HCE Bogblog February.06

Two Bar was a name they gave a certain view of the Paris Basin, from their side of the river looking north past the clumps of muck and stranded flood wrack which would later host St. Chappel, Notre Dame and, set just upstream, the favorably disposed citydwellings of the anciently and permanently rich of present day Paris, but seeing then, instead, the place where by the wrestlings of chance and design it would become.

The controversial
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lustrum, n.; pl. lustrums, lustra [L. lustrum, a purifictory sacrifice, a space of five years.]
1. In ancient Rome, a purification of the whole Roman peeople, performed by means of certain ceremonies at the end of every five years, after the census.
2. a five–year period.

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Coming soon in the comic American Adventure series:

"Baghdad Funnies"

Our recently rescinded first editon (featuring The Mage of Baghdad!) has been replaced for the time being in our prospectus by:

featuring The Mage of Baghdad!

Or alternately, time permitting:

featuring The Mage of Baghdad!

February leapings

rom what remains of the well-regarded Barry Family standard here at HCE, February is the meanest month.

Once dead last in listed months of the Roman calendar, February was promoted to second place in the early reshuffling of the calendar's values ascribed to Numa, fabled second of the many, many kings of Rome.

Abrupt, brief thing, February.

The word February is rooted in the more ancient formal tendency of the Latins to end the calendar year with a brisk period devoted to the expiation of the forgone thing, but that expectably dour review drew an uncomfortable crowd, and thus understandably came to be replaced to the relief of the balance of the Latins by the more mirthfully disposed inclinations of the newer calendar said to have been made by Numa, second king in the fabulous pack of kings of the Latins, who proposed a space at end–year called Saturnalia where all manner of communal merriment could see the old year off instead.

Here at HCE, where many of our faults and excesses (as characterized so often in snideries ascribed to friend and foe alike lying everywhere about us here in the Bogblog) are certainly rooted to our poor upbringing when not directly traceable to innate burdens of heridity, we yet acknowledge there comes a time to take account, to recognize and make whatever grudging gesture we might assay to rectify the errant damaging result issuing from our acts.

Promptly following in the train of the freshly done act itself is, strictly, the proper moment for confronting the requirements of any such evaluation, yes. The demanded immediacy of the propitiating motion has forever shadowed the footstep of the Barry Family Standard, our own views on the matter here at HCE substantiated early and often by the instructively interventionary acts of dour nuns from the earliest imaginable moment of our formal education. Making it right when required is always the necessary next step in any continuous progress of steps we might take in this view: the unmade misstep is the best next step, always.

Moving the ceremonial expiations of February to the second month of the year may seem simply foward–looking on the part of the Latins after Numa (reputed maker of that move).

From the vantage of the second month the Romans were able to map out ahead of time all good excuses for their conduct in the coming year (natural byproduct of any period of expiation, the good excuse is in the Barry Family view, and a thoroughgoing knack they had, the Romans, for prefabricating theirs).

Too, in passing, they might in the course of that brief second month, time permitting, assay the duncity, destructiveness and depravity that was the Roman share in the recently completed year past, should any decent memory of it linger in the saturnalian fizz of merry January's wake.

Numa's remove of little February had that other use as well, for, by moving the short month itself to second place, the subtle hand (suggested to be Numa's) lifted up the period of expiation and transferred it symbolically to second place as well, cleverly synchronizing the timing of its dutiful reflections, and thus the whole Roman calendar, with the other alternate supplanted calendar (as previously adopted by the quite wide range of people to Rome's north and west for example) which marked the month of the spring equinox to be firstmonth of the calendar, and thus the month previous to the equinox (call it February for the purposes of expiation) the last month of the cycled year, continued to be the reserved space it was for the summary enactment of hopefully corrected coursings all along.

By synchronizing expiations between the two schemes of calendar, the imposing Romans cleverly colonized the autochronous measure of a year once brandished by the Barrys.

