Repent Ye, Syndicated Columnists!

Charles Krauthammer asks a number of questions in his column today about Obama's recent speech on race . We at the Fiery Sword have prepared an uncomfortable answer for him:

Because focusing the conversation on race is easier and more politically acceptable in the current climate than stating the obvious: Christian Preachers Say The Darnedest Things. These guys are dependent on demagogic incitement to keep their jobs, and they base most of their pull on the notion that the people they are talking to are fundamentally flawed and deserving of punishment, and only they possess the power to avert that punishment. The notion that 9/11 was punishment for transgressions (sins, if you will) flows naturally out of the modern Christian theology. Given that those who believe themselves to be special, to be saints in the land of the wicked, are more likely to cling to the church, declaring America to be the aforementioned wicked land is the best choice for a preacher who wants to retain his job for upwards of two decades.

But good luck dropping that little egg on a campaign trail where all the candidates are crassly scrambling for the mantle of "most devout." Pointing out the glaring incompatibility of pretty much ANY Christian sermon with the qualities necessary for competent governance is not the kind of thing that gets one elected to public office, and we can thank who for that? The liberal elites? Not so much, CK.

Against The Power of Mordor There Can Be No Victory

There are no coincidences. Don't say I didn't warn you.

I Have A Huge Head, And Little Tiny Arms!

People depend on us, the blogging community, to synthesize the news stories of the day, to make the connections that they otherwise would not have made, whether for lack of time, lack of motivation, or lack of intellectual wherewithal. Taking that duty as seriously as I do, I present to you today the obvious upshot of these four recent stories:

Fearless Glow-In-The-Dark DINOSAUR ARMY!


You heard it here first, people. Don't act all surprised when you see the ripples in your Mojitos.

Hosannas In The Lowest

If I were the type to make sweeping pronouncements about cultural paradigms, I might be tempted to say that that kid in Omaha who carried out that suicide attack on a shopping mall was the final step in the ascendancy of the most truly American of cults, celebrity. The kid said he wanted to go out with a bang, and that he would be famous. Note that he didn't decide to get famous by shooting a celebrity, he decided to become a celebrity by shooting random people and then himself (which, by the way, is no easy feat with an SKS). Apparently that's an accepted method now.

I understand the draw of celebrity, or so I thought. There's money and power and ease of life, and all that. Being a celebrity could be pretty sweet, as a means to an end. But this guy, he has a more radical theology, i.e. that celebrity is the end in and of itself. And he was willing to both kill and die for it. A interesting idea, certainly.

Several folks interviewed expressed sorrow for this guy. I wonder if they express sorrow for suicide bombers who blow themselves up in markets in Israel or Baghdad? I'm not judging the response, I'm just suggesting that drawing a distinction between the two is a bit too picayune. Suicide/murder in hopes of posthumous reward, inability to grok the finality of death, it's the same rationale. If there's any reason why one is deserving of sympathy and the other is not, I don't know what it is.

The Post Gins Up Some Rummy

Your friend and mine Donald Rumsfeld apparently used to fire off about 40-60 little memos a day, termed "snowflakes" for the way they drifted down upon the heads and outstretched tongues of the Department of Defense. After reading several of them, it would appear that the good Secretary was awfully concerned with how things were being perceived in the press, and felt he was often being depicted unfairly. He would, at times, attempt (with some success) to develop counter-narratives to combat the depictions at which he took umbrage.

Does that sound like a Secretary of Defense? Or does that sound like the type of thing that one would expect from, for instance, a blogger?

What's Past Is Prologue. Also, It's Plausibly Deniable.

FEMA held a press conference whereat there was no press, on account of the thing being called at the last minute, etc. FEMA dealt with this particular emergency by providing its own employees to stand in for the press, and lob softballs at the podium with reckless abandon.

Our lovely new White House Press Secretary, Dana Perino, true to form, could not just say "That's embarrassing, here's how it happened, we apologize." Oh no. Not Dana. She's a professional. She had to overextend and say (wait for it) "It is not a practice that we would employ here at the White House or that we -- we certainly don't condone it."

