Jumping To Conclusions

In the future, on this page, you'll be reading occasional posts appovingly citing Brad Delong, Paul Krugman, Liz Phair, Gary Wills, Lisa Lowe, Ronnie Spector, Nadia Mustafa, C. Wright Mills, and Alejandro Portes.

No, David hasn't had a brain transplant. I'm Partha Mazumdar and I'm occasionally going to be collaborating with him on this blog (the page is still his, I'm just going to be helping out). I'm officially trained in American Studies and I "do" Asian American immigration specializing in Asian American entrepreneurship and representations of Asian Americans in popular culture. Entrepreneurship (and, specifically, Indian owned hotels) is my first love -- and nothing can ever approach a first love -- but popular culture studies has become a mistress I spend probably too much time with. I teach within the Department of Asian American Studies of the Unversity of Pennsylvania.

You'll all read soon, but my politics can best be described as Clintonian. I feel no shame (in fact, I feel great pride) in saying that the former president is my guide, my leader, and my admiration for him borders on reverence. Without any irony and not thinking that it's cheezy, I still believe in a place called Hope.

So, as you can see, my politics differ some from David's, but, this difference will be fun; as Mark Twain said in the Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar, "It were not best that we would all think alike; it is the difference of opinion that makes horse races."

Missing in President Bush's current debate with Capitol Hill over the bill to establish an office of Domestic Security is any sort of discussion of a sentence in section 724 of the House bill. It's 724.a.1.A: "(A) shall be exempt from disclosure under section 552 of title 5, United States Code (commonly referred to as the Freedom of Information Act)"

I'm confident that people from both sides of the aisle can agree with the statement that the inclusion of this sentence is, for lack of a better word, wrong. I mean, why would we want a 170,000 person law-enforcement agency with investigative powers to have to, at some point -- at any point --, release what they've done? Who they've investigated? Why they investigated them? What they found? Who they followed? Who they wiretapped? Basically, any other question you can think of.

One would think that the mainstream media would be all over this. The Freedom of Information Act is one of its hallowed treasures and being a watchdog over the government is one of its rason d'etres. Just go to a panel discussion at Columbia University or Columbia, Missouri... the leading lights of the American media talk about these two things all the time (and they beat their chests while they congratulate themselves). However, we're not getting a peep over permanently exempting 170,000 employees from any sort of independent oversight. Maybe they really do only write about what Ari Fletcher and Congressional press secretaries tell them to write about.

One is forced to wonder about the Right's current obsession with Robert Rubin. One example is Andrew Sullivan; in his childish one-way battle with The New York Times, Sullivan asks why the Times isn't interested in investigating "Rubin's allegedly glorious record as Treasury secretary," and the calls for 'investigating' Rubin are coming from many quarters, loudly and often.
Of course, these voices going after Rubin were silent when Rubin was actually Secretary of the Treasury. They seemed to have no problem with what he was doing, while he was doing it.
Is it too much to ask for the people invested with the power to affect the economy (the presidential administration) and their supporters to, in this time of economic and financial crisis, actually do something to help the country out? Instead, as evidenced by the growing attacks on Rubin, it seems that they they haven't left the 1990s and still don't have any other method of politics other than afixing blame.
You're in charge now, so go do something. The country will love you if you do. We didn't love Franklin Roosevelt because he spent all of his time dragging down the Hoover administration; we loved him because he took the bulls by the horns.
Sometimes it seems (like when listening to an Ari Fletcher press conference) that the administration has nothing under its sleave other than blaming the Clinton administration. You know, even if Fletcher is right, who cares? You're in charge now. Lead us. With our stock porfolios, our retirement accounts, our savings losing ten, twenty, thirty, fourty, fifty, sixty percent of their values, it's not too much to ask that you don't constantly search the past for scapegoats but look to the future with answers. Even if they're the wrong answers, give the consumers something to be confident about. Make us confident in you.

In all the ruckus concerning someone at the Princeton admissions office accessing a dozen or so admission notices off of Yale's computer server, what's been lost is: what in the world could the Princeton admissions officer have gained by learning a few of Yale's admitting decisions?

One hypothetical proposed by a reporter at the Yale Daily News is that the information could have been used to help tailor better recruiting packages to attract these students. Perhaps, but I doubt it. Princeton had all they needed to know already; everything that the applicants listed as interests on their Yale application, one can assume, they also listed on the Princeton application. Some people have (somewhat jokingly) proposed that Princeton did it to help better recruit basketball players, and, while they have a point, if my school lost a playoff game to Yale in the past year, I'd want to fix the team, too, but I doubt this is the case.

I just don't see why anyone would do this, other than to check the security on the site (as has been claimed) or just because he was curious. Neither, of course, excuse what he did, but it does not seem to be all that sinister.

I have two more questions, though.

First, if the two schools would not have been Yale and Princeton, but had been the University of Kansas and Kansas State University, would the press be covering it so much? The same incident, the same everything. I doubt it, even though it's the same story.

Second, in addition to admissiongate, the Yale Daily News is fronting a story that Yale's unions may go on strike on the first day of classes. This appears to be a much bigger story, but addmissiongate is what's causing the buzz.

[David: Boy, this has been an embarrassing few months for me. First we get Cornel West foisted off on us again, and now this scandal. Plus, Paul Krugman keeps shaming the school with his New York Times columns.]

In his latest column, Thomas Friedman reminds us of something said by presidential candidate George W. Bush:

"The I.R.S. just announced they're going to hire an additional 2,079 bureaucrats. My opponent talks about fighting for the people against the powerful. But it works out a little differently under his plan. In his case, more audits for people, more power for the I.R.S. And that's the heart of his agenda: a fundamental belief in the federal government, a lack of trust and faith in ordinary Americans. . . . I trust people; he trusts the government."

But, the IRS is law-enforcement agency. It ensures that people abide by the law; it makes people pay their federal taxes. If you don't like the law, go after the legislators, however, George W. Bush has no shame in going after the 'bureaucrats'. More people, it must be infered from Bush's comments, should be able to avoid their taxes -- avoid the law.

From the quote above, we have to assume that "the powerful" are people like Ken Lay and "the people" are Enron stockholders. "The people" who had their 401(k) accounts decimated by "trust."

Why, one must wonder, if Bush trusts everybody to be law abiding -- why he trusts Ken Lay so much -- why he allows this country to have so many police officers? Don't trust the government, don't trust the law enforcers, trust the people.

Law enforcers have a job to do; oversight officials have a job to do; they make sure that our system works. Don't tie their hands, don't put them down. Let them do what they do and let's make sure the system works.

Friedman ends the column with a great line: "...so much of America's moral authority to lead the world derives from the decency of our government and its bureaucrats, and the example we set for others. These are not things to be sneered at by a president. They are things to be cherished, strengthened and praised every single day."

Preach on, Tom, preach on.

It probably isn't an appropriate subject for a blog, since it's difficult to be analytical or critical about it, but, I have to say that what happened this morning in Somerset is the best news I've heard is a long long time. It's just so wonderful; wonderful for the nine, wonderful for their families, wonderful for the crew that rescued them, and wonderful for the region I love, Southwestern Pennsylvania. I haven't lived there since I moved away for college, and now that I've passed the Foreign Service Exam, it seems that I'll be moving thousands and thousands of miles away, but Southwestern PA will always be home. And it's wonderful.

Proving once again that the best original programing on television is not produced by the networks but by cable stations, tonight Showtime premiered an hour and a half feature Our America directed by Spike Lee's old cinematographer Ernest Dickerson.

The show dramatizes three main characters: David Isay, a producer for Chicago's National Public Radio affiliate (ably portrayed by Josh Charles... you remember him, he played Ox in Dead Poet's Society), LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman, two kids who lived in the Ida B. Wells housing development in Chicago. Jones and Newman took microphones into the Ida B. Wells, their home, and, with Isay's assistance, produced some of the best radio this country has ever witnessed.

The first forty-five minutes of the Showtime program details their first project, Ghetto Life 101, which debuted in 1993.

The second forty-five minutes covers the second project, one exploring the events surrounding the death of Eric Morse, a 5 year old child thrown out a 14th floor window by two other kids -- one was eleven and the other was ten.

If you can, watch the Showtime program.

If you haven't already, you owe it to yourself to listen to the story Jones and Newman made about Eric Morse. I've linked it here: Remorse: The 14 Stories of Eric Morse. This isn't 'if you can'... this is a must.

It'll bring you tears as Jones and Newman articulately demonstrate that there is no 'our America' and 'their America.' It's all our America.

Pop quiz:

He's in his early 30s. His parents are both from India and they're both successful professionals. He lives in Philadelphia. He's devistatingly handsome (at least he thinks so). An essential part of his job is to watch movies. His teachers used to mispronounce his real name so other name gained some currency. He speaks flawless English, even with a regional Pennsylvanian accent, but people still ask him "where are you from?" (answer: his home town or Pennsylvania or the USA) "no, no, where are you really from?"

Are you thinking me? Partha Mazumdar?

Okay, how about the next clue: he's on the cover of the latest Newsweek magazine.

So, it's not me.

It's M(anoj). Night Shyamalan.

A couple of thoughts:

First, those people who downplay the importance of role models and the requests that minorities should be able to be able to see people who look like them in positions of power and celebrity, I have to say, have never gone day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, not seeing people who look like them where ever they look. South Asian Americans, like me, are going to be talking about this Newsweek cover for a long time; they'll be saying: America really is a place where you can be Indian American and get on the cover of Newsweek.

Second, either Newsweek missed what Shyamalan is doing or he snookered them.

Sure, as is noted in the article, he's influenced by Hitchcock, Lucus, and Spielberg in his choice of subject matter, but in form, his primary influence is the great Indian writer, director, composer Satyajit Ray. From his framing, from his character development, from what he reveals and what he doesn't, from his pacing, Manoj is a student and admirer of Ray. He's bringing an Indian sensibility to Hollywood. It's a sensibility which many find slow, boring, and plodding, but for those whose attention span hasn't been reduced to nanoseconds, his movies are well worth the time.

And, after the American release of Lagaan, movie critics around the country announced that it would be the begining of an American appreciation of Indian films (India has the largest movie industry in the world). (Roger Ebert was more measured in his excellent review of Lagaan.) With Manoj and with other heavily Indian influenced movies such as Moulin Rouge, we don't need to go to the art house to see Indian movies. We can just go to the local multiplex. India is already here.

Companies give stock options -- the option to buy shares of stock in the company at a predetermined price some point at the future -- to executives because, supposedly, it provides an extra insentive for the executive to make the company stronger.

An executive, let's call him Ken, joins a company and it's at $20. He receives an option to buy ten million shares, when he leaves the company, for $10 each.

(First off, this $10 price seems bogus. All he has to do is break even and he makes $100,000,000, but that's how the world works, I guess.)

But, looking at this, Kenny doesn't have an insentive to make the company stronger. His incentive is to make the stock price as high as possible when he leaves. So, if the stock is at $50 on that magical day, and he can buy ten million shares from the company at $10 and then immediately sell them on the market, then he's made $400,000,000. (minus, of course, brokerage fees and capital gains tax)

Kenny Boy, in other words, is paid in a way where the company doesn't matter. The stockholders don't matter. Nothing matters, in terms of his golden pay day, other than the analysts. You know, the people who appear on CNBC during the day. They research the company and give independent advice on where they think the stock price should be. People listen to them, because the analysts are smart, well educated, research the company, are independent, and individual people and managers of smaller funds don't have the time or ability to do all of this research themselves. And the analysts are independent, after all.

And, if this story in the New York Times is true, company executives made decisions on who the analysts of their companies would be. (I'm using the plural here, even though the story is just about Enron. Like a lot of the stories we've been reading about, I'm confident more will follow.)

To get this straight... an executive would receive a great deal of the money (generated by the workers of the company) because it would be transfered to him, essentially, on the say of an analyst who the executive himself picked. You've got to be kidding me.

One likes to believe there aren't enough jails for scum like this. But, realistically, if you have friends in the White House and the Naval Observatory, one has to assume that Ken Lay won't see one minute of jail time. He'll spend his life at his many pools, at his many houses, while actual employees at Enron, whose retirement plans helped to raise the price of the stock, have to work decades longer because their retirement savings are gone.

It's really hot here in Philadelphia. It's hot all around the country.

In a recent article in Slate, Eric Klinenberg asks "Why don't Americans sweat over heat-wave deaths?" More Americans die from heat waves than all other natural disasters combined (including tornadoes, hurricanes, and floods).

The answer is simple: those who succumb to the heat are predominately old (without the physical strength to withstand the heat), poor (without the financial ability to pay for air conditioning), and scared (they stay inside their homes because they are scared to go outside into the crime filled streets of their neighborhoods).

The old, poor, and scared don't vote nor do they line the coffers of the major political parties. It's better political policy to make sure those who own hurricane-prone ocean-front property are well taken care of then elderly women in the Ida B. Wells housing project in Chicago. (Not to attempt to rhetorically minimize the pain engendered by hurricanes, but it is better politics).

Klinenberg notes that there are "simple and relatively inexpensive measures that could prevent future heat deaths," and that "it's just a question of whether we value the lives of poor city dwellers as much as the property of wealthy coastal developers."

I have another suggestion to add to Klinenberg's. When a heat wave rolls in, FEMA is called up. If it can respond to tornadoes and hurricanes, why not heat waves?

Just hours after making a big to-do of signing the corporate reform bill, President Bush began to try to water it down.

On provision of the bill protects employees who bring to Congress evidence that their companies have been cooking their books. Claire Buchanan, White House spokesman, issued a statement saying that this protection only applies when the Congress is "in the course of an investigation.”

That means, if you call up your local Congressman to alert him or her about fraud, you are not protected. The investigation must already have been started. That means, if the majority party never authorizes an investigation, you can never call it -- you can't call a minority member, because they don't have the power to authorize a formal investigation.

The White House is trying to have it both ways: look like it cares about corporate crime and letting the corporate criminals off. I think it's no surprize that, upon the news from Washington, the markets are down.

The markets want this reform. Investors want this reform. Everybody wants this reform, except the 61 people on this list, the crooks who are poised to join the list, and the President.

The list is of the 61 people who profited the most as their companies went bankrupt -- the people who stole the most as they drove their companies into the ground. I understand that a bunch of them are buddies of the current President, but they belong in jail. The President should use the presidency to ensure that evidence of criminal activity has the ability to come to light.

That's not too much to ask.

In a quite puzzling story fronting today's Washington Post, we read what a terrible time Ken Lay had as Enron was collapsing, and what a good man he is.

A few excerpts:

Ken, the man of principle: "As part of the Dynegy deal, Lay was scheduled to get a 'golden parachute' -- a payoff that amounted to $60 million to buy out his three-year contract. But on Nov. 13, after the perk was disclosed by Bloomberg News, Lay announced that he would forgo it. It didn't look good at a time when many of his employees and investors were losing millions as the company's stock plunged."

Ken, well, the man of principle: "Lay shouldered responsibility for the mismanagement and concealment that marred the company's performance. Investigations were continuing and might turn up new facts but the culture of secrecy had ended, he promised."

Ken the martyr: "Ken Lay was alone. He drew back a privacy curtain in the emergency room of St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital and padded into view bare-legged, wearing a half-tied hospital gown, slippers and a confused expression.... 'There were six rooms in the emergency room," Blumenthal said. "All six were filled with patients. Everybody had somebody with them, a wife, a husband, a couple of kids. He was the only one who was all alone.'"

Ken Lay left Enron with having made $246.7 million. That's Alex Rodriguez money, except ARod hasn't bankrupted anybody's retirement plans.

Sorry if I don't feel badly for Ken Lay. He has a quarter of a billion dollars, has a friend in the White House, and will jet around the country and the continent for the rest of his life. Spending other people's money. If he felt really bad... if he really was responsible... he'd give the money back.

Other than not having to listen to the droning-babble about how brilliant the recent crop of Republican governors were, the horrible financial mess our state governments are currently in may have another bright side.

We may have seen the end of publicly funded sporting venues.

Yesterday, Pittsburgh's Sports & Exhibition Authority announced its plan for a $270 million new arena for the Pittsburgh Penguins, which includes a $90 million price tag for the State of Pennsylvania and $53 million for the residents of Allegheny County.

(Aside: one reason given for the necessity of a new arena is that it will help bring in bigger and better music concerts. But, this summer, the old arena has already booked Bruce Springsteen and the Rolling Stones. Pray tell, which bigger concerts will the new arena bring?)

This year, Pennsylvania faced a $770 million budget gap. Penn State University's state funding dropped $10 million, and similar cuts were made to the University of Pittsburgh, Slippery Rock, Indiana, and other Pennsylvania schools. Penn State raised its tuition 14 percent (in one year!), Pittsburgh by 13.5 percent, and the other schools an average of 9 percent. Does the Sports & Exhibition Authority really believe its going to get $90 million from the state? For hockey and bigger concerts?

They days of a team asking (or blackmailing) and the local government rolling over and building new buildings are over. At least for now.

Coming on two years after Bush/Gore, it's comforting to know that Katherine Harris, Florida's chief elections officer, still doesn't know Florida's election laws. She doesn't know the stuff she should know?... in Congress, she'll fit right in.

Watching the Sunday morning pundit shows is always a painful experience. This past Sunday's were ever more so.

