretentious shopping centers, eyeing the impeccably dressed scouting the antique stores and design houses on every major corner who in turn eye their quarry -- a magnificent shaker end table, perhaps, or a sleek nickel and glass coffee table like a relic of a Kubrickian future.

The pavement is unfriendly to bikes; notwithstanding nearly universal five-digit property tax burdens, the Powers That Be extend the life of the road surface by sealing it as it ages in tar and gravel, which only smooths over time, and never completely. Moreover it stains shoes and rocker panels, spotting sumptuous floormats in the heat of summer. Nothing one would notice from the supple-suspended air-conditioned splendor of a leased luxury car, windows closed and air conditioning whispering almost inaudibly, radio turned to an investment show on talk radio, blue tooth surgically fused to one's ear beeping from time to time its message of validation.

Does anyone own anything here? Is it all ARMs and leases, a cover story to deflect attention from impending financial ruin staved off by creative borrowing and endless jumps from one overcompensated job to the next, paper wealth or its mere prospect. Financial management and millions of the allegedly wealthy in orbit around the black whole of their own insolvency, falling eternally in perfect equilibrium until finally their orbits deteriorate, one by one, and they disappear into the darkness.

Or maybe they really have this much money, all of them, and I describe my own equally perilous but so much more modest solar system of tiered debt. Perhaps in projecting my own situation onto them, a couple of orders of magnitude greater, I reveal my own desire to believe I am not irresponsible; perhaps I need the wealthy to be overextended and desperate to compensate for my own overextension and occasional desperation.

I am an attorney with impeccable credentials; consequently, my earning potential is effectively limited only by my prerogatives. This is not a pity party. Not even close.

But there is a decadence to all of this, my native surround. And I have trouble determining whether my wonderment at this never-entirely-familiar fact is a product of envy or disgust. I cannot discern -- though I try mightily -- whether I am second-guessing my decision not to return here to make my way in the metroplex of my youth or gloating over my own perspicacity and leaving this place before entering an unsustainable orbit. In Pittsburgh, my finances will right themselves as soon as I make that a priority; in New York, however, I'd be forced to accept, as have my friends and family, a far more precarious existence. At some point it's not about the money, a lot or a little, that passes through one's checking account each month; it's where it goes that matters. So many of the expenses, necessary and merely recommended, that happen here are black holes -- paying rent into one's forties or for a lifetime, leasing what one cannot afford to buy in other areas, the psychic expense of working under the threat of a dozen qualified people looking for your job and just waiting for you, or someone like you, to slip up this much.

And all of this, too, may be a fiction contrived to assuage my ambivalence. Who's to say?

Today I went to my favorite used bookstore south of the Hudson River Valley, a small place in Montclair Center (there really are three centers to this town, as though it were too overlapping ellipses, but only one goes by that name), and negotiated the discounted purchase of a first-edition of Richard Powers' The Gold Bug Variations. I may not read it for a while -- such painfully elegant writing acts as an obstacle to my own -- but at the discounted price it was a bargain, a fine hardcover first from 1991 in near-fair condition. Then I headed to Watchung Plaza, another town center (and this one more accurately in the middle of things), and ordered a late breakfast from a tin-ceilinged bistro run by Spaniards in an old Montclair store front, their patois behind the display case unnerving as their unlikely trade in hypertrophic bagels. I ate inside, and then took my book, Coupland's Hey Nostradamus, across the street to a small park, where I found a bench in the shade to finish my iced coffee.

On the way home, heading down Bellevue Avenue (just downhill from the third and most northerly of the shopping areas), I spotted two girls, perhaps 14, one tall and one short, both pretty and innocent, walking a beagle like a credulous little brother between them. As I drew even with them, slowing for the red light at Grove Street, they turned to the man driving the car in front of mine and smiled and waved familiarly, with the entirely undirected ebullience of young women in pairs, and I detected in the slow roll of the driver's head no more familiarity with them than I had.

The light turned, the car in front of me passed through the intersection, and I eased forward unhurried to make my left turn, waiting for the girls to negotiate the crosswalk. The other driver gone, they turned as they walked to the car waiting to make the left that mirrored my own and waved and smiled with the same mock familiarity, the same unrequited jubilation, and after a moment they turned their attention my way and continued the ritual as I waited for their passage to open a car-width corridor. I was oddly affected by their unlikely bonhomie -- good neighbors in the land of tall fences.