Ahhhh Dana. Really? The White House wouldn't hold a public event and pack the audience with shills? Really? The White House wouldn't do that? They wouldn't call press conferences with no warning? The White House wouldn't screen attendance to ensure only the underhand pitchers get through?

Are you absolutely sure of that?

Apologies.

They have been making me work at work. I know, right? But since the whole reason I started doing this was to have something to do at work, it has put a hitch in my blogging step. There have been ridiculous things going on, and I have not commented upon them. Cardinal sin, for blogs. Two our fathers and two bloody marys for me, for certain.

Oh Come On Dot Org

Apparently, "Petraeus" sounds enough like "betray us" to make some intern at Moveon.org think it would be a great idea to make up a new and disparaging nickname for the good General. Come on people. Who green-lighted this? Are you TRYING to torch your credibility? Let me introduce you to a little bit of important PR calculus: if you're going to engage in character assassination, you have to do so in so clever a manner that even your target can't deny the humor without being pegged as a stuffed shirt. Homophones aren't going to cut the mustard.

So embarrassing.

General Petraeus is a pawn, okay? He is trying to put a good face on things because his job is to win the war in Iraq. Not to decide whether we should be fighting it. Not to declare the policy failed. Just to win. If his boss gave him the latitude to decide those other things, he would be a less sympathetic character, but in the current situation, THAT'S NOT HIS JOB. Do you suppose he got where he is by giving up? This guy is doing his level best to spin gold from hay, and while that may make him a little delusional, it doesn't make him malignant. The president may have been acting like this is all Petraeus' baby, but seriously. This is George Bush we're talking about. Not exactly what we would call a reliable source.

So please, Moveon.org, next time you find yourself in the kind of paroxysm of group-think that led to that headline, remind yourself that that's how teenagers and coke-addled studio executives think, not effective political actors. The rest of the copy in the ad wasn't terrible, but who do you think read past the headline? Anyone who isn't already in the choir? Not so much.

Bush league, folks.

It's Not Foie Gras, It's More Like Veal.

I'm going to draw a parallel here: you are aware of the people who decry games like tag in schools in some kind of misguided rush to avoid conflict during developmental stages when kids should be learning to deal with conflict? You are also aware of the people who decry the university professors who bring their politics to the classroom and make dissenting students feel uncomfortable at a time when said students should be learning how to debate effectively in hostile ideological environments?

Same team.

I fought my alma mater on a number of issues, and you know what? I consider that to be among the more valuable lessons of higher education: taking on an institution that holds all the cards. Because I hate to break it to you if you were unaware, but that's life, kid. When I was in middle school we played a game at recess called "Smear the Queer" wherein one kid had a ball and every other kid in the game (and there was no limit to participation) would try to take that kid out and take the ball from him (this was generally a boy's game, not by design, but by nature). The educational value of that game cannot be overstated. It's just you against an overwhelming force, success is only fleeting, and defeat is assured. When I was in college we played a game called "Divestment" wherein a small group of students with no money would try to get the university to stop investing in wealthy companies that conducted business with oppressive regimes such as those in Burma and Afghanistan. It was just us against an overwhelming force, success was only fleeting, and defeat was assured.

It is these experiences that foster growth, understanding, and character development. It is these scenarios that will recur ad infinitum throughout life, and those who are unprepared for them are weaker for it. So I say to those complainers, you are opposing the very thing that makes you strong. Your success will ensure the failure of those who follow you. Educational environments require these elements, for the same reason that gyms don't prohibit weights over 5 pounds.

Why Adapt When You Can Recontextualize?

Q: How much of an unrepentant narcissist do you have to be to squander the power of one of the mightiest elected offices in the world on the unrelentingly incompetent pursuit of a lofty and admirable but hardly unreachable goal, and then declare yourself a "dissident" when the wages of your blundering come home to roost, as though the unquestionably-universally-yearned-for-and-fought-for idea onto which you latched to give flight to your ambition was some sort of unpopular, counter-intuitive seed that you have been furtively trying to plant in the hard, unyielding soil that is potted in the hearts of men?

