Funmurphys: the Blog

More Of The Same

President Bush has nominated Judge Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court. That's more like it, even if it isn't Judge Janice Brown. I expect that he'll be confirmed on a close to party line vote. While he can clearly write court opinions, I'm starting to miss Harriet Miers because she at least was something different, not another brilliant Yalie who followed the correct path (which isn't meant to be a knock on Judge Alito). The problem was that she represented too great a risk at a time when the Supreme Court has become far too political and not simply judicial. It's too bad that that's what we hold elections for now - to pick and confirm Supreme Court Justices so that one side can win the nine vote elections.

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

By and large, the St. Louis Post Dispatch is a terrible newspaper. It puts the crap in crappy. It survives because it is the only real newspaper in St. Louis. Yes, I subscribe (including weekends) for the following simple reasons in order of importance (1) my wife saves more money with the coupons than we spend on the subscription, (2) my daughter likes the everyday section, (3) my son likes the sports section, (4) I like the idea of getting a newspaper more than the actual one I get. But that doesn't mean it's a uniform consistancy of bad. Frequently somebody slips in something good, and sometimes it comes from the most unexpected sources.

For instance, the editorials are typically poor. Even good progressives like Archpundit think so. But they had a really good one today, in fact I was thinking about writing the same way on the very subject they did (only I'm not a paid staff and last week and this weekend was very, very busy). So instead I'll let them do the talking about oil company profits:

Mr. Durbin is one of several members of Congress proposing excess profits taxes on oil companies. The idea is excellent populist politics and lousy economics. It's a bad idea that would ultimately leave us with higher gasoline prices and tie us even more tightly to the unstable oil states of the Middle East.

It is true that oil companies are celebrating a profit gusher. Last week, ExxonMobil reported quarterly profits up 75 percent to $9.9 billion. Shell's take is up 68 percent to $9.04 billion.

Figures like that stick in the craw of all of us with sticker shock at the pump: $50 for a tank of gas! But those sky-high profits now will help ensure a steady supply of oil in the future.

...
But in the short term, the key to price relief is to dig more oil wells and expand refineries. Oil companies will do those things if they are highly profitable.

After all, oil drilling is a risky business, and refineries cost billions. Today's profit levels provide a great incentive to drill and build. But companies must also take gamble on what oil prices may be when new wells and refineries come on line. Long experience with the ups and downs of oil prices have taught oil executives to bet cautiously. That, along with the Gordian knot of regulatory red tape, helps explain why no new refinery has been built in America since the 1970s.

But let's turn our attention to the bad, as pointed out by Brian Noggle. Betty Cuniberti is retiring from the paper and I won't miss her pointless ramblings. She says farewell in her typically clueless style:

Even in the era of the Blogosphere (no thought too vacuous to share), this is good work if you can get it. What knucklehead would walk away from a newspaper column?
...
To cut operating costs, the paper offered an early-retirement buyout to folks over age 50 with five or more years on the job. It appears that some 40 newsmen and newswomen, whose combined service totals a staggering 700-plus years, are walking out the door. Just like that.

With them goes an era when a guy (and sometimes even a girl) got a job in the hometown and stayed 30 years, 40 years or more.

We'll see few of their kind again.

Newspapers aren't the money-printing machines they used to be. The Post-Dispatch is just one of many papers forced to dance with the enemy, the dark force that seeks to take the paper out of newspaper: the Internet.

Newspapers are joining doctors, lawyers and makers of psychotropic drugs, marketing ourselves with imagination we never knew we had. Or needed. We'll do anything short of coming to your house in a French maid costume, making breakfast and reading the darn thing to you.

Be assured, many of our best and most seasoned people remain. They will continue to do great work at all hours of the day and night and bring you news from every nook of the bi-state region and the planet. They'll be joined, I'm sure, by fresh, young talent. That is always a plus.

For a women who has done nothing but share vacuous thoughts, and whose vacuity I have spared both my readers from in the excerpt, that is quite the pot calling moment. Of course, it doesn't stop there (it never does), because she bemoans the internet, a device that has proven of inestimable value in providing the American people with a much better variety of news and news sources, and frankly a quantum leap in quality in news analysis, and yes, plain old columnists. What's left unsaid in her column though is the role of the erosion in trust of not just the Post, but all newspapers. Readership is declining for a very simple reason - the Post, like most other newspapers, has declined -- in accuracy, in fairness, in balance, in just about every way -- and the internet allows people access to information that shows just how badly it has declined.

And speaking of the internet, the Post has a lousy internet presence. The decided several years back to separate their internet portal, STLtoday.com, from the newspaper, and killed the old St. Louis Post Dispatch site. And STLtoday.com is pretty ugly. Just get aloud of their blogs. Ugh. If that's the future of blogging, count me out. I'll rename this site "Funmurphys: The Vacuous Thoughts" and keep on posting.