Your Tax Dollars at Work -- The White House Propaganda Machine

First, I just want to say this is absolutely positively my last overtly political post until I come up with something creative to write. Lest I set a bad habit, I need to impose some discipline.

In general, the story of the White House paying off supposedly independent commentators to shill for White House pet projects is getting sort of old. Frank Rich, however, points to why the story is still important, still very much alive, and how White House Press Gaggle Member and would-be gay prostitute "Jeff Gannon," about whom I've written before, is tied to the Armstrong Williams ($240K to shill for NCLB) and the others.

The money that paid for both the Ryan-Garcia news packages and the Armstrong Williams contract was siphoned through the same huge public relations firm, Ketchum Communications, which itself filtered the funds through subcontractors. A new report by Congressional Democrats finds that Ketchum has received $97 million of the administration's total $250 million PR kitty, of which the Williams and Ryan-Garcia scams would account for only a fraction. We have yet to learn precisely where the rest of it ended up.

I remind everyone that, in broad strokes, it is illegal to use federal funds to generate propaganda supporting government policies. And this administration has been reprimanded time and again for running afoul of the spirit, if not the leter, of the law (it has done both).

Remember that your tax dollars have been used to pay for one-sided commentary in support of the policies of a president who claims his win, by just a few percentage points, constitutes a true mandate. What if he hadn't had the federal treasury at his fingertips and had to find real newspeople to speak in favor of his most misguided policies? Think that might have erased his margin of victory? I certainly wonder.

And of course, the more incendiary question: which closeted White House staffer set up "Gannon," of all people, to be the Press Gaggle toady?

UPDATE: A propos my last question, 2PoliticalJunkies chimes in with "What Did The Hooker Know And When Did He Know It?," referencing DailyKos's discussion of evidence suggesting "Gannon" knew about, and leaked, "Shock and Awe" hours before it began. (I know, I know, but it's just an 'update.' I'm a lawyer. It's a loophole the size of a Ford Expedition.)

Mark Hyman, "Extremist Mole?"

Thanks to the fact that the Pittsburgh FOX affiliate is owned by the evil evil evil evil evil Sinclair Broadcasting (if there's nothing about Sinclair in Revelations, there damned well ought to be), we get "forcefed" Mark Hyman's "The Point" every now and again, quite possibly the most fatuous right-wing tripe this side of Ann Coulter.

For those who never made the connection, or don't remember, Hyman's more than a bloviating moron with a bully pulpit in virtue of some sad strain of popularity. Truth is, he might even be too stupid for FOX. But since he's a VP of some sort, my guess is he pretty much appointed himself pundit (not only are his comments inane, but he's roughly as comfortable and eloquent in front of a camera as shy high school student doing a poorly thought-out historical reenactment on a camcorder for extra credit), and anybody with the temerity to question him better update her resume.

Anyway, ever since Hyman became the de facto apologist for Sinclair when Sinclair was, er, encouraging its affiliates to run the anti-Kerry documentary about a month before Election Day, and I realized that jackass trying to explain rampant partisanship on All Things Considered was the same jackass doing a terrible impression of Rush Limbaugh on the FOX evening news every so often, I sort of perked up my ears to all things Hyman. So to speak.

So anyway, today, Dave Neiwert -- probably my favorite investigative blogger of them all (see especially the series "The Rise of Pseudo-Fascism" (a 7-part series that starts here)) for his daring, insight, and intellectual rigor -- corrects in great detail one of Hyman's typical misrepresentations of the left, of the right, and pretty much anything that he talks about.

So, just so there's no confusion: Christian Identity has nothing to do with mainstream Christianity. It is an extremist racial belief system that adopts the guise of Christianity but has practices and beliefs that are not part of any traditional mainstream church. Most of their beliefs, in fact, constitute heresies for many faiths.

I'm hoping this was just a really dumb mistake. Because if it wasn't, and Hyman wanted us to think that Identity was just another kind of Christianity, well ... that's a problem.

Hyman is a little, little man. And Neiwert rightly exposes him to the basic truth. The only difference between Neiwert's view and mine, is that when it comes to petty blowhards like Hyman, I assume the worst. The benefit of my doubt is reserved for those people who at least pretend to think before they speak.

And that, folks, is The Point.

UPDATE: For more, see this very informative site.

Bob Novak and the Get Out of Jail Free Card?