A: Duh. We know where to place blame when our ideas don't come to fruition, right? It's the system's fault, or the press's fault, or the opposition party's fault, or just plain rotten luck. We certainly wouldn't ever dream of placing that blame in our own fumbling hands. The time for examining our own efforts and assessing the validity of our methods may one day come, but for heaven's sake not now while we're busy strutting around in an unabashed dilettantic fugue. History Will Vindicate Us. Print it on the currency. Brick by brick our good intentions will pave us a mighty road down which we shall gaily skip, eyes aglow in anticipation of the just desserts that await us at the end.

Candid And Unfettered Advice

I often hear, in reference to the refusal of the White House to allow information about its advisors and its decision-making process to come to light, that "for the President to perform his constitutional duties, it is imperative that he receive candid and unfettered advice," to quote White House Counsel Fred Fielding, and that the prospect of having to testify under oath about that advice could have a chilling effect and make such advisors "reluctant to communicate openly and honestly." This rationale has been repeated so many times that reporters seem to gloss right over it on auto-pilot, like it's just some boilerplate they have to include next to station identification and the weather.

What kind of advice is the president getting that the American people need to remain ignorant of it? If there are people advising the president who are afraid of having their ideas attributed to them, I've got news for you, those people should not be influencing policy. Are there any secret signatures on the Declaration of Independence? Are there any articles of the Constitution whose validity is dependent on their authorship? Why should we, as Americans, be so respectful of the desire for privacy of those who are guiding our ship of state? It's our country, "We the people" isn't just a cute phrase, it's a guiding principle, that this representative democracy, this republic, derives its power from the people, through the people, and for the people.

I know I'm getting carried away here, but this is pretty outrageous stuff. Should we allow ourselves to be ruled by those who lack the courage of their convictions? Given that this nation was created and birthed by men and women who were willing to die, to be tortured, to give up all they had in the world for the ideas of freedom and justice for all, does it not follow that the maintenance and furtherance of the grand ideals that underpin the United States of America should be undertaken by people of similar strength of character? That the governance of this nation should be an enterprise to which one would be proud to have one's name attached?

I recognize that a good decision-maker, especially one responsible for so much, needs to have access to all available options, and sometimes must make difficult and perhaps Machiavellian choices about things. And if we're talking about information that must be kept secret to ensure the security of the country, then telling it on the mountain is not appropriate. But when we're talking about internal politics, about the basic nuts and bolts administration of national policy, such a deference to secrecy is not right, and it's certainly not our way of doing things. We the people believe in open and honest government, and those qualities are not fueled by shadows, smoke, and mirrors. If the Congress is asking the president a question, then the people represented by the Congress (that's us! you and me!) are asking the president a question, and if he is indeed upholding the ideals that he most solemnly swore to uphold, then he cannot but answer truthfully. That is a basic fact of our system of government. To do any less is un-American, and must be dealt with harshly and with all available haste.

Hear Ye, Democrats! Here There Be Dragons!

I'm going to start off today with some excerpts of transcripts, one from Attorney General Gonzales' Senate testimony, and one from Larry King's interview with the Vice President, pointed out to me by Dan Froomkin, a reporter for the Washington Post, and that is going to lead us into a Big Question. Here goes, Larry King first:

"Q- In that regard, The New York Times -- which, as you said, is not your favorite -- reports it was you who dispatched Gonzales and Andy Card to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft's hospital in 2004 to push Ashcroft to certify the President's intelligence-gathering program. Was it you?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't recall -- first of all, I haven't seen the story. And I don't recall that I gave instructions to that effect.

Q- That would be something you would recall.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I would think so. But certainly I was involved because I was a big advocate of the Terrorist Surveillance Program, and had been responsible and working with General Hayden and George Tenet to get it to the President for approval. By the time this occurred, it had already been approved about 12 times by the Department of Justice. There was nothing new about it.

Q- So you didn't send them to get permission.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't recall that I was the one who sent them to the hospital."


So there's that, and then there's this exchange between Gonzales and Sen. Schumer(D-NY):


"SEN. SCHUMER: Who sent you to the hospital?

