cheese it, the cops!

let me say again : one should ask oneself: who else was intimidated or blackmailed to keep them from revealing info about cooked intelligence, and how? if one other were to be revealed, this administration would collapse like a house of cards.

ok so let's get this straight: here's the tale: rove revealed plame's identity not knowing or believing she was a covert operative, just to clarify that wilson was not sent by the white house but by his own wife to check out the niger rumor. it seems plausible. but: how would the supposed fact that he was sent by plame undermine wilson's credibility? indeed, why would valerie plame on her own dime be checking rumors of this variety? i guess it would make sense if the idea is that the admin essentially refused to check it out at all and plame suspected them of manufacturing intelligence or simply purveying implausible rumors. this would certainly suppose she was in a position of authority and also a subversive influence within the admin (i.e. someone concerned about the truth). i guess i don't believe it. the rational procedure would be to say: we sent him because we were concerned about the accuracy of the claim, and regretfully we ovberestimated its credibility. blaming plame for coming up with the truth wouldn't help the cover-up at all. see? we're discrediting her on the grounds that she was not acting at our behest. it's senseless.

eric is pretty damn amazing.

And it occurs to me that to notice things might be the simplest way to happiness.

Although Britain has passed a series of antiterrorist and immigration laws and made nearly 800 arrests since Sept. 11, 2001, critics have charged that its deep tradition of civil liberties and protection of political activists have made the country a haven for terrorists.

well, i guess we've had enough of that.

i remember when i was a kid (circa early-to-mid-60s) seeing ads in the comic books for sea monkeys, which were presented as more or less kinglyishly crowned monkey-headed sea horses that you could raise at home. thirty years later, when my kids sam and emma were maybe 7 and 3, i ordered some from somewhere and we raised them. they're brine shrimp: just tiny itsy-bitsy crustaceans. but they are highly accessorized, and their tininess is effective as a kind of screen: you can imagine them to be sea monkeys because you can see something moving around but that's about all.  emma used to wear a little water-filled pendant around her neck with sea monkeys floating within. the sea monkey magnates - operating out of maryland -  call themselves "trans-science inc": apt to their beautiful, extremely american marketing confection of hard science, pure imagination, and outright huchsterism. so anyway, sam (now 13) evidently had pretty vivid memories, because he really really wanted to find sea monkeys for jane's 5th b-day. he got her the basic starter set, which we're doing. but then we started checking out the available accessories, which include:

Cupids Arrow Mating Powder
                                  For shy Sea-Monkeys afraid of "marriage",                                   this fabulous formula will give them a quick                                   trip "to the altar"! Once "hooked",                                   former "bachelor" Sea-Monkeys will                                   fill your tank with oodles of cute babies -                                   fast!

Sea-Monkeys Banana Treat
                                  While it's true that "monkeys" like                                   bananas, Sea-Monkeys are no exception. So here's                                   a TREAT for your favorite pets and a wonderful                                   way to REWARD them for the FUN they give you!                                   A long-lasting supply of tasty "dessert"                                   for your aquatic pets that rovides health-giving                                   vitamins, minerals and LOVE!

Sea-Monkey Sea-Diamonds
                                  This heap of sparkling "sea-gems"                                   keep Sea-Monkeys happy and entertained by giving                                   them toys that they will really play with! So                                   pretty they might as well be REAL. Watch the                                   Sea-Monkeys have fun by tossing Sea-Diamonds                                   around like beachballs! They even "learn"                                   to climb up and ride them as if they were surfboards.                                   This gives them the exercise they need to stay                                   fit. But MOST AMAZING, as the water levels drops                                   in your aquarium, Sea-Diamonds RISE UP from                                   the bottom and FLOAT MID-WATER, seemingly in                                   DEFIANCE OF THE LAWS OF GRAVITY! The Sea-Monkeys                                   now wind their way among the mysteriously suspended                                   gems swimming in and out of the enchanted "maze".                                   So fantastic, it MUST be seen to be believed!

                               

Sea-Monkey® Speedway                                   Challenge™
                                  Extreme head-to-head                                   Sea-Monkey races!
Which little creature                                   will earn the title of Sea-Monkey World Champion?                                   Coach your pets to maneuver the turns and speed                                   full throttle through the finish line! Sea-Monkeys                                   actually race "up-stream                                   by instinct" - against a current of water                                   that you control                                   - and the first to cross the finish line wins!