There continues to be an awful lot of discussion of why, if the Times Judith Miller, who never wrote about Valerie Plame's identity, and Time's Matthew Cooper, who didn't break the story, both face 18 months in prison, Bob Novak, who broke the whole story has never been reported even to have appeared within a mile of the Plame leak grand jury.

The PG's Tony Norman expresses some of the confusion many of us feel, and expresses well the exasperation of most everyone who has followed this story, especially those of us with serious First Amendment concerns about the pending imprisonment of Miller and Cooper to begin with.

Congressional investigations were threatened and a grand jury convened. In the perverse logic of the nation's capital, subpoenas were sent to reporters who merely sat on the information Novak published. While Miller and Cooper face serious jail time for upholding the principle of source confidentiality, Novak continues perfecting his million-dollar scowl on "Crossfire."

It's worth emphasizing that Novak may well have been called to testify, may have appeared, and may have "sung like a canary," in the words of Slate "Explainer" Daniel Engber. As Engber does a good job explaining, grand juries historically have been confidential, and their secrets are often better protected than other political secrets. This is important, and there's nothing wrong with it.

But as far as I'm concerned, where Miller and Cooper go so should go Novak, unless he has, indeed, disclosed the name of the administration official who leaked the story, in which case perhaps Novak deserves a deal provided the official is removed from his office and given the same prison term I would have gotten if I'd disclosed the identity of a clandestine operative overseas in violation of federal law.

Class Action -- Reform or Emasculation

As some of you surely have noted, I've done an abysmal job of steering this blog away from the politics that threaten to swamp it in due proportion to the degree to which politics threatens to swamp the blog's author. The AP provides an adequate baseline discussion of what the House did today, in decisively approving pending legislation purporting to streamline and centralize the class action process in the federal courts.

The gist of the legislation is that class action lawsuits that used to be subject to the jurisdiction of courts in virtually any state in which an injured party resides, an injury occurs, or a corporate defendant is located, now will have to be brought in already overwhelmed federal courts. Aside from clogging up the system, this will also have the effect of diminishing the frequency and volume of class action rewards, as federal courts have proven far less sympathetic than many state courts to sweeping multi-state litigation.

Needless to say, not everyone's happy, and some people are seeing through the anti-class action attorney rhetoric, which is the same red herring here that it is in most contexts. Speaking of which, this account of what's in store:

"Today we will attempt to pre-empt state class action," said Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich. "Next month we will take up a bankruptcy bill that massively tilts the playing field in favor of credit card companies and against ordinary consumers and workers alike. On deck are equally one-sided medical malpractice bills and asbestos bills that both cap damages and eliminate liability to protect some of the most egregious wrongdoing in America."

Now I could do this at much greater length, could provide any number of sources of discussion on this point, but I don't want to belabor what I see as a couple of simple points I can just gloss over at a common-sense level, each corresponding to a stated rationale for this supposedly ground-breaking reform (italicized descriptions of rationales taken from the same AP article, though they are surely available in any complete article).

1. The president has described class-action suits as often frivolous . . .

Really? How often? Which kinds? And what, precisely, do we consider to be frivolous? How easily we forget Ralph Nader's industry-shaking exposure of the Ford Pinto scandal. How easily we forget the atrocious case highlighted in A Civil Action (which, those familiar with the story will recall, ended with a relatively paltry award). If regulation is insufficient, and the one strong tool consumers have is vitiated or effectively eliminated, how can the people keep corporations in line?

2. [B]usinesses complain that state judges and juries have been too generous to plaintiffs.

Which is to say, if I'm not mistaken, that businesses don't like the jury system. So, when it comes to things like political speech, businesses want to be treated like individuals, but when it comes to being held culpable for misconduct, juries are, what, unqualified? Isn't that the task of corporate defense lawyers -- to make sure juries understand why this egregious suit is being brought against their blameless corporation in violation of all that is good and decent in the world. Oh, wait, what? Your army of $300/hour attorneys can't convince 12 perfectly honorable citizens in Mississippi of that fact? Could that be because it isn't true? Just maybe? Here's my feeling: if a jury can hold a criminal defendant's life in its hands, then I think it can handle doling out an award for a class of people collectively injured by knowing corporate misconduct. Call me crazy . . .

3. Bush: "This bill is an important step forward in our efforts to reform the litigation system and to continue creating jobs and growing our economy . . ."