ATTY. GEN. GONZALES: Senator, what I can say is we'd had a very important meeting at the White House over one of the most --

SEN. SCHUMER: I didn't ask that. I didn't ask for -- would you discuss the meeting --

ATTY. GEN. GONZALES: I'm answering your question, Senator --

SEN. SCHUMER: Who sent you?

ATTY. GEN. GONZALES: If I could.

SEN. SCHUMER: Did anyone tell you to go?

ATTY. GEN. GONZALES: It was one of the most important programs for the United States. It was important -- it had been authorized by the president. I'll just say that the chief of staff of the president of the United States and the counsel of the president of the United States went to the hospital on behalf of the president of the United States.

SEN. SCHUMER: Did the president ask you to go?

ATTY. GEN. GONZALES: We were there on behalf of the president of the United States.

SEN. SCHUMER: I didn't ask you that.

ATTY. GEN. GONZALES: I can't --

SEN. SCHUMER: Did the president ask you to go?

ATTY. GEN. GONZALES: Senator, we were there on behalf of the president of the United States.

SEN. SCHUMER: Why can't you answer that question?

ATTY. GEN. GONZALES: That's the answer that I can give you, Senator."

So. There you have it. The question of who dispatched Gonzales and Andy Card to harass John Ashcroft in his hospital bed is so centrally important to the executive branch that no one must know who gave the order. Seem strange? Sure it does, but here's the trouble: that question is tantalizing, it hints of shadowy and momentous dealings that anyone who cares about the health of the nation must investigate. Because otherwise, why would they be so taciturn?

It is at this point that the Democratic congresspersons must tread very, very carefully. They must remember that, despite all the chatter declaring his obsolescence after the last election, Karl Rove got where he is by being very clever, and losing an election does not rob one of one's cleverness. It is entirely possible that there is no greater mystery to this hospital visit question than that the president and his veep told Card and Gonzales to go harass Ashcroft to try to get around Comey's objection to their illegal surveillance program. That could be the entire story. If so, the reticence of the administration on this front is not just contrariness, but an attempt to draw the opposition party into making a mountain out of a molehill and thus not only wasting time, money, and energy that could be spent on more fruitful pursuits, but looking awfully stupid in the process, just in time for the next presidential election. Pretty Rovian, no? The Democrats pull back the curtain with great fanfare and hoopla and... there's nothing there. They're Austin Powers trying to pull the wig off of an enemy operative only to find an old lady.

The question of whether the current administration is up to no good is pretty well settled, for anyone who pays attention to politics. But there are those who will forget or ignore the fact that they are, unless a solid conviction or at least an unequivocal exposure of wrongdoing is presented before the nation. Certainly the revelations of secret prisons, torture, spying, incompetence, and the series of deceptions that led us into Iraq are sufficient for most people, but there are still holdouts whose robust capacity for rationalization and suppression of cognitive dissonance prevents them from accepting that as evidence of wrongdoing. For those people, there must be a smoking gun, with a signed and notarized admission of guilt taped to the side, because let's face it, there's a lot of people who have very publicly and clearly tied their personal and professional reputations to this Bush character, for reasons multifarious. There are also those who will succumb to the circular logic of "if they didn't get punished, they must not have done anything too terribly wrong." For them, someone must be frog-marched before they'll catch on. So the importance of further investigation and hoopla is also clear.

What a tight spot! Those who seek to hold the current administration to account must go in with all guns blazing, knowing that to do so is probably a trap, and could lead to the exact opposite of the desired outcome. If this scenario sounds familiar, it is for good reason. Messrs Bush and Rove found themselves on just the opposite side of this dilemma several years ago over a little issue called "Iraqi weapons of mass destruction." Yes, the irony is thick, but bear with me. Just as the Iraq invasion led to the revelation that its primary stated rationale was a load of hooey and created even more terrorists, so the vigorous investigation of the White House's actions could lead to the revelation that none of the many unethical actions were technically and actionably illegal, and it could lead to the creation of more Bush Republicans.