Aqua-Leash™
                                  Here is a MUCH-NEEDED tool to SAFELY handle                                   Sea-Monkeys! Over 8 1/2" long, it's a Sea-Monkey                                   "picket-upper" that works by suction                                   and cannot injure even the biggest Sea-Monkeys                                   that you can grow. BEST                                   OF ALL, when                                   not used to catch a little rascal to move him                                   to another tank or for other reasons, it DOUBLES                                   as a "vacuum                                   cleaner"                                   to suction up the "yuck"                                   that settles on the bottom. Easy to operate,                                   and SO USEFUL, you'll thank the day you got                                   it.

PlayPen
                                  This bio-ergonomic                                   designed and tested short-term Sea-Monkeys RC                                   is a perfect way to take your Salty Simian pets                                   with you to school, a friend's house, or the                                   David Letterman show! The PlayPen is a mobile                                   home as well as the best way to show case and                                   view your Sea-Monkeys at a close range. Press                                   the momentary button switch on the base of the                                   playpen and WOW...a very cool red light floods                                   the watery world of your pets. It happens because                                   the PlayPen is equipped with a bright red LED                                   light that puts a spot light on your pets. The                                   specially designed strong, stainless steel clip                                   will securely attach the PlayPen to your pocket                                   or back pack. The PlayPen is designed to safely                                   transport your Sea-Monkeys' for up to 36 hours.

Tic-Tac-Toe
                                  Tic-Tac-Toe the Sea-Monkey                                   way. Here is a portable, whimsical Sea-Monkeys.                                   Tic-Tac-Toe game in blue and purple. 8 little                                   magnetic guys (4 blue, 4 purple) come in a high                                   quality tin container that serves as both play                                   set and storage container small enough to fit                                   in your pocket. Cute enough to brighten any                                   mood, any day. Size: 3" 1/2 x 2" 1/2                                   in a blue gift box. Contains 8 playing pieces;                                   one storage / play set and Instructions.

etc!!

                                                               

 

one thing blogs are not good for, with rare exceptions: covering breaking news like yesterday's london attacks. everybody feels like they have to say something, but obviously the msm are the ones with the resources and sources to have the basic info at a given moment. so the blogs start doing what blogs do best: bickering. truly it was horrendous yesterday to read, for example, michelle malkin, who started squawking about what the "moonbats" were saying after the achingly redundant condemnation. why is that worth reading? or for that matter why read the people she's arguing against? better to just do something else. 

krugman demonstrates again that an advocate of liberty has no place in the current american political spectrum. in fact, up until the bush administration started trying to impose religious values by legislative and judicial means while suspending civil liberties on the pretext of terrorism, i would have said that the greatest threat to american liberty is "public health." the restraints appear small- usually - but they hound you throughout the day, from seatbelts and helmets to diet and tobacco, etc. there is practically no restraint that can't be justified when you start to aggregate the results of individual or family choices into public costs. these restrictions reach actually into your body. fundamentally, the justification is precisely the same as the patriot act: we can make you safe if you will hand us your freedom.

just blogrolled a site called unknown news, largely on the basis of this lovely and actually profound piece.

so i've been trying to figure out what to blog about london . one thing is that it's sad that there will actually be no more coverage of legitimate protests against the g8 by anarchists and others. bush cand get up and say

The contrast between what we've seen on the TV screens here, what's taken place in London and what's taking place here is incredibly vivid to me. On the one hand, we have people here who are working to alleviate poverty, to help rid the world of the pandemic of AIDS, working on ways to have a clean environment. And on the other hand, you've got people killing innocent people. And the contrast couldn't be clearer between the intentions and the hearts of those of us who care deeply about human rights and human liberty, and those who kill -- those who have got such evil in their heart that they will take the lives of innocent folks.

as though there are two possible positions, as though you're al qaeda or all g8. meanwhile, actual protesters are fielding actual arguments and even attacking exploitation with whimsy.

religious conservatives might be gearing up to squawk about a gonzales nomination to the supreme court, but i'ma gonna try to outsquawk them. dude. you rendered the opinion that it was perfectly constitutional to abduct people secretly and hold them without trial or counsel forever. there could be no more "extreme circumstances." i'd rather have a child rapist with some rudimentary tendency to publicly simulate a respect for human freedom or understanding of democracy.