February 28, 2006

The Unbearable Lightness of Momentum

Franklin Foer Is Named Top Editor of New Republic

[ … ]

While there is no blood spattering its walls, the magazine that Mr. Foer, 31, takes over is hardly on a roll. The New Republic's circulation has dropped by almost 40 percent in four years …

[ … ]

Mr. Foer says that he is taking over a magazine that has a great deal of momentum from Mr. Beinart's tenure, which began in 1999, and it is a fine time to be at its helm.

— David Carr, The New York Times, February 28, 2006

February 26, 2006

Elementary

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

Our correspondent writes:

That was hardly a test of eighth grade math. I recall eighth grade math as an extremely pencil-depleting subject with lots and lots of least common bother and inverting this or that or the other and long, long, division.

I got 10/10 on this in less that two minutes without even looking away from the screen. That can't be eight grade math, unless it's eight grade math … for dummies! You can't do eighth grade math in your head! And you can't even finish the test, because your pencil broke and Sister won't give you another one because didn't she tell you before to bring a spare, young man, and no you cannot be grinding away at the sharpener and disturbing all the rest.

February 25, 2006

Dharma Update, Nothing to Lose But Your Chains Edition

Last fall, Hosono clashed with Gencho Komatsu, the 73-year-old head priest of the Tendai sect at Zenkoji. In short order, the monk found himself banished to a tiny, windowless storage room where he was ordered to spend each day writing out Buddhist sutras until further notice.

[ … ]

"It was harassment," Hosono said. "I wanted him to stop. I wanted him to release me from that room."

[ … ]

"I know people might think the idea of a monk joining a union is a joke," he said. "But this is important. It is not funny."

— Bruce Wallace, Los Angeles Times, via sfGate.

The Laughing Buddha could not be reached for comment.

February 24, 2006

There Are No Stupid Questions, Field Tested

February 17, 2006

Unfamiliarity with the Holy Quran of Moslems, the famous book about which so much has been written over the years, leaves us here at HCE ignorant of where in its pages the injunction against representations of the venerated prophet of that religion, Mohammed, is written down.

We understand that to believers the Holy Quran is the final dispensation of the self-same singular deity who figures so prominently in the previously written lore of Jews and Christians, and that the revered Mohammed represents to such believers the final, ultimate and irrefragable recipient of all clues and commands that renowned deity will ever be bothered to reveal.

Lacking Arabic, acknowledged by believers to be the only legitimate vessel of the words of the Holy Quran (the words "Holy Quran" themselves but a shadow of the true words struck in Arabic), we regret that we can say little that adds meaningfully to any conversation on the many important topics covered in its pages.

detail of the cartoon "A King of A-Shantee," published in Puck, 1882

We here at HCE, following the Barry Family in this, are persuaded that there are properly speaking no images of the Uncle.

We in no way mean to imply that the Uncle is comparable in the least to the venerated prophet Mohammed, though they do share this: during their respective lifetimes no one ventured to create a reasonable likeness which survives, and afterwards only those with an axe to grind have ever seen fit to try.

The Uncle we claim is a particular individual, and yet the Barry Family remains convinced that representations of Everymick, once so common in the journals and newspapers of Britain and the United States, have, without any thought for our own feeling in the matter, conspired to depict all that is objectionable in our closest relative as a template for generalized ridicule of all our most cherished bogrelated lore. This continues to be a sore point with us, though given the shortest possible shrift by others. The image here of the Pat calling the kettle "hat" is but one of the myriad of representations suspected by the Barry Family to refer to the Uncle down the years.

Recently in Denmark the editor of a minor journal (consonant with its culture, there are no other kind in that land), goaded cartoonists to submit offensive representations of the prophet Mohammed to a contest meant, it is said, to test the limits of free speech, although, to our knowledge, robustly offensive representations of the Other have always had a safe harbor where "free speech" is practiced. Transgressive free speech risks being squelched, offensive representations of the Other, well, not so much.

February 16, 2006

Department of But Not One of Them Was Shot In The Face

GENEVA (AP) - The United States should shut down the prison for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay and either release the detainees or put them on trial, the United Nations said in a report released Thursday.