I forced myself to listen to drivel about Al Gore's column in the New York Times. All the pundits could talk about was the apparent split between Joe Lieberman and Al Gore. Trent Lott opined about how discourse sounding like class warfare would get the Democrats nowhere (Lott also proudly proclaimed that he was a poor boy from Pascagoula, Mississippi, and it was funny because I thought he was the Senator from WorldCom).

What was lost -- intentionally, probably -- was what Gore actually said. If the pundits talked about the substance of Gore's message, they'd have to engage his points, and they'd be left short.

If the Democrats running this November have brains, they won't run away from Clinton/Gore like Gore tried to do in 2000. They'll cut out and pin this column above their desks and read it every morning before they go out and talk to the voters.

They'll remember that Clinton/Gore promised to use the surplus to save Social Security now. Bush used the surplus to give 1.6 million dollars worth of tax breaks that the middle class did not see. They'll remember that it's not just the stock market that has gone down in post-Enron Wall Street, but "it is confidence in the honesty of our government." Not that Clinton did not have an affair with a member of his staff (he did) and not that he did not lie about it (he did) but no one ever thought that he was not working for, what he called, "the forgotten middle class." Bush and Cheney are being more and more perceived to be, well, the oil executives that they both were.

If the Democratic Party can't run on so-called "class warfare"... if it can't run on a genuine prescription drug benefit plan... if it can run on a powerful Patients Bill of Rights... if it can't run against enormous tax breaks for the richest... if it can't run for a lockbox for Social Security... if it can't run against the executives at Enron and WorldCom and for the investors in Enron and WorldCom, then there is no point to having a Democratic Party. There is a point, and it's time to stop willow-wallowing and get out there and fight the battles worth fighting. Like Bill Clinton did.

Gore could have ended his Op-Ed piece with the same (identical) words that Franklin Roosevelt said when accepting the Democratic nomination in 1932 and Harry Truman said when accepting the Democratic nomination in 1948: "This is more than a political campaign; it is a call to arms. Give me your help, not to win votes alone, but to win this new crusade to keep America safe and secure for its own people."

In a letter in today's New York Times, Marisa Bartolucci writes:

"The New Democrats miss the point when they voice fears that the party, in seizing on allegations of corporate abuse, will again seem too populist for the majority of Americans. As the middle class and upper class watch their retirement investments evaporate, they are painfully recognizing that such large-scale corporate abuse makes us all 'little people.'

"Could the Democrats have a more salient issue when Americans feel this vulnerable?"

The answer is: No.

I don't know why, but I read Andrew Sullivan's blog.

Today, he had an aside which read: "Kushner's dreadful play, "Angels in America," was in part devoted to lionizing these fanatics [Marxists/Communists]."

Dreadful? "Angels in America"?

It's pointless to quible over matters of opinion, but "Angels in America" is not dreadful; it's brilliant. Without a doubt, the greatest play (two plays, actually) written by an American that I've ever seen.

(And, even though Ethel Rosenberg [of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg] was a character in both parts of Angels, she was hardly lionized. Sympathized with, perhaps (and I wouldn't even go that far)... used as an example of Roy Cohn's contempt for the legal system, that I'd say.)

In Pennsylvania today, speaking about the 9 rescued coal miners, President Bush said the following: "It was their determination to stick together, and to comfort each other. It really defines kind of a new spirit that's prevalent in our country, that when one of us suffers, all of us suffers, that in order to succeed, we've got to be united, that by working together, we can achieve big objectives and big goals. Here is a living example of people working together to save nine precious lives, to make sure that nine families were reunited."

Did the President really say all of this, at a gathering for coal miners? Determination to stick together? Comfort each other? When one suffers, all of us suffers? In order to succeed, we've got to be united? By working together, we can achieve big objectives and big goals?

If I didn't know any better, I'd have thought that President Bush was speaking at a union organizing rally. He should really give it a try.

On Monday morning, National Public Radio's news program Morning Edition included a seven minute segment by Jill Kaufman on Henry David Thoreau's Walden. Some of us who weren't quick enough hitting our snooze bar had to listen to part of it. Even though I included the link to the story, I encourage you not to click it.

I believe I speak for millions who were subjected to Walden in high school that it should be joined with Ethan Fromme in a dust-bin of history of books that were once assigned in school but no longer are. High school should not be this cruel, and neither should NPR. Andre Codrescu is painful enough.

If one reads this CNN story, it seems pretty clear that Abdallah Higazy was up to no good. The Assistant US Attorney had him arrested for, on September 11th, having an aviation radio, staying in a hotel across the street from the World Trade Centers, and for being Arab. None of these are crimes, of course, but the attorney said that all of this was "a potentially quite significant part" of the 9/11 investigation and had him charged with making false statements. Tying him into the events of 9/11 was, obviously, part of the reason behind the arrest.

It turns out, however, that he did not have an aviation radio, he did not lie about having a radio, and even though the FBI was on a great fishing expedition arresting everybody it could, he had nothing to do with 9/11. He spent a month in jail... enough time for the FBI to force a confession out of him. To do this, it seems the FBI threatened Higazy's family's safety.

This is a case that we all know about. It's long past time that the government release the names of everybody it took into custody after 9/11 and the reasons they were arrested. Long past time.

Unlike most in the blogsphere, I love the New York Times. I like it so much so that I subscribe to the paper edition full well knowing that it's all free on the internet; I think I should pay for something as wonderful as it is. (I also take the Philadelphia Inquirer and even though I have an extraordinarily talented friend who is on its staff, I often feel that it should pay me for reading it.)

However, even with my admiration of the Times, I was puzzled by a front page story today -- it's buried on the web-site, but it's on the front page of my edition -- "Hitler, It Seems, Loved Money and Died Rich."

Revelations in the article include that he received royalties from the sales of Mein Kampf and that his house in Berchtesgaden was paid for with state funds.

If the article would have included a photograph of the United States's E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne drinking Hitler's champagne after taking Berchtesgaden in late April 1945, maybe the article would have been enjoyable.

The only thing I could think of while reading the article was: is this really news? That is seems Hitler loved money?

This morning, the New York Times fronted a wonderful story about the Hill District neighborhood in my hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. For those of you with the time, I encourage you to read it. Fifty years ago, the Hill was one of the most exciting, vibrant, close-knit communities in the United States. It was like all those stories told about old-time Brooklyn except it was smaller, not in New York, and almost entirely African-American. I did not grow up there (my neighborhood was a couple of miles away), but I went to kindergarden through eight grade at a school at the top of the Hill.

One paragraph I found facinating in the story was: "Much of the neighborhood's spirit was crushed — literally — in the mid-1950's when the city demolished the lower part of The Hill as part of an urban renewal project, displacing 8,000 residents. The destruction was carried on by the 1968 riots, the crack epidemic of the 1980's and the steady outflow of middle-class blacks to other neighborhoods."

That urban renewal project did rip the heart out of the Hill District and the area never recovered. At the time, the local residents were adamantly against it and have never forgiven the city for pushing it through. But, this isn't the reason I found the paragraph noteworthy -- I knew all of this before... the project, the riots, the drugs, and the flight out of the Hill. I'm just amazed that the Times did not say what the urban renewal project was. They put, on the front page, a story about the growth, peak, decline, near-death, and current renaissance of an urban neighborhood, and they don't name the incident which precipitated the demise?

The urban renewal project was the building of the Mellon Arena (née Civic Arena). The Arena (as it is simply known in Pittsburgh, or outside of Pittsburgh as "The Igloo") was originally built for the Civic Light Opera and there was hope at the time that major league basketball and hockey could be lured to the site. The Pittsburgh Penguins have played there since their inception in 1967.

I love the Civic Arena and have fond memories of watching U2, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, the Go-Gos, the Grateful Dead, Duran Duran and dozens of other musical acts there, and seeing dozens upon dozens of Penguin games there. However, the building of the Mellon Arena was one of the most horrible acts of urban renewal and neighborhood destruction in this nation's history.

The current owner of the Penguins, Mario Lemieux, is insisting that the city and state build the Penguins a new venue next door to the Mellon Arena. City activists are petitioning to have the Arena be named an historic building which would preclude its demolition. Hill District residents are calling for a plan which, if the building is leveled, that new construction on the site would have the Hill in mind, replace the business district which was taken from them almost fifty years ago, and aid in the improvement of the neighborhood.

This is all going on right now. It's an essential part of the Hill's history and it's a major part of the Hill's future. I wonder why the Times did not mention any of it. Any profile of the Hill District must engage the construction and proposed demolition of the Arena.

On Thursday, Dick Armey said: "My own view would be to let him bluster, let him rant and rave all he wants and let that be a matter between he and his own country... As long as he behaves himself within his own borders, we should not be addressing any attack or resources against him... If we try to act against Saddam Hussein, as obnoxious as he is, without proper provocation, we will not have the support of other nation states who might do so."

Armey seems to be a supporter of the decade-old policy of containment of Hussein, doesn't believe in an offensive strike, questions the allocation of resources against him (which, presumably, could be used other places, like here at home), and thinks we should have a coalition (or at least support) in any sort of military action. Dick Armey.

I don't think it's any coincidence that Armey is not running for re-election. He does not feel the necessity to participate in the great drum-beat for war.

Often overshadowed by New York (an hour and a half to the North) and Washington (two hours to the South), Philadelphia is a oft-overlooked city. Everybody learns about Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, and the Constitutional Convention, of course, but most don't realize how big the city actually is. It's also still a big political city; its national conventions have nominated for President people like Millard Fillmore, Ulysses S. Grant, William McKinley, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Wendell Wilkie, Thomas Dewey, Harry Truman, Henry Wallace, and George W. Bush.

More than politics, however, what gets Philadelphians stimulated to argue... the thing they really care about... what they all are experts at... what they have opinions over formed by years of experience... is where to find the best cheesesteaks. It is a question of national importance, as Bob Dole found out when he asked to have a cheesesteak delivered to his plane at Philly International Airport instead of visiting himself in 1996 -- not a way to the hearts of Philadelphians or the Pennsylvania vote.

(When will politicians like Dole and Gore learn that the American people will love you provide the promise that you can lead them and if they think you are like them? Everybody in Kansas loves Bob Dole because he had the quintessential Kansan childhood, but in 1996 he went to the other 49 states and promoted an image of being out of touch. Gore went to 50 states advertizing a similar image. Heaven help the parties if Gore or Dick Cheney decide to run for President in 2004 or 2008. The parties should be looking to a working mother [Hillary Clinton] or a child of immigrants, City College grad, army vet [Colin Powell] or a life-long working man and public servant [Ed Rendell].)

Craig LaBan, the restaurant critic and guru of the Philadelphia Inquirer breached the subject in today's paper, and I was quite pleased by his opinions. The details of the rankings aside, I feel for the suburban readers of the Inquirer. The winner was not one of the three hot tourist places (Pat's, Gino's, Jim's... and none of these three deserved it), but an obscure South Philly staple which is only open Monday through Friday and closes at 2:30 p.m. John's Roast Pork caters to the workers of Philadelphia, and with its hours and location, few outside of South Philly or Center City will be calling for reservations.

The President held a super-sized Economic Summit in Waco, Texas today. Not a summit, really, but a mass-public relations extravaganza to show the country that he's, channeling Karl Rove: heard the message from the American people and that he's on message. However, it turned out to be only a massive photo-op; no new policies were offered, no new direction, no new anything. Tommorrow, the President will be back fishing at his ranch.

The President did offer up a nugget of wisdom, however. In a panel discussion on retirement security he asked "How do we simplify the numbers so people know what they're looking at? How can people all over America feel confident about what they see and hear?"

The American people do not want Arthur Andersen-esque "simplifying" of their retirement account statements. They don't want the statements "simplified" so they can feel confident about them. What they want is to actually have enough money for retirement. What they want is to have their money safe. What they want is corporate crooks who steal their retirement to be punished (I'm counting a grand total of 5 arrests from Enron, Worldcom, and all the rest. Just 5.) That's it. They want to be able to retire one day and go fishing, like the President.

Unable to shake the accusations that they're in the pocket of big corporations who steal money from working people's retirement plans, conservatives are attempting a new approach: liberals do it do. It's a time-tested strategy: cloud the issues, make everybody seem to be the same, and no harm will be done to you.

In the National Review Online, Joel Mowbray calls ULLICO, a financial-services company run which primarily invests money from union pensions, "Big Labor's Enron." If labor unions are corporate criminals as well, then we can all forget about all the money the President's friend Ken Lay stole from thousands of retirement accounts (the last figure was $247 million; why isn't he in jail yet?).

However, even though it did not stop Mowbray from writing the article, the biggest problem with ULLICO was that it was heavily invested in Global Crossing (which Mowbray calls "the telecom favored by wealthy Democrats such as Terry McAuliffe" -- what does that mean? Is Terry McAuliffe complicit in what happened there, Mowbray?). ULLICO did not anything that wrong except get burned by the criminals at Global Crossing.

Mowbray wants a Congressional investigation, except he does not think one will happen because "Sen. Ted Kennedy, chairman of the Senate committee that would be tasked with looking into ULLICO wrongdoing, received $1,000 from ULLICO in 2000. ULLICO's political action committee has handed out $31,500 this year, 94 percent to Democrats."

I'm sorry to point this out, though, but $31,500 does not make one a big spender in Washington. And the $1,000 that Ted Kennedy received two years ago? I'd hazzard a guess that Kennedy has room service bills from two weekends ago which are higher than that. ULLICO is not the issue that's depressing America's confidence in the financial markets and their bank accounts -- Enron is and the administration's timid response to Enron is. (Timid may be too generous, since there has been a complete lack of response to the current economic crisis from this White House.)

Mowbray should stop trying to confuse the issue and join millions of others who want the real corporate crooks behind bars.

During the peparations for yesterday's Economic Forum, President Bush said "Most Americans don't sit in Martha's Vineyard, swilling white wine." The allusion was clear: the East Coast elitist President Clinton held policy forums in Martha's Vineyard, but President Bush was in touch with the common man and was having a real meeting with real Americans in the heartland. While, this seventh-grade playground rhetoric may have been effective against Al Gore, it boggles the imagination that President Bush would actually think Americans would confuse Bush and Clinton... which one was raised by an alcoholic mother and abusive step-father in a middle-class family and worked his way to the White House and the scion of an incredibly wealthy and powerful family.

Instead of taking swipes at President Clinton, instead of pretending that he has a background similar to the rest of us, President Bush should realize who is is and that he's the steward of the Presidency now and get on with work of the White House. The Wall Street Journal, hardly a liberal voice, and who was quite unimpressed with the Economic Forum, has a suggestion. Bring in Bush's economic advisors from the 2000 campaign; it says "It's time to reconvene the brain trust and pass around the thinking caps." I wholeheartedly agree; it's time for some imagination and leadership from this administration.

(This isn't a sports blog, however, the baseball players union announcing August 30 as a strike date is the leading news story of the day.)

In a column detailing the possible strike, leading sports columnist, Mike Lupica, explains what he believes unions are all about: "Samuel Gompers was once asked to define organized labor and said, 'More.' The players say they are only fighting to preserve the status quo here. But they always want more."

Gompers was a Dutch Jew, born in London where, at 10, he was apprenticed to a cigar maker, moved to America at 13 where he began a career as a union leader of a cigar workers local and took over the leadership of the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Councils, transformed it into the American Federation of Labor (the AFL of the AFL-CIO) of which he was President from 1886-1924. Gompers worked to better the attrocious working conditions and lives of America's workers, yet Lupica implies that Gompers's ideology was a celebration of avarice.

Instead, Lupica should have followed his Gompers sentence with an allusion to the musical "Oliver!" Trade unionism is not a ideology of greed and rapacity; it is, in an organized fashion, the exploited workers of a company stepping up to Mr. Bumble and asking for more.

In the musical, Oliver was right and Mr. Bumble was wrong. Asking for more is not always a bad thing. And, put in its simplest terms, the baseball players union just wants a free market for its members. That's definitely not a bad thing; that's the American way.

The average baseball fan, it seems, is sick about how much baseball players make. Millionaires that just run around bases, they say. More than that, they should be feel lucky to play this game.

Furthermore, the average baseball fan don't want salaries to rise according to demand; they want artificial caps put on salaries.

Finally, these fans insist that there must be a luxury tax. "Give us -- and particularly in the small cities -- the same chances the small cities," they're saying. The luxury tax directly re-allocates money from the rich teams to the poor teams.

Let's review: (1) Making lots of money; being successful at your trade; being well-compensated is bad. (2) Free markets are bad. There should be pre-set rules on how much people make. (3) Redistribution of wealth is the only way to help the small guy.

This all seems like a Republican nightmare. However, why do I have a feeling that lots of people who voted for George W. Bush are currently taking the owner's side against the players?

[David Nieporent: because you like criticizing Republicans? I doubt there's much of a partisan gap in how fans feel about this labor battle.]

CNN television has been showing an interesting feature story recently. On the web-site, the link to it is entitled "India's arranged marriages go prime time."

Basically, there is a show on Indian television where, over the course of a few episodes, a woman picks a groom and gets married. It's much like Fox's show "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire," or "Bachelorettes in Alaska" except no one calls those 'arranged.'. Arranged marriages happen in backwards places like India; in the United States, we're enlighted on the ways of love -- we have match.com, FOX television, and an unbelievably high divorce rate. In India, where divorce is perfectly legal and acceptable (as much as divorce is acceptable), the divorce rate is 5 percent. What do they know, anyway?