Libby Indicted, Resigns

Lewis "Scooter" Libby was indicted on charges of obstruction of justice, false statements, and perjury yesterday. He wasn't charged for the actual disclosure of classified information. Since Fitzgerald is alleging that Libby engaged in a pattern of deception, namely Libby's claim that he first found out about Valerie Plame from reporters and merely passed along what he had heard from reporters, I think he should be charged with perjury. But what I don't understand is, since Fitzgerald made clear that he considered Plame's status with the CIA classified information and that Libby did indeed disclose it without proper authorization, why Libby wasn't also charged with the unauthorized disclosure of classified information. So my complaint isn't that Libby was charged with perjury, but that he was just charged with perjury.

If that's all Libby faces, what message does it send? It's OK to leak classified information, just own up to it in court? We seem to have adopted a standard in the US that disclosing classified information to foreign governments, friendly or otherwise is punishable, but disclosing to the press isn't punishable. When was the last time a leak to the press itself investigated and charges brought? Here was a chance, and Fitzgerald has (so far) declined to take it. Does disclosure to the press somehow do less damage to national security? I sure don't think so.

I'm also of the opinion that lying Joe Wilson should be charged for unauthorized disclosure of classified information, and there is some ammunition in Fitzgerald's Press Release. First, Ambassador Wilson made the most damaging disclosure of classified information about his wife to David Corn since he went far beyond my wife works for the CIA. But he also maintained that there was nothing classified about his trip - neither his taking it nor his findings. Yet we find in the press release this statement:

on or about June 9, 2003, a number of classified documents from the CIA were faxed to the Office of the Vice President to the personal attention of Libby and another person in the Vice President’s office. The documents, which bore classification markings, discussed, among other things, Wilson and his trip to Niger, but did not mention Wilson by name.

After consulting with the State Department's African Affairs Bureau (and through it with Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, the United States ambassador to Niger), I agreed to make the trip. The mission I undertook was discreet but by no means secret. While the C.I.A. paid my expenses (my time was offered pro bono), I made it abundantly clear to everyone I met that I was acting on behalf of the United States government.

And Fitzgerald's statement in the press release

shortly after publication on or about June 19, 2003, of an article in The New Republic magazine online entitled “The First Casualty: The Selling of the Iraq War,” Libby spoke by telephone with his then Principal Deputy and discussed the article. That official asked Libby whether information about Wilson’s trip could be shared with the press to rebut the allegations that the Vice President had sent Wilson. Libby responded that there would be complications at the CIA in disclosing that information publicly, and that he could not discuss the matter on a non-secure telephone line;

Is this the end of the indictments? What about Karl Rove? Only Fitzgerald knows, and he (still) isn't talking. Certainly the evidence uncovered so far is weaker against Rove or he'd have been indicted too; maybe Karl is in the clear because he did hear from a reporter before saying things like "I hear that too".

A Walk In The Woods

We went for a hike a couple of weekends ago. The weather was perfect, sunny yet cool. We picked the perfect trail for the last great day of 2005 - the Al Foster trail which is actually cooperative endeavor with the city of Wildwood, the Department of Natural Resources, St. Louis County Parks, the Meramec River Recreation Association and The Great Rivers Greenway District. The end in Glencoe intertwines with the Wabash, Frisco and Pacific Railroad which is a miniature steam railroad that runs every Sunday afternoon May through October. The trial follows an abandoned railroad line along the Meramec river and thus is blessed with two great attributes - it's very flat, and its very scenic.

OK, as you can see from the photo, the flatness of the trail doesn't mean the scenery is flat.
Continue reading and viewing even more photos.

The sky was a gorgeous blue, the shade of blue it gets when the humidity is low, a shade you don't see too often in warm weather around here. The leaves hadn't started turning color yet. We were enveloped in green as we walked along, the miniature railroad to one side, the Meramec on the other. The trees arched overhead so that you walked in a tunnel.

But you weren't enclosed everywhere. A stretch of the trail runs through an open glade - the site of an old gravel operation on the river. The ground isn't dirt here, it's pea gravel. We were actually hot while walking under the open sun.

When we came to the end of the railroad, we made an inadvertent discovery: The road less traveled. Yep, it exists, and you can find it just off the Al Foster trail. But you better hurry, before it gets developed. It was pure luck we found it, because we decided to follow the train tracks through their turnaround Y instead of the path. When we came to the end of the track, we could see a trail leading off away from the main trail, and it looked like we'd have to jump a ditch to make it back to the main trail. So we decided to follow the other trail, the road less travelled and it made all the difference. We wondered at the presence of a paved road out here, but since the crown was leaf free, we figured we weren't the only people who had been on it recently. It followed a little creek that meandered its way to the Meramec.

After the hike I wondered at the road so much that I did a little research. It turns out we had come across the legendary Lawler Ford Road, AKA Zombie Lane. John Fischer, who oddly enough we met biking on the trail, my source for all things in this part of St. Louis County, knew of the road and told me that when he was a teenager the road was where you took your girlfriend to scare her so that she would - hey, this is a family blog!