The world body also called on the United States to refrain from practices that "amount to torture.''

[…]

The White House rejected the recommendation to shut the prison.

"These are dangerous terrorists that we're talking about that are there," spokesman Scott McClellan said.

McClellan dismissed the report as a "rehash'' of allegations previously made by lawyers for some detainees and said the military treats all prisoners humanely.

"We know that al-Qaida terrorists are trained in trying to disseminate false allegations,'' McClellan said.

— The Guardian, February 16, 2006

And we know how trying a rehash of allegations can be.

At least eight prisoners at Guantanamo are there even though they are no longer designated as enemy combatants. One perplexed attorney, whose client does not want public attention, learned that the man was no longer considered an enemy combatant only by reading a footnote in a Justice Department motion asking a federal judge to put a slew of habeas corpus cases on hold. The attorney doesn't know why the man is still in Cuba.

[…]

Much of the evidence against the detainees is weak. One prisoner at Guantanamo, for example, has made accusations against more than 60 of his fellow inmates; that's more than 10 percent of Guantanamo's entire prison population. The veracity of this prisoner's accusations is in doubt after a Syrian prisoner, Mohammed al-Tumani, 19, who was arrested in Pakistan, flatly denied to his Combatant Status Review Tribunal that he'd attended the jihadist training camp that the tribunal record said he did.

Tumani's denial was bolstered by his American "personal representative," one of the U.S. military officers -- not lawyers -- who are tasked with helping prisoners navigate the tribunals. Tumani's enterprising representative looked at the classified evidence against the Syrian youth and found that just one man -- the aforementioned accuser -- had placed Tumani at the terrorist training camp. And he had placed Tumani there three months before the teenager had even entered Afghanistan. The curious U.S. officer pulled the classified file of the accuser, saw that he had accused 60 men, and, suddenly skeptical, pulled the files of every detainee the accuser had placed at the one training camp. None of the men had been in Afghanistan at the time the accuser said he saw them at the camp.

The tribunal declared Tumani an enemy combatant anyway.

— Corine Hegland, National Journal, February 3, 2006

February 15, 2006

Department of News Management Department

Cheney May Migrate to Heart of Press Conference

"The White House hopes the story will fade in a couple of days. If it doesn't, one Bush adviser said, "Cheney should think about having a press conference early next week."

Or maybe a sit-down with Oprah, if he can spare the time. Or the Crocodile Hunter, at the very least.

February 13, 2006

Annals of Collateral Damage

Those of us who've ever gone hunting birds with the Vice President know that when he's in his cups, the man has a mean sense of humor.

"Quail before me, I say! Quail!" he'll shout. Anyone familiar with his mirthful ways should be prepared to laugh and duck down, for good reason.

Apparently the Vice President shot a friend in the face this past weekend. We here at HCE cannot help but believe he was just having fun.

February 8, 2006

Article I, for example:

Mr. President, last week the President of the United States gave his State of the Union address, where he spoke of America’s leadership in the world, and called on all of us to “lead this world toward freedom.” Again and again, he invoked the principle of freedom, and how it can transform nations, and empower people around the world.

But, almost in the same breath, the President openly acknowledged that he has ordered the government to spy on Americans, on American soil, without the warrants required by law.

The President issued a call to spread freedom throughout the world, and then he admitted that he has deprived Americans of one of their most basic freedoms under the Fourth Amendment -- to be free from unjustified government intrusion.

The President was blunt. He said that he had authorized the NSA’s domestic spying program, and he made a number of misleading arguments to defend himself. His words got rousing applause from Republicans, and even some Democrats.

The President was blunt, so I will be blunt: This program is breaking the law, and this President is breaking the law. Not only that, he is misleading the American people in his efforts to justify this program.

How is that worthy of applause? Since when do we celebrate our commander in chief for violating our most basic freedoms, and misleading the American people in the process? When did we start to stand up and cheer for breaking the law? In that moment at the State of the Union, I felt ashamed.

Congress has lost its way if we don’t hold this President accountable for his actions.