It is at this point that we, instead of despairing at this pickle, must remember that the invasion of Iraq was most incompetently managed. Therefore the importance of careful and sober management of the many investigations of the White House is paramount. Sure, it sounds pretty unlikely, given everything we know about politicians, but it also presents a good litmus test to the average citizen: if the Democrats want to prove themselves capable of digging the country out of the many difficult situations the Bush folks have gotten us into, they must succeed at this task first. It has shades of classical mythology to it, no? He who would ascend to the throne must accomplish these seemingly hopeless tasks first, with only his wits and resourcefulness to aid him? I am excited, I think this could be quite a magnificent contest, with Leahy and Specter acting like real congressmen, and the huge fields of presidential candidates on both sides chattering away about the whole thing. I obviously have a desired outcome, but that doesn't change my appreciation for a good fight.

No Greater Social Significance!

In local news, my band is playing the Fort Reno concert series tomorrow (Thursday). Fort Reno is a park in NW DC across the street from Wilson High School, about a block or so from the Tenleytown metro stop on the red line. They throw free rock concerts there every Monday and Thursday all summer, so that folks who are too young to go to bars or too poor to pay covers or too free as a bird, man, to go indoors and/or ever stop playing frisbee can go see some of the sweetest local shows in a friendly, safe, and all-around pleasant environment, twice a week if they so choose. Apparently this has been going on now for about 40 years, but our paths didn't cross until last week, when I managed to get there in time to see Greenland and pick up their recently released debut gem, Call/Message.

As far as I can tell, the protocol is as such: everybody sits around on the grass or on blankets, smiling, chatting, and glistening a bit, and picnics are consumed but no booze. Those guys from those local bands look around and nod at each other across the grassy expanse. A throng of underage kids packs in right up against the stage like pigeons around a bread machine and many a minor adolescent drama plays out almost imperceptibly in their midst. The cops sit on the hillside overlooking the stage like shepherds, lights slowly flashing. The stage itself is lit by a pair of streetlights, and the performers sweat like pigs. Everyone has a good time, from about 7pm till just shy of ten o'clock.

Sounds nice, right? It is. Just so you know, they survive off of donations and volunteers.

Nicomachean Efforts

Michael "Axis of Evil" Gerson wrote an interesting editorial today that I believe bears addressing. He attempts to designate morality as a purely religious idea, one that exists outside the confines of religion (and let there be no doubt about which faith he assumes in his arguments) only as a fluke, a "cruel joke of nature -- imprinted by evolution, but destined for disappointment." He pretends to give ground by saying he can't prove the existence of God, but then asserts that atheists have no objective way to judge the goodness of other people. What? Yeah, seriously. He is actually saying that without religion, human beings would have no impetus to behave in an ethical manner. Let's examine this claim.

I wrote him a brief note informing him of the existence and writings of one Immanuel Kant, who similarly, if more effectively, pitted his own intellect against this very quandary. Kant, as I'm sure you (as a high school graduate) are aware, articulated a sort of Golden Rule that formed the basis of deontological ethics, known as the categorical imperative. It attempts to transcend situational or hypothetical ethics by stating: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." In practice, it encourages respect for the rights of others, equal treatment in matters of law, and a general acknowledgement of the dignity of man. Not bad, right?

Well, what if you don't believe in ethical behavior? What if you have no interest in morality, but are driven by and given over to personal lusts and covetings? Is there any external force that can compel you to observe and respect the rights of others? Not really. And this is the elephant in the room, because while Gerson says that a person who is religiously motivated to be a moral actor does so out of a desire for "love, harmony and sympathy because [he or she is] intended by a Creator to find them," note that he does not invoke the threat or fear of punishment. He indicates that love, harmony, and sympathy are not inherently good or pleasurable, but are designated as being good by God, and therefore the pleasure that one feels from those states is actually the joy of pleasing God. He is pasting the veneer of religion over love, harmony and sympathy, and then using that as a springboard to give religion credit for the pleasures that anyone else would recognize as inherent in those things. Clever. Because the alternative to declaring that goodness is the desire to please God (which is, in the mind, in no way different from the desire to please oneself) is to admit that religiously-motivated goodness is the desire to avoid God's wrath, which is NOT a moral code, but a response to the threat of reprisal, the old knee-jerk self-preservation impulse.