Mike and Gloria, the bride and groom, wanted to have their favorite food, Chinese, at their wedding. The father of the bride, Archie, was disgusted and claimed that he'd order delivery. Something "American," Mr. Bunker proudly exclaimed: "Pizza!"

Over the next two weeks, I'm going to be a bit out of touch. I'll be checking in every day and writing when I get the time, but I'll be really busy. I'll be attending two weddings and doing a great deal of work for one of them.

The first one is this Saturday night. My two roommates are getting married. He was born in Israel and moved to the US at the age of five. She was born in Saigon, and after a refugee camp, came to the United States when she was one.

The second one is week from the upcoming Sunday, the day before Labor Day. My twin sister is getting married. She was born in the United States. The groom was born in Bombay and moved to the United States at 26.

The first wedding is going to be a blast. It's an Orthodox Jewish wedding, with the chuppah, the breaking of the glass, a klezmer band, lots of eating, lots of dancing, the bride and groom being held up on chairs, and rejoicing all night. The second one is going to be a blast, too. It's a Hindu wedding, with the walking around the fire, a D.J. playing Bollywood dance numbers, lots of eating, lots of dancing, and rejoicing all night.

It'd be difficult to claim that over the next two weeks I'll be seeing a representative cross-section of American life. They do not make as much money as their college buddies who went to Wall Street, but they all are quite accomplished. The jobs the four have are: (1) psychiatrist and clincal faculty member of the University of Pennsylania medical school, (2) staff member of the University of Pennsylvania and doctoral student at Penn, (3) pediatric neurologist and clinical faculty member at Harvard University medical school, (4) faculty member in Carnegie-Mellon University's Biology department. (The four have a mean age of 31.)

I feel that it's important to note that only one member of the two couples (my twin sister) and none of the eight parents was born in the United States. That's 1 out of the 12 principles of the two ceremonies. Also, both weddings are going to be very old world and old school.

Even though I'll not be seeing a cross-section of America, I'll be seeing a large and wonderful part of her. The United States is not just celebrating Independence Hall and presidents with boring one or two syllable last names. It's also about those who eschew tradtional notions of assimilation, keep old world traditions alive, remember where they are from, become American and make their mark in this country. I'll be giving a toast at both weddings. I'll write them later, but in both I want to say "God Bless America!"

Mickey Kaus is unhappy at Paul Krugman. Truth be told, Kaus seems to be, along with the rest of everybody in the blogsphere, always unhappy at Krugman.

This time it's because of the last sentence in Krugman's latest New York Times column: "Wouldn't it be nice if just once, on some issue, the Bush administration came up with a plan that didn't involve weakened environmental protection, financial breaks for wealthy individuals and corporations and reduced public oversight?"

In response Kaus writes: "What about EPA administrator Christie Whitman's decision to go ahead and get pollutants out of diesel fuel and engines, which most of the oil industry lobbied against? Is Whitman somehow not part of the 'Bush administration'?"

One has to wonder how long Kaus looked for this single example? Did he scour the budget for hours on end, go through thousands upon thousands of Bush proposals, until he found one that did not involve kickbacks for wealthy individuals and corporations? Perhaps what Kaus found is the exception which proves the rule.

On the topic of invading Iraq, Richard Pearle has recently said that "The failure to take on Saddam after what the president said would produce such a collapse of confidence in the president that it would set back the war on terrorism."

This, of course, is the same reasoning Justice Scalia used to stay the 2000 Florida vote counting -- that if the votes turned out to be invalid, that there would be a collapse of confidence in President Bush.

Wouldn't it be nice if we had an administration which was in Washington because and did things that actually instilled confidence instead of not trying to lose it?

While at home last week, I saw the FX channel's movie R.F.K. To be frank, I didn't think it was very good; I encourage you, if you get the chance to see it (and the True Stories cable network occasionally shows it), to see the quite remarkable 1985 television mini-series on Kennedy's life entitled Robert Kennedy and His Times.

Both the 1985 and 2002 movies ended with a montage of Kennedy's funeral train travelling from New York City to Washington with voice-overs of the actors who played Kennedy reading from his most famous speeches. The 1985 version read out-loud his 1966 South Africa speech (actually written by Richard Goodwin of Quiz Show fame) where he waxed eloquently for future collegiate .sig files about individual acts of kindness overcoming the mightiest walls of oppression.

The 2002 show ended with Kennedy's speech at Lawrence, Kansas's Phog Allen Field House (if you read Kennedy's collected speeches, the editors get its name wrong). It's quite a remarkable speech. Here is the excerpt FX included:

Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence
and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross
national product ... if we should judge America by that - counts air pollution
and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It
counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It
counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in
chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored
cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's
knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our
children.

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality
of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry
or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of
our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor
our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything,
in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America
except why we are proud that we are Americans.

Yeah, it's heavy stuff. Integrity of our public officials... intelligence of our public debate... poetry... strength of marriages. It's stuff, quite sadly, we hear precious little of today.

If you can, actually, I recommend you see either, or both, of the Robert Kennedy shows. It'll remind you that, even though the rhetoric and actions from our current administration don't relect it, there are reasons why this country is remarkable other than our GNP and making rich people even richer.

The USA mens basketball professionals lost their first basketball game ever tonight 87-80 at the hands of a remarkably able Argentina side.

This is only the third time the USA has lost a meaningful basketball game. The first was the shamefully officiated gold medal game in the 1972 Olympics and the second was an 1988 Olympic game against the Soviets. Both teams were horribly coached (the former by Hank Iba and the latter by John Thompson) and neither had professional players, just two dozen courageous collegians. When the professionals played, however, it was believed that America could never lose.

More so than baseball, basketball is a genuinely American sport. (Baseball derives from the English children's game Rounders, but basketball was invented and nurished here.)

This game may turn out to be like Canada's historic 7-3 hockey loss to the Soviet Union in the first game of the Summit Series of 1972 or England's 6-3 and 7-1 soccer losses to Hungary in 1953 and 1954. In both of those games, the losing side were the inventors of the game and both times they thought they were so masterful at their inventions that defeat was impossible. The losses sent shockwaves throught the countries.

Neither England nor Canada, however, learned anything from their losses. They didn't adapt their styles of play to the exciting playmaking witnessed on other shores. They kept on with their boring plodding strategies. They've both been world powers in their sports since, but neither country ever regained their previous unquestioned superiority. Both had more than enough talent to do it, but neither had the will to change or learn from others.

USA Basketball must take from this game that others play our game well, too, and we may have something to learn from them. There is a reason they beat us. USA Basketball shouldn't make the same mistakes as Canada and England.

Of course, the current administration may want to take a lesson, too. We don't have to do what other countries want, but we may be able to learn something if we take the time to listen. If we don't at least listen, our old style -- our unquestioned superiority -- may too disappear and one day soon we'll be looking around wondering how it all vanished so quickly.

Over the next few days, governments, institutions, and individuals all over the world will be holding events marking the anniversary of 9/11. Here at the University of Pennsylvania, we'll be having a quite appropriate day of Remembrance, Reflection and Community. Events include bells tolling from the nearby churches and presentations by President Judith Rodin, Michael Eric Dyson, Professor of Religion and African American Studies, Afaf Meleis, Dean of the Nursing School, Harvey Rubin, Professor of Medicine, David Rudovsky, Senior Fellow in the Law School, and Jeremy Siegel, Professor of Finance.

On the other hand, Colorado College is having a symposium entitled "September 11 - One Year Later: Responding to Global Challenges" with a featured speaker being Hanan Ashrawi, Yasar Arafat's former spokesperson and ardent defender of homicidal terroristic attacks against Israel.

I'm all for free speech and open dialogue and would never advocate Colorado College cancelling Ashrawi's presentation. However, I wonder who the college has scheduled to speak on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. David Duke?

Over the next few days, we'll be hearing a number of renditions of President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. In today's New York Times, William Safire provided an English 101-esque critique of the speech and how it is relevant to the present day. I agree with Safire; it is altogether fitting and proper that we should be recalling the Gettysburg Address this week. We should remember, too, of course, that there have been many other great Presidential speeches and some of these may also be fitting in our remembering this week.

The one that I am thinking of is President Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms Speech from January 1941. That January, the rest of the world was at war and the United States was soon to enter into the fray. The President spoke these words:

"In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want -- which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear -- which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor-- anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

To that new order we oppose the greater conception -- the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.

Since the beginning of our American history, we have been engaged in change -- in a perpetual peaceful revolution -- a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions -- without the concentration camp or the quick-lime in the ditch. The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.

This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women; and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose.

To that high concept there can be no end save victory."

I feel these words are quite appropriate for our times, today.

In his crusade against Howell Raines and the New York Times, Andrew Sullivan today includes the following tidbit:

"RAINES WATCH: From the Washington Post:

'Report Warns Iraq Could Produce Nuclear Weapons

LONDON, Sept. 9--Iraq could produce a nuclear weapon 'in a matter of months' if supplied fissile materials from an outside source, according to a report released here today. Saddam Hussein's government also has an extensive biological weapons capability, a smaller chemical weapons stockpile and a small supply of missiles to deliver them, the report concluded.'

From the Raines Times:

'London Group Says Iraq Lacks Nuclear Material for Bomb

LONDON, Sept. 9 — Saddam Hussein has substantial stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and the capacity to expand production of them on short notice, but Iraq will be unable to build a nuclear weapon for years unless it obtains radioactive material on the black market, a leading security affairs research organization said today.'"

Sullivan is implying that: (1) The Washington Post's story is more accurate and objective, and (2) That the New York Times story, guided by Raines's hand, is dishonestly attempting to sway popular opinion against the United States's impending battle against Iraq. Sullivan trusts at face-value the Post story that Iraq's nuclear capability is, perhaps, mere months away.

However, if one looks at the actual report and supporting documents from which both the Post and the Times wrote their stories, we read: "Iraq does not possess facilities to produce fissile material in sufficient amounts for nuclear weapons.... It would require several years and extensive foreign assistance to build such fissile material production facilities.... It could, however, assemble nuclear weapons within months if fissile material from foreign sources were obtained," and "but it would be more difficult to acquire foreign materials, equipment and components without detection."

It seems, that while the Post story was basically accurate, the Times summarized the group's findings a bit better and more fully. Maybe Raines, in fact, does know what he's doing.

The house I live in was built in the 1760s. It's in the "Old City" neighborhood of Philadelphia -- so named because, well, the neighborhood is old. The street in front of my house is made of Belgium Ballast stone. Ships from Belgium would load up with these stones, sail to Philly, dump the stones overboard and then load up with merchandise for their travel back to Antwerp; the enterprising citizens of Philadelphia did not let the stones go to waste -- they built roads with them. At the end of my block, there are two churches. The first is St. Augustine's, a Roman Catholic church, completed in 1829 (with the "Sister Bell" in its tower... the sister of the Liberty Bell... it was the bell in Independence Hall after the first one cracked). The second is St. George's, the site of the oldest Methodist church in the United States, dating back to the 18th Century. My block is all about being old; nary a cul-de-sac for miles. (If you have a good memory, the block was shown in the begining of the Sixth Sense.)

Yesterday morning, for the one year anniversary of 9/11, I went to the flag store two blocks away (which is right across the street from Betsy Ross's house; if you were going to have a flag store, where would you put it?), bought a flag pole, walked back and installed a flag on my house out a third floor window. When I went outside to see how it looked, I could, from St. Augustine's, hear music playing; it was John Brown's Body also known as the Battle Hymn of the Republic. One of America's greatest songs in tribute to one of America's greatest citizens.

When Brown was hung, churches all over the North paid tribute to him by ringing their bells, and for a second, on 9/11/02, I felt, standing on New Street, like I was back in the 19th Century. And I thought it was so very appropriate for 9/11 and the 21st Century. As Brown died to make men free, let us live to make them free.

Big news out of Florida. Three men were pulled over, their car was extensively searched, 20 miles of Alligator Alley, the major east-west connector in south Florida, was shut down. Nothing was found. No terrorist literature, no explosives, no weapons, no nothing. It seems like the three were just kids heading down to Miami for medical school.

The CNN story has some few facinating nuggets, including: "Government sources said the men are U.S. citizens, two of whom are naturalized, and are of Middle Eastern heritage." Implied, one has to assume (because why else would it be mentioned?), that for CNN, there are now two classes of American citizenship, native-born and naturalized.

Second, the CNN reporter writes that according Eunice Stone, the woman who called the tip on the three in, "the men appeared to be in their mid-20s and spoke English without accents. She said one of the men had a long beard and wore the type of cap she said she had seen Muslims wear."

I wonder what kind of hat she's talking about? A New York Mets hat? I, for one, have seen lots of Muslims wear those. Maybe it was a Dodgers hat? Or a Royals? It's a shame the CNN reporter does not elaborate or give evidence that he or she asked Stone to expand these remarks.

(And, just wondering out loud here... lots of people advocate racial profiling when it comes the war on terrorism. We're told, don't search the old white grandma, instead double the searches of those who we are more likely to cause trouble. Does this now include brown men who speak English without an accent, were born in the USA, and appear to be in the mid-20s? I hope, for my sake, this isn't true.)

Please disregard the link in the previous posting ("I wonder"); CNN has changed it. It's now about how Eunice Stone was "'flat-out lying' when she told authorities she overheard three Muslim men at a restaurant laughing about September 11." When I linked it a few hours ago, the story was different; it was about three possible terrorists in Florida and a heroic woman in Georgia who tipped them off. Sorry for the confusion, but it was CNN's doing, not mine. It's not a shock, though.

The "hero" who tipped the authorities off had some more interesting things to say. According to the New York Times, "Ms. Stone... said she was surprised to hear the three speaking in perfect American accents." Surprised, I suppose, because in Ms. Stone's world, there is nary a brown person who speaks with an American accent. A Mazumdar family function would probably be such a shock to her that she would not be able to take it. For her sake, I'll make sure she's never invited.

Because of Ms. Stone, the three were detained for 17 hours. According to the Times, the stop "triggered a tremendous law enforcement response, especially after bomb-sniffing dogs reacted as if both cars contained explosives. Exhaustive searches and even swabbing of surfaces in the cars, completed many hours later, showed no traces of explosive materials." No other reason, other than her. And her surprize at, among other things, how well they spoke.

Stone's husband has said that ""I think my wife did the right thing. That's what they ask people to do... I praise her." Let's hope (although I fear it's unlikely) that these three don't carry the stigma of this stop -- an unjust and unfair mark of Cain -- with them for a long time. Let's hope that the people they encounter are not like Ms. Stone and accept them for who they are and not for who they're assumed to be because of the color of their skin (if you think this line is too much, remember, she was surprized at their English fluency. Why?) or because of the spectacular news reports surrounding the events of today.

Sure, Ms. Stone is racial profiling taken to its extreme, but through her we see it at its logical conclusion. After her, I wonder how it's possible to advocate for it.

One more note. CNN reports the following: "Authorities had referred to the three men as being uncooperative, even as they were being released. Asked if they were indeed uncooperative, Gheith acknowledged authorities could have interpreted that way: 'I made it clear to them that I would prefer them not to search my car. Maybe that's what they assumed as not cooperative, and I take that as my prerogative because I know there is nothing in my car'" The authorities in South Florida may call that 'uncooperative.' In the rest of the country, we call that the 4th amendment. We all retain our Constitutional rights, every one of us, even when your an American citizen and you're brown.

Another posting on the event in Florida. Sorry if it seems a dead horse is being beaten, but, geez, it only happened yesterday.

According to the Miami Herald, the police and federal authorities say the three men were uncooperative. It writes: "However, several other things conspired to escalate the incident even further," one of these things was "according to police sources, all three men at first were uncooperative - denying consent to search the car. 'It was probably not the right time for them to be copping an attitude with police,' said one federal law enforcement source who was up all night monitoring the investigation. 'But that's exactly what happened.'"

By not agreeing to a search, the three were simply asserting their 4th amendment rights against unwarranted searches.

It's not like the police could not search the car (and they, of course, did); they just had to provide probable cause, either then or later. It's too bad that the police and federal authorities are trying to deflect blame onto the three for escalating the situtation. It's a shame that the Herald writers, David Green and David Kidwell, don't counter the police account with a reference to the Bill of Rights, which I assume they both read in high school civics. Claiming your rights is not "copping an attitude" yet the writers included the line, without qualification, anyway.

Brad Delong alerts us to a recent essay by Edward Said on the terrorism in Israel. Said writes: "Suicide bombing is reprehensible but it is a direct and, in my opinion, a consciously programmed result of years of abuse, powerlessness and despair. It has as little to do with the Arab or Muslim supposed propensity for violence as the man in the moon. Sharon wants terrorism, not peace, and he does everything in his power to create the conditions for it."

So, according to Said, homicide bombing is bad, but it's Israel's fault. Those who want freedom are, because of the current conditions, have no other choice.

African Americans were oppressed for 350 years before the 1950s, by slavery, by Jim Crow, by lynchings, by discrimination, yet the main leader that arose in the 1950s was Martin Luther King Jr. Indians were colonized by the British, they suffered decades upon decades of abuse, powerlessness and despair, yet the main leader that arose in the independence struggle was Gandhi.

There are other alternatives for the Palestinian cause other than Arafat. Blacks in American found one as did Indians in India. It's a shame that Said can't imagine one. Homicide bombings are not the only answer; in fact, they are not an answer at all. All they are is murder.