Reforming the litigation system? In the literal re-forming sense, sure: this is profession-changing stuff. Creating jobs? What, because corporations are going to keep so much more of their money that they'll shower it on new employees? That they'll break ground in entirely new industries? Why has this recovery been mostly jobless? Because corporations are reaping the benefits of enhanced productivity, and because when they don't have to, they choose not to hire more people. Growing our economy? This is zero sum stuff. Either businesses spend that money or lawyers and consumers do. Few corporations are going out of business due to this stuff. Costs may be passed on to consumers, but a few million dollars here and there to attorneys from multi-billion dollar corporations is not breaking the bank. And to the extent serious costs are passed on, it's where corporations have had to change the way they did business. Like, for example, shielding gas tanks to prevent explosions that kill these same consumers. Keeping corporations honest in some industries quite literally saves lives. How's that for the economy?

4. Bush, the GOP and the business community [. . .]have criticized what they see as a litigation crisis that enables lawyers to reap huge profits while businesses and consumers are stuck with the bill.

It stands to reason that our supposedly free-market MBA president would want to redistribute wealth from attorneys to MBA's, doesn't it? Seriously, what they're referring to here is the concern that class action lawyers' clients "get only small sums or coupons giving them discounts for products of the company they just sued," while the attorneys rake in multi-million dollar fees. Indeed, this is often the case.

Many of us have received such coupons over the years, and they are pretty trivial on an individual level. But return to my earlier point regarding corporate culpability. Again the analogy: to an American citizen who lives and breathes, his freedom is his most prized possession. When he commits a crime against an individual or the community, he loses that freedom. Unless he's a corporate executive. Meanwhile, to a corporation qua entity, its bottom line is its most prized possession. All hail the almighty shareholder, right? Well then doesn't it make sense that it is by dipping into its coffers when it steps out of line that we most effectively punish a corporation? Of course. Practically speaking, it's the only way.

That's what class action lawsuits are and have always been about. So yeah, it's relatively unimportant to me that a few years back I received as compensation for years of billing misconduct a coupon good for about $20 of Verizon-sold hardware. But if everyone who received one of those coupons redeemed it, what do you suppose that would cost Verizon? Millions, of course. And yes, the attorneys in that case surely reaped millions. They also probably worked for years and years on that case, like most others. And last I checked, a lawyer's time is pretty expensive. Moreover, if there isn't that financial incentive, lawyers won't take these cases. And if they don't take these cases, consumers have to rely on regulatory bodies to protect them, which these days is pretty cold comfort.

I don't participate in opt-in class actions because I care about what I might get. Rather, I opt in because in so doing, the corporate defendant is forced to justify its conduct. If it has a fair case, and good attorneys, it will convince the jury. And if it doesn't, then it pays. Lawyers make some money, I make virtually nothing, but of crucial importance is the price paid by the corporation. That's what's important. And I guarantee that with a sufficient payout, corporations will wake up and take notice, and change conduct to avoid future liability. And such changes almost invariably favor consumers in the long run.

Lawyers are not the problem here. Neither are juries. It's just another example of corporations doing what they must -- aiming to milk the market for every penny it can get. Corporate political donations to politicians and fees paid to lobbying firms are loss leaders -- and today they have been handsomely rewarded, to the detriment of consumers, who will suffer far more than the lawyers will under the yoke of this corporate-friendly legislation.

Winter Is Cancelled; Come Back Next Year

No one can feing surprise that the brinksmanship in which the NHL owners and players engaged resulted, finally, in the the cancellation of the entire 2004-05 NHL season. But that doesn't make it any less depressing for those of us who actually help to put money in the coffers of NHL owners.

The above-linked article doesn't reflect comments made by an NHL spokesman and broadcast on NPR last night, which suggested an irrational truculence. The Times article quotes the final decisive discrepancy as being about $6.5M per team. That is, the players had accepted a salary cap, one not linked to revenue as the owners originally proposed, and the owners came around as well. But the final cap offer by the union was $49M per team, while the owners refused to go above $42.5M per team. On NPR last evening, a representative of the owners observed that the $6.5M difference per team amounted to a nearly $200M difference between the sides when multiplied across 30 teams.

That math is all fine and good, and I'll even grant that such a cap would tend to draw even those teams with the lowest payrolls up to meet it. This would, of course, have the salutary effect of creating parity, except perhaps for the Rangers, who haven't been able to win lately spending twice the cap on players' salaries. And parity might improve turnout and thus revenue. But my biggest problem was with the spokesman's observation that the $200M gap approached the amount of money allegedly lost by owners in the past couple of NHL seasons. What makes no sense about this is that a $200M gap between the sides could have occurred after any degree of compromising, and any consequent lowering of the bar. If, instead of $42.5M vs. $49M, the sides had bound up over $22.5M and $29M, the gap between the sides still would have been nearly $200M, which still would have resembled the alleged losses of the owners en masse, but of course the owners would have gained $20M per team in concessions in moving down to that level.

