Posthumous Acclaim
I was introduced to the paintings of Mark Rothko by my composition instructor in grad school because Rothko was an important influence on the music of Morton Feldman, whose work we were studying - and which I've grown to love (and, of course, hate...so it goes). His paintings are majestically depressing, and exactly the sort of minimalist expression that opponents of contemporary art (you know who you are) find maddening. I usually show a piece or 2 to my modern music students, to illustrate Feldman and to generate discussion on minimalist art. Try as I might to present it as inspiring and beautiful and haunting, I always get an overwhelming majority of sneers and chuckles, disbelief and a chorus of some version of "I could do that..."

To stand in front of one of his signature works up close is to feel almost toppled by his bending rectangles of swirling color. Large vertical canvases ask you to lean your head back to see the top. He intended for these pieces to be spiritual experiences, to re-create the intimacy of quiet religious knowing through an overwhelming space, one in which to become lost, for the sake of that urge that craves the divine. That's the part that makes my students most roll their eyes - the allegation of spiritual intent - since all there seemingly is to see are shapes and colors.

Maybe it was the childhood memories of death-pits of murdered Jews in his Russian hometown. Maybe it was the loss of his father when Mark was 10, just months after the Rothkowitzes emigrated to America to escape the call of the army of the Czar. Maybe it was the conflict of being the only religiously educated Jew in a family of secular Jews - in an age where to be a Jew of any kind was to be fearful, hated and ostracized. Whatever it was, his work longs for the intimately human and spiritual, but does not find it in stories and mythologies, or in the images of things known. It seeks that experience even as it seems, on the surface anyway, to deny it under panels of abstraction.

The more fame he achieved, the more misunderstood he felt. Rising prices of his work seemed to be accompanied by acclaim for his sense of form and color, when what he wanted to be known for was his sense of ecstasy and tragedy and humanity. And why try to paint those things? Because you overflow with the spiritual? or because you lack it? Because you have so much to offer? or because you need it so badly - that drop of water to cool the tongue?

Abstract expression is never just that - abstract. It is not the voice of the sterile or the inhuman or, certainly, the unimaginative. In Rothko's case, he bubbled over with the needs and desires for transcendent aesthetic experience. Ultimately marked by alcohol and drug abuse, chronic illness and broken marriages, his life - which ended in suicide in 1970 - was one of turbulent humanity, not of a technician's cold distance.

I bring this up now because last night, at a Sotheby's auction, misunderstood or not, Mark Rothko's "White Center" sold to an anonymous bidder for $73 million, the most ever paid for a post-war artwork, by far. You can take a look at an itty-bitty version of the work, which in reality stands almost 7 feet tall, here.

Civil Liberties Saved By...John Ashcroft?
If you haven't read about former Justice Dept. official James Comey's testimony yet, you must. It shows just how bad things have gotten under Bush and Gonzalez, that Mr. Patriot Act himself, John Ashcroft, may have been the last line of defense for our civil liberties. Their plan to bypass his resistance? Get to him while incapacitated in a hospital bed.

What Bush has done to our foreign policy and international standing, Gonzalez has done to our commitment to civil liberties and due process.

Kudos to Hillary
I expected otherwise, but she was one of only 29 Democratic Senators to vote for the Reid-Feingold amendment today. It called for the end of war funding by early 2008 and the gradual withdrawal of troops beginning in 120 days. Candidates Obama, Biden and Dodd also voted yes.

Pardon the Imagery
Watching Republican debate #2, I can only deduce that a possible test for whether a male is a Republican is this: whether or not he gets an erection at the thought of the United States being under terrorist attack with him playing Jack Bauer running around torturing everyone he can. With the exception of McCain (draw your own conclusions), the rest of them are falling on themselves with excitement. Romney was unable to stand up straight talking about his love for a vibrant, growing, torture-filled Guantanamo.

This was twice as scary as the last GOP debate.

Bloomberg to Run?
The Washington Times sounds like it's all but decided - the NY mayor will bring $1 Billion (yep, with a B) to a general election as an independent. This should prove more interesting than the Ross Perot experiment. The question is, can he find a high-enough profile VP candidate willing to buck party and form a legitimate ticket? Chuck Hagel? Colin Powell?

All in all, if it comes true, this strikes me as good news for Hillary Clinton.

Idiots [UPDATED]
Heard just now on MSNBC, as they carry on about Jerry Falwell (my transcription),
Contessa Brewer (speaking to Chris Matthews):

You're looking at a guy - Jerry Falwell - who had a lot of influence on the current President, even now. One of my producers, Chris, just pulled up a page from whitehouse.org where they say "Jerry Falwell has earned his role as the de facto executive director of domestic and global policy for the White House." How much influence did he have on George W. Bush?

Of course, and apparently unbeknownst to the crack detective staff at MSNBC, whitehouse.org is a satire site... the actual web address of the White House is whitehouse.gov. It's nice to see the mainstream media snatching satire from the jaws of the serious here.

[UPDATE: TPM has posted the video here.]

More Sopranos
Tim Goodman's post about Sunday's episode is now online.
An interesting conversation between Tim Noah and Jeffrey Goldberg starts here.
News anchor and Sopranos fan Brian Williams shares his thoughts here (have to scroll down a bit).

MEDIA MONDAY
what have you been watching, listening to, reading?

Dear Sir
Author and Beatles expert Tim Riley pleads with Paul McCartney to save EMI.

Weekend Box Office
1. Spiderman 3
2. 28 Weeks Later
3. Georgia Rule
4. Disturbia
5. Delta Farce

Movies I saw in the last week: #87, Air Guitar Nation, and #6, Fracture. The first is a pretty funny look at a funny event - the world air guitar championships. COuld have been better, but worth a rental if you're looking for something light and funny that's not stupid Hollywood fare. Fracture was a decent twist on the legal thriller genre. 3 things bugged me: I don't know anything about acting or accents - and surely Anthony Hopkins of all people knows what he's doing. But I'd swear his accent in some scenes was strangely Irish, but not in most scenes. 2) Ryan Gosling was thoroughly unlikable and unbelievable; 3) the film noirish lighting was pointlessly over-the-top. Despite those things, believe it or not, a decent thriller, if you're into that.

The Sopranos
...was awesome last night. My favorite episode of the new batch.

Good News From the World of Science!
I'm starting a new feature here at Article 19. I could use your help giving it a proper name. The thing is, there's just so much encouraging, good news these days. We're so collectively healthy, taking such good care of the environment (and so flowing with sarcasm), that we deserve some regular inspirational words from the world of science. Today, I'd like to assure you that you're fat. Even if you don't think you are, even if you don't look like you are. Trust me, you are.

Some doctors now think that the internal fat surrounding vital organs like the heart, liver or pancreas — invisible to the naked eye — could be as dangerous as the more obvious external fat that bulges underneath the skin.
...
According to the data, people who maintain their weight through diet rather than exercise are likely to have major deposits of internal fat, even if they are otherwise slim. “The whole concept of being fat needs to be redefined,” said Bell, whose research is funded by Britain’s Medical Research Council.

Without a clear warning signal — like a rounder middle — doctors worry that thin people may be lulled into falsely assuming that because they’re not overweight, they’re healthy.

So what should I call this fluffy good-news feature? I was thinking - "Believe Me, You're Screwed," but I'm open to ideas.

Shameless Church-State Blog Promotion
In which I take on one Lou Dobbs of CNN.

Vultures
In case you are wondering, and I know you are, there's a good and pleasant reason why University studies of decomposing bodies aren't placed near airports.

Energy Efficiency Awareness, or Do I Really Need a Coffee-Maker That Knows the Time?
I've become energy-efficiency conscious. Not especially helpful, mind you - certainly not engaging in enough responsible lifestyle-changing, just...conscious. And while I'm aware of the story that goes: new appliances are much more energy efficient than the old, I can't help but wonder....how can that be?? Pay attention to the stuff you have plugged in, and check to see how hard it is to turn them off....really all the way off.

Our new TVs are on all the time, remembering our setup preferences and favorite channels. The microwave, the coffee maker even -- if you want them to use zero energy while they're not actively cooking stuff and making coffee, you have to unplug them. Do you leave the speakers on your computer turned on while your computer is off? The printer? The stereo with the clock, the phone charger, the cable box...they don't use much to be sure, not much at all. My point is we're plugged in *all the time,* so much so that even a concerted effort to turn off the stuff you're not using is not so easy. Give it a try and you'll see.