Marianne Stanley is a pioneer in women's basketball. In the 1970s, she played for the pioneering Immaculata College team. She coached Old Dominion to AIAW National Championships... the only national championship back then... the NCAA would not sanction a tournament. She later coached at the University of Southern California, another storied program (it's Cheryl Miller's alma mater). Many of those who currrently follow women's basketball sometimes seem to believe that the 1995 UConn team invented women's basketball -- instead, however, it was fostered and developed year after year by remarkable and couragous women like Stanley.

Stanley wasn't just a pioneer on the court. When she was the coach at USC, she filed a law suit against the USC administration demanding equal pay as the men's basketball coach. She lost her job and was out of basketball for a couple of years until Stanford hired her as a one year interim coach. She lost the case. She took a job at the University of California (Berkeley) currently, she is the head coach of the Washington Mystics of the WNBA.

Why the short history of Marianne Stanley? Today's Washington Post fronts a story that, while the head coach of the University of California, she allegedly demanded that a newly hired (and pregnant) assistant coach have an abortion or lose her job. When the assistant decided to keep her baby, her job was gone. It's in court now; Stanley claims the assistant wasn't fired nor did she demand an abortion, just that she asked for her resignation. Either way, it's quite damning towards Stanley.

How are young women going going to advance through the work world -- how are they going to have families and careers -- when friends like this treat them in this way? It's a sad, sad story.

Near the end of a dime-a-dozen piece by John Leo about how liberal college faculty are in the new U.S. News and World Report college rankings issue, Leo makes a facinating statement: "Litigation is likely to play some role in reforming the campuses, particularly at state schools, where taxpayers are expected to foot the bill for ideological excesses. One suit successfully challenged the funding of leftist campus causes with fees collected from all students."

The case Leo is talking about came out of Wisconsin a few years back. Scott Southworth sued the University of Wisconsin over being forced to help fund so-called liberal student groups, and in 2000, the case was decided by the Supreme Court. However, he lost; the University of Wisconsin won. The suit wasn't successful (if winning is how Leo defines sucess, and I think he does). The 'leftist campus causes' are still funded by mandatory student fees. US News and World Report needs better editors reading Leo's pieces.

You can read the decision here: Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System v. Scott Southworth et. al. or look it up yourself at 529 U.S. 217. Don't bother, however, looking for a dissenting opinion -- it was a 9-0 vote.

FWB is "Flying While Brown."

Today's Philadelphia Inquirer fronts the story of Bob Rajcoomar and an experience he had on Delta flight 442, Atlanta to Philadelphia, about a month ago.

Rajcoomar was sitting in first class and, back in coach, a guy went a little nuts. When the guy would not stop being a butthead, two air marshals restrained him. They
handcuffed him and seated him in first class next to Rajcoomar (Rajcoomar switched seats). After the plane landed in Philadelphia, Philadelphia police officers came on board and arrested the unruly man. Noticing Rajcoomar -- and that he was brown -- they arrested him, too.

That's exactly why Rajcoomar was arrested, no other reason. He was a brown man on a plane. Rajcoomar, who for the next few paragraphs I'm going to call Major Rajcoomar (since he is a retired U.S. Army major), did not do anything wrong. He just sat there on the plane while someone else caused trouble.

Maj. Rajcoomar is quoted as saying: "One of the marshals said something like, 'We didn't like the way you looked.' They also said something like, 'We didn't like the way you looked at us.' " Maj. Rajcoomar's statement seems a little over the top -- I mean, he must have done something suspicious to be arrested, right? People are not just arrested because they are brown. Not in the United States. Everybody is respected here; equal justice under the law and all that.

Well, Maj. Rajcoomar, who for the next few paragraphs I'm going to call Doctor Rajcoomar (since he's been a medical doctor for the past 20 years), is right on target. David Steigman, a spokesmen for the U.S. Transportation Safety Administration, is quoted as saying Dr. Rajcoomar "to the best of our knowledge, had been observing too closely." There's a disturbance on the plane, the guy who caused it is seated right next to you, and you get arrested because you "had been observing too closely." Steigman, quite charitably adds, "the airline declined to press charges." I wonder what charges the airline would have pressed? Brown person looking intently?

So, word the wise for all the brown people reading this. If there is a disturbance near you, don't look at it. Look away. It probably won't keep you from being arrested for being brown, but it couldn't hurt.

I realize that the headline comes from the Who and not the Rolling Stones, but today's Philadelphia Inquirer includes a fascinating factoid about the Stones who played a concert in Philly last night.

The average age of the Stones is 58.25. The average age of a member of the Philadelphia Orchestra is 47. I don't know what it means, but it must mean something.

The cover story of the most recent US News and World Report is a remarkable piece examining the history which is currently taught at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Gettysburg, of course, was the site of the Civil War's most famous battle and from where President Lincoln said this country would have "a new birth of freedom."

It should be remembered, and it currently is not officially at Gettysburg, that he mean a freedom without slavery.

Gettysburg is not the only historic place in the United States where the past is whitewashed. I highly recommend reading James W. Loewen's Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong. It's an essential companion for any vacation trip across America, or even a trip to my neighbors, Independence Hall and the old Presidential Mansion, here in Philadelphia as they confront their pasts. College campuses throughout this country could do worse than to make this book, and Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me required reading by all freshman.

(A wonderful exception to what is, painfully, a rule is Augustus Saint-Gaudens's Shaw Memorial in the Boston Commons.)

Right before he was elected, on August 27, 2000, on "Meet the Press," Dick Cheney said: "In the meantime, I think we want to maintain our current posture vis-a-vis Iraq. And we want to see to it that we keep the coalition in force, we maintain the sanctions that are currently on and can keep the pressure on. And hopefully, there'll be a change to the government of Iraq before too long."

But, today, if you advocate for that position now, meaning if you advocate for the coalition... if you advocate for sanctions... if you advocate for keeping this pressure on, you'll be called, well, lots of names (vid. many blogs, like Andrew Sullivan's, and what they've been calling the New York Times).

I think Jay Mazumdar (yeah, we're related) is right on target. None of us, even us on the so-called left, like Saddam. We don't think he should be in power, either. We just want to know what changed Cheney's and the rest of their's minds. None of us (well, perhaps some of us) are cynical enough to think that, without all this war talk, the administration would be currently be forced to discuss the economy and executive (including their executive) excess, and the administration does not want to do this. Most of us would simply like to know what's going on; we don't want to be like all those Americans in 1917 who voted for President Wilson, who in 1916 had campaigned that he'd keep us out of the war but within six months had gotten us into the war, with Ashcroft at our door if we noted the inconsistency. (Woops! I didn't mean Ashcroft, I meant Palmer.) (And, please don't reply "9/11" as the cause; Maureen Dowd has written quite correctly "The administration isn't targeting Iraq because of 9/11. It's exploiting 9/11 to target Iraq.")

Jay wrote: "The problem is with the cynical way the Bush administration has foisted war onto an unsuspecting populace. There was no mention of war during the last presidential campaign; there was no mention of Iraq when the neo-cons were beating the war drums against China after the spy plane incident. Indeed, there was no mention of war against Iraq until Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld announced its inevitability, leaving the rest of us wondering whether we had missed something important. The problem isn't with overthrowing Iraq. It's with the chikenhawks who think the decision is their's and their's alone to make."

Mel Gibson is set to direct and produce a new movie, "The Passion," detailing the final 12 hours of Jesus Christ's life. This story has been told many times on film, as far back as the 1898 French silent film "The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ," but never before like how Gibson is planning to do it. His movie will be entirely in Latin and Aramaic and without subtitles.

I can't think of who Gibson's target audience will be, but he does not seem to be worried. At a press conference last friday, he said: "Obviously, nobody wants to touch something filmed in two dead languages. They think I'm crazy, and maybe I am. But maybe I'm a genius."

Hats off to the members of the University of Mississippi Student Senate. On Tuesday night, they unanimously repealed a resolution, passed 40 years ago by the same Ole Miss Student Senate, which censured the campus newspaper editor, Sidna Brower. That Senate was critical of Brower's writings on the presence of federal marshalls on the Oxford campus who were enforcing a federal court order that Ole Miss be integrated and that James Meredith be matriculated. At the time, it wrote that she "failed in time of grave crisis to represent and uphold the rights of her fellow students." This Senate wrote that Brower should be "commended for the outstanding journalistic courage she displayed throughout her tenure as editor of The Daily Mississippian."

Of course, this resolution does not change anything. It does not change what Mississippi was like 40 years ago and does not change what America is like now. However, it did make an older woman happy (Sidna Brower Mitchell has said that "I can't tell you how much this resolution means to me. I am really touched"). And, as Martin Luther King Jr. said in Oslo: "When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, we will know that we are living in the creative turmoil of a genuine civilization struggling to be born." I believe Brower knew this then; the student leaders of the University of Mississippi know this now.

Virginia Postrel's critique of Al Gore's recent U.S. - Iraq is adequate; it's the same old stuff -- not really too much to comment on. However, in an attempt to be witty in her jabs at the former Vice-President, she does miss at least one mark.

She quotes Gore: "'We have to recognize that this is a whole new era, and the advances in the technology of destruction require us to think anew.'" Then she compares this to a comic strip: "Think anew! It's worthy of a Dilbert PowerPoint presentation. What new thoughts are we to think? Here's where I get to writing 'weak and vague.'"

Postrel misses that Gore is obviously alluding to Lincoln's 1862 Message to Congress: "The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disentrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

I believe that Lincoln's words are quite appropriate for today. So does Vice-President Gore. Postrel believes they belong in Dilbert.

In Washington D.C. today, over 600 protesters have been arrested while showing their displeasure at the World Bank and IMF who will hold meetings there starting on Monday. These protesters reportedly have, among other things, "made a rush-hour attempt to close a main commuter artery", "harassed police with false 911 calls", thrown smoke bombs at police, set a tire fire, and smashed bank windows.

Even if the demonstrators had a valid reason to protest, these actions are unjustifable and accomplish little anything except alienating otherwise sympathetic people from their cause. They need to remember Martin Luther King Jr.'s four basic steps in any non-violent campaign: "collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification; and direct action." Direct action comes last, and I don't think the anti-globalization folks who look back on Seattle with fond memories have accomplished one through three or even attempted two and three.

Republican candidate for the Maryland governorship Robert Ehrlich is open to debate and ideas for all -- just ask him. About his campaign, he has said "We're going to continue doing the things we've been doing to win their vote. We're willing to show up to debates and engage in conversation about issues with African-American groups. We're very comfortable operating outside our comfort zone."

A necessary question is: considering that Maryland, the state he hopes to lead, is 27.9 percent African-American, why aren't conversations about issues with African-American groups within his comfort zone? Ehrich's opponent, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, correctly responded: "This is not Star Trek. African-Americans are not aliens. They are a part of our community, and I think that it has not been a part of your comfort zone. That's the problem with your party for a long period of time."

Lawmakers in Spain are debating whether to reduce the 16 percent luxury tax on diapers, the same rate that is levyed upon cigarettes and alcohol. Opponents of the tax want it reduced to 4 percent. Spanish Federation for Large Families President Jose Ramon Losana says that parents should be rewarded for having large families; he says: "When kids use diapers, they are generating gross domestic product."

The new issue of U.S. News and World Report has a puzzling article about the take-over of some of the schools within the Philadelphia public school system by Edison because of chronic underperformance. To be sure, the article is quite impressive, mostly because the author dropped the word "sclerotic" and used it correctly (this, however, does not to top the time I witnessed George Will correctly use "equipoise" in a conversation). It's puzzling, though, because the article really doesn't say anything. The author notes "it's far too early to gauge results," making me wonder why the article was written and, after being completed, why it was run.

One definite bright note for the Philadelphia public schools, though: according to the new Philadelphia Magazine, if you want your kid to get into the University of Pennsylvania (now the #4 school in the country according the U.S. News) it may be best to keep them in the Philadelphia schools. There is a joke there somewhere, but I don't know what it is or who the butt of it is, the Philadelphia schools or the University of Pennsylvania.

In Lawrence, Kansas, where I used to live, the University of Kansas Law School was right next to KU's basketball arena. The first year law students used to get annoyed on game nights because of the difficulty of getting to the library -- the basketball fans took all the parking spaces. They'd complain, but by their second year, they would be resigned to their fate and plan ahead; they'd either get to the library early or do their work at home.

Not wishing for its students simply to cope, Florida State University has come up with a novel solution on how to deal with the competing demands of academics and athletics. This upcoming Thursday, FSU is playing Clemson with the game starting at 7:45 p.m. What is FSU doing? It's cancelling all of its Thursday classes. Not just the evening classes, but all of them. The ones that begin at 9:30 a.m, the ones that begin at 3:30 p.m as well as the ones that begin at 8:00 pm. But, that's not it. It's cancelling all of its Friday classes, too. FSU President Talbot D'Alemberte says that "The game will involve more than 80,000 fans coming to campus during the day. A fall break seemed to be the answer for both the long-term and short-term challenges."

In 1914, the workers at the Colorado Fuel & Iron Corporation went on strike. They were evicted from their company-owned houses in Ludlow, Colorado, moved into a tent-city. On Easter 1914, the National Guard and company-hired gunman burned the tents, shot into the city with machine guns, and killed 13, including some of the worker's wives and children.

Colorado Fuel & Iron was owned by John D. Rockefeller. His image, was, to put it mildly, tarnished by the incident. So, what did he do to show is contrition? Instead of (somehow) making it up to his workers (or any other workers), he hired a P.R. man who advised him to give dimes to random poor children. For the next two decades, Rockefeller devotedly gave dimes away.

Yesterday, Global Crossing Chairman Gary Winnick, who made (read: stole) $734 million from the company's stock before the shares became worthless, will donate $25 million into the retirement funds of his thousands of employees, many of whom lost virtually everything. Winnick's crime may not be as reprehensable as Rockefeller's but his penitence is.

Readers of this blog may recall David's post on August 21, 2001 celebrating Represenative Cynthia McKinney primary defeat in her re-election bid. In the post, David cited McKinney's father, Billy McKinney, who spelled out the reason he thought his daughter lost: "J-E-W-S."

Gary Collard alerts me to a recent speech Cynthia McKinney made on the House floor; it seems she believes that Indians are also to blame for her loss. Among other things, she says: "I am inserting in the Record along with this statement shows that they admitted that they invested heavily in the effort to defeat me. To my colleagues of both parties who have also been involved in the effort to expose India's brutal record, I say: Watch out; they are coming after you, too," and "Now I have become the latest political officeholder in India's cross hairs. I won't be the last unless their activities are exposed. Mr. Speaker, whether I am in office or not, I don't intend to let a foreign power determine the results of American elections if I can help it."

The link includes what she inserted into the record. After reading it, I'm quite convinced that some Indian-Americans most surely did organize to defeat McKinney and elect her opponent. What McKinney amazingly fails to grasp is, just because some people of Indian decent did something, that does not mean the Indian government did it. She confuses Americans politically organizing around shared ethnicity or race (which she undoubtably condones) with "a foreign power" being out to get her.

Whatever. She accused President Bush of being behind the 9/11 attacks, is an anti-semite, and believes the Indian government is came after her because Indian-Americans in America must not be Americans, they must be Indian and under the thumb of the government (which, for what it's worth, is the world's largest democracy, but who's keeping track?). David said it best: "She's out, and that's what's important."

Noam Chomsky spoke yesterday at his alma mater. Sadly or happily, depending on how one views Chomsky in these parts, he is an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania.

The Daily Pennsylvanian article about the talk labelled him a "dissident" which, I suppose, is true; however, "dissident" is tradionally used to describe those who critique a totalitarian state. As in one of the Oxford English Dictionary definitions: "In political contexts, one who openly opposes the policies of the government or ruling party, esp. in a totalitarian system." I don't think Chomsky qualifies as a "dissident."

After the talk, two Penn students were allowed to speak to the crowd and encourage its members to sign a petition advocating that Penn disinvest from its endowment all holding it has in Israel. Chomsky became the first Penn alum to sign on. I realize that Penn disinvesting from Israel is about as likely as it making me a full professor tomorrow, but I'm still speechless.

It's not really news anymore, but the Dow is down another 200 points today.

The Iraqi situation has effectively kept the stock market and the economy off the network news agenda, but President Bush is going to have to deal with the economy at some time. The question becomes: why has he not put it on a frontburner this summer and fall, when the worst that could happen is that the Republicans lose the midterm elections? (Note the use of "a frontburner" not "the frontburner" -- it's possible for the White House to do more than one thing at a time). Why is he waiting? So it'll simmer and be a boiling issue for the next two years? So he'll get beaten in 2004?

Jumping to Conclusions for a second... is this his corporate experience coming into action? Putting short-term goals ahead of long-term ones?

There's an old maxim which ties fashion with the economy: "hemlines rise when the market goes up, they fall when the stocks plunge."

Today, stocks are plunging, but if the recent fashion shows in Milan and Paris are an indicator of future trends, hemlines are rising.

I think that one of these is good news.

Sometimes I have to read things twice because I don't believe it the first time.

One instance of this just happened. It seems, and I couldn't believe it at first, that Henry Bellefonte publicly said the following the other day: "There's an old saying, in the days of slavery, there were those slaves who lived on the plantation and [there] were those slaves that lived in the house. You got the privilege of living in the house if you served the master ... exactly the way the master intended to have you serve him. Colin Powell's committed to come into the house of the master. When Colin Powell dares to suggest something other than what the master wants to hear, he will be turned back out to pasture."