Despite the name, or perhaps because it was daylight, we came across no zombies. Just more scenery, this time a forested valley.

So I took advantage of tools not available even a year ago, and so you can check out a map and satellite view of the road. Way cool. But the point is to notice how the road, which starts out on the map as Lawler Ford, and then changes to Quail Hollow Estates, is just a line on the satellite map, unlike the other roads, and has no houses along it, also unlike the other roads. I don't know when it was abandoned and closed off, but we hiked up to the point where we made another discovery: The end of the road. Two giant discoveries in one afternoon! It seems that sime time in the past the creek eroded the road, and must have washed out the bridge that used to cross it, leaving nothing behind but a concrete wall in the middle of the creek. Ok, we went a little past that point, but since it was obvious that we had long left the trail we wanted to be on, and had no idea where the creek led, we turned around and finished the Al Foster Trail. I leave you with a picture of the End of the Road Less Travelled. Gape in wonder.

Thinking Out Loud

It's the consensus view that if Roe Vs. Wade were to be overturned, abortion rights would then move back to the states. I read it all the time, and law bloggers don't even discuss it, it's just assumed. But I wonder. How exactly would it be overturned? Would a majority say, sorry, we got it wrong, those pesky penumbras and eminations are so hard to decipher, a right to privacy doesn't cover going out and having a medical proceedure? Or more likely, would the court have to find a right of the unborn that is more compelling than the mother's right to privacy? And if that were the case, would it really go back to the state legislatures, or would abortion then be unconstitutional, and thus beyond the reach of the states?

Congratulations!

I'm way behind on my blog reading, so I'm a little late, but congratulations Jim and Franki. As me ancestors would say:

May your mornings bring joy and your evenings bring peace.
May your troubles grow few as your blessings increase.
May the saddest day of your future
Be no worse than the happiest day of your past.
May your hands be forever clasped in friendship
And your hearts joined forever in love.
Your lives are very special,
God has touched you in many ways.
May his blessings rest upon you
And fill all your coming days.

Discretion, Valor, Better Part

Now that Harriet Miers has withdrawn from consideration, I won't be able to make up my mind on her elevation to the Supreme Court. No hearings, no way for me to decide. I do think the nomination itself was a mistake (yeah think, einstein?) mainly because there seems to have been so little thought put into it. It's like all this effort went into picking now Chief Justice Roberts, and then they were too tired and distracted and picked the first woman who said yes. It's like going out to Tony's for dinner and then stopping off at Shop 'n' Save to pick up some house brand ice cream for dessert on the way home.

I suppose I'm a natural optimist, but I don't think the nomination does any lasting damage to the president if this time President Bush picks a compelling nominee, or at least someone the administration can provide clear reasons to support. Who remembers Kerik? He was clearly qualified for the job, but he had "other" issues. And his successor is the lackluster Chertoff.

I'm hoping for Janice Rogers Brown, but I'm not holding my breath.

Fitzgerald, Plame, Wilson, Rove, Libby, Cheney

OK, the webs aflame with rumor and speculation over Fitzgerald's investigation into the Plame kerfuffle. Of course, I get all my Plame news from Tom Maguire, who never grows tired of the fact that we know so little. Consider that Fitzgerald and his people are famously closed lipped. Who do all these leaks come from? Even if they came from Fitzgerald (gigantic if there), let me remind you of the most important point about leaks involving politics (OK, any leak for that matter) - they are always self serving for the leaker. Always. The fact that the leaker can provide only partial truth allows the leaker to control and manipulate the story.

And isn't leaking grand jury testimony a crime as well? I understand a witness can come out and talk about the questioning, even lie about it like good old Sid Blumenthal, but other than that the testimony is legally protected. So the only way for it not to be a crime is if the leaker about a particular witnesses testimony ultimately derived their leak from the particular witness? Which leads us right back to the self serving nature of any leak. Sigh.

So what's really going on here. Is the most important part of the whole sodden mess the fact that Valerie Plame was outed as a CIA employee? Is it that CIA is a rogue organization that is trying to undermine the elected President of the United States? Or does it's import derive as proxy for the Iraq war itself?

Personally, what I care about most is the unauthorized discloure of classified information. If Fitzgerald can return indictments about that, even perjury indictements, I'll consider it a successful investigation. But I want the perjury to be perjury, not just how good Karl Rove's memory is. So if he deliberately lied to conceal unauthorized disclosure, then good. If he forgot a particular conversation of several that occured with one or more people, then bad. And by that I mean if he were tardy in disclosing a conversation with Matt Cooper, someone who Rove had no reason to believe wouldn't disclose, then an indictment is just butt covering.