When I'm asleep the only things I'd like to stay running are the a/c (at a reasonable temp), my alarm clock, my phone charger, my refrigerator (so the milk doesn't go bad, and the milk that's already gone bad doesn't grow legs), and my fire alarm. But the list of things running a slow drip of electricity without my need, or even consent, really, is much longer than that, and longer than you'd think.

It's difficult to be responsible - which is one reason why we could use the help of some government regulations, to hopefully do to cars what they have done for major appliances - earlier this year the new "energy star" specifications came out for appliances, more stringent than in the past. If you're in the market for something big, shell out the few extra bucks to make sure it has the "energy star" rating.

Mostly though it's difficult to keep your eyes on everything, right? I might change the thermostat when I leave, and keep power strips off for things I don't need. But if I make one needless trip in the car, I've pretty well undone all that stuff and more, as far as damage to the environment. And if I use one of those canisters to clean the computer keyboard, I might as well drive cross country and back for all the damage I've done.

How's a well-meaning, but gadget-loving person supposed to keep up?

Post #2000
Thanks for reading my hot air to date. Everybody should take the day off to celebrate.

Obama Speech
We've discussed this before here - Obama's plan to offer the Auto industry help with health benefits in return for their finally agreeing to reaise auto emission standards. He gave a great speech in Detroit yesterday, where this idea is controversial - makes me appreciate his courage - would be an easy thing to bring up in California, right? You can read the entire speech at the end of this Gristmill post.

Steve Clemons objects that this plan isn't "comprehensive" enough to save us from the doom of climate change. I say - that's a dumb reason to be against it at this point.

MEDIA MONDAY
What have you been reading, listening to, watching?

The Machinist
Over the weekend I caught Christian Bale's amazing performance, but have to say it was one of the more disturbing films I've seen in a while. I can't remember the last time I was so tempted to change the channel during a movie, just to not have to see what comes next.

Sopranos Question of the Day
Does Christopher's surprising action (I won't give it away) in last night's episode make it more, or less, likely that he'll rat out Tony and the rest of the crew? Seems like you could take it either way.

Maybe He Should Have Read the Bible in His Underwear
Remember Jeff Gannon? The guy with dubious press credentials who was allowed to cover the White House lobbing softballs instead of actual questions until it was revealed that he hired himself out online as a gay prostitute at sites like HotMilitaryStud.com? (Just typing that sentence it's hard to believe that whole story actually happened.) You'll never guess who he works for now - the International Bible Reading Association. Yeah, strange journeys. The Washington Post's Dana Milbank reports on yesterday's IBRA event for which Gannon was the spokesman - a public reading of the Bible on "national prayer day."

Organizers put out 600 folding chairs on the lawn -- the spot where presidents are inaugurated -- and set up a huge stage with powerful amplifiers. But at 9:30 a.m. yesterday, not one of the 600 seats was occupied. By 11 a.m., as a woman read a passage from Revelations, attendance had grown -- to four people. Finally, at 1 p.m., 37 of the 600 seats were occupied, though many of those people were tourists eating lunch.

Watching the Republican Debate
Bumbling, scary fools...including maybe especially the moderator, Chris Matthews. If you missed it, here's a rundown in a sentence: they want to bomb Iran and believe the day Roe v. Wade is repealed will be the greatest day in American history, except for Giuliani, who could take it or leave it, preferably both. (if you think that's confusing, you should have heard his answer)

Big debate winner? Fred Thompson - who wasn't there.

When Will It Change?
I have this fear, it goes like this: that 50 years from now I'll still be (barely) alive and when I watch the political news - or drink it, or however we're ingesting it by then - it will feature black leaders and (occasional) black candidates decrying the anti-intellectualism and the naughty language of predominantly African-American culture, the same as Obama is doing today, and the same as we've been hearing in critiques for some time now, especially from people with money, power, influence.

So far as I can tell, the only person whose life was improved by Bill Clinton's "Sister Souljah" critique was Bill Clinton. I haven't heard of one person's life turned around by Bill Cosby's rant.

I'm starting to think that critiquing from afar is not the answer. One day, someone will actually get about the business of changing the situation on the ground, as they say. I hope I'm still alive to see it. As far as I can tell - 2007 looks and sounds alot like 1987 in terms of race relations and the problems plaguing the poorest in America and affecting the vilest of our pop culture, so often an easy target of exploitation by those seeking to promote themselves.

Melting and the Reaches of Outer Space
2 bits of bad news.

First, Arctic ice is disappearing faster than expected, melting about 30 years ahead of the already-troubling schedule. Summers will, at this rate, feature an iceless Arctic by 2020, not 2050. Don't buy stock in polar bears or walruses (or coastal property).

Second, just in case you thought the recent discovery of the new Earth might be a saving grace from our ruin of this one, I happened to catch astro-physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson on Colbert, who says it would take a wee bit longer than you might think to get there. See for yourself:

Veto Ad
Americans United for Change will start running this ad as soon as the President vetoes the Iraq funding bill that would mandate beginning withdrawal of troops. I have to admit I don't really understand the tag line: "you can't veto the truth,"but it's a decent spot, making an important and obvious point: the country's not with him. Take a look.

MEDIA MONDAY
What have you been reading, listening to, watching?

What David Byrne Said
Save Net Radio! One of my favorite things about the beginning of the month (give or take a day or 3) is seeing/hearing the new playlist at David Byrne Radio. Because he can, he ponies up about $2,000 a month to pay the royalties that keep the streaming station going. But thanks to a decision from a 3-judge panel, that cost is about to go up.

While traditional terrestrial radio does pay songwriter/publishing royalties for the musical work itself, in the U.S. they don’t pay performance royalties for the sound recording under the rationale that airplay promotes the songs, which benefits the copyright holders. (This determination was mostly due to the radio industry lobbying congress not to collect these royalties.) Web radio, however, along with satellite and cable services, does pay performance royalties — these are the rates that are being raised now. (If this discrepancy sounds illogical, it’s because it is.)
...
With the proposed changes the royalties can no longer be based on a percentage of revenue, but on a fee for each listening hour — how many folks are listening and for how long — and there will be a minimum fee per radio “channel”. Also, above a certain aggregate listening hour amount, non-profits have to pay the same per-listening hour rates as commercial broadcasters. . . . The threshold for non-profits is proposed to be 159,140 listening hours per month. Where did this bizarre number come from?

New Releases Coming from Old Favorites
Rufus Wainright - Release the Stars (May 15)
They Might Be Giants - Else (July 10)
Black Francis (formerly known as Frank Black, formerly known as Black Francis) - Bluefinger (September)

Unexpected Collaboration
Philip Glass is writing the score for the newest movie by Woody Allen - Cassandra's Dream - due out this fall.

Sopranos
I have to agree with Tim Goodman at the SF Chronicle, whose Sopranos commentary I always anticipate: last night's episode was not the best, although I loved the very end, confusing as it may have been.

"The Overlooked Genius of Twin Peaks' Second Season"
Yes, there was a second season. Slate's Jessica Winter has this piece on the occasion of its awaited release on DVD.

Summer Recommendations?
Of course, I have a million books I haven't read yet - but that's not going to stop me from getting something new to read once school's out in a week or so. What do you suggest?

Box Office Woes
Apparently nobody is going to the movies. You too? I'm not convinced Spiderman can be the single-handed movie savior they seem to expect, but I suppose we'll see. The few people that did see something over the weekend chose these:
1. Disturbia
2. The Invisible
3. Next
4. Fracture
5. Blades of Glory

Lots more Media related stuff to post about today so check back in and as always let us all know what you've been into.

This is More Like It
How are the American people expected to get worked up over the trivial transgressions of the Bush Administration so far? You know the small mistakes I'm talking about - not heeding the warnings about September 11; diverting resources from the chase for Bin Laden to go after Saddam Hussein; misleading the public about Saddam's weapons, his threat level, his responsibility for the 2001 attacks; Letting Afghanistan get out of control, the Taliban back in business; maintaining Iraq War troop levels and strategies long after they've been proven ineffective; editing science reports they don't like; ignoring disaster warnings surrounding hurricane Katrina; responding sluggishly to the cries for help from New Orleans; putting inexperienced incompetent political hacks in important government positions; outing an undercover CIA operative because they were pissed at her husband; using the Department of Justice to do the dirty work of the national Republican Party; and then there's a wee bit of corruption as congressmen cavorting with bribe-artist Jack Abramoff are popping up left and right.