I'm no accountant, and there are many numbers in play here of which I know nothing. But comparing the $200M gap between the sides to an utterly irrelevant number and then suggesting that bogus analogy was a decisive factor in canceling a major league sport's entire season over a labor dispute for the first time ever has no explanatory power whatsoever, and can't possibly in any way satisfy the fans that the parties involved in these failed negotiations did everything they could do to reach a compromise and let the players play.

And we have nothing to do but be jealous of the fans of the European teams for which more than half of NHL players are competing this season. It's a shame. It really is.

Text, Subtext, and Pretext

Sorry, this post isn't going to be nearly as sophisticated (or pretentious) as that title implies. But sometimes words just go together. Especially when they have the same roots. Natch.

Anyway, is it possible that the Bush Administration can find another way to piss on the Geneva Convention? Funny you should ask. According to this Los Angeles Times story, the answer is yes, in connection with the Bush administration's effort to bar United States military personnel who were captured and tortured during Desert Storm from collecting damages from Iraq for their injuries.

What's interesting about the story is what's left out -- a motive distinct from the administration's cover story (that Iraq needs whatever money it has). I would submit that there's another reason, related to the administration's flat refusal to affiliate the United States with any international criminal court. Because even if, as a matter of policy, we don't consider turnabout to be fair play, it can still provide a compelling public narrative. We didn't like the idea of an international criminal court, because by any rational international law that had any teeth whatsoever, there would be more than a small probability that American officers and perhaps even policy makers would ultimately be named as defendants. Imagine Cheney or Kissinger at the defense table. That's what they imagined, too, and that's why we wanted no part with it.

To that same end, what do you think happens once a precedent is set that wrongfully tortured individuals (if there is any other kind), combatants even, can seek monetary relief in an appropriate jurisdiction. Hel-lo McFly, anybody in there? Yeah, exactly. That's what we're really afraid of.

But even absent the subtext I suggest is at work here, just look at the face of it: the Bush administration arguing that it needn't abide yet another aspect of the Geneva Convention, and saying, in no uncertain terms, tortured American soldiers are entitled to nothing, except perhaps the thanks of a grateful nation. Just when you think it can get no more surreal . . . .

(Hat tip, tonypierce.)

UPDATE: And in keeping with the subject of obscene and perverse conduct, it's about to get a whooooooole lot more expensive to lose a couple of buttons at the wrong time.

Explosion in Iran

So sad that as much as I love my country, I don't trust my country. Or rather, I don't trust my government just now. But then again, maybe this was Poland -- don't forget Poland!

UPDATE: To be clear, it now appears to have been nothing. I'm not backing away from the above; I still blame my government for pushing me to where I assume the absolute worst. And now, we return you to your regularly scheduled broadcast.

UPDATE 2: Evidently, I'm not the only one. On the unrelated topic of the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, Josh Marshall, who usually sources his assertions meticulously, confesses a simple gut-level doubt about the administration's assertions regarding the event. Quoth he:

[I]t is more than a little unfortunate that I at least find it hard to take at face value anything this administration says about the probable perpetrators. And again, I say that not with any particular knowledge of this situation, but simply on the basis of the track record and the region of the world

"The Inner Ring" Considered

My first visit to Obsidian Wings in a little while was handsomely rewarded by Sebastian Holsclaw's wonderful posting of a long speech given by C.S. Lewis on, it would seem, some coming-of-age-ish occasion. As Holsclaw justly notes, Lewis's speech constitutes an incisive and thought-provoking rumination on the nature of peer pressure and on the pervasive role it plays in virtually all societies and at all phases of one's life. It's riveting stuff. Teaser:

I said I was going to give advice, and advice should deal with the future, not the past. I have hinted at the past only to awake you to what I believe to be the real nature of human life. I don't believe that the economic motive and the erotic motive account for everything that goes on in what we moralists call the World. Even if you add Ambition I think the picture is still incomplete. The lust for the esoteric, the longing to be inside, take many forms which are not easily recognizable as Ambition. We hope, no doubt, for tangible profits from every Inner Ring we penetrate: power, money, liberty to break rules, avoidance of routine duties, evasion of discipline. But all these would not satisfy us if we did not get in addition the delicious sense of secret intimacy. It is no doubt a great convenience to know that we need fear no official reprimands from our official senior because he is old Percy, a fellow-member of our ring. But we don't value the intimacy only for the sake of convenience; quite equally we value the convenience as a proof of the intimacy.