The President suggests that anyone who criticizes his illegal wiretapping program doesn’t understand the threat we face. But we do. Every single one of us is committed to stopping the terrorists who threaten us and our families.

Defeating the terrorists should be our top national priority, and we all agree that we need to wiretap them to do it. In fact, it would be irresponsible not to wiretap terrorists. But we have yet to see any reason why we have to trample the laws of the United States to do it. The President’s decision that he can break the law says far more about his attitude toward the rule of law than it does about the laws themselves.

This goes way beyond party, and way beyond politics. What the President has done here is to break faith with the American people. In the State of the Union, he also said that “we must always be clear in our principles” to get support from friends and allies that we need to fight terrorism. So let’s be clear about a basic American principle: When someone breaks the law, when someone misleads the public in an attempt to justify his actions, he needs to be held accountable. The President of the United States has broken the law. The President of the United States is trying to mislead the American people. And he needs to be held accountable.

Unfortunately, the President refuses to provide any details about this domestic spying program. Not even the full Intelligence committees know the details, and they were specifically set up to review classified information and oversee the intelligence activities of our government. Instead, the President says – “Trust me.”

This is not the first time we’ve heard that. In the lead-up to the Iraq war, the Administration went on an offensive to get the American public, the Congress, and the international community to believe its theory that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction, and even that he had ties to Al Qaeda. The President painted a dire – and inaccurate – picture of Saddam Hussein’s capability and intent, and we invaded Iraq on that basis. To make matters worse, the Administration misled the country about what it would take to stabilize and reconstruct Iraq after the conflict. We were led to believe that this was going to be a short endeavor, and that our troops would be home soon.

We all recall the President’s “Mission Accomplished” banner on the aircraft carrier on May 1, 2003. In fact, the mission was not even close to being complete. More than 2100 total deaths have occurred after the President declared an end to major combat operations in May of 2003, and over 16,600 American troops have been wounded in Iraq. The President misled the American people and grossly miscalculated the true challenge of stabilizing and rebuilding Iraq.

In December, we found out that the President has authorized wiretaps of Americans without the court orders required by law. He says he is only wiretapping people with links to terrorists, but how do we know? We don’t. The President is unwilling to let a neutral judge make sure that is the case. He will not submit this program to an independent branch of government to make sure he’s not violating the rights of law-abiding Americans.

So I don’t want to hear again that this Administration has shown it can be trusted. It hasn’t. And that is exactly why the law requires a judge to review these wiretaps.

It is up to Congress to hold the President to account. We held a hearing on the domestic spying program in the Judiciary Committee yesterday, where Attorney General Gonzales was a witness. We expect there will be other hearings. That is a start, but it will take more than just hearings to get the job done.

We know that in part because the President’s Attorney General has already shown a willingness to mislead the Congress.

At the hearing yesterday, I reminded the Attorney General about his testimony during his confirmation hearings in January 2005, when I asked him whether the President had the power to authorize warrantless wiretaps in violation of the criminal law. We didn’t know it then, but the President had authorized the NSA program three years before, when the Attorney General was White House Counsel. At his confirmation hearing, the Attorney General first tried to dismiss my question as “hypothetical.” He then testified that “it’s not the policy or the agenda of this President to authorize actions that would be in contravention of our criminal statutes.”

Well, Mr. President, wiretapping American citizens on American soil without the required warrant is in direct contravention of our criminal statutes. The Attorney General knew that, and he knew about the NSA program when he sought the Senate’s approval for his nomination to be Attorney General. He wanted the Senate and the American people to think that the President had not acted on the extreme legal theory that the President has the power as Commander in Chief to disobey the criminal laws of this country. But he had. The Attorney General had some explaining to do, and he didn’t do it yesterday. Instead he parsed words, arguing that what he said was truthful because he didn’t believe that the President’s actions violated the law.