See? What's there to really be upset about?

Until now. Finally, a true American scandal.

On Friday, Randall L. Tobias resigned as deputy secretary of state one day after confirming to Brian Ross of ABC that he had patronized the Pamela Martin firm. Speaking yesterday on "Good Morning America," Ross said Tobias told him Tobias's number was on Palfrey's phone records because he had called "to have gals come over to the condo to give me a massage." There had been "no sex," Ross quoted Tobias as saying, and that recently he has used another service, "with Central American gals," for massages.
...
ABC is expected to air a report on Palfrey and her clients on "20/20" on May 4, during sweeps.

More revelations are in the offing. Ross said the list includes the names of some "very prominent people," as well as a number of women with "important and serious jobs" who had worked as escorts for the firm.

Debate Word Analysis
Via Kos, this is an interesting word analysis of last night's debate. It shows me a couple things: Clinton is on message, Edwards emphasizes very basic civic-minded words, and Obama does not tend to emphasize words that are evocative, emotional, even memorable, and is also the most self-reflective - the only candidate for whom "campaign" was one of the 50 most-often words used. Richardson and Biden were the only ones who did not manage to say "war" enough to get in the top 50.

"One Signature Away" plus Debate Thread
Barack Obama's got the statement of the day. Now that both houses of Congress have passed timeline military spending authorizations, he says:
"We are one signature away from ending the Iraq War." The American people are ready for a timeline, the Congress is ready. Just one person stands in the way.

I don't know if I can bring myself to watch a presidential debate already. But the first one is on MSNBC tonight. Use this as a thread to clap or complain, depending.

56-37...228-218
New NBC/WSJ Poll

56 percent say they agree more with the Democrats in Congress who want to set a deadline for troop withdrawal, versus the 37 percent who say they agree with Bush that there shouldn't be a deadline.

Nice to see the House held it together. Late in the day, 228-218, Democrats passed the bill calling for troop withdrawal to begin in October.

The Food Bill
Michael Pollan wrote 2 of my favorite recent books - The Botany of Desire and Omnivore's Dilemma. In the weekend NYTimes, he has a great story about the upcoming "Farm Bill," up for renewal this year, which he says should be called the "Food Bill" instead. No impending legislation, he argues, is more important for our national health. If you eat, go to the grocery, and/or care about your health, this is is a must-read.

Compared with a bunch of carrots, a package of Twinkies, to take one iconic processed foodlike substance as an example, is a highly complicated, high-tech piece of manufacture, involving no fewer than 39 ingredients, many themselves elaborately manufactured, as well as the packaging and a hefty marketing budget. So how can the supermarket possibly sell a pair of these synthetic cream-filled pseudocakes for less than a bunch of roots?

For the answer, you need look no farther than the farm bill. This resolutely unglamorous and head-hurtingly complicated piece of legislation, which comes around roughly every five years and is about to do so again, sets the rules for the American food system — indeed, to a considerable extent, for the world’s food system. Among other things, it determines which crops will be subsidized and which will not, and in the case of the carrot and the Twinkie, the farm bill as currently written offers a lot more support to the cake than to the root. . . .

That’s because the current farm bill helps commodity farmers by cutting them a check based on how many bushels they can grow, rather than, say, by supporting prices and limiting production, as farm bills once did. The result? A food system awash in added sugars (derived from corn) and added fats (derived mainly from soy), as well as dirt-cheap meat and milk (derived from both). By comparison, the farm bill does almost nothing to support farmers growing fresh produce. A result of these policy choices is on stark display in your supermarket, where the real price of fruits and vegetables between 1985 and 2000 increased by nearly 40 percent while the real price of soft drinks (a k a liquid corn) declined by 23 percent. The reason the least healthful calories in the supermarket are the cheapest is that those are the ones the farm bill encourages farmers to grow.

Read the whole thing.

MEDIA MONDAY:
What have you been listening to, watching, reading?

Links
For what it's worth, it's turn-the-tv-off week. Yeah, sounds lame to me too. Also, there's a nice piece at Slate defending the South Korean film Oldboy (I reviewed it a while back) from those who are blaming the Va. Tech shootings on it. Apparently, the kid wasn't just a deranged gun-wielding lunatic; he also was bad at film interpretation (the horror!!) --Don

Happy Birthday: Michael Moore. His new film, Sicko, has been selected for Cannes!

Move it to the top of your Netflix queue:

Finally released on DVD last week, Robert Altman’s Thieves Like Us (1974), a story about trio of criminals (Keith Carradine, Bert Remsen and John Schuck) go on a bank-robbing spree through the Depression-era Deep South, terrorizing the population and managing to stay just one step ahead of the law Also stars Shelley Duvall, Tom Skerritt and Louise Fletcher. Often overlooked, some consider it one of Altman’s best films.

Sopranos Update: (Waring – could contain spoilers).

Only 6 episodes left: What are your predictions on how (or if) it will all end?

Every episode is a gift. This week’s episode Remember When is no exception. We find out how Tony made his bones. We find out that Tony knew about Paulie’s betrayal of the NJ crew to Johnny Sack (did the scenes on the boat make you seasick?). Best comedic moment – Uncle Junior dictating a letter to Vice Prez Cheney: “we’re both powerful men all too familiar with accidental gunplay.”

Is there anyone NOT watching the Sopranos? Arguably one of the best TV shows ever, Sopranos has kicked off the end of the series with great style. Sure, with six seasons behind us, new viewers may not be able to keep up with the show’s plot as it twists and turns in these last few episodes. For those wanting a quick (seven minutes) rundown, go here. Some college guys posted this clipped-up video summary of the entire series on Youtube. You’ll laugh (warning, contains some objectionable language, be sure to close your office door first!).

Am I the only one? In these last few episodes, I wonder....have we been seeing David Chase’s homage to the great gangster films? Seriously, the scene on the boat dock with Tony and Janice in the Home Movies episode (“what do you mean I’ve changed…changed how?”) make you think of the scene in Goodfellas with Joe Pesci (“what do you mean I’m funny…funny how?”). What about last night….the scene with Tony going out to check on his tomatoes? Right out of The Godfather.

Top 5 Movies:
1. Disturbia
2. Fracture
3. Blades of Glory
4. Vacancy
5. Meet the Robinsons

Top 5 Albums:
1. Now 24, Various Artists
2. Let It Go, Tim McGraw
3. Konvicted, Akon
4. Cassadaga, Bright Eyes
5. Timbaland Presents Shock Value, Timbaland

With the Lights Out: April marks the anniversary of the death of Kurt Cobain, singers, songwriter, guitarist of the rock bank Nirvana (he was found April 8, 1994). He would have been 40 years old this year. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt the same about music since he died (although I still feel stupid and contagious). There were punk and alternative bands before Nirvana, but the 1991 release of Nirvana’s album Nevermind changed the face of rock music forever (bonus - it knocked off Michael Jackson’s Dangerous as best selling album in 1992), and Cobain’s influence is still felt today. For better or worse, Cobain brought alternative music to the mainstream and popularized “grunge” rock. Nevermind is easily one of the best rock albums of all time. If you haven't listened in a while, go back and do so. You won't be dissapointed.

Kurt - If the Top 5 list above is any indication, we could have really used you in 2007!

Sign the apocalypse is near: Spiderman might be coming to Broadway. Marvel Studios has begun casting for the tentatively titled Spider-Man: The Broadway Musical. Tony winner Julie Taymor (The Lion King) directs, with U2's Bono and the Edge handling the music and lyrics.

Gingrich
Newt explains who's responsible for mass killings like the ones that occurred at Virginia Tech, and Columbine: liberals. I'm not sure I can even follow his tortured logic, but it's something to do with the dehumanization of video games and Hollywood movies, which are apparently not the fault of the free market system conservatives love but because of something liberals do.

No word on whether liberals are also responsible for the kind of cruelty that would lead a man like Gingrich to deliver divorce papers to his cancer-stricken wife while she's in her hospital bed. Must be the fault of that best-selling Nintendo game "The Asshole", where you get points for having affairs with office assistants, leaving your wife, being a hypocrite, etc.

Alberto
The Times rips the AG a new one:

Mr. Gonzales came across as a dull-witted apparatchik incapable of running one of the most important departments in the executive branch.