But if it turns out that the Valerie Plame wasn't covert and the CIA persued this case while it has let plenty of other equally or more serious dislosures go in the past, then I think the CIA becomes the big story. Why should it be OK for a disgruntled current or ex-CIA employee to disclose classified information to the press, but not the White House?

Here are the unanswered questions for me. Was Valerie Plame a covert agent at the time her name was leaked? If so, it raised for me another important question then - how did her name leave the CIA? What does that say about their security proceedures? If not, what is the CIA trying to pull here?

Which reporter broke the sacred confidentiality to tell Joe Wilson who the sources were? I mean, how else was he able to finger Karl Rove and Scooter Libby way back at the start of the kerfuffle? It was only a month after Novak's article that Wilson said he wanted to see Karl Rove "frogmarched" out of the White House in handcuffs. Libby's name followed soon after, and then Joe Wilson backtracked and shut up about it. Odd how the press isn't interested in Joe Wilson's source, which he admitted to, and how that source named the two people that have been most prominently featured as people who talked to the press.

Speaking of Joe, why isn't he being investigated as the man who clearly did the most to out his own wife? For those who like convoluted conspiracies (I'm not one), why not think the Valerie was tired of living the covert life, have Joe out you, and bam you're out, in the clear, the darlings of the media, book deals, Vanity Fair articles. Hey, it's more plausible than Flight Plan.

What about the role of the State Department? Plame was "moving to State Department cover", there are reports of a State Department memo with her name in it, State opposed the war in Iraq just like the CIA. Has the institutional opposition at these two power centers overstepped the bounds of good government? And will we ever see that probed?

Most of all, what does Fitzgerald really have?

OK, that last one is a repeat of how we know so little. And what amazes me is how there are some who don't seem to realize that. We don't even know if Valerie Plame was covert. Did the neighbors know she worked for the CIA? I have no idea, but Mark Kleiman is convinced by an article in the LAT which relies on two neighbors. Did the LAT contact "all" the neighbors but only inlcuded quotes from two? Cliff May said lots of people in Washington knew a long time ago - but Cliff wasn't a neighbor. Was he just talking trash, or was he telling the truth? Beats me, I don't live in Washington. We have to rely on these leaked reports to the press, which clearly has lower standards about such leaks than, say, allegations by a victim that she was raped by Bill Clinton.

Some people don't even know what we do know - namely that Joe Wilson is a liar who came forward not courageously before the war, but after when the status of the Iraq WMD was known. If Ambassador Wilson was so upset by President Bush's so called manipulation of intellegence before the war (you know, when CIA head Tenet was claiming that Iraqi WMD was a "slam dunk"), why didn't he come forward then, when it could have done some good?

One last final thoughts (not for the subject, just the post) - whatever you may think of Fitzgerald's integrity, it seems as if people are treating the indictments as the final word on the subject. They aren't, they are just accusations. I know that depending on whose ox is being gored, people will ignore that fact or ignore every other fact.

Made My Day

I'm not one to brag, but my teenage daughter gave me a hug yesterday in front of schoolmates. OK, it was my birthday, she was dripping wet, it was her water polo teammates who weren't paying attention and who aren't exactly her close friends, but that is still big news. Any father of a teenage daughter knows just how big. It's the kind of moment that makes you want to let out a big Yeaaaghhhhhhh!!!!!.

That Has Made All The Difference

A coworker asked about the Pinky and the Brain action figures that I obtained indirectly from my niece Kelly. Another commented that he prefered Ren and Stimpy. Given the ages of the coworkers, I asked the coworkers if they were comparing the two as a parent or an adolescent. The preference for R&S was an adolescent one, while P&B was a parental one. They agreed that would make a big difference. Parenthood - one of the defining moments of your life.

Having children means that not only do you find yourself saying the same things your parents did, but agreeing with the values expressed.

Same As The Old Boss?

Republicans heaved a huge sigh of relief yesterday when President Bush named Ben Bernanke as his nominee to replace Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve. The Bernanke pick surprised no one, as the man has impeccible credentials.

Rumor has it that President Bush was seriously contemplating nominating his longtime broker, and a draft of the President's introductory remarks has been obtained by Funmurphys: "This is a man who understands the markets; and who by the way made a ton of money for me over the years. I'll never forget his timing on Harken, that's for sure. Cutiepie, come on up here. I call him Cutiepie because he sends Laura and me the cutest cards and notes, with cats and bluebonnets on them." The Whitehouse and "Cutiepie" were unavailable for comment.

The Queen of Maybe

I suppose the real problem with Harriet Miers nomination is that I actually have to wait until the hearings before I can make up my mind. Oh, I admit I'd like to support her, but nothing so far has indicated to me that she clearly should be on the Supreme Court, nor has there been a clear indicator that she shouldn't. Team Bush has not been able to put forth a good, let alone compelling, reason beyond George and Laura really like her, and even her most ardent critics have shot intellectual blanks. She's beyond a stealth candidate, she's a Rorschach test.