so what are we to make of the fact that cooper's source called him at the last minute and let him off the hook, while miller goes to jail? certainly this, plausibly: their source is not the same. for that matter, a number of reporters have already testified, and still they prosecutor presses on. so if i may speculate: a dozen different people were yapping simultaneously to anyone who would listen that valerie plame was a cia agent. ok? that is, someone hatched a policy, then sent everyone off to implement it. rove or cheney are the obvious candidates, but this makes it a conspiracy, directed from on high. in a way it's a pretty minor matter, and i heard the ancient pigboy ed meese today on tv say that he wasn't even sure any crime had been committed, so what was the fuss anyway? but in a way the pettiness is part of the point: vicious little bitches out to exact their tiny little revenge. of course the ramifications are much larger, because it is in the context of making people pay for revealing the truth about the ways the admin lied our way to war. there may be a dozen cases like this. one must think to oneself: someone called joe wilson and said: if you reveal this we will out your wife. well the other twenty people being blackmailed capitulated. maybe they had more to lose. if any of this is true and the prosecutor has any inkling, it could be truly extreme.

impeachment

i call it encouraging that 42% of americans say that bush should be impeached if he deceived americans about the reasons for war. i said this from the beginning: there could be no clearer case calling for impeachment, no deeper abuse of power with more disastrous consequences. and manipulation of public opinion by secrecy and lies - hallmarks of many administrations but never more than in this one - is a form of tyranny.

2nd amendment contd

while i rant on the right to bear arms: in the debate over ratification, there was radical advocacy of this right on both sides. this from the great american linguist noah webster, writing as "a citizen of america" in october 1787:

Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States.

and therefore we shouldn't worry too much about erecting a strong national government; the people are the guarantors, the prosecutors, of their own freedoms. also note in passing that webster's practices of capitalization are strikingly modern: compare franklin e.g.! but i have transcended even webster in this regard. however, he remains retrograde and arbitrary in his use of the semi-colon.

i'm planning to do more blogging etc on the following topic as my research deepens this summer. but here's a proposal for you. one appeals to the federalist papers to help understand the intent of the framers of the constitution. but to understand the intent of the framers of the bill of rights, one has to turn to the anti-federalists, who opposed the ratification of the constitution partly on the grounds that it did not include an enumeration of the rights of citizens, and whose signal achievement in the ratification process was to force later inclusion of a bill of rights. one classic source here would be the dissent of the pennsylvania minority to the constitutional convention, signed by 21 delegates and probably written by samuel bryan. they proposed in the convention itself something very close to the eventual text of the bill of rights. now it would seem relevant, for example, to give their version of the right to bear arms - here clearly an individual right:

7. That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and their own State or the United States, or for the purpose of killing game; and no law shall be passed for disarming the people or any of them unless for crimes committed, or real danger of public injury from individuals...

james stockdale is dead. he was best known as ross perot's runing mate in 1992, when he gave a charmingly unpolished and occasionally sharp performance in a debate with gore and quayle. he was a prisoner of war in vietnam for over 7 years and subjected to extreme torture. what is most remarkable about stockdale, though is that in his own direct way he was a very serious philosopher. i've read his booklet "courage under fire: testing epictetus's doctrines in a laboratory of human behavior." it's not a great work of scholarship but it is an earnest attempt to describe doing what epictetus would most want done with his philosophy: living it in hell. i've not yet read "thoughts of a philosophical fighter pilot."

Stockdale received 26 combat decorations, including the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest medal for valor, in 1976. A portion of his award citation reads: "Stockdale ... deliberately inflicted a near mortal wound to his person in order to convince his captors of his willingness to give up his life rather than capitulate. He was subsequently discovered and revived by the North Vietnamese who, convinced of his indomitable spirit, abated their employment of excessive harassment and torture of all prisoners of war."

my creators column, on poker, is in today's philadelphia inquirer.

here's the column we were discussing on c-span this morning:

Is America Over?
by Crispin Sartwell

Recently I was interviewed by a filmmaker who's working on a documentary about American philosophy. He asked me the big, hard, obscure questions about the nature of the American spirit, about the great themes of American history, about what makes America distinctive.
    I have tried to answer such questions before. But this time as I ran through them I was seized with nostalgia for the mere existence of questions: the idea of America is more and more thoroughly retrospective, a survey of something of great value, now lost to history.
   The first thing we might think about is the content of American mythology, which has its basis in reality: a celebration of the frontier where there is no structure of authority; of the outlaw; of Clint Eastwood's man with no name; of the gangster from Al Capone to Snoop Dogg; of political radicals such as Emma Goldman, H.L. Mencken, Abby Hoffman, Barry Goldwater; of pointedly distinctive artists from Robert Johnson and Hank Williams to Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol.
     But as time goes on, we have fewer and fewer figures capable of real boldness or defiance or self-reliance: we worship bureaucracies and their leaders, bureaucracies and their products. Our frontier is the cubicle.
    Surely, we have to understand the vision of America - its imaginary essence, its function as a symbol - in terms of individuality and freedom. The radical protestants who fled England and Europe believed that each person had his own relation to God, unmediated by the Catholic church or the government of England. Each person was answerable to God only as God expressed Himself in that person's conscience.
    This is the motivation for the First Amendment, with its insulation of individual conscience, expression, and religion from state interference. This radical religiosity and the idea that it entailed radical liberty was the position of abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown.
    This independence of spirit from institution was secularized in the work of the greatest American intellectuals of the nineteenth century, Ralph Waldo Emerson and his best friend Henry David Thoreau. As Thoreau asked in "Civil Disobedience": "Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward."
     The individualism that Emerson famously set out in the essay "Self-Reliance" - perhaps the greatest statement of what America means - is not an individualism that tries to disconnect people from one another or from the world: quite the reverse. It celebrates the life of each thing as essential in the life of all things. But that entails that each person ought to free to become himself.
   There are two opposing forces between which this America has been crushed. We might call them quasi-communism and quasi-fascism.  (Actual communism and fascism would require more clarity than most of us now possess.)
    The social programs that grew exponentially with the New Deal - and the huge bureaucracies needed to fund and administer them - are almost self-evidently good: feed the poor, house the homeless, care for the elderly, eliminate bad products from the marketplace, assure our health. But of course they are destructive of self-reliance. And they permeate America with state power.
    Americans are now processed by state educational institutions into a fundamental unanimity that revolves around the simultaneous muttering of cliches: even "believe in yourself" is an invitation to witless conformity; even reading "Civil Disobedience" - a text no American educator could possibly accept - is rendered empty by its institutionalization. Our devotion now is only to standardized tests and standardized minds.
     That's the quasi-communism. The quasi-fascism was brought home to me last week when I revisited my home town, Washington D.C. It was bristling with barriers, cameras, security forces. The capitol must be the most surveilled and policed city in the world. To call that the symbol of human freedom is laughable.
    At every turn - from its Patriot Act to its overwhelming propensity to secrecy to it use of the term "Homeland"- the Bush administration is intent on reducing freedoms and increasing state power. Even its theocratic wing has a grim fascistic flavor. Texas governor Rick Perry signing a law against gay marriage at an evangelical church is telling you one thing: we have established evangelical Christianity as the state religion. 
    America is dead and really no one seems to be mourning. At any moment we will be as thoroughly bureaucratized as France and as theocratic as Iran. If there is any enthusiasm for - or even understanding of - what makes America distinctive and valuable, it is not currently visible on our political landscape.
    In our pathetic little world, some people - Hillary Clinton, maybe - want to shape your mind and then take care of you; others - Alberto Gonzales - want to watch you all the time and then intern you. But no one wants you to be free.

hey thanks if you watched me on c-span. self-promo for the 4th. there's a section on fireworks in "six names of beauty." and no one has ever better exemplified the term "independence" than that great american, voltairine de cleyre.

on the politics of the supreme court: maybe bush always moves with confidence and no regrets. maybe. but if i were his political advisor i'd be extremely nervous. if he puts forward a straight-up right-wing ideologue he of course will face a filibuster. then the repubs can nuke it etc. but this will be a long hellacious process in which all other biz grinds to a halt. then it is a question, i think, to what extent he can keep hagel, mccain, snowe, etc on board. and if somehow the balance of power again shifts to them here - if they reach some sort of compromise in which maybe they get a moderate nominee for the rehnquist vacancy etc - then bush and the religious right will have lost control of the republican party and set up mccain to get the nomination in 2008. so the admin is in serious jeopardy of losing the popular mandate to an even greater extent than it has already and then of losing their own party. i think if rove and the political operation have anything to say about it, you may be surprised at how moderate the nominee is.

on supreme court. maybe bush always moves with confidence and no regrets. maybe. but if i were his political advisor i'd be extremely nervous. if he puts forward a straight-up right-wing ideologue he of course will face a filibuster. then the repubs can nuke it etc. but this will be a long hellacious process in which all other biz grinds to a halt. then it is a question, i think, to what extent he can keep hagel, mccain, snow, etc on board. and if somehow the balance of power again shifts to them here - if they reach some sort of compromise in which maybe they get a moderate nominee for the rehnquist vacancy etc, then bush and the religious right will have lost control of the republican party and set up mccain to get the nomination in 2008. so the admin is in serious jeopardy of losing the popular mandate to an even greater extent than it has already and then of losing their own party. i think if rove and the political operation have anything to say about it, you may be surprised at how moderate the nominee is.

thin blogging if any this weekend as i wander about the hemisphere. but look for me monday, july 4, on c-span, between 7:45 and 8:30.