He had no trouble remembering complaints from his bosses and Republican lawmakers about federal prosecutors who were not playing ball with the Republican Party’s efforts to drum up election fraud charges against Democratic politicians and Democratic voters. But he had no idea whether any of the 93 United States attorneys working for him — let alone the ones he fired — were doing a good job prosecuting real crimes.

He delegated responsibility for purging their ranks to an inexperienced and incompetent assistant who, if that’s possible, was even more of a plodding apparatchik.

Ethanol: Not the Answer
LATimes:

"Ethanol is being promoted as a clean and renewable fuel that will reduce global warming and air pollution," said Mark Z. Jacobson, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and author of the study in the online edition of Environmental Science and Technology. "But our results show that a high blend of ethanol poses an equal or greater risk to public health than gasoline, which already causes significant health damage."

Ozone is a key ingredient in smog, and when inhaled even at low levels it can harm lungs, aggravate asthma and impair immune systems.

Death and Killing
A couple of things caught my eye this morning. One is that the Dallas Morning News has reversed its position on the death penalty. That seems significant, in the state that executes more than any other. Also, back to the VA Tech killins, the Washington Post has a piece on the "psychology of mass murder:"

They're not looking for highs -- they're depressed, angry and humiliated. They tend to be rejected in some romantic relationship, or are sexually incompetent, are paranoid, and their resentment builds. They develop shooting fantasies for months or years, stockpiling dreams and ammunition. The event that finally sets them off, Welner says, is usually anticlimactic -- an argument, a small personal loss that magnifies a sense of catastrophic failure.

"But they don't 'snap,' as you so often hear people say," Welner says. "It's more like a hinge swings open, and all this anger comes out."

They plan everything about the killings, he says, except how to get away.

"It's about suicide," Welner says. "It's about tying one's masculinity to destruction."

It's also rare for them to be truly psychotic, he says. Psychotics hear voices and people from outer space and talking dogs. These are shooters like Russell Weston Jr., who ran into the Capitol building and killed two police officers. He believed he was being told to do so by alien radio transmissions.

No Warning Signs Here
From the AP

Citing unidentified sources, the Chicago Tribune reported Cho had recently set a fire in a dorm room and had stalked some women.
...
Some said that on the first day of a British literature class last year, the 30 or so students went around and introduced themselves. When it was Cho's turn, he didn't speak.

On the sign-in sheet where everyone else had written their names, Cho had written a question mark. "Is your name, `Question mark?'" classmate Julie Poole recalled the professor asking. The young man offered little response.

How can you set fire in a dorm room and still be, you know, a student?

Thompseriffic
Did you know there's a Thompson running for President? No, not Fred Thompson from Tennessee. I'm talking about Gov. Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin. With Vilsack we had maybe the shortest presidential campaign ever. With this Thompson maybe we'll have the most irrelevant campaign ever to be derailed by scandal? So far, the only news he's made is offending Jews.

"I'm in the private sector and for the first time in my life I'm earning money," Thompson told the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. "You know that's sort of part of the Jewish tradition and I do not find anything wrong with that."

With apologies to Seinfeld, I don't think "not that there's anything wrong with that" is the way to sidestep bigoted stereotypes.

Feel that Tommy Thompson surge!! Who wants in on the over/under of August 1 as the day he makes next bit of news - dropping out?

Madness
More than 20 30 dead from Va. Tech shooting. I understand suicide. But I'll never understand the ability to spread that kind of horror. So long as our national obsession with guns (masquerading as a love of constitutional rights) continues, we'll have to withstand occasional days like this. That's the trade-off. It hardly seems worth it to me, at least not today.

Calling All Bees
Mark e-mails to point out a new theory about the bee problem I posted about a while back. Here's the story in the UK's Independent.

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.
...
German research has long shown that bees' behaviour changes near power lines.

Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could provide a "hint" to a possible cause.

American Movie Rejects
On American Movie Classics right now...Halle Berry's 2004 Catwoman. I suppose it's American. And it's a movie.

I want to Stop I Really Do
Someone needs to be the one to start not talking about Imus any longer. But a couple of thoughts are stuck in my head - coming up every time I turn the TV or radio on, since it's all anyone talks about.

1) We have heard, and will continue to hear, worse things than Imus said coming from the likes of Rush and Howard Stern to name a couple. We expect that kind of racist/sexist ridicule from them. So, what's different here? I think the difference is not about Imus; it's about the happy fraternity of politicians and reporters who happily went on his show day after day, knowing he has said outrageous things. They are the ones that raised his profile as a legitimate place for serious people, probably because it felt fun to be cutting edge funny (or whatever). Now that he's done what he - pretty much - always does and been called on it, they're running for cover as if they're shocked. Why are they not regulars on Howard Stern's show? Some version of the same concerns should have made them think twice about being the I-man's best friend.

2) What about the other guy in the conversation? Imus was trying to make a point he though interesting or funny, about the fact that the Rutgers team looked tough, and the UT team looked glamorous. The other guy chimed in - about them then being "hardcore hos" (probably in his mind emphasizing the hardcore half of the statement) and Imus without blinking added the only other description he's ever heard modify "hos" - "nappy-headed." My point is - the other guy is on the radio too. Shouldn't he be getting equal treatment? One of Imus' problems over the years, if I understand correctly, is his unwillingness to get that guy under control on the air. I can only assume that's because he thinks he's funny.

3) I'm a bit sick of everyone talking about this great moment we have to address this issue as a country now. Remember Clinton's "Sister Souljah moment"? When was that, 1992? The same moment. I don't know if racism in America can or will be successfully addressed, or what that would even look like. But I feel confident it won't happen like this: with a sensationalized news drama and a renewed national commitment to deal with it. In the same way, comedians and black artists aren't going to stop using the n-word suddenly because of Michael Richards being an asshole. We may spend a week or so talking about dealing with it. But we don't know how to deal with it. That's the problem.

4 and then I'm done with this) Imus defenders should stop their whining about him losing his job. The guy just got 100 times more well-known than he ever was before. It's the best publicity he's ever gotten in his life. He couldn't have planned a roll-out to a satellite radio show - which he'll surely get - any better. He and his charities will make more money - and he will have more freedom - than he ever had on syndicated radio and a little-watched cable news channel. If he's smart he'll sign his next contract as soon as possible, while the buzz is still in the air.

Endings
Three things that (may) have come to an end worth noting:
1) Don Imus' radio show on CBS radio (will he still want to meet the the basketball team and apologize in person now that there's no job to save? [UPDATE: apparently they met Thursday evening at the Governor's mansion, so I guess so)
2) The life of Kurt Vonnegut
3) Democrats' wimpishness?

Overtime Playoff Hockey
is nerve-wracking...Preds had so many chances to win. Oh well. Gotta win game 2 on Friday.

Let's Go Predators!!
Lots of things in the news today, not the least of which is a new under-reported poll that says this:

Q: If George W. Bush vetoes the legislation, do you think Congress should pass another version of the bill that provides funding for the war without any conditions for troop withdrawal, or should Congress refuse to pass any funding bill until Bush agrees to accept conditions for withdrawal?

Fund the war without conditions: 43%
Withhold funding until Bush signs: 45%
Don't know: 12%

But my focus today is on one of the most fun times of the year for me these days - the start of the NHL playoffs. The Predators are well-positioned for both a long run - if their veteran players show up and the team is disciplined, and well-positioned for a huge disappointment - since they're playing probably the toughest team in the West right now and have alot of question marks with key players returning from injury.

Sadly, if you don't live in or around Nashville you can't watch the first 2 games of the series unless you go to a sports bar with the hockey package. But I'll be there making as much noise as I can. And I'm pumped for game-time! Nothing's more exciting than a rocking crowd for playoff hockey - completely different from the regular season, at least it has been in past years. So, I'm going to leave the wars, environmental crises and incompetent federal leadership aside for a little while and focus on hockey. If you get the Versus channel to watch the dynamite Penguins (or Fox Sports South for the Preds), I suggest you do the same. You can watch the first batter in the Red Sox game (Dice-K vs. Ichiro) and then switch over.

Water, Far Away
Link

Evidence of water has been detected for the first time in a planet outside our solar system, an astronomer said on Tuesday, a tantalizing find for scientists eager to know whether life exists beyond Earth.