After being appalled at Bellefonte's suggestion and noting how Bellefonte is quoting Malcolm X almost verbatim, I was puzzled to whom Bellefonte believes President Bush would listen to after he turned Secretary Powell "back out to pasture?" Some hawk when it comes to Iraq obviously. Who could it be? The National Security Advisor, perhaps. Condoleezza Rice.

Would it not be a good time to have a serious discussion on a national ballistic fingerprinting program -- "the keeping of an electronic record of the markings that the weapons leave on the bullets or shell casings" -- right now?

It can be well argued that "If we had that fingerprinting [for rifles], that guy wouldn't be free right now."

Ballistic fingerprinting would be able to prevent some future attacks of this nature. The events in Maryland and Virginia have made arguments against it shallow.

Newsweek magazine reports that the FBI is looking into failed applicants to the Fort Bragg sniper school for possible leads to the identity of the Washington area sniper.

Not to make light of the situation, but to make a point, this forces one to remember a scene from the movie "Full Metal Jacket" (a scene which Roger Ebert has called a "masterpiece"):

HARTMAN
Do any of you people know who Charles Whitman was?
None of you dumbasses knows?

HARTMAN
Private Cowboy?

COWBOY
Sir, he was that guy who shot all those people
from that tower in Austin, Texas, sir!

HARTMAN
That's affirmative. Charles Whitman killed twenty
people from a twenty-eight-storey
observation tower at the
University of Texas
from distances up to four hundred yards.

HARTMAN
Anybody know who Lee Harvey Oswald was?

HARTMAN
Private Snowball?

SNOWBALL
Sir, he shot Kennedy, sir!

HARTMAN
That's right, and do you know how
far away he was?

SNOWBALL
Sir, it was pretty far! From that book
suppository building, sir!

HARTMAN
All right, knock it off! Two hundred and fifty
feet! He was two hundred and fifty feet away
and shooting at a moving target. Oswald got
off three rounds with an old Italian bolt action
rifle in only six seconds and scored two
hits, including a head shot! Do any of you people
know where these individuals learned to
shoot?

HARTMAN
Private Joker?

JOKER
Sir, in the Marines, sir!

HARTMAN
In the Marines! Outstanding! Those
individuals showed what one motivated
marine and his rifle can do! And before you
ladies leave my island, you will be able to
do the same thing!

One wonders why the FBI is looking for just *failed* applicants.

Also, the scene reminds us that sniper incidents are not new to the United States. In addition to simply catching the sniper (which we all pray will be done soon), affirmative efforts should be taken to make sure this never happens again.

I'm all for an Italian American holiday. It could be October 4, not far away from the current Columbus Day. Name it for Francis Bernardone, Saint Francis of Assissi who preached purity and peace, served the sick, cleaned churches, and sent food to thieves. A wonderful, wonderful man, and a patron saint of Italy.

Currently, instead, we have Columbus Day. Columbus's men, under his direction, used Native Americans as dog food. "They would even take Indians from place to place with them -- as dog food -- as a kind of mobile dog food. When they got to where they were going for the night, [they would] allow the dogs to tear one of them apart and eat them." This according to Bartolemy de Las Casas, an acquantiance of Columbus and a European (this history was written by the "winners"). By 1555, sixty years after Columbus first arrived in Haiti, there were no Indians left. From a population of three million to zero. Columbus enslaved Indians, committed genocide against them (neither of these is in dispute), and now we have a holiday named after him.

A holiday named after Saint Francis, like the unofficial one we have for Saint Patrick, would be a good thing. And a much better thing.

"If you're going to go in and try to topple Saddam Husein, you have to go to Baghdad. Once you've got Baghdad, it's not clear what you do with it. It's not clear what kind of government you would put in place of the one that's currently there now. Is it going to be a Shia regime, a Sunni regime or a Kurdish regime? Or one that tilts toward the Baathists, or one that tilts toward the Islamic fundementalists? How much credibility is that government going to have if it's set up by the United States military when it's there? How long does the United States military have to stay to protect the people that sign on for that government, and what happens to it once we leave?"

- Dick Cheney, quoted in the New York Times, April 13, 1991

It's amazing what you can find on the web. If, during your surfing, you too come across this page, like I did today, be rest assured that I'm alive and well.

I often go to sleep listening to the BBC in Bengali. I like it because it kills two birds with one stone: it's the world news and it helps me keep up with my Bengali.

Tonight, I was listening, and I heard something that made me jump up. I'll link it here, but unless you know the language, you'll have to find someone who speaks it to translate it for you (which might not be that hard as you think; Bengali is the 4th most spoken language in the world, outpacing French and German, combined).

In the piece, the BBC interviews a person who quite seriously claims that the American government planned and planted the Bali bomb, and this can be proven by how few Americans died in the blast. From what I've read, this sentiment has not made it out of Asia yet, however, I'm sure this belief will resonate in some parts of the world (and, to a lesser degree, in this country -- witness Amiri Baraka). Let's hope this one dies a quick death and those who actually did it are found and brought to justice, or have justice brought to them, soon.

Commenting on the recent admission by an Enron official of price-manipulation in California, Brad Delong remarks that "people who said that the California energy crisis was due not to market manipulation but just to excessive pro-Green government policies seem to be very quiet these days."

Who are these people, anyway?

George W. Bush? Who said: "The problems in California shows [sic] that you cannot conserve your way to energy independence," quoted in the New York Times, May 29, 2001.

Dick Cheney?, who in attempting to blame Gray Davis for the entire mess said on Meet the Press on May 20, 2001; "They've bankrupted the biggest utility in the state, destroyed the state's credit rating and squandered a significant portion of the state's financial surplus in a harebrained scheme to try to use the state to purchase power.... They knew over a year ago they had a problem, and Gray Davis refused to address that problem. [They] kept putting it off and putting it off and putting it off, with the notion that somehow price caps could be maintained. Now, today, where are they in California? Well, rates are having to go up. The PUC just had to increase the rates themselves in California. They've got rolling blackouts, they've had some already. They'll have them across the state this summer."

Dick Cheney?, who called accusations that price-gouging was being allowed, "goofy," quoted in the San Diego Union-Tribune, June 5, 2001.

Perhaps it's time for an apology.

Irony
2. fig. A condition of affairs or events of a character opposite to what was, or might naturally be, expected; a contradictory outcome of events as if in mockery of the promise and fitness of things. (In F. ironie du sort.)

or

The Newsweek cover story promoting and containing excerpts from Kurt Cobain's diary.

One diary entry included in the Newsweek piece reads: "The most violating thing ive felt this year is not the media exxagerations or the catty gossip, but the rape of my personal thoughts. Ripped out of pages from my stay in hospitals and aeroplane rides hotel stays etc. I feel compelled to say f—k you F—k you to those of you who have absolutely no regard for me as a person." Ironic it no doubt is. Shameful, it isn't; I fear for the people involved, there is no shame to be felt when there is money to be made.

One has to wonder whether David Demby was being serious in his New Yorker review of Michael Moore's new movie, "Bowling for Columbine." The review was outstandingly poor. It's easy to disagree with Michael Moore, but I can't imagine it's easy to write such a sloppy review.

While discussing Moore's first movie, "Roger & Me," Demby writes: "Moore refused to see GM's big picture; he was outraged by the little picture—by the ruined city, with its desolate streets and impoverished workers scrounging around to make a living." One has to believe that, if he actually saw the movie (and I assume that he did), that he would have realized that this was the point of the "Roger & Me" -- the devil is in the details. Corporations may make decisions which are justified by their "big picture," but sometimes they have horrible effects -- effects which, in a humane and democratic country, should have been taken into account by the company.

Demby accuses Moore of the following: "he thinks powerful people should take responsibility for the troubles that their decisions lead to," which forces one to ask: does Demby not believe this? That powerful people should not take responsibility for their decisions?

Demby says the movie becomes "an absurdist portrait... of America as a paranoid nation." Yet, Demby does not reveal why it's absurd. In a responsible debate, you can't just disagree with your opponent, or just call his position names (like absurd), but you are required to state why. Moore did his part to further the debate. His movie isn't and shouldn't be the final word on its subjects. Demby refuses to engage the debate. He just wants to call the movie names.

Demby contributes the following analysis: "Moore traces our anxiety to guilt over slavery and the slaughter of Native Americans." I've seen the movie, too, and remember the part that covered slavery and Native Americans. Yet, Moore hardly "traces our anxiety" to it; his point was simply that Americans have owned and employed guns for a long time. Putting words in someone's mouth is easy but crass.

Near the close of the review, we read the following statement: "Moore's satirical scattershot method offers no way of distinguishing between real and pathological terrors." Again, this was Moore's point. American are terrified -- terrified by the local news, terrified by the shootings at Columbine, terrified by the government telling them that terror strikes are likely this upcoming weekend and when none comes that it will likely come next weekend. It's the fear that Moore was exploring, not whether the fear was justified or not (or, in Demby's words, real or pathological). This message wasn't subtle; it was obvious throughout the work. It's surprizing that Demby did not realize this. Actually, it's not surprizing.

A bunch of bloggers are disappointed that, while reporting today's events in the Washington sniper story, MSNBC originally couldn't find Alabama on an unmarked US map. It'd be easy to condemn MSNBC, or the US educational system, or the East Coast/West Coast elitism of American education and American media. Easy and unfair.

This is the same news organization, who, in 1998 after Tara Lipinski won the women's figure skating gold medal at the Olympics defeating Michelle Kwan, led with the headline: "American beats out Kwan." (Hint: the problem with this headline is that Michelle was born, raised, lives in the USA and is as American as apple pie and Mu Shu Pork).

I say, let's not be too hard on MSNBC. If they can't figure out that Americans are American, it's probably too much to expect that they know the rudiments of American geography.

The Instapundit has posted the following on his site. From reading what he has written, one has no choice but to believe the following: (1) if we were to qualitify their emotions, that President Clinton and Vice-President Mondale are feeling a lot less grief over Senator Wellstone's death than the Instapundit, and (2) in fact, President Clinton and Vice-President Mondale aren't feeling any grief at all... the picture, just one moment from a hours long ceremony and at the close of a week of coming to terms with the catastrophic news, illustrates their true feelings... they are immoral heartless Democrats who find this time a good one to yuck it up.

Even if Reynolds meant his post as a joke (and, for the life of me, I can't figure out what the joke would be), it seems to me, at least, that Reynolds was out of line.

Jay Mazumdar (yeah, we're related [my grandfather and his great-grandfather were brothers]) has an excellent post on his blog on Andrew Sullivan's call for all of us to "connect the dots" concerning John Allen Muhammad. Mazumdar points out, that, as of the data we have now, Sullivan seems to be reaching.

Speaking of Mazumdars, Jay's brother and fellow lawyer (I'm not a lawyer; the two of them are), Anandashankar Mazumdar has just started a blog (everybody is doing it.) I can't condone his liking Enterprise or Trading Spaces, but his post on Digital Rights Management is a must read for those interested in intellectual property rights and internet file sharing.

The three of us grew up hundreds of miles away from each other, like different baseball teams (me: the Pittsburgh Pirates, them: the Cincinnati Reds), with different parents (of course), and different lives (one of us is married with children -- and it's the youngest of the three!) yet we all grew up into unapologetic bleeding-heart-Wellstone-loving liberals. Isn't America great?

Concerning Walter Mondale, Andrew Sullivan asks us "Wellstone's death is indeed a tragedy. But why compound it by voting for this misguided relic?" Because, Mr. Sullivan, the people of Minnesota are not voting for the President, they're voting for a Senator. The Senate is a place where institutional memory counts for something, and, after all, they're not voting for Stom Thurmond., an actual misguided relic.

Misguided, Andrew Sullivan may believe his past was, but Mondale cut his teeth at the knee of Hubert Humphrey, the man who couragously spoke up at the on July 14, 1948 at the Democratic National Convention which led to Thurmond and his Dixiecrats breaking away. Even though his compromise pleased no one, Mondale, as a young man, was charged at the 1964 Democratic convention to find a compromise with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the leadership of the national party. With his mentor, Humphrey, Mondale was a champion of what the Democratic party once stood for and what Wellstone believed it could be again. Mondale won't be leading the party in 2004, but over the next six years he could remind the party that what is required for a victory in 2004 -- he can be a bridge between the party's glorious past and Wellstone's tragically abreviated potential -- and show that the party needs a grassroots coalition of working-class whites, African Americans, Latinos, and youth. Those people who galvanized the party in the 1960s and those who President Clinton resonated with so clearly in the 1990s.

Grassroots. Whites. African Americans. Latinos. Youth. (And, I'll add Asian Americans.) This is what Wellstone was. This is what Mondale still is. A grand coaltion which includes everybody. I think it's something worth voting for in 2002. I also think it'll be something worth voting for in 2004.

Why didn't President Bush go to tonight's ceremony for the late Senator Paul Wellstone?

Media Whores Online has its take on it. I can imagine three posibilities: (1) Wellstone voted against some of President George W. Bush's initiatives and the President still holds it against him; (2) Wellstone voted against some of President George H.W. Bush's initiatives and the current President holds it against him; (3) a trip to Minnesota would mean curtailing the President's current campaigning for Republican candidates [there's no money to be raised at a tribute]. And, yeah, Media Whores is correct -- when Ari Fletcher said "If you take a look at the historical record of when a sitting senator dies in office, no the President will not go. This has not been the past pattern. We will send an appropriate official," he wasn't telling the truth.

Going to an event like this, even if its someone who voted against you or your father, is Presidential. And, on top of that, it's the right thing to do. It unites (remember the campaign slogan: I'm a uniter not a divider?). None of the three reasons I can imagine for Bush not going are Presidential. Are there any other possible reasons? Was he busy tonight? Is he trying to get his job approval ratings to go ever farther down? (Currently 60 percent, 66 percent two weeks ago, 69 percent in August.)

Cnn.com reports that millions of American parents lack confidence concerning their ability to raise their children. Being childless (and wifeless, for that matter) myself, I'm probably in no position to give advice on the matter. But, I can't help remembering the first line from Dr. Benjamin Spock's great book, Baby and Child Care: "Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do."

If you haven't yet, go see Bowling for Columbine. Theaters and showtimes can be found here.

If my recomendation isn't enough, read my old friend's James Owens's review of the movie at his website, filmsnobs.com. It's a good website, it's an excellent review, and, even though it had a few things I didn't agree with, it's a great movie.

A lot of bloggers are complaining about Rick Kahn's eulogy's to Senator Paul Wellstone. Well, I listened to it (you can too). To be perfectly frank, it's pretty great. It's difficult to understand why Republicans are so up in arms about it. (A eulogy to a politician that talks about what that politician believed in and encouraging those in the audience not to let the politician to have died in vain but to keep on fighting for his cause? No, say it ain't so!).

No, I don't think that Andrew Sullivan and the Instapundit and the pissed-off Republicans and Jesse Ventura are angry at Kahn's speech. They're angry at the crowd and its response.

Media Whores Online is correct. Sullivan and Reynolds and the Republicans who are angry (not all of them are; Tommy Thompson, the President's representative was okay with it all) know very well that the crowds at their memorials will not react like the crowd at Wellstone's memorial. At their memorials, no one will be talking about how they worked to better everyone's life. Their memorials won't be held in basketball arenas. Their memorials won't turn thousands of people away because there just wasn't room. Their lives haven't affected that many people that they would cheer uproarously in their memory. No one will be cheering at their nobility. No one will wait in line just to get in. It's a shame, too. Powerful people have the opportunity to affect people's lives like Wellstone did. The shame is that more people who have the opportunity don't do it.

Maybe they're more than angry. Maybe they're also jealous. Perhaps they're also a bit scared.

(And, whatever, lots of people are quoting Kahn's speech... one part of it... when he turned to the Republicans in the audience and said "We can redeem the sacrifice of his life if you help us win this election for Paul Wellstone." These people share Will Slaten line when he says that, "Somewhere, Wellstone must be turning on his cross." Go listen to Kahn yourself. The bit is about at the 15:00 minute mark. It's not as odious as it seems when taken in context. Kahn was talking about non-partisanship -- Wellstone's non-partisanship -- and that for the last week of the campaign, we all should win this election for Wellstone: win the election for non-partisanship. Listen for yourself. And, of course, listen to the crowd.)

After Trent Lott was booed at the Wellstone memorial, blame was cast upon the organizers of the event and their motives.

When Hillary Clinton was booed at a 9/11 function, blame was cast upon the Senator, herself. The heckers did nothing wrong. For verification, look here, here, here, or here.

Which is it going to be? You can't pretend to be on a moral high-road -- stake a claim for class and decorum and values -- only when it's personally beneficial. Either both booings were wrong or neither of them were (I say both). There's a word for that. But, I suppose that talking down the Wellstone memorial will get votes for Coleman, and that's all that matters.

(Thanks again to media whores and Jay Mazumdar.)

Concerning the Haitian refugees who recently came ashore in Flordia, Kathleen Park writes that "America cannot house, feed, clothe and educate every unhappy human being from every crummy country or America will sink."

I don't know if this is true, and, for that matter, I don't think that every poor person in the world is planning to come to the United States. But, if we take Park's statement as being true, let's end the hypocrisy.