So let's parse this out. If one desires to be a moral person, and one chooses to base one's moral code on, for instance, a Christian sect, let's say evangelical protestantism, can one justify the repression of outward expressions of homosexuality in one's fellow man or woman, whether by law, violence, or any other means of compulsion, if those expressions cause no manifest harm to other people? What about under Kant's version of ethical behavior? I would contend that the answers to those two questions are different and contradictory, because one code is beholden to the subjective determinations of its inceptors, while the other one is self-contained.

How about a second example: does Christian morality prevent the seizing of occupied territory and the enslavement of the indigenous peoples? Not if that land is granted you by God. And what is the difference, to the conquered and enslaved people, between an aggressor who attacks for God and an aggressor who attacks for his own personal enrichment? Not a whole hell of a lot, right? And on the other hand, what is the difference to a poor and bedraggled beggar if he is given soup and a warm bed by a Christian or by a morally upright atheist? Not a whole hell of a lot, right? Because kindness is objectively good and cruelty objectively bad for the recipient, no matter the motivation.

So if you come across a moral actor and he tells you he has no religion, you can be sure that he is a moral person. But if you come across a moral actor and he tells you that he has a God who tells him to do right, you cannot be sure if he is a moral person or a profoundly immoral person who is deathly afraid of being burnt by the everlasting fires of Hell or smitten by the angry right hand of the Lord and cast into penury for twenty moons. Which means, of course, that religion is a crutch for the immoral. It is the goad that keeps those who are not inherently righteous on a socially acceptable path (or a reasonable facsimile). It promotes, to quote another of Mr. Gerson's speechwriting gems, "the soft bigotry of low expectations" insofar as it encourages immoral behavior by not holding human beings to the standard of ethically defensible behavior in the absence of the sword of Damocles.

Now factor in confession and absolution, and tell me which one you would rather hire as a babysitter. Right. Checkmate, Mike. Please stop assisting those who run religious sects in their quest to expand their power and influence via taking undeserved credit for the good and noble qualities of man. It's unseemly and it restrains the potential of the human race for the enrichment of an over-reaching few. Like, for instance, certain other employers of yours.

Do The Math.

Yesterday, on the subject of Iraq, the President said this: "Al Qaeda is doing most of the spectacular bombings, trying to incite sectarian violence. The same people that attacked us on September the 11th is the crowd that is now bombing people, killing innocent men, women and children, many of whom are Muslims, trying to stop the advance of a system based upon liberty."

The intelligence community says this: "Al Qaida in Iraq didn't emerge until 2004. While it is inspired by Osama bin Laden's violent ideology, there's no evidence that the Iraq organization is under the control of the terrorist leader or his top aides, who are believed to be hiding in tribal regions of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan... the main source of violence and instability is an ongoing contest for power between majority Shiites and Sunnis, who dominated Saddam Hussein's regime."

Title 18, section 1001, paragraph (a) of the United States Code says this: "Whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully--(1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact; (2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or (3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry; shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both."

Oh, if only I had pursued that degree in rocket science, I could get a handle on this complicated situation! I could tie together these disparate and seemingly unconnected threads! Ah well, better leave well enough alone. I think I'll go watch Wayne Brady laugh at people who forget song lyrics on TV.


(Tip of the hat to Dan Froomkin and Jonathan Landay for doing their jobs when no one else would.)

Another Turd In The Punchbowl, or "All Your Laws Are Belong To Us"

We're going to start by assuming that Americans are not too stupid to figure out when and how they are being abused by their leaders. I know, but bear with me. We're going to continue by stipulating that the failure of the American people to overthrow their current government stems from their ignorance of the seriousness of the situation. We're blaming the delinquency of the press for that. By way of remedy, right here and now, we at the Fiery Sword are going to try to put President Bush's statement on Monday in a format that the proud and sturdy yeoman farmers of de Tocqueville's journals can understand and digest:

Oh noes! I'm in ur x-ecootiv, bailin' out ur felonz!