Holsclaw concludes: "This speech has done me more good than I can easily outline." And I'd have to agree: it is that good, and you should read it too.

Retraining?

CNN reports:

NEWARK, New Jersey (AP) -- A security screener at Newark Liberty International Airport failed to spot a butcher knife in a passenger's pocketbook and was removed from the post for retraining, officials said.

Two questions:

1. When did they start calling the airport voted most likely to be the closest to Moon's childhood home Newark Liberty?

2. Am I the only one who finds the "removed . . . for retraining" language a bit Orwellian?

When Is a Plan Not a Plan?

Evidently, when it's part of the residue of a Democrat administration. This Times article pretty well confirms as a fib Condoleeza Rice's claim in a March 2004 Washington Post Op-Ed piece that "No Al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration."

Nice of the Times, by the bye, to remind its readers of Condi's claim in graf 16 of the article, deep in the page 12 continuation. For that matter, nice of the Times to make this article a small headline below the fold on "Take Out the Trash" Saturday.

Further refuting her claim is the Times characterization of the January 2001 Richard Clarke memo in question:

The 13-page proposal presented to Dr. Rice by her top counterterrorism adviser, Richard A. Clarke, laid out ways to step up the fight against Al Qaeda, focusing on Osama bin Laden's headquarters in Afghanistan. The ideas included giving "massive support" to anti-Taliban groups "to keep Islamic extremist fighters tied down;" destroying terrorist training camps "while classes are in session" and then sending in teams to gather intelligence on terrorist cells; deploying armed drone aircraft against known terrorists; more aggressively tracking Qaeda money; and accelerating the F.B.I.'s translation and analysis of material from surveillance of suspected terrorists in American cities.

If this isn't an "al Qaeda plan," what is? Please bear in mind that at 13 pages this plan was about eight pages longer than the President has signaled he is willing to read.

Science v. Religion, cont'd

This is a lively discussion, so I'd like to keep it on the front page. Joe Kearns, in response to my initial post on this topic, writes in part:

To teach science as if it were Truth is a violation of the spirit of science, which is always aware of its unanswered questions. The teaching of the "time plus chance" paradigm of Darwinism as "received fact" leads the young non-scientist to believe what ain't so...that "scientists believe" this answers all the origin questions. They do not. There is a real problem with the paradigm, and that problem raises a real question whether we live in a "closed system" (the a-theistic view) or an "open system" (the someone/something else is out there messin with us view.) You might find it interesting to note that Francis Crick, along with several other atheistic scientists, believe in "panspermia", the idea that life evolved outside our planet and was planted here, precisely because of problems with the paradigm like those pointed out by Behe. To say with the authority of a teacher or a textbook, "science has found no need for a creator in its explanations of the world" is a religious statement, and simply untrue to boot.

Can we really interpret the 1st Amendment to disallow the discussion whether a creator exists? Especially when our scientists are haveing precisely that debate?

First, I want to reemphasize that while in the abstract, I am hard-pressed to mount a compelling argument for denying children in public school access to this debate, if not for purposes of hinting at some metaphysical truth than perhaps as an object lesson in the nature of scientific inquiry, I am still troubled by the evidence I see of what actually happens when such an endeavor comes to be. I also should acknowledge my limitations in this discussion, insofar as my knowledge of what various school systems have been doing is restricted to what I read in newspapers and the blogosphere. I wouldn't bet my whole stack of chips on either of their myriad recommendations. Furthermore, I have to object gently to Kearns' implicitly instrumentalist approach to the First Amendment. I have worked for a number of judges, at the state and federal level. I submit that most judges, notwithstanding their leanings, would express grave concern about couching the interpretation of the Bill of Rights strictly in terms of what result a given interpretation may or may not have, the Right's empirically incoherent alarums about an "activist judiciary" notwithstanding. None of which means there isn't a legitimate question there; it's merely an objection to loose terminology in a tight area of law: to frame it circularly and yet I think accurately, we will interpret the First Amendment precisely as we should, based not on whether the Framers' short-sightedness engendered an amendment ill-equipped to accommodate the teleological debates of future centuries, but on what the amendment says (about the discovery of which, debate will ever rage, but should never reduce to "because this interpretation would cause this, it simply must be the wrong interpretation," such normative judgments having only a modest role in American jurisprudence), mindful that if it proves problematic enough it can be changed through the democratic process (although I wouldn't hold my breath until that happens). Of course, this hardly means that the First Amendment's implications for public education are clear or settled; neither is true, as evidenced by the ongoing debate.