But he knew what I was asking, and he knew he was misleading the Committee in his response. If he had been straightforward, he would have told the committee that in his opinion, the President has the authority to authorize warrantless wiretaps. My question wasn’t about whether such illegal wiretapping was going on – like almost everyone in Congress, I didn’t know about the program then. It was a question about how the nominee to be Attorney General viewed the law. This nominee wanted to be confirmed, and so he let a misleading statement about one of the central issues of his confirmation – his view of executive power – stay on the record until the New York Times revealed the program.

The rest of the Attorney General’s performance at yesterday’s hearing certainly did not give me any comfort, either. He continued to push the Administration’s weak legal arguments, continued to insinuate that anyone who questions this program doesn’t want to fight terrorism, and refused to answer basic questions about what powers this Administration is claiming. We still need a lot of answers from this Administration.

But let’s put aside the Attorney General for now. The burden is not just on him to come clean -- the President has some explaining to do. The President’s defense of his actions is deeply cynical, deeply misleading, and deeply troubling.

To find out that the President of the United States has violated the basic rights of the American people is chilling. And then to see him publicly embrace his actions – and to see so many Members of Congress cheer him on – is appalling.

The President has broken the law, and he has made it clear that he will continue to do so. But the President is not a king. And the Congress is not a king’s court. Our job is not to stand up and cheer when the President breaks the law. Our job is to stand up and demand accountability, to stand up and check the power of an out-of-control executive branch.

That is one of the reasons that the framers put us here - to ensure balance between the branches of government, not to act as a professional cheering section.

We need answers. Because no one, not the President, not the Attorney General, and not any of their defenders in this body, has been able to explain why it is necessary to break the law to defend against terrorism. And I think that’s because they can’t explain it.

Instead, this administration reacts to anyone who questions this illegal program by saying that those of us who demand the truth and stand up for our rights and freedoms have a pre-9/11 view of the world.

In fact, the President has a pre-1776 view of the world.

Our Founders lived in dangerous times, and they risked everything for freedom. Patrick Henry said, "Give me liberty or give me death." The President's pre-1776 mentality is hurting America. It is fracturing the foundation on which our country has stood for 230 years. The President can't just bypass two branches of government, and obey only those laws he wants to obey. Deciding unilaterally which of our freedoms still apply in the fight against terrorism is unacceptable and needs to be stopped immediately.

Let’s examine for a moment some of the President’s attempts to defend his actions. His arguments have changed over time, of course. They have to – none of them hold up under even casual scrutiny, so he can’t rely on one single explanation. As each argument crumbles beneath him, he moves on to a new one, until that, too, is debunked, and on and on he goes.

In the State of the Union, the President referred to Presidents in American history who cited executive authority to order warrantless surveillance. But of course those past presidents – like Wilson and Roosevelt – were acting before the Supreme Court decided in 1967 that our communications are protected by the Fourth Amendment, and before Congress decided in 1978 that the executive branch can no longer unilaterally decide which Americans to wiretap. The Attorney General yesterday was unable to give me one example of a President who, since 1978 when FISA was passed, has authorized warrantless wiretaps outside of FISA.

So that argument is baseless, and it’s deeply troubling that the President of the United States would so obviously mislead the Congress and American public. That hardly honors the founders’ idea that the President should address the Congress on the state of our union.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was passed in 1978 to create a secret court, made up of judges who develop national security expertise, to issue warrants for surveillance of terrorists and spies. These are the judges from whom the Bush Administration has obtained thousands of warrants since 9/11. The Administration has almost never had a warrant request rejected by those judges. They have used the FISA Court thousands of times, but at the same time they assert that FISA is an “old law” or “out of date” and they can’t comply with it. Clearly they can and do comply with it – except when they don’t. Then they just arbitrarily decide to go around these judges, and around the law.

The Administration has said that it ignored FISA because it takes too long to get a warrant under that law. But we know that in an emergency, where the Attorney General believes that surveillance must begin before a court order can be obtained, FISA permits the wiretap to be executed immediately as long as the government goes to the court within 72 hours. The Attorney General has complained that the emergency provision does not give him enough flexibility, he has complained that getting a FISA application together or getting the necessary approvals takes too long. But the problems he has cited are bureaucratic barriers that the executive branch put in place, and could easily remove if it wanted.