There. It's done. I can hear the torches lighting now, the sharpening of the pitchforks. Like Paul Revere before me, I have alerted the citizenry. Remember, when casting your bronze plaques, to spell my name correctly.

You Know, Some People Voted For These Guys TWICE.

The White House is just being so darned accomodating to those Democrat vultures in Congress, it really boggles the mind. From the Post: "The White House has said it would allow current or former White House officials to speak to the committee only under strict limitations. Specifically, Bush has insisted that the officials not be compelled to testify under oath, that their testimony not be recorded or transcribed and they speak to a limited number of lawmakers in private." I mean, what more could you ask for, really?

I have a question, though. How is that different from saying "Sure, we'll talk about whatever you guys want to talk about. Oh, but, one more thing, we want to be able to lie with impunity about what we did, limit the number of witnesses, minimize the chance of leaks, and have no record, audible, visual, or textual, of what we discussed. Cool with you guys?"

Anybody want to take a crack at that one? Because I'm sure that there's people who disagree with me on this. Care to speak up? I would really love to hear a good, muscular rationalization of how those conditions jive with the concept of oversight.

Richard B. Cheney, I Am Calling You Out

The Vice President of the United States is saying, with a straight face, that he doesn't have to comply with an executive order (number 12958) requiring him to report on his handling of classified information because, get this, his duties as President of the Senate mean that he's not technically part of the Executive Branch.

Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines, because the most flagrant abuser of executive privilege in modern times has just stated that it is his official legal opinion that he is not subject to the rules and regulations governing the executive branch of the U.S. federal government. It's so on. We now get to find out, courtesy of Mr. Addington's slip-up, everything that was previously denied to us under the protections afforded the Office of the Vice President by the (aggressively interpreted) notion of executive privilege.

Oh wait. Nevermind. We don't, because Dick Cheney believes himself to be above the law, and anyone who tries to remind him that he is, in fact, a public servant and thus subject to the rules and regulations governing public servants just can't seem to find a way to hold him to account. Here's an idea: CALL THE POLICE! Isn't that what you do when someone breaks the law? You call the cops? Well, it seems that someone already did. The agency responsible for monitoring compliance with the executive order in question attempted to conduct a floor-check on Cheney's office, but they were blocked by Cheney's staff. With what, tear gas and tasers? They were acting on an executive order, how were they blocked? Well, they didn't take that lying down, they called the top cop in the country, the Attorney General of the United States, Alberto Gonzales. You know where this is going. They still have not received a response. The Department of Justice didn't, um, you know, call them back.

Those of you who support the right to bear arms on the theory that at some point you might have to defend yourself against the abuse of power by despots foreign or domestic, YOU SHOULD BE CLEANING YOUR BARRELS RIGHT ABOUT NOW. Seriously, what's it going to take? Does Dick Cheney have to dress up like the Hamburglar and scuttle around carrying a sack labeled "Your Rights & Freedoms" before you say to yourself "Golly, I wonder if that guy should be running the country?" Here's the kicker: Cheney's office, upon noticing that there was an official government entity trying to make sure that they were obeying the law, attempted to abolish that entity. They tried to eliminate that office. Oh. My. God. How stupid do you have to be not to understand what's going on here?

Just to recap: The Vice President of the United States, Richard Bruce Cheney, is a crook. For anyone who didn't get that. He's breaking the law. Not a minor law, either, he's breaking a law that is supposed to keep him from breaking EVERY OTHER LAW ON THE BOOKS, because it governs, directly, whether he has to tell anyone what he's doing.

Now, I can't be the only person who is up in arms about this. Apparently everybody in a position to bring the hammer down is afraid of this guy. Well I'll lay it out for you pigeon-livered sons of bitches in Congress: Dick Cheney asserts the right to abduct me, send me to Syria, torture me indefinitely, and have me beaten to death and forgotten about, BUT I'M CALLING HIM OUT. What the hell are you doing about it?

Leave The Kids Alone. So Very Alone.