To be true and consistent, all those who advocate sending the Haitians back to Haiti should also be advocating the following be removed from the base of the Statue of Liberty:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

You can't have it both ways. Either we're the United States -- the country of immigrants, the country of the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the land of the tempest-tost -- or we're not.

Mickey Kaus brings us this gem in his lastest blog entry: "If [Gary Hart had] just been a blatant, leering cheater, like Clinton -- well, that's a type we know and can deal with. But he wasn't -- which is why the fact that he's still married to his wife Lee, rather than cleansing him of the taint of the Donna Rice scandal, somehow makes him seem creepier. Why couldn't he get divorced like a normal politician?"

Mickey... I gotta tell you... you may call him a "blatant, leering cheater" (whatever), but your comparison by difference just doesn't work. President Clinton is still married.

And, I should add, for all I know, and for all you know Mickey, and for all the people reading this know, President and Senator Clinton are very happily married.

Google.com has a new fun element... "googlisms." Basically, you search someone's name, the google spider looks for it and the computer tells you what, from the web-pages out there, what that person is like. To see what blogger Brad Delong's googism is, check out here. To test it, I checked under my old friend/boss/guru Robert Hemenway, the current Chancellor of the University of Kansas; googlism finds the following:

robert hemenway is the sixteenth chancellor of the university of kansas
robert hemenway is quoted in the october 23
robert hemenway is back at work while recuperating from surgery to have his prostate removed
robert hemenway is sponsoring the wheat state whirlwind faculty tour of kansas
robert hemenway is the host of the reception
robert hemenway is a perfect example
robert hemenway is part of the council
robert hemenway is expected to make a decision in the next month about whether or not to continue allowing alcohol at tailgate parties at memorial
robert hemenway is wrong when he says "tea cake accepts janie as an equal"
robert hemenway is taking steps to ensure that ku's new athletics director will have a comprehensive study of
robert hemenway is on the side of tradition

Okay, so far, so good, it all makes sense. That's what I'd expect to find for Bob Hemenway. I don't know what "tea cake accepts janie as an equal," but, whatever.

If we check out the host of this page and my blog partner, David Nieporent, we get:

david nieporent is one of the most prolific posters to the rec
david nieporent is an extremely dedicated fan
david nieporent is the nom de plume of syd thrift
david nieporent is right that almost all baseball players have a solid work ethic and good "intangibles" in general

Okay, still good. Daivd may disagree, but from what I know, there's no problem; he's a baseball fan and googlism reflects that. I think the Syd Thrift one refers to a tongue-in-cheek comment David must have written sometime back about the baseball executive (although, the truth be known, I'm kinda a fan of Thrift... I think he did a great job when he was the GM of the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1980s... yet another thing David and I disagree on, I suppose.)

The problem comes when you googlism me. Googlism produces just one line:

partha mazumdar is said to have also suffered a bullet injury on his leg.

Huh? Bullet injury? Leg? What's it talking about?

Just wondering... if President Clinton would have ordered a missile strike the day before a mid-term election, do you suppose that he would have been accused of wagging the dog?

I'm not saying that President Bush did what he did solely to influence today's election. Just that, if President Clinton would have done the exact same thing, Bill McCollum, Ed Bryant, James E. Rogan, Steve Buyer, Steve Chabot, Bob Barr, Charles T. Canady, Lindsey O. Graham, Chris Cannon, George W. Gekas, F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., Henry J. Hyde, and Asa Hutchinson would have been all over the airwaves accusing him of everything, including stealing the kitchen sink.

At least there is one positive thing we can take from the list is that the 10 impeachment managers quickly disappearing from the American political scene. Hopefully some more will disappear today.

I'd like to point you to Kathy Newman's excellent column about David Kelley's recent (and recently cancelled) television show, "girls club" (I don't know why, but lower-case is how you're supposed to write it). Newman sees what other critics were unable or unwilling to -- that "Kelley does not really care about the law, nor is he a 'feminist.' He doesn’t have to be. But he is still one of the only TV writers out there who is writing ABOUT sex, and not merely using legs and sexy haircuts to get ratings.... girls club should not be seen as Kelley’s latest misstep. Rather, David Kelley is finally playing with the grown-ups, and it’s a huge relief."

Newman does get one thing wrong, though, when she wrote: "[Kelly's] law shows are not really about law at all. They never were. They are about relationships -- sexual ones -- and the ways in which these relationships can be made to play out in the context of a system with rules and regulations."

I've never seen any of Kelley's shows other than Ally McBeal (of which I was a dedicated viewer), and I don't think the show was about relationships at all. Quite the opposite, it was a show about being alone. Episode after episode closed with a shot of Ally sitting at her office desk or in her apartment by herself and cut to a wide cityscape of Boston and all the buildings within which lived millions of people, none of whom Ally was with. It was a show about how a single professional woman negotiated her loneliness.

Ally jumped the shark (as it were) when David Kelley began believing the press about the show being about relationships, the characters's querkiness, and the post-feminist idelogical position the show supposedly a trail-blazer of. Subsequently, Kelley made those the show's focus. No longer was the viewer treated (and it was a genuine treat) which we saw at the close of an early episode -- a shot of Ally kissing an an imaginary unicorn -- a unicorn that she dreamed about during her childhood and currently was dreaming about (and believing in) again. No, we got that annoying John Cage singing in some Mexican barbershop quartet. The generation x fans who flocked to Ally because her loneliness was real because it resonated with their own lives ran away from these later episodes like they were at a Perry Cumo concert. The show, which was once the jewel of generation x appointment television viewing, couldn't have been cancelled quickly enough.

We were left with with the vacuousness of that unbelievable utopian Friends world where not only everybody knows our names but there's no smoke and our favorite sofa is always empty.

For what it's worth, everybody I voted for today won -- including Mayor Ed Rendell and Congressman Robert Brady.

Is it too early to propose Rendell for the 2004 Democratic ticket? Straight-talking, intelligent, proven, and an unapologetic Democrat. He's exactly what the party needs.

And, he's a Penn alum to boot. With him, how can the party go wrong? (I'm just hoping, for his own piece of mind, that his new gubenatorial responsibilities won't keep from attending the Palestra. It's going to be a great year.)

Andrew Sullivan writes today that: "RIORDAN WOULD HAVE WON: Can anyone doubt that now? Bush would have a friendly governor in California in 2004 if the California Republican party hadn't allowed itself to become captive to the hard right. The Dems are not the only people to learn lessons from last night. The Republicans need to internalize the fact that religious right conservatism, especially in places like California, is poison."

I don't know what he meant by "especially in California." The Republicans lost the Kansas governorship, too. Kansas forpetessake. Kathleen Sebelius becomes the first Democrat to win an open gubenatorial race in the Sunflower state in 65 years (eight years ago, she became the first Democratic Insurance Commissioner in over 100 years). Kansans, even in rural areas, voted for Sebelius over the hard right Tim Shallenburger. If a Republican can't win a state-wide race in Kansas, there must be something wrong with that Republican and there was with Shallenburger. Moving to the far right is bad no matter where you are -- California or Kansas (or Oklahoma where Steve Largent also lost his bid for governor). For their sakes, I hope the Republicans don't repeat what they did after their victory in 1994 and take the midterm election as an excuse to press a far right agenda.

A good topic for an American Studies master's thesis would be to compare and contrast the press coverage of the Winona Ryder trial and the Fatty Arbuckle trials. What Arbuckle was accused of was much much more serious (rape and manslaughter); Hollywood was bigger back in Arbuckle's day; however, I'd bet that Ryder's case received more media attention (and Arbuckle's received a lot).

A lot of people made a lot of money and made their careers destroying Arbuckle. I wonder why so much was made out of Ryder's case, both by the Los Angeles District Attorney and by the Hollywood media? She's a famous actress, I understand, but she's not that famous. She's hardly a Julia Roberts or a even a Drew Barrymore. (If you disagree with me, name a big hit that she's been in. Or a great movie which she was the star of.)

The bottom line is the great national nightmare is now over. And if Ms. Ryder (or, Ms. Horowitz, if she does not go by her stage name in real life) needs someone to cheer her up, she's welcome to give me a call.

One thing history students constantly complain about is dates -- why do they have to memorize so many dates. (Answer: because it's important to know when things happened.)

I'm going to give you two dates:

1939: The last time an Ivy League college won a football national championship. (It was Cornell's brilliant 8-0 team).

1993: The year ESPN's College Football Gameday program began broadcasting their show from outside of the stadium of the biggest college football game being played that week. As of last year (I couldn't find the most recent numbers), they've made over 120 trips to 33 cities. They've gone to all the places you'd expect: Gainesville seven times, Ann Arbor and South Bend six times, Miami and Lincoln five times, and Knoxville four times.

This Saturday, the ESPN Gameday crew is going to broadcast from outside of Philadelphia's Franklin Field and feature the Harvard - Pennsylvania game; a first for the Ivy league, a first for Division I-AA, a first for many categories. I don't think that ESPN is caught in some kind of a timewarp and believe that Hamilton Fish is going to be lining up against John Heisman and John Outland, but they still chose this game to broadcast. I don't think this piece of information has any sort of grand international significance, but it's just facinating. And, it'll be fun to watch (but I can't decide what will be more fun: going to the game or watching it on tv.)

In the discussion of Ari Fleischer's recent wedding, few seemed thoughtful enough to ask: where is the couple registered? The answer is, at Target (Mark Dayton, heir to the Target fortune and Democratic Senator from Minnesota must be happy about this) and at Macy's. You can buy the happy couple a gift at either place and it'll be shipped to them. Congratulations to both.

Glenn Reynolds over at Instapundit has lost his marbles. Today he wrote that Creedence Clearwater Revival was "the greatest -- and most thoroughly American -- American rock and roll band." "Fortunate Son" is a great song and all, but let's be serious. Is there anybody out there who would rather have CCR's new boxed set over a copy of the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds"? Or would rather have seen CCR in concert than, say, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band? Or the Jimi Hendrix Experience? Or Nirvana? The Jackson Five? The Ramones? R.E.M? All these bands are American, and they're all just great.

What's the greatest and the most thoroughly American rock and roll band? If I had to name one, I'd take any from the list I just gave over CCR, but I probably would have to go with The Funk Brothers. Who are they, you ask? They're the "best kept secret in the history of pop music." Hopefully, though, not for long.

I live right smack dab in the middle of a really big city, so this information doesn't really help me. But, to all of you who don't -- wake up early tomorrow morning (or, if you're on the West Coast, stay up late), go outside, and look up. You'll be glad you did. (Anywhere up should be good, but if you know where the constellation Leo is, look there.)

Getting a bunch of attention on the news recently has been the National Council of Churches and the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life's upcoming advertizing campaign: What Would Jesus Drive? Basically, these groups are saying that Jesus would not be driving a SUV... if He were around today, He'd be behind the wheel of an environmentally friendly auto, so you too should not purchase an SUV; you should be buying a earth-friendly car. (I'm not joking about this.)

With humility, I disagree with the National Council of Churches and the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life. I remember Luke 18:25 "For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God" (similar lines are also at Matthew 19:24 and Mark 10:25), and Mark 10:21 "Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me," and 2 Corinthians 8:9 "For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich."

Personally, I don't think He'd own a car. If He had, He would have given it away. So, What Would Jesus Drive? He wouldn't -- He'd do what poor people do: He'd take the bus.

That's what the National Council of Churches and the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life should be advertizing.

Andrew Sullivan is puzzled at this entry in Kurt Cobain's journals ("I like to make incisions into the belly of infants then fuck the incisions until the child dies,") and why Newsweek did not publish it when it printed some of its excerpts.

Let's remember Mark Twain's line from his journal (the headline is also Twain, from Following the Equator): "there is a good side and a bad side to most people, and in accordance with your own character and disposition you will bring out one of them and the other will remain a sealed book to you."

It's too late, of course, but one wishes that those who are currently cashing in on Cobain's journals would have kept them sealed.

Whether it be from portrayals by Michel Bouquet, Reginald Owen, John Carradine, William Peterson, George C. Scott, Jeremy Kerridge, Patrick Stewart, Bill Murray, even Bugs Bunny, or (gasp!) reading it ourselves, we are all familar with the story of Ebeneezer Scrooge and Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. One of the most memorable scenes is the horrifying conversation between Scrooge and a man asking him for a charitable contribution:

`At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,'
said the gentleman, taking up a pen, `it is more than
usually desirable that we should make some slight
provision for the Poor and Destitute, who suffer
greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in
want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands
are in want of common comforts, sir.'

`If they would rather die,' said Scrooge, `they had
better do it, and decrease the surplus population.
Besides -- excuse me -- I don't know that.'

If the House of Representatives does not act soon, 830,000 people will lose their unemployment benefits three days after Christmas. Let's put aside the economic stimulus 830,000 families spending at Christmas-time would add. Not acting now may be an act of conservatism, but it surely is not compassionate. It's an act worthy of Scrooge.

Andrew Sullivan's blog has a quite workaday Paul-Krugman-is-bad piece. Krugman wrote about nepotism and, surpizingly(!), found that liberals like Krugman are bad. He writes about Krugman that "Every example of nepotism he gives is Republican or conservative, implying a seamless connnection between family favors and his increasingly unhinged idea that America is now in the grip of a brutal plutocracy," and he wonders where the Kennedy and Pelosi families were in Krugman's analysis. Well, geez Mr. Sullivan, I read Krugman's piece too, and, cripes, where was the Bush family? Krugman doesn't mention them, either.

Could it be that the Kennedys, the Pelosis, and the Bushes were *elected* (except, of course, the ones who lost election). That's why they were absent. Perhaps Krugman was focusing on the fact that the pork given to the families Krugman discussed was not democratically vented. Maybe that was his point?

CBS News reports that the Los Alamos National Laboratory has been suffering from "widespread theft and fraud," totalling millions of dollars and including a forklift, hundreds of computers, some from the top secret X Division, a cryogenic refrigerator, oscilloscopes. Sad and surprizing stuff, especially considering this news comes from such a respected institution as Los Alamos.

Puzzling, though... CBS doesn't make an obvious connection. Los Alamos is where Wen Ho Lee worked. Well, where he worked before his nine months of solitary confinement, before his public flaying, before he was taken out to the woodshed.

In light of this CBS news report detailing the daily operations of Los Alamos, it's time for another apology to Mr. Lee. Not that there was any before, but can there remain any doubt that the reason Lee was persecuted was because he was Asian-American?

Andrew Sullivan and a lot of others in the blogsphere are making a lot of hay on the New York Times' decision not to run two sports columns. Sullivan, citing, Jack Shafer, says that the Times should hire an ombudsman. Sullivan indignantly writes that "The Times has got to stop acting like the Vatican and open itself up to scrutiny and debate."

I don't see why. Even if we accept Sullivan's analogy, acting like the Vatican isn't the same as being like the Vatican. The Times is not a religious institution -- it's a newspaper. If Sullivan does not approve of it, he should either stop reading it or make his complaints known. Demanding institutional changes because of its ideological choices isn't, well, it isn't the American way. Judging from all the bandwidth that has been used to criticize the Times over its nixing of the two columns, it sure seems that the Times is subject to "scrutiny and debate." That's not what Sullivan wants, however. He wants this debate over the Times' editorial decisions (or his debate over the Times' editorial decisions) to be on the pages of the Times, itself.

I had planned not to write anything about the 100th birthday of Strom Thurmond because my parents once told me that if you can't say something nice about someone, you shouldn't say anything at all.

But then, from a link on Brad Delong's blog, I read James Edwards Jr.'s National Review column on the event.

The money section reads: "And Strom Thurmond has done more for blacks in South Carolina than he has received credit for. He opposed the liberal civil-rights movement because it sought to force radical change. He opposed not its goals, but its tactics. It forsook the legislative route of state legislatures and ordered, measured, consensual change for the heavy, centralized hand of the federal government and the courts. Its legacy includes judicial activism, an undermined federalism and a weakened Constitution."

I realize that, in some circles (including that of the National Review), that the word "liberal" is synonymous with "bad," however, I've never before heard the civil-rights movement called "the liberal civil-rights movement." If this is indeed true, I would hope that everybody in America will run and embrace being called "liberal."

And, a movement that tried to "force radical change" instead of taking an "ordered" and "measured" approach is wrong? What, prey tell Mr. Edwards, was the alternative? By 1963, slavery had been over for 100 years. Should this measured approach... something "consensual" (which I assume means that Bull Connor and Ross Barnett would also sign on to)... have taken another 100 years? Should the promise and rights granted to all Americans be precluded from millions of Americans living at the time with the assurance that they would be guaranteed to the great-grandchildren of these citizens? Would this have been a good thing? Depriving million of Americans of their consitutional rights? That would have been ordered and measured. I wonder whether this is just Edwards writing or the National Review's editorial policy?

Let's remember what Thurmond said when he was running for President: "I want to tell you, ladies and gentleman, that there's not enough troops in the army to force the southern people to break down segregation and admit the Nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches."

If that's "ordered" and "measured" and opposing it is "liberal," well, to be frank, I've never been more proud to be a liberal.

For an opposing view on why the "liberal" civil-rights movement took the "heavy" and "centtralized" tactics it did, it may be worthwhile for Edwards to go to this link and read it. A highlight:

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant 'Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you no forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

Edwards, of course, still doesn't understand this impatience. He longs for ordered and measured.

Will Vehrs says that there's a lot of "piling on" criticizing Trent Lott's comments. (Instapundit links and comments on Vehrs' piece, here.)