Kearns and I agree that problems with, or limitations of Darwinian theory ought to be openly acknowledged. Legitimate alternatives warrant exploration. I feel the same way about the teaching of history. That I may have arrived at certain conclusions about the reasons for this or that event, or the intrinsic worth of this or that decision and outcome, I wouldn't deny our children access to as much historical data as possible so that they might form their own opinions. This is the nature of critical inquiry, and it ought to be the essence of our children's education. Sadly, it is not; the ability to think critically is being sundered to various ideogically loaded sacred cows and market imperatives. This bodes poorly for all sides of the debate: neither will Darwin nor ID be viewed with the sort of jaundiced skepticism that I think all claims to Fundamental Truth ought to be.

It's misleading, however, to claim that scientists simply do not believe Darwin works as a theory -- though I will readily grant that an assertion that a given theoretical framework obviates the explanatory need for a designer qua deity is, in some limited sense, a religous claim and ought to be evaluated on the same terms as any other religious claims. Natural selection as a complete theory retains its accomplished, articulate bevy of advocates. The late Stephen Gould comes to mind. That Hawking continues to struggle against the idea of a theological explanation does not discredit him per se -- most would agree he is among the most brilliant scientists the world has known. It's unfair to ascribe to him a truculence, as though even were his explorations to lead him ineluctably to a deistic explanation he would reject it as part of some conspiracy-of-one to mislead the world. Furthermore, we find more than just ID or Frick's "panspermia" proffered up as theoretical constructs to help us get from there to here. Robert Wright's Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, while focusing on the past few tens of thousands of years of human development, posits various constructs for understanding a sort of directedness to evolution that requires no designer or creator. Granted, Wright does not attempt to account for the early leaps of complexity that Behe identifies as the biggest problems for NS, but it still might inform the debate. Kurzweil's work on machine intelligence and perhaps spirituality (his word) also might bear on the topic. And I'm confident that there are others.

The problem -- and the source of my reflexive concern vis-a-vis education -- is that it's wrongheaded to treat NS and ID (taking two dominant examples and letting them stand in for the larger spectrum of accounts) as mutually inconsistent. As I understand Behe's ID, it wouldn't supplant NS. Rather, it takes the fossil record and the evidence of widespread and sweeping natural adaptation as granted. The principle issue is that there is a gap in the NS account, and ID offers an explanation at least as credible as any other. As I began to note earlier, I don't thnk this is how the situation is seen among those teachers, administrators, and parents who are most outspoken in their determination to see ID in the classroom. For those NS-is-just-a-theory types, ID does or ought to supplant Darwin's account as the superior account -- not for its ability to address small problems in an exhaustively documented, verified, and predictive theory but for its suggestion of something wholly outside that theory. That's not Behe's ID, and it's not one that I think is defensible in public education.

The idea of truth is, of course, problematic in the sciences. But as far as theories go, NS has tremendous evidentiary support in its broad strokes -- indeed, I question whether many biological theories are more irrefutable at the general level. Whether some designer interceded early in the process, or whether the initial building blocks came from some extraterrestrial source (which to my mind is the same thing, because if this stuff was too complicated to occur here as posited by NS, it also would have been too complicated to occur spontaneously elsewhere, thus, no matter how long the consequent regress, even Frick's account ultimately requires some first step in establishing complexity somewhere -- in a word, a designer), is irrelevant to whether NS is just another theory when its explanatory power is so robust and its empirical underpinnings so widespread and well understood. If there's a gap somewhere along the way, students should know about it. But that's very different than saying students should be taught that NS theory is merely on a par with others that are less thoroughly validated by such voluminous evidence. That is why I previously said I believed NS is the Alpha and the Omega: should any of these alternative theories go so far as, or be presented as going so far as, to cast into doubt the basic principles of NS, I think they have left the realm of science and broken decisively toward religion (or metaphysics, if you prefer). And it's there that the First Amendment as it has been consistently interpreted comes into play.