Travis Barman, an astronomer at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, said water vapor has been found in the atmosphere of a large, Jupiter-like gaseous planet located 150 light years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. The planet is known as HD 209458b.

Everyone seems quite excited in science land. But I have 2 questions - one is: don't they seem to find new "the first evidence of water ever found" pretty often? More important, is this really the best we can do, name-wise, for planets? Can we get the people that name hurricanes to give some kind of seminars to the astronomer crowd? Maybe send up their rejects? Even they have to be better than HD209458b.

Imus [UPDATED]
I never understood how the guy got treated like some kind of knowledgeable, legitimate outlet for news-related interviews. Every public figure - like Tim Russert, Lieberman, Harold Ford - who have been regulars on his show should be embarrassed for their association. His act is nothing more than a wrinkled Howard Stern, with politicians and news reporters playing the role of Stern's strippers and porn stars. And it has such a lazy, thoughtless, cliche-ridden sense of humor, he just naturally gravitates to caricatures of black people as, among other possible labels, "pimps" and "hos" for any he sees on TV, even college students - young women trying to make something of themselves through higher education and a commitment to teamwork, and from the looks of their effort - engaging in harder work than the I-man has even sniffed in quite some time.

It's just a 2-week suspension but good riddance. The guy's made plenty of money in his time I'm sure. Here's hoping he has such a hard time getting the same kind of interview to which he's accustomed that the show is forced to fold.

Democrats don't go on Rush Limbaugh's show - we expect that kind of hateful rhetoric from him. Being a guest with Imus should bring the same stigma.

Still, as ignorant and poisonous as he is, whatever goes on in the head of Imus is like Mother Theresa compared to Tom Delay. You've gotta read what he said to believe it.

[UPDATE: Here are a couple of must-reads if your blood is boiling about this story. PBS' Gwen Ifill, once referred to as a “cleaning lady cover[ing] the White House,” by Imus, has a brilliant and moving piece in today's New York Times. And Al Roker says Imus needs to be "remove(d) from the airwaves."]

The Sopranos
The final handful of episodes got off to a brilliantly slow start, opening a rift in Tony's universe we knew was there but didn't expect to explode. Is this a head-fake? Or the avenue for the boss's downfall? Your thoughts? Warning - could be episode 1 spoilers in the comments.

McCain
Falling apart. It's Giuliani v. Romney v. Fred Thompson?

Kentucky Hires Billy Gillispie
It's a done deal. He was an assistant to Bill Self (Kansas' coach) at Tulsa and Illinois and is credited with recruiting the Illinois team that went to the national championship game a few years back. Since then he's rebuilt the UTEP and TX A&M programs as head coach in just a couple years each. We'll see if he can step up to the big stage.

Oh Well, Nevermind
Billy the Kid is staying at Florida. Now the best thing that could happen for the long-term health of Kentucky's program is this: get a good coach who restores UK's perennial place atop the SEC East, ahead of Florida leaving the Gators languishing in fights for 2nd and 3rd place and leaving Donovan - looking always up at the Wildcats - gnashing his teeth over his decision not to go. For the next 100 years, this would ensure that Kentucky would never again lose the coach on the top of its list.

Of course, personally, I think that would have happened anyway in about 3 years, if they had just kept the coach they had. I don't know who will be the next coach now, but something tells me we will be missing Tubby for several years.

Stuff I Know
Obviously, money is important in political campaigns. Because of Hillary's fundraising hype, she must be a bit concerned that Obama has shockingly stayed with her step-for-step. She claims $10 mil more for the quarter, but that extra wasn't raised last quarter--it's a transfer from her Senate campaign. Also, surely more of her funds are committed to the general election and so off-limits in the primary. In reality, Obama raised more cash for the primary in Q1 than she did. In addition, his donors are smaller dollar, so they haven't given the limit yet and can be tapped for future donations as the primary continues.

All of that sounds great, and strangely familiar. Howard Dean claimed all the same advantages - along with Obama's penchant for drawing huge crowds to his rallies. That's all fabulous and probably scares the Clinton crowd more than a little. But here's what I know from 4 years ago: having the most money, the most donors, and the biggest rallies doesn't get you any convention delegates. Obama has an astonishing 100,000 donors for the quarter. But 100,000 national votes won't win much. To do better than Dean, he has to be able to close the deal. That's where the primary will be won or lost. If he can't do it, the lesson will continue that Internet-based, people-powered, low-dollar donor-driven campaigns are just a fundraising gimmick, not a winning strategy.

I'm excited about Obama. But trying to remember...after the second quarter of 2003, Howard Dean drew rock-star crowds, and was the leading fundraiser among Democrats. I'd rather be Obama than Chris Dodd right about now, but unless he uses the money effectively to persuade Democrats to vote for him - the ones who wouldn't even think about giving money to a political campaign - it doesn't mean much.

Even beyond that, you don't need that kind of cash to win in Iowa or New Hampshire or South Carolina but those are still likely to be most influential. Remember, Kerry was nowhere in NH and in SC until he won Iowa. Suddenly he's surging and wins all three. All the money in the world can't buy the momentum that winning an early state can. Dean tried to run a national campaign before the first primary vote. While he was doing that, Kerry had the best Iowa experts in the country on the ground organizing for the caucus.

Billy Donovan Watch
Lots of other more important things to think and worry about, but I've got my sport on today. The Predators are flagging and have a big trio of games left in the year. The Red Sox opening day effort was, well, uninspiring. And I go back-and-forth over whether Donovan might actually take the KY job. Word on the street is $4 million/year will be offered. I expect we'll know something by tomorrow or Thursday. Why would he leave? Why would he want to go to such a draining place? On the other hand, he'll never again have a Florida team that good, and he'll always be competing with Kentucky for the top spot. If, in 4-5 years, KY is back to perennial conference champs and #1 or 2 seed in the tourney, and Donovan is back to first-and-second-round exits...think he'll be regretting it? And if he doesn't take the job, who will? And how good can they possibly be?

SCOTUS: EPA Can't Ignore CO2
An important majority opinion written by Justice Stevens will likely be an increasingly rare event now that Bush has managed to make the Court more conservative. When he does pen a 5-4 decision we know they've managed to do something correctly. Today, the Bush Administration lost its argument over the EPA and its refusal to regulate CO2 emissions. More on that ruling, which established standing rights for the state of Massachussetts to sue the EPA, is at SCOTUSblog.

Attention Math Geniuses
Browsing a new Newsweek magazine poll on religion in America, I see that 3% of the country identify themselves as atheist, while 49% of the country claims to personally know an atheist. So, if true that means that 3% of the country is personally known by 49% of us. I'm no math guru but this seems impossible. There are some obvious explanations - atheists tend to underreport because of social stigma, or perhaps 49% of people know people they generally consider heathens and have labeled them atheists, maybe unfairly. Or, perhaps atheists are simply the most popular people in any given social setting, so everyone knows them.

But really I'm posting this with another question - could this be one of those unintuitive mathematical realities, like the unexpectedly high odds (over 50%) that 2 people in a random group of 23 will have the same birthday? Could 3% of the population be personally known by 49% of it? Or something close?

Sometimes "What Happens in Vegas" Should Never Have Happened at All
Add this to the list of great ideas from the mind of Michael Jackson, right after screwing up his face, donning a single glove, sleeping with children, and having a zoo in his back yard. Like those, I'm sure this will actually happen too.

Michael Jackson is in discussions about creating a 50-foot robotic replica of himself to roam the Las Vegas desert, according to reports.

The pop legend is currently understood to be living in the city, as he considers making a comeback after 2004's turbulent child sex case.

It has now been claimed that his plans include an elaborate show in Vegas, which would feature the giant Jacko striding around the desert, firing laser beams.

If built, the metal monster would apparently be visible to aircraft as they come in to land in the casino capital.

Pet Peeve Alert
Via Kos, here's Jesse Jackson on the Congressional Black Caucus' decision to sponsor a presidential debate on Fox News:

FOX moderating a presidential debate on issues of importance to Black Americans is literally letting the Fox guard the henhouse – FOX should be rejected.

I get it - FOX = fox. But they're not literally doing that. They're figuratively letting that happen. That's, you know, the opposite of literally.

Maybe if for some reason the Democrats' mascot was a hen... then, I suppose in a roundabout way you can make the "literally" case.