I suppose after Roberts we think the bar is set pretty high, but even a cursory examination of both the current court and past courts show not just that the mediocre is well represented, but can thrive. And the idea that to understand the constitution you have to be a great intellect who's done nothing but thought deep thoughts about it is a bunch of hooey. It's a two page document that relies on a combination of common sense and historical insight. Now, I have to admit that the actual court decisions, especially in later years, can be quite impenetrable, especially for those who expect that they should be clear and be related in some modest degree to the actual text. Quite frankly, what good is stare decisis if the previous decisions are not just a hopeless muddle, but unconstitutional on their face, and not even followed by the wing of the court that holds that evolving community standards, as discovered by canvassing nine people who just happen to be the nine most powerful lawyers in Washington, D.C., trump all.

Misplaced Concern

There are times when I read the papers and I think I must be insane. It seems that a lot of people are worried about the fairness of Saddam's trial. Fairness? Is there really some question of his guilt? This is a guy who started out as a leg breaker for the Baathists, graduated to assassin, took over by killing his rivals and associates, and never hesitated to kill, torture, or maim anyone. He stayed in power not through the ballot box, but throught the overwhelming application of terror and death. He's ordered the deaths of hundreds of thousands people, enough I suppose that for some it's no longer a crime but a statistic. Having a trial at all is all the fairness this guy deserves. I guess I've come to expect delusional arabs quoted in the papers, but when Saddam's fellow dictators publish self-serving editorials indistinguishable from an editorial run by what was once considered the top newspaper in the US, you have to wonder about your sanity.

Some people haven't lost it though, as this commentary in al-Adalah shows:

Imagine if justice tried Saddam with the same laws he enacted, such as executing him and asking his family to pay for the bullets, burying him alive in a single or mass grave with a number of his henchmen, cutting off his ear or tongue, throwing him in an acid bath or poisoning him with thallium or poisonous gas. The main lesson of this trial is not a brief show that will end up with the most severe punishment meted out to Saddam. Rather, it will be a trial of a whole black era revealing all the tragedies and disasters perpetrated by the dictatorship.

Exactly, the point of this isn't Saddam's long awaited and richly deserved death, but the exposure, exposition, and condemnation of his and his minions evil.

Some of our elite media, like Ted Koppel, have showed their concern for our fighting men by reading the names of the fallen or showing their flag draped coffins. I wish these same organizations, which were mute when Saddam was fertilizing the soil with Iraqi bodies, would starting reading the names of all the Iraqi's killed by Saddam, and showing their mass graves.

Congratulations Iraq

I have a ballcap I love for two reasons: (1) even though it only cost me five bucks it's a very nice cap -- bought it at Kohls BTW, and (2) the logo is a flag with "established 1776" underneath. The whole "established 1776" works as the simple story, but America (OK, the United States for my international readers) didn't spring fully formed from Washington's head in 1776.

1776 is the date of the Declaration of Independence, which after a stirring introduction is a laundry list of grievances and concludes by declaring that each state is independent and a nation in its own right. And 1776 was a couple of years after the First Continental Congress. So was 1776 the birth of nation? The Articles of Confederation were approved by Congress in 1777, ratified by the states in 1781 and are the original constitution of the United States. Dissatisfaction set in almost immediately however, and so the current US Constitution was created in 1787 over period of almost four months. It wasn't until 1789 that it was ratified by enough states and took effect (with Rhode Island and North Carolina ratifiing after it took effect).

The Bill of Rights, or the first 10 amendments, was the result of the complaints about the Constitution during the ratification process, and were proposed in 1789 almost immediate after it took effect were ratified by 1791. It has been amended 17 more times since, with the 27th amendment originally proposed as part of the Bill of Rights in, yes, 1789, and ratified in 1992. Some people dislike the messy amendment process, where they have to persuade a majority of the American public across the land, so instead now we have the Supreme Court simply amend the constitution on their own say so.

All this is a long preamble to noting that two years after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Iraq voted on and may have ratified a new constitution this past weekend. If so, the next rendezvous with history will be the parliamentary elections to be held December 15 this year. The path has not without winding and stones, since a lot of Iraqi's have not had a chance to read the document for themselves, and some issues were kicked down the road to be settled at a later date. Kind of like slavery in the US constitution, but hopefully more like the Bill of Rights, which was added as a result of pressure and politics following the ratification of the constitution. Even if this Iraq constitution was voted down, they are still way ahead of the US, which took 13 years from the Declaration of Independence to ratify our Constitution.

Part of the dissatisfaction with progress in Iraq is historical amnesia - we who live in a time tested democracy under the rule of law simply have forgotten the time required and difficulty in forging a new nation when there wasn't even the need to create a political culture of law and democracy as well as since it was already bequeathed to us by Great Britain. We forget that the early trials and tribulations strengthed our political institutions, not weakened them. And so we Americans demand perfection when we have no right ot expect it nor should we want it.