Dr. Harry Harlow at the University of Wisconsin performed a series of studies in the 1950s involving monkeys and physical contact. He removed baby rhesus monkeys from their mothers and set up a chickenwire "mother" with a milk dispenser and a plush cloth "mother" with a milk dispenser, and then several variations thereof. He observed the psychological states of these little monkeys, in an attempt to gain scientific insight into the nature of love and development.

Perhaps you have heard about Joyce Kilmer Middle School in Fairfax County, Virginia. They don't permit touching there. Any sort of physical contact between students is against the rules. No high fives. No piggy-back rides. No hugs. The principal at Kilmer Middle defends her policy by noting that her school is overcrowded to the tune of 250 kids, and that when mixed with the youngsters' immaturity, that can lead to a terrifying maelstrom of aggressive and/or sexual contact. The kids play violent games, get in fights, hug people who don't want to be hugged, and generally test the boundaries of social acceptability at the behest of their newly discovered hormonal id. The school's argument is that absolute prohibition of physical interaction is the only way to enforce enough order to educate.

Even when the wire mother was the one giving milk and the plush mother was dry, Harlow's monkeys would go get their food and then scurry back to the plush mother to cuddle. They would play and explore under the benevolent gaze of the smiling face painted on the felt. Those with only a wire mother in their enclosures would curl up and shriek when confronted with anything unfamiliar. They would wrap themselves tightly in their own arms in a desperate attempt to simulate the contact and comfort they innately knew they needed, but it was inadequate. They grew to resemble sanitarium inmates or severely autistic children. If Harlow's monkeys had no mother for the first 90 days, they were irreparable. The window had closed. No amount of love and attention could undo the ravages of the wire mother. The lonely little monkeys went crazy and could never function in a normal environment. When presented with a potential mate, they would often start furiously humping the wrong parts, sometimes grabbing ahold of the other monkey's head instead of hips, sometimes not reacting at all. Those females that managed to reproduce were either indifferent or abusive to their offspring, neglecting them or biting and scratching them to death.

Kids don't live their whole lives in school. They hang out together afterwards, they have families, they have friends, they play sports. Kilmer Middle isn't necessarily breeding wire monkeys by keeping these kids physically isolated for at least 40 hours a week. But they aren't fulfilling their mission as a school, either. They are creating an artificial and unrealistic environment for their own convenience, and eventually those kids are going to leave Kilmer and go to high school or into the workforce and they are going to find themselves in crowds that are not of their choosing. They will be surrounded by strangers in environments of varying structure and protocol. Not having had a structured environment in which to explore those protocols, they will be unprepared, courtesy of their middle school's desire for more rigid order.

Schoolchildren are not receptacles into which knowledge can be poured, provided that they can be held still for long enough. Their development at that young age cannot be segregated into academic and social and physical and psychological categories and dealt with separately, each one in turn. It's everything all the time with the little hellions, and yes, that's a very difficult job to do. Middle-school kids are learning how to calculate the effect of their actions and recognize appropriate behavior even as they learn to calculate the volume of a cylinder or recognize literary foreshadowing. Any educator who would deny that in the name of making his or her job a little easier would do well to go find an easier job and leave teaching to those who have the uncommon fortitude to handle thirty-odd tweens for eight to ten hours a day and still care about their well-being after they leave.

Ask Mister Legal Person

Perhaps you've heard this latest bit of farce oozing out from the Scooter Libby defense. Here's the gist of the argument:

"It appears to be undisputed that there is no day-to-day supervision of Special Counsel Fitzgerald by anyone, and no way short of removal even to assure that he complies with the policies of the Department of Justice or the Executive Branch..."

I can parry this ham-fisted thrust in one sentence: The Executive Branch and its attendant Department of Justice have demonstrated quite clearly, through the juxtaposition of the actions and words of the former and the sworn testimony of the latter, that their policies are unknown even to them, therefore rendering the compliance that forms the central concern of the 12 Distempered Men who filed the unbidden amicus curiae in question to be an unverifiable criterion, of interest only to fantasists.

Shazzam. Judge Walton, a smartass after my own heart, will likely be paraphrasing me presently.