Where, however, is this "piling on" actually happening? In the blogshere, sure. Not, however, in the mainstream media, though. Just by reading the papers, watching Sunday morning pundit shows, and the evening news, it would seem like Lott didn't make the statement at all. Vehr says this "piling on" is "I see this as a little partisan 'payback' for the Wellstone Memorial debacle." I think this is just a bit of overkill. Just a bit.

Here is the complete text of Trent Lott's apology: "A poor choice of words conveyed to some the impression that I embraced the discarded policies of the past. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I apologize to anyone who was offended by my statement.''

Interesting choice of a word, using "discarded." President Clinton's heath care proposal was discarded. It was debated and was not implemented. It is no longer discussed. The policies of the past which Lott embraced the other day were not just "discarded" -- they were repudiated. It's a shame that Lott still does not realize this. Segregation and racial supremacy aren't, as some people believe about President Clinton's health care proposal and dozens of other policy suggestions which fail, a good idea which fell by the way side. They are the antithesis of everything American.

Lott made a mistake. We all make mistakes. He needs to apologize again, remembering Franklin Roosevelt's words at his fourth inaugural address: "We may make mistakes -- but they must never be mistakes which result from faintness of heart or abandonment of moral principle." These words are true when dealing with post-war Europe, Mississippi, or Iraq. We must remember moral principles. What was wrong in 1948 is still wrong in 2002. It was not simply discarded.

Today's New York Times fronts a story about a $15 billion family fortune, family strife, and a lawsuit by one of the family's youngest members to get what she believe to be her fair share. That 11 cousins are planning to collect $1.4 billion each, it's safe to say this share is quite substantial.

The battle is over the Pritzker fortune. I'd heard the name before -- the Pritzkers control, among other things, the Hyatt Hotel chain. However, I do not know much about the legal battles other than what I read in today's article. It's their business, and I can't say that I care that much.

What really caught my eye though, is the identity of the young cousin who filed suit. The Times identifies her as Liesel Pritzker, although I believe her birth name is Liesel A. Pritzker-Bagley. Her stage name is Liesel Matthews, and she was just brilliant in "A Little Princess." It's a remarkable movie, and as an 11 year old actress, Matthews made Sara Crewe come alive with all the kindness and magic that the extraordinarily demanding role required. Her performance of Sara's speech to Miss Minchin ("I am a Princess. All girls are. Even if they live in tiny old attics. Even if they live in rags. Even if they aren't pretty, or young, or smart, they're still princesses. All of us! Didn't your father ever tell you that? Didn't he?") more indignant and yet still genuine than most actors three times her age can manage.

I later saw Matthews playing as Harrison Ford's daughter in Air Force One. It was a smaller role, but there, too, she excelled.

I hope that no matter how this legal battle works out and after she gets whatever money is coming to her (and I have a feeling that even if she loses, she'll still win), that she returns to acting. She has a gift, and it would be remarkable to see it on the big screen again.

And, if you haven't yet seen "A Little Princess," you must. You can buy it here or here.

The blogsphere is becoming the Lottsphere, and I'm not going to buck the trend.

The Washington Post reports today that Trent Lott has approached Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell asking them to issue statements support him but they have refused.

Juxtapose this against the saccharine statements of support coming from Lott's fellow Senators. You can read one of them, from one of my two senators, Arlen Specter, here.

For a second, close your eyes and imagine how different this scandal would be right now if fifteen members of the United States Senate were African American. Or ten members. Or five members. Or, for that matter, even one member. Yeah, it would be much different, wouldn't it?

Trent Lott must feel right at home in the Senate, but that does not mean that the other 99 are required to be hospitable.

If the Bush advisors quoted in David Frum's National Review article are to be believed, one of the major reasons President Bush is so concerned about the Lott debacle is that "Bush sees himself as the first Republican president in a generation to campaign explictly for black votes – a campaign compromised by Lott’s indiscretion." (Instapundit uncritically cites this, too.)

One has to wonder if this is simply spin on the advisor's part or lazy journalism by Frum or both.

If one recalls the 2000 Presidential election, the African American vote broke down like this: Gore 90%, Bush 9%, Nader 1%. To put this into perspective, a higher percentage self-described conservatives voted for Gore than black people voted for Bush.

Lott has not compromised President Bush's campaign for black votes. He wasn't getting it, anyway. The point is that Lott has compromised white votes. When this is finally realized, Lott will be gone.

While watching "All the President's Men," I learned the term "non-denial denial." I think, with all of Trent Lott's apologies, we've now seen the emergence of the non-apology apology.

I've lost track on how many apologies there have been; the most recent one comes from the new issue of Time magazine (cover dated December 23, 2002) where Lott says: "I've said things and done things on race-related issues that weren't intended to be hurtful but that I now realize were hurtful."

Did he actually ever believe that segregation wasn't intended to be hurtful? He must have always known that it was intended to be hurtful to some people. If not, he seems to have grown up in the wrong century. Or was it just what he said about and did concerning segregation that wasn't intended to be hurtful? And, I wonder when "now" actually was. This week? When he's 60? After over a decade of being in the Senate?

There is a difference between digging oneself out of a hole and digging deeper into it. Lott needs to realize this.

The American Film Insititute just released its list for the ten best movies of 2002. I realize these sorts of lists are a dime-a-dozen, but, jimminycricket, there are still two and a half weeks left in 2002.

I say this because four of the movies on the list, The Antwone Fisher Story, Chicago, Gangs of New York, and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers haven't opened yet. Antwone Fisher, Gangs of New York, and the Two Towers open this week and Chicago doesn't actually open nationally until 2003 (it has a limited release scheduled for next week so it'll be eligible for the 2003 Academy Awards). I fully realize that the AFI is full of big-wigs who get invited to premieres, sneak previews, and get prints couriered to their homes, so they, no doubt, have seen these movies. But how are we supposed to evaluate their list when there is no way we could have seen forty percent of it? If it's not for us, why publically release it?

Couldn't they have waited until the first week of January to issue this list?

One of the major points of evidence for Trent Lott supporters in proving he didn't mean what he said at Strom Thurmond's birthday party is that, as Dick Morris wrote today, "[Lott] took the lead in doubling funding for historically black colleges in Mississippi."

These historically black colleges were founded because of or in response to segregation. I'm just posing a question, not answering it, but wouldn't it make sense that a pro-segregationist Senator would be supporting these schools? Among other things, I could imagine such a Senator believing increasing funding to historically black colleges would keep African Americans away from Ole Miss.

Another note: Dick Morris also uses this to prove that Lott is a good guy: "There is not a racist bone in his body. That's why one third of Mississippi blacks vote for him, year after year." I hate to break it to Mr. Morris, but, in elections, one-third isn't all that many. Prey tell, why do the other *two-thirds* of Mississippi blacks vote against him, year after year?

The Smoking Gun has put up a copy of the States Rights Democratic Party (a.k.a. the "Dixiecrats") platform. It's also linked by Instapundit and Jim Henley.

Perhaps as important as what the Dixiecrats were for is what they were against. Remember, they formed their party in response to the 1948 Democratic Convention (which took place in Philadelphia's Convention Hall, just a few blocks from my office), and it was the implementation and attempted implementation of the convention proposals which Lott was refering to when he spoke about "all these problems over these years."

Linked is the text of Hubert H. Humphrey's historic speech at the 1948 Convention. It's one of the main reasons Thurmond left the party and those who wistfully long for days gone-by still, apparently, deplore it.

Glenn Reynolds has just posted another fine piece on the Michael Bellesiles scandal. In it he cites the the Volokh Conspiracy and poses the following question: "whether there could be a Bellesiles in the legal-scholarship world." He answers yes and no. My question is, how did it happen in the history-scholarship world and could it happen again.

The "Report of the Investigative Committee in the matter of Professor Michael Bellesiles," found that Bellesiles' major sins were his trangressions of the American Historical Associaion's Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct, specifially those dealing with professional historical scholarship. He fell short on the AHA's rule that "Historians must not misrepresent evidence or the sources of evidence," and most of all, he fell short dealing with this paragraph:

Because historians must have access to sources--archival and other--to produce reliable history, they have a professional obligation to preserve sources and advocate free, open, equal, and nondiscriminatory access to them, and to avoid actions that might prejudice future access. Historians recognize the appropriateness of some national security and corporate and personal privacy claims but must challenge unnecessary restrictions. They must protect research collections and other historic resources and make those under their control available to other scholars as soon as possible.

Like scientists, empirical historians (I'm freely and quite blithely using this term) create their own data. Scientists do this through experiements. Historians do this through archival and other research. To check the validity of a scientist's findings, one can recreate the experiment (if it was a reliable experiement, of course). To check a historian, one must be able to access the archives and recreate the data. Scholarly progress cannot happen if this is not possible.

It must, however, be remembered when this paragraph was added to the AHA Statement of Standards -- after the David Abraham scandal of the mid-1980s. It is the memory of this case, I've gotta assume, why so many historians initally defended Bellesiles. They remembered the injustices done to Abraham (he was driven out of the history profession -- he landed on his feet, though. He went to law school here at Penn and is now on the faculty of the University of Miami law school) and attempted, in perhaps a knee-jerk reaction, to keep it from happening again.

If another scandal hits, one has to assume that, since we're always fighting the last war, historians will remember the Bellesiles scandal and will be, at first, hesitant to offer their support. Will another scandal hit the history profession? Sure it will. We should remember Lawrence Stone, Dodge Professor of History at Princeton, "When you work in the archives, you’re far from home, you’re bored, you’re in a hurry, you’re scribbling like crazy. You’re bound to make mistakes. I don’t believe any scholar in the Western world has impeccable footnotes. Archival research is a special case of the general messiness of life." The real question (more applicable to Abraham than to Bellesiles who seems to have made way too many) is how dedicated vested interests are in revealing and ascribing motives to your mistakes.

On BET tonight, after Ed Gordon asked questions about his statement and his hideous voting record, Trent Lott actually said: "My actions don't reflect my voting record."

He wanted us to believe that he had grown since his segregationist upbringing. Gordon played along, asking about recent votes. These did not reflect any change. So Lott said, and I'm going to repeat it, "My actions don't reflect my voting record."

So, don't judge him on what he used to believe and, presumably (and I left the interview so presuming), still does. Don't judge him on what he's done as a legislator. Judge him on his worthiness as the Senate Majority Leader on his "actions" -- his non-legislative actions, and not on his past beliefs (past, of course, meaning everything before Strom Thurmond's birthday party ended) and if you do, you'll agree that he's a good egg.

The clock is now ticking on Lott's career as Majority Leader, there is no doubt about that (and he's also probably quashed any hopes of re-election, too), but it's not to late for him to be penitent.

Andrew Sullivan offers this gem on what he calls "the Democratic strategy on race": The Dems take black votes for granted, which is bad for them and worse for blacks; they too easily acquiesce to the biggest race-baiters in the business; they treat blacks too often as a group rather than as individuals."

I don't understand. If Democrats took black votes for granted, wouldn't they be ignoring blacks instead of acquiescing "to the biggest race-baiters in the business?" If Democrats were acquiescing "to the biggest race-baiters in the business," isn't this a sign that the Democrats take the black vote quite seriously and attempts to placate it?

Or, maybe Sullivan has hypnotized himself into believing in a litany of perported Democratic Party sins and types them without really thinking about what he's actually saying. (And, sadly, Sullivan is far from alone in this.)

When we're children, we all learn the story of the two women who come to King Solomon both claiming to be its mother. Solomon, we're told, orders the baby cut in half, because of this order, the true mother is revealed. The story can be found in the first book of Kings:

Then came there two women, that were harlots, unto the king, and stood before him.
And the one woman said, O my lord, I and this woman dwell in one house; and I was delivered of a child with her in the house.
And it came to pass the third day after that I was delivered, that this woman was delivered also: and we were together; there was no stranger with us in the house, save we two in the house.
And this woman's child died in the night; because she overlaid it.
And she arose at midnight, and took my son from beside me, while thine handmaid slept, and laid it in her bosom, and laid her dead child in my bosom.
And when I rose in the morning to give my child suck, behold, it was dead: but when I had considered it in the morning, behold, it was not my son, which I did bear.
And the other woman said, Nay; but the living is my son, and the dead is thy son. And this said, No; but the dead is thy son, and the living is my son. Thus they spake before the king.
Then said the king, The one saith, This is my son that liveth, and thy son is the dead: and the other saith, Nay; but thy son is the dead, and my son is the living.
And the king said, Bring me a sword. And they brought a sword before the king.
And the king said, Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one, and half to the other.
Then spake the woman whose the living child was unto the king, for her bowels yearned upon her son, and she said, O my lord, give her the living child, and in no wise slay it. But the other said, Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it.
Then the king answered and said, Give her the living child, and in no wise slay it: she is the mother thereof.
And all Israel heard of the judgment which the king had judged; and they feared the king: for they saw that the wisdom of God was in him, to do judgment.

For more than a year now, two men, Alex Popov and Patrick Hayashi, have been in court arguing over the ownership of a baseball -- the baseball Barry Bonds hit for his 73rd homerun last year. They both claim the ball to be theirs.

Today, Judge Kevin McCarthy issued his ruling on the ball's true ownership. And, it's a ruling worthy of Solomon. The ball is to be sold and the money split between the two.

Now that Mickey Kaus has just linked it, I'm sure Timothy P. Carney's recent article on the National Review site is going to get a lot of readers.

Near the end of the piece, Carney writes about Trent Lott, "If [James] Carville wins — if the bar for branding someone a racist is lowered to a single careless comment, an unreflective childhood in the south, and a belief in states' [sic] rights — that puts every Republican politician or nominee in a little more danger." It all sounds okay at first, but let's think about what Carney actually wrote.

A single careless comment? Lott said it more than once.

An unreflective childhood in the south? An explaination, perhaps. It's not an excuse, though. Lots of people who have grown up in the South don't share Lott's vision (there are millions, of course, but easy ones to point to are Alabama's Howell Raines and Arkansas' Bill Clinton). And, Carney must believe in Henry Hyde's defintion of childhood, for Lott has volunteered that even at 42 years old, he did not really know who Martin Luther King Jr. was.

A belief in states rights? Well, that's one way to sugar coat it. What Lott and Thurmond were exposing wasn't the states rights of today's federalism. It was an ideology of interposition, nullification, and segregation.

Perhaps if people like Carney can successfully spin this episode for Trent Lott, Lott may be able to stay as Senate Majority Leader. If that's the case, I'd put my money on the Democratic nominee in 2004.

In response to a protest outside the INS offices in Los Angeles, INS spokesman Francisco Arcaute yesterday said that "The only time the INS detains anyone is if they have violated INS law."

I never realized before that the INS had its own laws. I thought that the United States had laws which various agencies, like the INS, implemented and enforced.

I normally wouldn't write anything about Ann Coulter, because, geez, what's the point. However, this recent statement of hers takes the cake and, in a nutshell, tells you everything you'd ever want to know about her.... about the Trent Lott controversy, she is quoted today as saying: "I don't remember liberals being this indignant about the 9/11 terrorist attacks."

"Yes, I've got monkeys in my pants."

President Clinton is right on the money about the Trent Lott affair: "How do they think they got a majority in the South anyway? I think what they are really upset about is that he made public their strategy." Read John Marshall's excellent take on Clinton's statement here. This is exactly why Lott's comment has gotten so much attention.

The Democratic party has not seriously countered this strategy before. Whenever engagement has been attempted, Democrats would be accused of Robert Shapiro's infamous phrase "playing the race card." They'd be told, why are you talking about race? Don't you want a color-blind society? Isn't America about equality, after all? They'd be told, point blank, "you're playing the race card." They'd be (quite incredibly) told that discrimination is part of history so what are you talking about? They'd be accused of playing "identity politics." They'd be inundated with quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr. (well, actually, just one quote. You know, the "content of their character" one. As if King's extraordinarily detailed and complex thoughts and dreams could be summarized by only one sentence.) As a whole, and quite sadly, Democrats would go quiet in the face of this barrage, and the Republican Southern Strategy continued unchecked.

But now, Lott has made it possible to have an active engagement concerning this strategy. A Republican started the discussion, so the accusations go towards him; it wasn't started by Democrats, so the accusations aren't going towards them. Of course, the Republican party has to deny that what they've been doing is what they've been doing. This is one reason so many on the right have been so vocal in their criticizing Lott. If the Democrats have the courage, they should pursue this opening long after Lott is gone.

And, before I'm accused of "playing the race card," (whatever that's supposed to mean) let's remember Marshall's words: "One needn't think that the Republican party itself is racist. I don't. (In any case, that's too big a word, too general a question.) What the Republican party does have is a history -- not by accident, but by design -- of playing to and benefiting from the votes of racist and crypto-racist constituencies in certain parts of the country -- particularly, though not exclusively, in the South. They built the Republican party in the South on the foundation of racial resentment and civil rights rejectionism. Since then they've built a whole house on top of it. But the foundation's still there." That's exactly right, and let's talk about it.

Bonus: Where is the quote in the subject line from?

After reading David's post, and trying to see if I could do it from memory, I went through every election of the 20th century to see what the previous jobs of the Presidential nominees were. I think I have them all correct.