We can only do so much in Iraq; the rest is up to the Iraqi's. And so far, they are taking ahold of their own future. Congratulations, Iraq, and good luck.

More Dead Horse Beating

I know you've already read this because Instapundit linked to it, but its just too good not to link to: AP Response to Bush Teleconference Staged! Apparently the AP thinks when the President wants to hold a teleconference to have soldiers in Iraq answer questions about the war there, it should be a pop quiz. What's next, guests on TV news shows given advance warning about what will be discussed, or even, the horror, the horror, newspaper reporters describing the general thrust of an article when inviting comment from experts who will be quoted in it?

Travelling Woman

I know Colin Powell has a lot of admirers, and I tend not to be among them. I'm not talking about his military career, where from what I can tell he did a fine job, with such admirable quotes as "First we're going to cut [the enemy army] off, then we're going to kill it." There are parts of the Powell Doctrine that are letter perfect, such don't make it a fair fight, hit the enemy with everything you can, but the clear exit strategy is a non-starter for me. Clear victory conditions and a clear vision of what you hope to achieve, yes, but that may not be get in and get back out ASAP. It may be get in and stay in -- like after WWII.

I think his reputation as Secretary of State had more to do with his ability to handle the press than handle foreign affairs. And quite frankly, I think Condoleeza Rice is outshining him in one important area - she isn't afraid to leave the US and beard the lion in his den. Colin seemed much more attached to the comforts of hearth and home and his lack of foreign travel limited his effectiveness as Secretary of State.

The Story That Wasn't

The more we find out about what happened during Katrina and its immediate aftermath, the less the journalism of the moment holds up. Rapes, murders, chaos - not so much. People helping people, more than we ever heard about, or will hear about. You'd have been better informed to have just read these four words -- storm, flooding, mass evacuation -- than all the miles of column inches of rumor passed off as fact in the newspapers, and days of non-stop fear mongering on the TV.

I remember back in the floods of '93 the same talk about how the floodwaters are toxic as we heard about Katrina. I also remember how a few days after the levees broke in New Orleans, a reporter interviewed a Doctor and the reporter was so disapointed when the Doctor pretty much downplayed the toxic angle of the floodwater, and how the danger was limited pretty much to minor skin infections from direct contact because of the extra sewage in the water. The interview came to a quick end when no spectre of mass casualties was raised. So it's official now - at least for the press - the toxic floodwaters of Katrina aren't so toxic after all.

Hopefully the new media will throw out some of these old media story templates and frames because no matter how many times they are shown to be inaccurate after an event, they still get used the next time a similar event occurs. The institutional memory of journalism is always the sizzle, never the steak.

Journalism Needs No Shield

I'm not one of those people who think a reporter has a right to withhold information (like the name of a source) during a legal investigation. In fact, I don't think that reporters, or news organizations for that matter, should have any special legal deference, let alone rights. The first amendment right to freedom of the press resides in the people, just like all the other rights in the Bill of Rights, not in any particular member of the press alone.

I think we'd better off if you just had to show inaccuracy and damage for anyone to collect on libel, so I certainly don't think a journalist shield law is a good thing. As a blogger, I don't think I'm entitled to anything extra that just being in the United States doesn't provide, because I don't think a reporter, editor, or publisher should get anything extra either. If a company can be forced to pay damages for a defective product, a news company should be forced to pay damages for a defective, i.e. inaccurate or misleading, product.

I think the idea that we need a law to grant special privileges to members of the press ignores the current reality - the chief stumbling block to the press today isn't their accountability to universal responsibilities, but a lack of accountability to the public itself. And the currently proposed shield law, or any other such shield law, doesn't do a darn thing to fix that.

Keep On Keeping On

It's a big day in Iraq today, with the people voting on a new constitution. Pass or fail, it's democracy in action, and I'm hoping that the Iraqi people vote and the terorrists don't disrupt the vote. As has been observed, democracy is a process, not a one time event.

The Better Awards

Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between the Nobel and the Ig Nobel prizes, what with Mohamed ElBaradei winning the nobel peace prize with his winning slogan, peace through ignorance. But don't miss out on the real thing - the Ig Nobel awards were held a week ago and the winners announced to much rejoicing (amongst the losers, that is).

Of the winners, my favorite is the story of a local (Missouri) boy making good - Gregg A. Miller who won in Medicine for inventing neuticals, which are replacement testicles for animals who have been neutered. I don't know which is more surprising - that Mr. Miller wrote a book entitled Going Going NUTS! about them, or the fact that over 100,000 (thats over 200,000 neuticles for those keeping score at home) animals have been neuticled since 1995. And they say the age of miracles and wonders is over.