On another note - I applaud Jackson, and scratch my head at the CBC. And I'm confused by otherwise smart pundits like Bill Maher who criticize Democrats for refusing Fox News for a debate. He seems to think it's a step that underscores public's impressions of Democrats as weak. No. It's an acknowledgement that Fox is not a legitimate news outlet and doesn't deserve to be treated as one. It's called a boycott. It's not a sign of weakness. It's a sign of contempt and disgust. We didn't play Sun City. And we're not gonna play Fox News.

That having been said, if they debate on Fox News, I expect them to take Bill Clinton's lead and challenge every horribly framed question with the proper amount of scorn and indignation. And who's willing and able to do that would in fact tell us something important about the candidates. But I think voters would prefer to see them debating one another, not clashing with the questioner.

McCain's in Trouble?
Apparently, flirting with switching parties back in 2001 isn't the best way to win over the GOP faithful in 2007.

Here Comes the Veto
The Senate passed the Iraq funding bill - the one requiring withdrawal by August 2008 - 51-47. Every Democrat voted for it, plus 2 Republicans, Hagel (NE) and Smith (OR). How will the White House fund the war? Doesn't Bush support the troops?

Wow
I have to admit I'm a bit surprised the Senate Democrats managed to hold it together enough to keep the House's troop withdrawal timetable in the Iraq War funding bill, just now 50-48. That means, assuming the funding bill passes, the President will have to veto as promised. Eventually, either Bush will have to sign a funding bill given him by the Democratic congress, or convince enough legislators to support a funding bill without the timetable, or the troops don't get funded. This could become like the Clinton-Gingrich shutting down the government standoff. Who blinks first? Depends on who the public blames for the stalemate.

The Primary Calendar is Out of Control
We need to re-think how we want primaries to work. If we're going to have a national primary then fine. If we're going to roll them out gradually then let's do it with a thoughtful rational fair purpose. But this crap where states are leap-frogging, pushing dates earlier and earlier, and surely wreaking havoc on campaign strategies, is a load of crap. It looked like we had something of a national primary shaping up on Feb. 5. But that's not good enough for Florida, which has now moved up to Jan. 29. I disagree with Kos. I think this will have a huge impact. For the week before Feb. 5, whoever managed to win in FL will have a huge advantage - press, perception, all the rest.

Rove's Secret E-Mails
Most of Karl Rove's emailing has been done not from his White House account, but from his RNC account. This isn't shocking. I'm sure most of you funnel your porn and illegal activity through non-work accounts yourself. But...if he was conducting government business (or coordinating the improper dismissal of US Attorneys for a lack of political loyalty) through any email address, that work belongs to the people and, it turns out, can't be used as an end-run around the archiving laws. Rep. Waxman has requested that all relevant emails be preserved that were written or received through RNC accounts. If at least one important player is unwilling to destroy evidence, and eventually turns over RNC emails that reflect government work, things could get very interesting, especially if we actually get to see what some of these jokers said when they assumed there's no chance anyone unintended will read...

Dreaming Big
Watching a replay of Meet the Press, Russert's interview with Bill Bradley, who's written a new book about...blah blah hope for the future blah blah. And I wonder...these guys who dream of being president, even the ones who clearly have no plan to enter the race, and would have no chance, really, do they nonetheless dream about their magical books somehow catching fire, leading to a groundswell of cheering unstoppable support, whisking them to the presidency on the wings of their inspiring words? Can somebody with presidential aspirations in their blood ever pass on the chance to dream about something like that?

Secondly, has anything like that ever happened? ever?

Do you think Kucinich thought that maybe, just maybe, when people got a whiff of his Department of Peace idea, that it would spread like wildfire across formerly non-voting young liberals who would carry him to the oval office on their under-25 shoulders to the strains of John Lennon? Is there a part of him that thought...this could be the idea...?

I admit to dreaming about winning the lottery...but watching Bradley got me to wondering what goes through politicians' minds when they have some free minutes to let their imaginations wander...

It Probably Won't Stick...
Because Bush will veto it or before then the Senate will kill it, but at least the House did vote for an Iraq withdrawal by September of 2008. The bill wasn't perfect, but it set a deadline and it passed. Kudos to Speaker Pelosi.

Damn
Tubby is leaving - heading for the Big Ten and Minnesota. It's a huge embarrassing mistake that he wasn't appreciated. Sounds like he had enough.

In 10 years, he took UK to the final 8 four times, won a national championship, made the tournament each year and never lost a first-round game. He won more than 75% of his games at UK. Good luck finding someone who will do better.

I wonder who they will get to replace him? Can they pry Donovan away from FL? Unlikely. Calipari in Memphis? Too many rumors about recruiting violations. Gregg Marshall from Winthrop moving up from the mid-majors? Can't take a chance on unproven talent. Steve Lavin (former UCLA) out of the broadcast booth? Maybe. John Beeline from WV? That would be an interesting choice if he is willing to leave. Rick Barnes at Texas? Or Jamie Dixon at Pittsburgh? Or here's a crazy choice: Rick Pitino. Why not?

Yikes
Edwards press conference regarding his campaign and his wife's health...

[UPDATE: Her cancer is back. His campaign will continue. On the brief reaction I saw on MSNBC, both Chris Matthews and Howard Fineman were praising the press conference (which I didn't see myself) and the Edwards' position that - this is what we do as a family, and this is what we will do for America. Matthews said it looked to him like religion in action.]

Gore on C-Span Thread [3rd UPDATE]
I forgot to mention it here but today Al Gore testifies before House and Senate committees, a 1-man panel on global warming. I won't get to watch it until replays tonight. But if you saw/heard anything how do you think he did? I'll post links to coverage here when I find it so come back and refresh later.

[UPDATE: David Roberts at Gristmill live-blogged the House hearing and has some great quotes and descriptions.

UPDATE 2: At Intersection, Chris Mooney (author of The Republican War on Science) who has not been shy about criticizing Gore when he thinks he's overstated, says that Al's performance earlier today was "stirring."

UPDATE 3: Roberts says Gore isn't doing nearly as good a job in the Senate as he did in the House. And James "global-warming-is-a-hoax" Inhofe is making this personal about Gore's own energy usage, etc. So, sadly my prediction is the only encounter that will make the news is Inhofe asking Gore if he will pledge not to use more energy than the average house... Why is there always one asshole to ruin everything? Is that some kind of impenetrable cosmic math?]

Suddenly Bush is a Constitutional Stickler
I've never understood why the people of the country stand for DC residents to be without voting representation in Congress. It's completely un-American on its face. A new compromise bill that would add 2 voting members - one in DC and one in Utah (to make the Republicans not freak out) - is set to pass the House, but the White House insists they need to veto:

[T]he administration is against the bill because the Constitution limits House representation to members chosen "by the People of the several States."

"The District of Columbia is not a State," it says, adding that congressional representation for the District would require a constitutional amendment.

(thanks to jenifer for sending the link)

Whoops
Mitt Romney + pandering to Cuban-Americans + no habla espanol = whoops.

Gonzales Watch
I posted earlier about the lack of patriots running the show at the Justice Department, that is, folks committed to the rule of law over the rules of politics. Clearly there will be no Elliott Richardson - Archibald Cox moment here. This is what a nation of men, not a nation of laws, looks like:

Fired San Diego U.S. attorney Carol Lam notified the Justice Department that she intended to execute search warrants on a high-ranking CIA official as part of a corruption probe the day before a Justice Department official sent an e-mail that said Lam needed to be fired, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Sunday.
...
Last week, the Justice Department released e-mails showing that loyalty to President Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was among the criteria used to judge U.S. attorneys' performance and that Rove and former White House counsel Harriet Miers were deeply involved in discussions leading up to the dismissals.


Roehrkasse said the Justice Department would provide additional e-mails to Congress on Monday. The documents were to have been surrendered last week, but Justice officials delayed the delivery, saying they needed more time to prepare them.

Strange Bedfellows
A newish strategy of the religious right is to use the appeal to free speech rights as a way around standard church-state prohibitions. So, military chaplains should be able to pray "in Jesus' name" at mandatory military events that troops of all faiths are required to attend. And, other ceremonial prayers like those opening legislative sessions should be able to also express sectarian viewpoints they say. That sounds nice, of course - that ministers shouldn't have their prayers dictated by the government. But you just have to follow the logical conclusion and what we would have is a military and a Congress that opens all its events with Christian invocations, instead of the generic prayers acknowledging God that the Supreme Court has allowed.