FISA also permits the Attorney General to authorize unlimited warrantless electronic surveillance in the United States during the 15 days following a declaration of war, to allow time to consider any amendments to FISA required by a wartime emergency. That is the time period that Congress specified. Yet the President thinks that he can do this indefinitely.

In the State of the Union, the President also argued that federal courts had approved the use of presidential authority that he was invoking. But that turned out to be misleading as well. When I asked the Attorney General about this, he could point me to no court – not the Supreme Court or any other court – that has considered whether, after FISA was enacted, the President nonetheless had the authority to bypass it and authorize warrantless wiretaps. Not one court. The Administration’s effort to find support for what it has done in snippets of other court decisions would be laughable if this issue were not so serious.

The President knows that FISA makes it a crime to wiretap Americans in the United States without a warrant or a court order. Why else would he have assured the public, over and over again, that he was getting warrants before engaging in domestic surveillance?

Here’s what the President said on April 20, 2004: “Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires – a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so.”

And again, on July 14, 2004: “The government can’t move on wiretaps or roving wiretaps without getting a court order.”

The President was understandably eager in these speeches to make it clear that under his administration, law enforcement was using the FISA Court to obtain warrants before wiretapping. That is understandable, since wiretapping Americans on American soil without a warrant is against the law.

And listen to what the President said on June 9, 2005: “Law enforcement officers need a federal judge’s permission to wiretap a foreign terrorist’s phone, a federal judge’s permission to track his calls, or a federal judge’s permission to search his property. Officers must meet strict standards to use any of these tools. And these standards are fully consistent with the Constitution of the U.S.”

Now that the public knows about the domestic spying program, he has had to change course. He has looked around for arguments to cloak his actions. And all of them are completely threadbare.

The President has argued that Congress gave him authority to wiretap Americans on U.S. soil without a warrant when it passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force after September 11, 2001. Mr. President, that is ridiculous. Members of Congress did not think this resolution gave the President blanket authority to order these warrantless wiretaps. We all know that. Anyone in this body who would tell you otherwise either wasn’t here at the time or isn’t telling the truth. We authorized the President to use military force in Afghanistan, a necessary and justified response to September 11. We did not authorize him to wiretap American citizens on American soil without going through the process that was set up nearly three decades ago precisely to facilitate the domestic surveillance of terrorists – with the approval of a judge. That is why both Republicans and Democrats have questioned this theory.

This particular claim is further undermined by congressional approval of the Patriot Act just a few weeks after we passed the Authorization for the Use of Military Force. The Patriot Act made it easier for law enforcement to conduct surveillance on suspected terrorists and spies, while maintaining FISA’s baseline requirement of judicial approval for wiretaps of Americans in the U.S. It is ridiculous to think that Congress would have negotiated and enacted all the changes to FISA in the Patriot Act if it thought it had just authorized the President to ignore FISA in the AUMF.

In addition, in the intelligence authorization bill passed in December 2001, we extended the emergency authority in FISA, at the Administration’s request, from 24 to 72 hours. Why do that if the President has the power to ignore FISA? That makes no sense at all.

The President has also said that his inherent executive power gives him the power to approve this program. But here the President is acting in direct violation of a criminal statute. That means his power is, as Justice Jackson said in the steel seizure cases half a century ago, “at its lowest ebb.” A recent letter from a group of law professors and former executive branch officials points out that “every time the Supreme Court has confronted a statute limiting the Commander-in-Chief’s authority, it has upheld the statute.” The Senate reports issued when FISA was enacted confirm the understanding that FISA overrode any pre-existing inherent authority of the President. As the 1978 Senate Judiciary Committee report stated, FISA “recognizes no inherent power of the president in this area.” And “Congress has declared that this statute, not any claimed presidential power, controls.” Contrary to what the President told the country in the State of the Union, no court has ever approved warrantless surveillance in violation of FISA.

The President’s claims of inherent executive authority, and his assertions that the courts have approved this type of activity, are baseless.