2000 Gore (VP) Bush (Gov)
1996 Clinton (Pres) Dole (Senator) Perot (Businessman)
1992 Clinton (Gov) Bush (Pres) Perot (Businessman)
1988 Dukakis (Gov) Bush (VP)
1984 Mondale (ex-VP) Reagan (Pres)
1980 Carter (Pres) Reagan (ex-Gov)
1976 Carter (Gov) Ford (Pres)
1972 McGovern (Senator) Nixon (Pres)
1968 Humphry (VP) Nixon (ex-VP)
1964 Johnson (Pres) Goldwater (Senator)
1960 Kennedy (Senator) Nixon (VP)
1956 Stevenson (ex-Gov?) Eisenhower (Pres)
1952 Stevenson (Gov) Eisenhower (University President)
1948 Truman (Pres) Dewey (Gov)
1944 Roosevelt (Pres) Dewey (Gov)
1940 Roosevelt (Pres) Wilkie (lawyer)
1936 Roosevelt (Pres) Landon (Gov)
1932 Roosevelt (Gov) Hoover (Pres)
1928 Smith (Gov) Hoover (ex-Cabinet official)
1924 Davis (ex-Ambassador) Coolidge (Pres) Lafollette (Senator)
1920 Cox (Governor) Harding (Senator) Debs (Prisoner)
1916 Hughes (Judge) Wilson (President)
1912 Wilson (Gov) Taft (President) Roosevelt (ex-Pres)
1908 Bryan (ex-Congressman) Taft (Cabinet official)
1904 Parker (Judge) Roosevelt (President)
1900 Bryan (ex-Congressman) McKinley (President)

What strikes me much more than the relative lack of sitting Congressmen and Senators on this list is the amount of Presidents, and Vice-Presidents. 1952, fifty years ago, was the last time there was an election without a President or Vice-President, and before that 1928. Because these executive officers have been taking up so many of the slots, it’s no surprise that there have been so few people from other jobs. (2004, of course, will be no exception, in that President Bush will be running). And, with these people taking so many slots, the remaining probably comprise too small a sample to make any solid judgements.

That being said, one thing is noticable. After World War II, we saw lots of war heroes. Eisenhower, of course. Both Kennedy and Nixon. Johnson was a decorated Navy vet. McGovern was a bomber pilot. Carter was a Naval officer. Bush, the father, was a fighter pilot. Dole was a veteran of the invasion of Europe. After Clinton and Bush, the son, and the years that have passed since VE and VJ days, that dynamic is gone. It's anybody's game.

To me, the Democratic nomination is open. I mean, how many people in America knew who Jimmy Carter was in 1974 or Bill Clinton was in 1990? That’s why we have campaigns… so the people can get to know the candidates.

That being said, then why is the political media spending so much time focusing on Kerry, Edwards, Liberman, Gephardt, and Daschle? Because it’s easy and the Washington media is lazy. Those five all live in Washington. The political media lives in Washington.

When the campaign starts and everybody has to go to Iowa and New Hampshire, they’ll start covering more people. And different people. The next Carter or Clinton, perhaps.

Glenn Reynolds may be correct -- he probably is -- that the recent immigrant related arrests in California have been legal. That doesn't make them right.

Reynolds makes three major points:

(1) "This is hardly the Japanese-American internment revisited." Well, it is and it isn't.

These Middle Easterners are being treated like they are for no other reason than where they're from. That's how it's like Japanese-American internment. It wouldn't be surprizing to read something about these Middle Easterners in California that sounds something like: "we cannot reject as unfounded the judgment of the military authorities and of Congress that there were disloyal members of that population, whose number and strength could not be precisely and quickly ascertained. We cannot say that the war- making branches of the Government did not have ground for believing that in a critical hour such persons could not readily be isolated and separately dealt with, and constituted a menace to the national defense and safety, which demanded that prompt and adequate measures be taken to guard against it." That's from 1943, however, not 2002... Kiyoshi Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81 at page 99. (Aside: We all gotta remember, the Supreme Court repeatedly ruled that what was happening to Japanese-Americans was constitutional.)

We can all agree, from the President to Glenn Reynolds to me, that the vast majority, if not all, of the people being asked to register do not in any way pose a threat to this country. But they're all -- every male visa holder over 16 from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria -- being forced to register. Instead of singling out a group of people (like was done to the Japanese-American community and to this community), there is an easy way around this. Make every male visa holder in the United States register with the INS. If you're from India, Ireland, Germany, Korea, China, or Iraq. It doesn't matter. Make the man working at a greengrocer in Queens, the man working at an interstate motel in Knoxville, the man on a fellowship at Cal Tech. It doesn't matter. Instead of just some, let's treat all immigrants like foreigners. Hardly the American way, but it would be fair.

(2) "These guys are all charged with being in violation of some immigration rule or another." This rationale is a cop-out. What about all the non-Iraqi/Libyian/Sudanese/Syrians who committed the same crimes? They're not being arrested. Are their crimes any less serious? Unless you believe that only Iraqi/Libyian/Sudanese/Syrians overstay their visas.

(3) "Inviting people to show up voluntarily for fingerprinting and then arresting a bunch of them seems to me to be a strategy that only works once. If the Feds knew that, then do they have some unstated reason for cracking down on illegal immigrants from Middle Eastern countries in these places and at this time? Possibly. This may be yet another small sign of coming war, and a preemption effort aimed at catching terrorist sleepers." Yeah, the terrorist sleepers are going to turn themselves in. That part isn't the reason. Reynolds equivocates at the end: "The other possibility, of course, is that the Feds are idiots, and that's one never to be discounted, especially where the INS is concerned." Another possibility is that they know exactly what they're doing and it has nothing to do with sleeper cells.

It looks like Bill Frist is going to take Lott on. Frist, of course, is a pediatric surgeon.

Moving down Pennsylvania Avenue, I offer a trivia question: to my knowledge, there has never been a medical doctor President, however, there has been one that attended medical school and dropped out before completing his training. Can you name him?

Glenn Reynolds writes that "I think the Republicans should demonstrate that they're taking the country beyond the legacy of segregation by passing the "End to Racism and Segregation Act of 2003," which would provide that neither the federal government, nor the states, nor any entity receiving federal funds may take race into account in any manner in the making of hiring, firing, promotion, or benefits decisions."

Why just hiring, firing, promotion and benefits decisions? If we're really going to go "beyond the legacy of segregation," how about not taking "race into account" when it pertains to current voting laws and current housing regulations? If we're going to be a color-blind society, why doesn't Reynolds advocate that the Republican Party pass a law that repeals every piece of post-1960 Civil Rights legislation?

If Reynolds is any guide, it looks like nothing has been learned from the Lott affair. It's a shame.

Let's get down to brass tacks. There are one of two possibilites:

1. The United States has completely overcome its history of discrimination and is currently a completely egalitarian meritocratic society.

2. The United States hasn't and there are still areas in this country where discrimination can be found.

If you believe in #1, then what David calls "mandatory discrimination, racial preferences, quotas, special treatment" are not only bad policy, they are morally abhorant. If you believe in #2, then concrete action must be taken so #1 can be achieved.

Does anyone reading this really believe that #1 has been achieved?

Glenn Reynolds, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Pseudo Psalms, and many others are having a gas pointing out that the political party of the Solid South -- the political party that established and defended Jim Crow -- was the Democratic Party. Attention must be, of course, drawn away from what Trent Lott's comments revealed.

What they are saying is true enough. But it's no longer true about the Democratic Party.

Have they ever thought about why, during the Civil Rights movement, so many, including Trent Lott and Strom Thurmond, even Ronald Reagan for that matter, switched their party identifications from the Democratic Party to the Republican?

It would be nice to say that one of my new years resolutions is to post *much* more often to this blog. However, I don't know how much I'll be able to in the next month and a half.

Next week, I'm going to be making a long-overdue trip to Kolkata (that's Calcutta for those of you who haven't been keeping up with recent government mandated spelling changes). I'll be back in time to attend the Princeton - Penn basketball game at the Palestra; it's important.

If I can find a easily accessible computer over there (which I don't think will be *that* difficult) and if I have the time (which may turn out to be difficult), I'll keep you all posted in what I see, hear, and read.

West Bengal (the province which Kolkata is the capital of) has the only democratically elected communist government in the world (in the history of the world, I believe). A few years back, to poke a snook at the United States, it changed the name of the street the US consulate was on from Harrison Road to Ho Chi Mihn Saroni (Saroni means 'road'). So, you must realize that I can't wait to read the newspapers over there (especially the non-English-language ones) and see what they say about the US and Iraq. I hope that if there is a war, it won't start until I return to the US; however, if it does commence before, I'll make sure to keep you updated.

TRIVIA QUESTION: Kolkata has been the birthplace and childhood/early adulthood home to two Nobel Prize winners. Can you name them? (And, before you say Mother Theresa, I'll tell you that she was born and raised in Europe.)

It seems the administration wants to curb the quality and quantity of research done by foreign students at United States universities. The administration may have tapped the best and the brightest corporate minds for inclusion in the cabinet (see: Paul O'Neil, I suppose), but it seems to have no clue on what actually happens on America's college campuses. Like, for instance, who does a lion's share of this country's cutting edge scientific and engineering research. Even though they don't know, they can find out in the linked Associated Press article. The money sentence is: "About half of graduate students in the physical sciences and engineering come from abroad." (Aside: since the faculty come from the graduate student corps, let's take a guess at what the physical science and engineering faculty population is like?)

Let's see a show of hands over the blogsphere.

Who thinks that the United States will be a safer place... who thinks the objectives of the war on terrorism will be furthered... if Orhan Ozkan's visa is not renewed and he is forced to leave the country?

Simply summarized, Didion's thesis of Joan Didion's most recent New York Review of Books piece is that, right after 9/11/2001, there was an incredible opportunity for this country to explore its foreign policy shortcomings, but this opportunity was lost in a parade of patriotism and stifiling of open debate. The meat of Joan Didion's argument is found in the following paragraphs:

"California Monthly,... published in its November 2002 issue an interview with... Steven Weber..... It so happened that Mr. Weber was in New York on September 11, 2001, and for the week that followed. 'I spent a lot of time talking to people, watching what they were doing, and listening to what they were saying to each other,' he told the interviewer:

'The first thing you noticed was in the bookstores. On September 12, the shelves were emptied of books on Islam, on American foreign policy, on Iraq, on Afghanistan. There was a substantive discussion about what it is about the nature of the American presence in the world that created a situation in which movements like al-Qaeda can thrive and prosper. I thought that was a very promising sign.

But that discussion got short-circuited. Sometime in late October, early November 2001, the tone of that discussion switched, and it became: What's wrong with the Islamic world that it failed to produce democracy, science, education, its own enlightenment, and created societies that breed terror?'

The interviewer asked him what he thought had changed the discussion. 'I don't know,' he said, 'but I will say that it's a long-term failure of the political leadership, the intelligentsia, and the media in this country that we didn't take the discussion that was forming in late September and try to move it forward in a constructive way.'

I was struck by this, since it so coincided with my own impression. Most of us saw that discussion short-circuited, and most of us have some sense of how and why it became a discussion with nowhere to go"

Didion and Weber, however, miss an obvious possibility. Perhaps, on September 12th, people were reading books on Islam, Iraq, and Afghanistan (3 of the 4 subjects mentioned) not because they wanted to learn about American presence in the world, but because they wanted to learn about Islam, Iraq, and Afghanistan and figure out how they created the situation in which movements like al-Qaeda thrived and prospered. (Of course, Americans also were reading about our foreign policy; there is no requirement that only one avenue of thought and research be persued. This investigation was multivariate.) From this mid- and late-September reading and analysis, America's public debate developed into more detailed investigations on how societies that bred terror have been created.

Perhaps, the discussion did not short-circuit. Perhaps there was no failure of the political leadership or the intelligentsia (whoever they are) or the media. Perhaps the discussion actually did move forward in a constuctive way. In a quite logical progession, actually.

It's not that the discussion ended or was fruitless or has been a failure. It's just that the discussion did not go to where Didion wanted it to go. Instead of understanding this, or engaging in the discussion to move it to where she believes it should be, she castigates the entire conversation. Her article is worth a read, but it's too bad, really, that she doesn't have more faith in the intelligence and agency of the American people.

It turns out that the nationwide search for Abid Noraiz Ali, Mustafa Khan Owasi, Iftikhar Khozmai Ali, Adil Pervez, and Akbar Jamal has been called off, because, well, the tip alerting the government that they illegally entered the USA and were up to no good was bogus.

Instead of wondering how many such tips are bogus, I'm comforted by the knowledge, as Amitava Mazumdar has pointed out, that even if they were up to no good, we had little to fear from these five. According to the Ashcroft plan, since they were Pakistani, they would have just registered themselves and we would have found them that way.

Andrew Sullivan again jumps on his I-Hate-Al-Gore theme, applauding Richard Cohen's latest column which Sullivan characterizes as "disgraceful acquiescence in race-baiting in the last campaign" which caused Sullivan to go "from feeling queasy about Gore to being outright hostile."

But when one reads Cohen's column, it seems that Gore's main sin last campaign was that he didn't denounce a woman who wanted more action taken after her father had been murdered. For shame, Al! Cohen and Sullivan are correct -- you should have taken her out to the woodshed. That's what Cohen and Sullivan would have done.

And, that's it from last campaign. That's what made Sullivan outrightly hostile towards Gore. That's what Cohen uses to compare Gore to Trent Lott. Can the term moral equivalence be used here? I think it can.

I'm off for India in a few hours (my plane leaves in 5.5, I'll be leaving for the airport in 2). I'll be back in less than a month -- but I should be able to post a updates once I find a computer over there (and it shouldn't be hard to find a computer in India). Never fear; this page, of course, will be updated without me. David is on the case, so keep coming back.

Here in Kolkata, it doesn't take long for someone to ask me about America and Iraq. In fact, it happens in every conversation. One exchange I had this morning was quite telling.

I went to see a great uncle. He's my father's mother's brother. He's well into his 90s. He is almost blind and cannot walk without assistance. He spends most of his time in a village in West Bengal, but a few weeks out of the year, he's in Kolkata. Since he was in town, I went to visit. My visit was quite representative and telling. He did not get out of his chair (being frail), but he asked the following questions, in order of when I walked in the room (I've not included my replies, since they aren't as interesting as the questions; everything is translated from Bengali):

1. How tall are you? [I'm quite tall for a Bengali man -- I get the question a lot. Usually not as the first one, though].
2. How is your Bengali?
3. How is your reading and writing [in Bengali]?
4. What do you do for a living?
5. What is America going to do in Iraq?
6. What do Americans think about it?
7. What do American muslims think?
8. Has the WTO headquarters been rebuilt? [I didn't understand, so I asked him to repeat the question]
9. Has the World Trade Organization headquarters been rebuilt?

A few things I gathered from his questioning.

First, India and the rest of the 3rd World is quite concerned about America's intentions towards Iraq. They don't see it as part of the war on terrorism; it's seen as imperalism. Going through the UN hasn't changed matters. Unless the UN inspectors actually find Iraq in violation, this won't change. The administration may not care what the third world thinks, but it's what they think.

Second, there is a deep and abiding admiration in American democracy. We do it like nobody else. Everybody understands this. What Americans think actually matters when it comes to policy decisions. And, America is a diverse place; everybody understands this too.

Third, a lot of people don't really understand what was attacked on 9/11. It wasn't the WTO, of course. I wonder how pervalent this view is.

Fourth, there is a great confidence in America's ability to do anything. He asked if the World Trade Center had already been rebuilt. In India, there is no question that it will be rebuilt. American will do that. It has the money, it has the ability, and it has the will.

Admiration is not sufficent to describe how America is held. Awe is better. Admiration and awe. And, if it invades Iraq, imperalist.

More updates on the view from Kolkata to come.

My Bengali is improving by leaps and bounds during my stay here in Calcutta. My pronounciation is awful -- I sound like a big American instead of a true Bengali -- but my grammar and vocabulary are getting much better.

As proof... I've learned the Bengali words for revenge, terrorism, international relations, and border. I never needed them before (in talking with my parents, relatives, and family friends), but I need them now. Everybody wants to talk about the US and Iraq. Other than when I'm going to get married, it seems like the only conversation most people want to engage me in.

I woke up this morning here in Calcutta, got a cup of tea, turned on the television in the apartment, and watched the second half of the Tennessee - Oakland AFC Championship game. In Calcutta! As Vanessa Williams sang, isn't the world a crazy place.

Necessary background: I'm staying here in Calcutta in a second floor apartment. There is a balcony that looks out onto the street. The balcony has a interlocking series of bars to keep criminals away. The daily newspaper gets delivered to this balcony.

At first I was amazed. How does the paperboy get the paper to the second floor balcony (the answer I was told: "he throws it." Well, duh.) Next question, how does the paperboy get the paper through the bars... I mean, there isn't much room (the anwer I was told: "he's really good.").

So, I was thinking, the Pirates should come to India and sign this guy. The Pirates can't hit the cut-off man, can barely field the ball *and* throw it to first base, and this guy can chuck a newspaper from the ground, to a second floor balcony, through a series of bars? And do it time after time after time? Wow.

But, then, this morning, during my fourth week here in Calcutta, I was awake at 6:30 a.m... when the paperboy arrived... and witnessed how he did it. His first throw hit the bars and clunked back down to the street. The second throw hit the bars. The third and fourth, too. His fifth finally made it threw and I had my newspaper.

I've changed my tune. If he takes five attempts at every building he goes to, it must take him hours to deliver the papers.

Kalpana (as in Kalpana Chawla) means imagination.