And while I have enjoyed the odd Pinter play made into a movie, I think again the Ig Nobels picked the better Literati by with their selection for Literature:
"The Internet entrepreneurs of Nigeria, for creating and then using e-mail to distribute a bold series of short stories, thus introducing millions of readers to a cast of rich characters -- General Sani Abacha, Mrs. Mariam Sanni Abacha, Barrister Jon A Mbeki Esq., and others -- each of whom requires just a small amount of expense money so as to obtain access to the great wealth to which they are entitled and which they would like to share with the kind person who assists them."
As someone who has received many such one act plays via email, I can only say "Bravo" to their selection.

And finally, I have no idea what it was about, but James Watson (umm, no not THE James Watson, but some JW in New Zealand), the winner in Agricultural History should have won (and probably did) for the title of his paper alone: "The Significance of Mr. Richard Buckley’s Exploding Trousers." Now that's a scientific paper that I want to read.

International News

Ghazi Kenaan, Syria's Interior minister, is dead officially by suicide. He was questioned by the UN about the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minster Rafik Hariri. Apparently, Syria felt the Syrian interior covered more than the Lebanese did. Not everyone thinks it was suicide, me included.

Gerhard Schroeder will have no role in the "grand coalition" government in Germany. He took the opportunity to make some gratuitous insults, and spout some typical nonesense, like "I say to my British friend that people in Germany, in Europe, don't want complete denationalisation, they don't want the privatisation of lifetime risks. The Anglo-Saxon model will have no chance in Europe." and "I don't want to name any examples of catastrophes, where you can see what happens when there is no organised state. I could name countries, but the office I still hold forbids that - but everybody knows I mean America." Good riddance to bad rubbish. Don't let the doorknob hit you on the ass on the way out, Gerhard.

Is it just me, or does Angela Merkel look a lot like Harriet Miers?

China has launched its second manned spaceflight, sending two astronauts into Earth orbit. Xinhua, as the official news agency of China, focuses on the excitement of the people, along with Zang Ziyi's new sexy looks. Apparently China is engaged in more than a space race with the West (which doesn't seem to know that it's in one).

A former French ambassador to the UN is under arrest in France as part of Saddam's scheme to buyoff of the UN and others with Oil (known as the "Oil for food scandal"). This should not reflect on the UN or France. Who am I kidding, both are cesspools of corruption that are run for the benefit of their elites. Hmm, wasn't New Orleans a former French colony? Anyway, one can only hope this is the start of a number of prosecutions that lead to criminals spending a long time in jail and start on the draining of a couple of cesspools.

And some good news in a place where any good news is needed -- the weather has cleared over Kashmir and aid is "pouring in". Still, the devastation is simply overwhelming, and with an official death toll of about 25,000, I'm am deeply saddened. I spent three months in Pakistan (Karachi) a long time ago and really like the people there. You can see my pictures here.

Start Afresh

As long as we're rebuilding New Orleans, perhaps we should take a more "from the ground up" approach and start fresh with those parts of the City that didn't work before Katrina - like the New Orleans Police Department.

Hat Tip to Ed Driscoll.

How To Get Attention

I suppose these guys believe in Horoscopes too: Sleep researchers in England claim the position you sleep in reveals your personality. According to the researchers, I'm brash and gregarious. Yeah, right. I used to be quiet and reserved until the snoring (keeps the bears away!) got too bad. Did my personality change?

I thing somebody thought if they issued a silly press release that was sure to be picked up by the media they'd get more attention (and funding!). Of course, I have no experimental data to back up that assertion, but then neither do they.

King of Cold

Whenever there's a cold snap around St. Louis, blame me. It means I went camping with the Boy Scouts, and this past weekend was no different. New Horizons had a Webelos camporee, which meant a lot of men and boys (and a few women and girls) slept a couple of nights in a nicely shaded field and shot guns on Saturday. Shotguns, rifles, and blackpowder guns. Nobody got hurt, although I did hear some poor kid throw up for a long time in the middle of the night.

My son was grubmaster, which meant he was responsible for providing the food for his patrol. When we went shopping, he was concerned that we bought enough, because the quickest way to get on the bad side of your patrol mates is for them to go hungry on a campout. We bought for nine, but only six showed up, so there was plenty of food to go around. And come home. So his stint as grubmaster was a success.

I Didn't Get My Way

In keeping with my new policy of posting on issues after a delay to allow me time to (1) get accurate facts and (2) actually think about it, I'm now going to opine on President Bush's supreme court nominee, Harriet Miers. OK, if I waited until the press got its facts straight, I'd never be able to post. But at least I thought about it, and the great thing is, I'm still as disappointed that the President didn't pick Justice Janice Rogers Brown this time as I was when he picked Justice Roberts. Oh well. Just so you know where I'm coming from. No, I wouldn't want 9 of her on the court, but we do need a counterbalance to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg (of whom I would prefer to have a number less than 1 on the court).