The President has argued that periodic internal executive branch review provides an adequate check on the program. He has even characterized this periodic review as a safeguard for civil liberties. But we don’t know what this check involves. And we do know that Congress explicitly rejected this idea of unilateral executive decision-making in this area when it passed FISA.

Finally, the president has tried to claim that informing a handful of congressional leaders, the so-called Gang of Eight, somehow excuses breaking the law. Of course, several of these members said they weren’t given the full story. And all of them were prohibited from discussing what they were told. So the fact that they were informed under these extraordinary circumstances does not constitute congressional oversight, and it most certainly does not constitute congressional approval of the program. Indeed, it doesn’t even comply with the National Security Act, which requires the entire memberships of the House and Senate Intelligence Committee to be “fully and currently informed of the intelligence activities of the United States.”

In addition, we now know that some of these members expressed concern about the program. The Administration ignored their protests. Just last week, one of the eight members of Congress who has been briefed about the program, Congresswoman Jane Harman, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said she sees no reason why the Administration cannot accomplish its goals within the law as currently written.

None of the President’s arguments explains or excuses his conduct, or the NSA’s domestic spying program. Not one. It is hard to believe that the President has the audacity to claim that they do. It is a strategy that really hinges on the credibility of the office of the Presidency itself. If you just insist that you didn’t break the law, you haven’t broken the law. It reminds me of what Richard Nixon said after he had left office: “Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.” But that is not how our constitutional democracy works. Making those kinds of arguments is damaging the credibility of the Presidency.

And what’s particularly disturbing is how many members of Congress have responded. They stood up and cheered. They stood up and cheered.

Justice Louis Brandeis once wrote: “Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”

The President’s actions are indefensible. Freedom is an enduring principle. It is not something to celebrate in one breath, and ignore the next. Freedom is at the heart of who we are as a nation, and as a people. We cannot be a beacon of freedom for the world unless we protect our own freedoms here at home.

The President was right about one thing. In his address, he said “We love our freedom, and we will fight to keep it.”

Yes, Mr. President. We do love our freedom, and we will fight to keep it. We will fight to defeat the terrorists who threaten the safety and security of our families and loved ones. And we will fight to protect the rights of law-abiding Americans against intrusive government power.

As the President said, we must always be clear in our principles. So let us be clear: We cherish the great and noble principle of freedom, we will fight to keep it, and we will hold this President – and anyone who violates those freedoms – accountable for their actions. In a nation built on freedom, the President is not a king, and no one is above the law.

I yield the floor.

— Senator Russ Fiengold in remarks prepared for delivery on the Senate floor

February 7, 2006

Indeed

The challenges posed to American democracy by secrecy and by unchecked presidential power are the two great themes running through the history of the Iraq war. How long the war will last, who will "win," and what it will do to the political landscape of the Middle East will not be obvious for years to come, but the answers to those questions cannot alter the character of what happened at the outset. Put plainly, the President decided to attack Iraq, he brushed caution and objection aside, and Congress, the press, and the people, with very few exceptions, stepped back out of the way and let him do it.

Explaining this fact is not going to be easy. Commentators often now refer to President Bush's decision to invade Iraq as "a war of choice," which means that it was not provoked. The usual word for an unprovoked attack is aggression. Why did Americans —elected representatives and plain citizens alike—accede so readily to this act of aggression, and why did they question the President's arguments for war so feebly? The whole business is painfully awkward to consider, but it will not go away.