The new argument of those on the religious right is that curtailing those expressions, and those of students who want to - for example - bash gay students with rhetoric about their impending descent into hell - are violations of their free speech rights.

But this new love of free speech has forced them to get in the middle of some unexpected skirmishes. Today, the Supreme Court will hear argument in the case of a student who unfurled a banner that read "bong hits 4 jesus" at a parade for which students had been dismissed from school to participate. The principal demanded its removal and then forcibly destroyed it when the student refused. The student had his initial punishment doubled for, apparenly, quoting Thomas Jefferson to the principal. Interestingly, the Bush Administration is taking the side of the school - arguing for control of the environment and ability to censor expression that violates the central educational mission of the school. And religious groups have lined up on the other side, arguing for enhanced rights of student expression.

I have mixed feelings. I want to support the rights of schools to maintain order.

But I have to come down on the side of the student here despite his admission that the banner was not trying to say anything about anything, only tried to come up with something that would piss off the principal (it worked). Personally, I think free speech arguments for protest work better when there's actually something you're trying to protest, or something you have to say. But here, the government is over-reaching, as Marty Lederman indicates at ScotusBlog. It's a bit painful to side with religious conservatives, especially knowing that essentially the purpose of their concern is to support Christian young people in their continued harassment and demonization of fellow students. But legal arguments, I suppose, sometimes makes for strange bedfellows.

I'll read the oral arguments later today, and if anything interesting is said, will post it tonight or tomorrow.

My Prime Time Experience or...Our National Mental Health Breakdown
I don't watch many tv shows. Most of my tv watching is news, espnnews, cspan and some comedy central. But tonight, for whatever reason, after basketball, I left CBS on and watched prime time programming. 60 Minutes was a horrifying interview with a US soldier, charged with killing men, women and children in Haditha while he was in charge during the first moment of combat he had ever seen in his life. He said, essentially, that he would make all the same decisions all over again if he had the chance.

But that was a subtle emotional experience compared to the fiction. "Cold Case" solved the 8-year-old murder of a homeless mother of 2 who all lived in her station wagon after her husband died of cancer. We spend most of the episode suspecting the ungrateful daughter before guilt finally falls on the one man that had been presented as a decent human, if troubled. We follow a replay of her awful life trying to find work and improve her family while life throws one cruel trick after another her way, mainly for the purpose of generating murder suspects. A subplot I didn't understand that took up only 5 mins of the show involved another cop tracking down the trucker who killed his wife in a hit-and-run. He confronted him in a back alley and pressed a gun to his chest to kill him, before he lost his nerve. All the while there's break-your-heart music just in case you haven't picked up on the pathos.

Before I could really get started being depressed, I get to "without a trace", which followed the story of a lonely 15-year-old who goes missing after posting videos of herself online offering up her virginity. She lives with her grandfather who told her her parents died in a car accident when actually her mother died in childbirth and her father went insane and tried to kill his newborn daugher out of grief. Oh and did I mention that her grandfather is dying of kidney failure? We follow her through the attack by some high school boys, and her encounter with her eventual statutory rapist and are, I suppose, expected to react with glee over the implied abuse he suffers at the hands of police brutality. There's the meeting with the estranged father who can't care for her and the teary reunion as she's returned to her grandfather-caregiver that has about 6 months to live.

So, best as I can tell, prime time network tv is about guardians hanging on for dear life to care for their ungrateful children while the world around them is made up of threats by predators, disease, broken families and mental illness. After 2+ hours of that I already feel like not getting out of bed for the next week. Are there people that actually watch that stuff all of the time? I'm going back to ESPN, Comedy Central, C-Span, CNN and MSNBC.

Valerie Plame Wilson Testified Today
Before the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. You can read her opening statement here on dKos.

Where are all the Patriots?
I wasn't old enough to know Watergate when it was happening. I didn't hear one word about it in any class in high school or in college. (Hopefully there's enough historical perspective at this point for that mistaken omission to be fixed in today's US history classes.) I didn't learn much about it until just after college when I happened to start watching a great multi-part documentary on the Discovery Channel and couldn't take my eyes off of it. I bought the videos in fact it was so good,(though they've been lost in various moves) though I haven't been able to find it on DVD.

The part I'll never forget is the late-night press conference by Archibald Cox, holed up just outside his office in the midst of Nixon's attempts to fire him (the "Saturday Night Massacre"). The special prosecutor was trying to protect the documents and work product he had compiled. His determination to pursue the truth and be true to his country despite the President's efforts to cover all wrong-doing brought the unmistakable sound of cheers among the press, who couldn't hide their patriotism, not knowing what Nixon would be willing to do next to shield himself.

Nixon got rid of 2 Attorneys General that night in search of one (Robert Bork, eventually) who would be willing to fire Cox, who famously said "whether ours shall continue to be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people."

Compare that to today, when we have an Attorney General in the pocket of the President, and a White House operation that systematically fired US attorneys for not being sufficiently loyal, and for threatening to prosecute corrupt Republican office-holders.

Sigh.

It's March Madness Time!
Who ya got?

NCAA Stupidity
As I was thinking about this yearly rant, I wasn't going to post it, assuming i've probably done it in past years, but a quick check of the archives didn't turn it up so here goes. This "play-in" "opening round" game of theirs - Florida A & M and Niagara played in it last night - is the worst idea they've ever had. And it's borderline racist. Kids in schools too small, or too poor, or too uncompetitive in major sports, to participate in big conferences, work their butts off all year with the hope that they get to go to the big national tournament *that starts on Thursday.* Then 2 of the schools, having won and celebrated, get told that no, they have to jump one more hurdle and play one another 2 days earlier for the right to go.

They play in Dayton, OH. And of course nobody in the country cares or watches. Why would we? The setup is cruel and avoids an obvious solution that would be far better. If there is to be a play-off game *how about we make it to decide between some of the teams the whole country is currently arguing about.* The play-in should be between at-large teams, not automatic (non)qualifiers. They have a larger fan-base - crowds would actually travel. Money would actually be made. Maybe there should be 1 play-in per region. So right now, Syracuse and Arkansas, Drexel and Illinois, Air Force and Old Dominion, could settle things on the court for the right to be the 12 seed or whatever. More teams would be involved and the cruel turn of making 2 conference tourney champions go through another unexpected game is removed.

"We are struck by the obvious fact that the Peaks are located in a desert."
That's my favorite line from a 9th Circuit decision released yesterday involving a ski resort and the religious beliefs of some Native American tribes. I've got the story over at the Baptist Joint Committee blog. Sorry for the shameless self-promotion, but thought it was interesting.

President Thompson?
Tennessee is abuzz over the possibility that former Senator and, ahem, Law and Order star Fred Thompson might run for President. I think he would actually be a tough opponent for the Republicans in the race. And since the GOP rank and file don't seem satisfied with the dozen or so choices they have so far, maybe Fred will outflank Newt and sweep in before he has the chance? And, Thompson's only had 2 wives!

One thing's for sure, with Rudy, McCain and Thompson, Republicans would have some seriously seasoned citizens in the running. 64, 72 and 66 respectively when they would become President.

McCain's withering on the vine. It will be hard for anyone but Romney to catch Giuliani. But Thompson may really shake things up.

And More Great News...
When you die and go to heaven, Jeffrey Dahmer will be there waiting! And you were worried it might be boring...

Happy Face, Everybody!
I thought we could all use this great news for a Monday.

The draft document by the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change focuses on global warming's effects and is the second in a series of four being issued this year. Written and reviewed by more than 1,000 scientists from dozens of countries, it still must be edited by government officials.
...
"Things are happening and happening faster than we expected," said Patricia Romero Lankao of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., one of the many co-authors of the new report.

The draft document says scientists are highly confident that many current problems _ change in species' habits and habitats, more acidified oceans, loss of wetlands, bleaching of coral reefs, and increases in allergy-inducing pollen _ can be blamed on global warming.

For example, the report says North America "has already experienced substantial ecosystem, social and cultural disruption from recent climate extremes," such as hurricanes and wildfires.

But the present is nothing compared to the future.
...
_Hundreds of millions of Africans and tens of millions of Latin Americans who now have water will be short of it in less than 20 years. By 2050, more than 1 billion people in Asia could face water shortages. By 2080, water shortages could threaten 1.1 billion to 3.2 billion people, depending on the level of greenhouse gases that cars and industry spew into the air.
...
_Europe's small glaciers will disappear with many of the continent's large glaciers shrinking dramatically by 2050. And half of Europe's plant species could be vulnerable, endangered or extinct by 2100.