Since I couldn't actually name all the Justices of the Supreme court, I did a little research and discovered that far too many were undergraduates at Stanford (Kennedy, O'Connor, and Breyer) where none of them took the Physics 60 series, the wimps. Only Souter went to Harvard as an undergrad, and we know how he turned out. And all them have as their chief failing that they are lawyers. If not Justice Brown, why not Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman when there were openings for two justices?

And what is with the claim that we want judges who will be fair and impartial and oh by the way, what are their political views? Like we know that Supreme Court justices are going to vote their politics, principles be damned, but that's OK as long as we agree with their politics? Isn't that what 99% of the questioning by the Senate during confirmation hearings is about - tell me how you will rule on abortion, gays, guns, affirmative action, the environment, the little guy, unions, hats, etc? It's even OK to talk in code somewhat, as long as you show your hand. But we have the nominees claiming that it's inappropriate for judges to do so. Why, you can't judge shop at the Supreme Court. You get all nine unless they have a conflict of interest. Politicians will tell us that its not right to have litmus tests for judges (too bad you can't put a piece of paper up against a nominee and see "pro-abortion" or "pro-gun") but why not?

I'd like to see a nominee come in and spell it all out in detail, not some wonkish "judicial philosophy" but to what stage of development they'd limit abortion at, is a loophole for the health of the mother really a "constitutional" requirement, under what exact conditions should parents be notified or minors be allowed to withhold information from them about abortion, gay marriage is constituitional yes or no or a matter for each state and what does the full faith and credit mean if states differ on this, etc. As long as judges are going to legislate from the bench, we ought to know what their agenda is. I'd prefer that to winks, evasions, silence, and "trust me". And quite frankly, I think it would be educational hearing the nominees explain their views in detail on the leading issues of the day.

Enough process, I'll have to tackle Ms. Miers herself another day.

Stay On The Path

In the continuing saga of last years summer vacation, we had an amazing experience on our way back from Cub Lake. But first, let me start at the beginning. When we first pulled into Estes Park, our stop after the visitor's center was a crammed local fast food establishment where we sat next to an older couple that was detailing their attempts to see the Elk in the park. They told us how they hadn't seen any in the park after a couple of days looking, but on their way back to town they had seen them. So we were primed to look for Elk ourselves, and didn't see any until we were hiking back from Cub Lake when we came across a herd in a flat area. It was really amazing how big they were and how close we were:

They didn't seem to mind us and paid little attention, although you could tell they were keeping an eye on us. It was just a treat to stand there and look and see how many there were, just munching away on the grass and the bushes, and we were telling ourselves this was the highpoint of the trip, to have just stumbled upon a herd of Elk.

And then we noticed that some were on the path in front of us, and some were on the path behind us, and lots were on the path to the one side. So we couldn't stay on the path and go either forwards or backwards, but no big deal, we were having too much fun just watching them. And then we noticed that the ones behind us were slowly moving down the path towards us, led by a big buck. And the one's in front of us, they were kind of drifting towards us with another big buck in the lead. Now I knew how Lindsay Lohan must feel, mobbed by a pack of wild beasts. The big buck next to us gave us a look like "don't even think about coming this way".

At this point the rest of the family was urging that we go around them, leaving the path and picking it up where it looped around the low hill next to us. I was all in favor of staying on the path and letting them move on, but as they gave no sign of moving on (by this point a lot were just sitting down), and the three bucks were looking decidedly unfriendly as they edged closer, we went ahead and climbed the low hill and picked up the path further on without incident. We did try to step from rock to rock to avoid any damage though.

We were pretty proud of how we "found" those Elk, although the next day we came across a smaller, no male in sight group right in Estes Park along the Fall river, just upstream from the statue in this picture where we had posed just a day before. Sometimes they aren't so elusive after all.

News Or Rumors?

Mike Brown was forced out of FEMA. Blanco and Nagin still have their jobs, along with all the newsies who not just got it wrong, but made things worse in New Orleans. How's that for accountability? Next time President Bush gives a press conference, maybe he should start by asking the reporters to repent of their mistakes.

It's Not The Age, It's the Milage

This blog started October 3, 2002 and after 3 years it has achieved the status of a blog that hardly matters. But I'm not discouraged, because there's a huge difference between hardly matters, and matters not at all. It's the difference between Gigli and The Princess Bride, though not in that order. But my web presence is older than this blog; I've maintained a continuous presence since 1996 when I first published a web version of a family newsletter - which means I'm almost a decade old in internet time, which makes me, well, way over the hill in real time. Good thing I'm not a dog, or I'd have turned to dust by now.

So anyway, Happy (slightly belated) Blog Anniversary to me and all that.

Pure Fun

I'm sure this tells researchers something important about how the brain processes visual information, but I find it to be just pure fun. Stare at the + below, wait just a few moments, and voila! the fun begins.

If you wait long enough, not only do you see a green dot moving, but the pink dots disappear altogether. Blink, or move you eyes, and they come back.