— Thomas Powers, reviewing James Risen's State of War in The New York Review of Books

February 6, 2006

Internet Argument Starter Kit

I’m offended. Those people, by their actions, have demonstrated the essentially corrupt nature of their society and culture. Their behaviour, which all right-minded people should be offended by, should be universally condemned. If anything shows that we are right and they are wrong, this is it. And I call upon all of those who agree with me to take action, while there is still time. To those who say that our side has also erred, I agree: there have been errors of judgement. But if anything our mistake has been to do too little and too late. We now need to wake up and respond to the danger that confronts us. In any case, to suggest that what we have done bears comparison with what they have done is itself deeply offensive and such sentiments betray the inner corruption of those who utter them. Some principles are absolute and this is one of them. Some have suggested that it is hypocritical of me to take offence at what those people have done whilst ignoring or excusing what some other people have done. Such critics thereby reveal their own inability to distinguish between those people and the other people (who have surely suffered enough and deserve a break). Others have intimated that I spend my time trawling the internet looking for obscure TV clips and articles in foreign languages to be offended by. Frankly, I find such comment offensive: the price of what we hold sacred is eternal vigilance and someone has to take on the responsibility of telling our people about the grave danger they face from those people.

— Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber

February 5, 2006

Department of The Easily Foreseen

Superbowl Commercial Predictions

(…)
3. Several beer commercials will feature a man making a complete fool of himself at a bar while trying to impress a woman.
4. Several beer commercials will feature a man making a complete fool of himself at his home while attempting to score with a woman.
(…)

February 4, 2006

Betty Friedan, February 4, 1921 – February 4, 2006: In Memoriam

February 3, 2006

Gertrude Stein, February 3, 1874 - July 27, 1946

Gertrude Stein forground, Alice B. Toklas, background

Q: "How do you do."

A: "Very well I thank you."

Q: Would you care to make a statement?

A: Gladly. "If we say, Do not share, he will not bestow they can reiterate, I am going to do so, we have organised an irregular commonplace and we have made excess return to rambling."

Q: You will not mind if I ask what an irregular commonplace is?

A: Not at all, since the answer is anything. That is, anything is the answer. Or anything is an answer. But to back to the question. Anything is at once typical and unique. And so anything is what "everybody knows and nobody knows," an irregular commonplace, and Miss Stein was always writing the portrait of that, and of anything.

Q: Do go on.

A: I always do …

— From An Interview With Gertrude Stein

February 2, 2006

Himself foisted on the world on this date, 1892

One day, the Spanish painter César Abin came to do a sketch of Joyce for transition, Eugene Jolas's journal which was publishing portions of "Work in Progress". Abin drew a conventional man of letters, sitting on front of his books, with his pen in his hand, his eyes visionary. It was a tolerable if awkward likeness. The books, the pen, the entire drawing seemed to Joyce too solemn, too simple. He began telling Abin what to draw, and presently he was involved in a collaboration. At Joyce's instruction a different picture was drawn: Joyce was shown in a large semicircle as if he were doubled up by cramps, with his feet dangling among wisps of cloud. His body ended up shaped like a question mark the eternal enigma he regarded himself to be and was to himself as well as his audience. His blinker-like spectacles were on his nose and the tip of his nose collided with a star. Under Joyce's dangling feet Abin drew a terrestial globe labeled "Ireland". The globe was made to become the large dot completing the question mark. On the head of this free-floating Irishman among the clouds, suspended over Ireland and a large Dublin drawn as Ireland's heartland, was placed a battered cobwebbed Irish derby. There were cobwebs in the hollow of Joyce's chest that is, near the region of his heart. Shoved into the left pocket was some sheet music. The title printed on it was "Let Me Like a Soldier Fall." There were patches at the knees and a patch on the sleeve. Joyce's mouth is turned down. Stuck into the front of the bowler is the portentious figure 13.

— Leon Edel, "Psychopathology of Shem," pp 112-115, Stuff of Sleep and Dreams: Experiments in Literary Psychology, 1982

February 1, 2006

Cindy Sheehan escorted from the halls of Congress for wearing the wrong clothes

"I come before you tonight to say that the State of the Union depends a lot on how you dress."

Bogsniffings:

(Should our business plan here at HCE go not too far awry, this portal to the previous year's Bogsniffings will someday be attended by the necessary machineries of commerce, erected to collect the agreeable sum on the looker's entering there — something much like the estimable Paypal system, perhaps.

At present, the Bogblog is freely entered to whatever depth the looker may choose to reach.

Use the Volume control to descend to the desired annum).

Bogblog