_By 2080, between 200 million and 600 million people could be hungry because of global warming's effects.

_About 100 million people each year could be flooded by 2080 by rising seas.

_Smog in U.S. cities will worsen and "ozone-related deaths from climate (will) increase by approximately 4.5 percent for the mid-2050s, compared with 1990s levels," turning a small health risk into a substantial one.

There's even more where that came from! Hope everyone has a great day!

NYTimes on TN Smoking Ban
For whatever it's worth, the elitists at the NYTimes think Tennessee's proposed smoking ban will "probably...pass," and that it's "expected to." In a piece today about our state's dwindling tobacco influence, their evidence is a little slim for the predictions of political victory ("because of its support — if qualified — in the General Assembly from both the House speaker and Senate president, and important business groups, including the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce."), but there you go.

I'll believe it when I see it (and cheer).

More Trouble for Rove?
I haven't been writing about the US Attorney scandal brewing for the White House and AG Gonzales. The one-sentence version is this: The Attorney General has been using his power as head of the Justice Dept. to fire US attorneys whose politics don't conform to the Republican Party. Of course, this was not all his idea. He's not that smart. Via TPM:

Allen Weh, the party chairman, said he complained in 2005 about then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to a White House liaison who worked for Rove and asked that he be removed. Weh said he followed up with Rove personally in late 2006 during a visit to the White House.

"Is anything ever going to happen to that guy?" Weh said he asked Rove at a White House holiday event that month.

"He's gone," Rove said, according to Weh.

And now the NYTimes has had enough.

We opposed Mr. Gonzales’s nomination as attorney general. His résumé was weak, centered around producing legal briefs for Mr. Bush that assured him that the law said what he wanted it to say. More than anyone in the administration, except perhaps Vice President Dick Cheney, Mr. Gonzales symbolizes Mr. Bush’s disdain for the separation of powers, civil liberties and the rule of law.

On Thursday, Senator Arlen Specter, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, hinted very obliquely that perhaps Mr. Gonzales’s time was up. We’re not going to be oblique. Mr. Bush should dismiss Mr. Gonzales and finally appoint an attorney general who will use the job to enforce the law and defend the Constitution.

Woohoo!
Kentucky may have lost today after a ridiculously stupid violation up 3 points with 5 seconds to go. But via Kos I see Democrats won today. There will be no Fox News debate after all. Way to go, John Edwards.

Read EJ Dionne Today
Link

[O]nly the Marx Brothers could have done justice to the manic us-vs.-them response of administration lieutenants to angry jottings that Vice President Cheney scrawled in the margins of former ambassador Joseph Wilson's op-ed piece attacking administration claims about Iraq. Imagine if these guys had spent the energy they put into discrediting an opponent into planning for the war's aftermath.

A reader once expressed his amazement that Republicans win office by saying government can't work, then go about proving it. They don't take responsibility for their failures until they have no other choice.

Even then, do they?

Calling All Reasonable Republicans
Looks like we'll get a chance to sift out the religious conservatives extremists and the war-hawks and see how many Republicans are left.

March Madness Officially Under Way
Kentucky just tipped off versus Alabama in the SEC Tournament. TubbyWatch is on. My main purpose for rooting them on this time around isn't just the typical fan-dom. I'm wanting to quiet the Tubby-haters. He's a great guy, great coach. Maybe they're not in the top 10 for a couple years in a row. Big deal. My message to Big Blue fans is simple: the coach you know is likely better than the coach you don't. It could easily be worse. Changing coaches would be a quick way to find that out. Ask me about my Boston Celtics. Follow the Kentucky score here.

Once Again, Edwards Impresses
Won't play with Fox News. Hopefully others will follow his lead.

Ann Coulter and Scooter Libby
Don't feel like spinning my disgust into an epic. Safe to say it this way: this is your modern day Republican Party. Childish, vulgar, bullying hatemongers and power-loving, criminally deceitful, unaccountable tyrants.

So long as Republicans continually refuse to denounce these figureheads, they will remain - as an organization - a black mark on the country, not just honorably incorrect on the issues. Any GOP supporter who claims to just be in it for the supposedly low-tax, small government principles should have to answer for enabling the true nature of their party: a country that's more comfortable persecuting gays and lesbians, more comfortable demonizing minority religions, more committed to war than to peace, more comfortable lying to achieve their objectives than we were 7 years ago.

That is their legacy.

Movie Recommendation: Zodiac
The advice here is take a good long piss before this - it's a long one. There was lots to like here and it's worth seeing, though far from great. The nature of the story leaves it kind of hollow in plot substance, and that becomes the story itself for much of the film - chasing one's tail and all of that. As you know, I don't like to give these things away, so I won't say more, other than that it's marginally recommended, more for how the search for the killer takes over a couple people's lives than for the actual hunt-em-down thriller aspect.

I'm either annoyed or impressed with the blatant ripoff of Charles Ives' The Unanswered Question marking most of the musical score. A music-nerd signal? (since I am one, I got it) or just a ripoff? expression of creativity or of the lack of it? I'm not sure.

The performances were great, and I'm not even counting Robert Downey, Jr. And the look of the movie was really fabulous. Thankfully, from the maker of Seven, not overly gruesome.

Also, curious - did anyone read the book?

Weekend Speeches
Hillary Clinton's is here. Barack Obama's is here. Obama was way better. Read them both.

Rant...
I'm so so sick of freaking roll-over ads. Listen - just because my stupid mouse crosses your page coordinates - doesn't mean I want to interrupt my surfing with a noisy obnoxious video covering my screen. Sometimes my mouse was just in the wrong place when I loaded the page. Sometimes I am just scrolling the page and happen to scroll the ad under my cursor, or more often I'm just trying to move the cursor from point A to point B and your points happen to be in-between, unbeknownst to me, the innocent bystanding reader. But I've never, ever said gee I'd like to roll over that ad and see more. It is easily the single most obnoxious intrusive method of advertising now that we've made pop-ups (mostly) a thing of the past. I can't believe it is ever met with any response other than fury. I have to close out the stupid things multiple times a day. I'd like to drop-kick any site that purposefully allows one to pollute its URL.

Funny Promotion
I have been anxious to see David Lunch's new film Inland Empire that is starting at the local indie theater, the Belcourt, this weekend. I notice they're running a promotion - see it 9 times and your 10th viewing is free! Clocking in at nearly 3 hours, and being a David Lynch movie, I'm not sure what signal that funny promotion is sending. Is it great or is it terrible? Have any A19 readers seen it?

I liked Mulholland Drive, though not as much as many critics did. And I really disliked Lost Highway, (at least I do now thinking back on it) maybe because I found the first half to be so interesting and promising before he descended into such self-parody (even for him) in the final half. My favorite of his is easily Wild at Heart (I like Blue Velvet less and less over time...).

Falwell: Al Gore = Spawn of Satan
The universe of good and evil is wacked-out crazy in Jerry Falwell's world.

Jerry Falwell, who has worked for decades to involve conservative Christians in politics, said Sunday the debate over global warming is a tool of Satan being used to distract churches from their primary focus of preaching the gospel.

"If I decide here as the pastor and our deacons decide that we're going to get caught up in the global warming thing, we're not going to be able to reach the masses of souls for Christ, because our attention will be elsewhere," Falwell said in Sunday's sermon at Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va. "That's pretty wise for Satan to concoct."
...
"Now how long will the earth remain?" Falwell asked. "It will remain until the new heavens and the new earth come. And that won't happen until, well, over in the last two chapters of the Bible--after the tribulation, after the thousand-year reign of Christ, then new heavens and new earth. Why? Because the former things are passed away. The earth will go up in dissolution from severe heat. The environmentalists will be really shook up then, because God is going to blow it all away, and bring down new heavens and new earth."

Um, what?

Robert Reich Has a Blog [UPDATED]
Here it is. I mentioned it in a comment the other day, because of this kinda wacky prediction of his. But other than that post it's an interesting and informative site to follow. The two most recent posts are about Monday's stock market tumble and the importance of Democratic attempts to improve labor union laws.

[UPDATE: The House has passed the bill Reich was pushing, though it's not likely to become law because of either a Senate filibuster or a presidential veto.]