Which leads me to qualify an overstatement I made earlier: perhaps it is not impossible to present ID as one possible solution to a fairly fine-grained problem with NS. Maybe that particular (Behe-ian) presentation of ID is entirely acceptable under the First Amendment. I still hold that we would have to be ever vigilant with regard to the individual treatments of the issue by the many educators who have indicated their willingness to use the chalkboard as a pulpit.

And now if you'll excuse me, my brain hurts.

Here We Go Again

Condi banging the drum on Iran.

There are almost too many scary quotes in this article to pick any one, but here's a particularly ominous one-two punch:

"The message that we are giving to Iran: We do have diplomatic means at our disposal, we are doing this bilaterally as well as multilaterally, and I believe that a diplomatic solution is in our grasp, if we can have unity of purpose, unity of message with the Iranians and if the Iranians understand that the international community is quite serious about it living up to its obligations."

The IAEA has the authority to refer Iran to the Security Council, but the group's board of governors has refrained from doing so in seven meetings on the topic in the past two years.

So, let me get this straight: We claim to have diplomatic means at our disposal, but those means have largely proven ineffective in the past few months (I'm sure that has nothing to do with the diplomatic capital we've squandered since 9-11, and the Europeans concomitant refusal to play ball (although can you blame them when last time they tried to play we picked up the ball and went home?)). And of course one word no one could use with any credibility to describe Bush 43's foreign policy is "patient." Moreover, she adds, "the next steps are in the offing . . . And I think everybody understands what the 'next steps' mean."

Bring it on, right? Isn't that what the man once said?

Sorry if the combination of these things, especially when so blatantly lumped together by the toothless CNN, sounds so alarmingly like the run-up to Iraq I don't even know where to begin, except, perhaps, at Arlington National Cemetary, which could end up a whole lot fuller if someone (Congress? Hello?) or something (a sudden infusion of common sense in the Bush administration?) doesn't derail this runaway train soon.

The State of the Union Address

Lies Lies Lies. And I haven't even read the thing. Last night, instead of watching the Not Neceessarily the State of My Union, Moon drank. And drank. And drank some more. Which, Moon feels, resulted in the most agreeable State of the Union evening since the Clinton era, when a talented orator delivered a plausible speech based on verifiable premises and presented sensible policy ideas with panache. I can't, or won't, get too caught up in this, but everything I heard this morning said what we already know:

Social security is not in crisis -- and even if it were, privatization is no solution.

A balky, functional election, even one that exceeded expectations, does not amount to a flourishing, or even a promising, democracy in Iraq.

Iran, not an ally, is not nearly as scary as a number of our allies, Pakistan in particular. And banging the drum against Iran and Syria accomplishes nothing except to alienate important middle-eastern sovereignties (insofar as we even recognize such a thing) and to reveal the unaccountable hawkishness of the Bush administration.

Which, by the way, it'd be best if we just overlooked, what with all the credible and independent commentators who assure us that Bush's plans make sense.

Moon is really fairly moderate, having once comfortably thought of himself as a Clinton Democrat, but every day, as the GOP spirals deeper and deeper into its little lockstep routine these guys make more and more sense.

(I'd like to track down and add a bunch more links, but increasingly I feel as though it's a waste of my time.)

With My Lawyer Hat on . . .

. . . just for a moment (and forgive me), I'd like to venture that I am fully in agreement with the Washington Post's Editorial noting that during the confirmation process Attorney General nominee Alberto R. Gonzalez failed to unequivocally distance himself from the defense of torture ascribed to him, and arguing accordingly that the Senate ought not confirm him. To the extent the Editorial doesn't speak for itself, see further elucidation along the same lines from the NewDonkey. Money quote:

If you believe, as I do and I hope you do, that the war on terror is an ideological war in which perceptions of American values and good intentions are in the long run as important as military assets, then confirming the Poster Boy for Torture as Attorney General provides a propaganda victory for Islamic Jihadism that's potentially just as damaging as those images from Abu Ghraib. Moreover, Gonzales's confirmation will also reinforce the already dangerous impression that the United States will only obey those rules we get to set ourselves, an impression the administration finds ways to strengthen nearly every day.

A man sworn to uphold the law must believe in, and honor the law. Gonzalez has conclusively proven himself more pawn than paragon, more politician than advocate, and hence an unqualified and ill-suited candidate for the prosecutor-in-chief for these United States of America.