Edward _

Grotesque and Grotesquer

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By Edward My sinuses are killing me and, besides, I’ve been pointlessly generous about things lately, so here’s a partisan round up of what’s pissing me off about Bush (don’t say I wasn’t up front about it): 1. Schiavo. Here’s a president whose record of demonstrating he cares about the dignity of human life includes … Read more

San Diego Bishop Behaves Very Badly

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By Edward

Via Daily Kos

The family of a gay San Diego nightclub owner who died of heart congestion at age 31 is being denied a funeral in any of the the Roman Catholic diocese’s churches by its Bishop because he disapproves of the business the dead man owned.

The owner of a popular local nightclub with a gay clientele can’t have a funeral in the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego because the church has deemed his business "inconsistent with Catholic moral teaching."

None of the 98 Catholic churches in San Diego or Imperial counties will be allowed to provide services for Club Montage owner John McCusker as a result of the decision by San Diego Bishop Robert Brom.

The Church is hiding behind a very flimsy argument on this, IMO:

The diocese issued a statement yesterday, saying: "The facts regarding the business activities of John McCusker were not known by church officials when arrangements were requested for his funeral. However, when these facts became known, the bishop concluded that to avoid public scandal Mr. McCusker cannot be granted a funeral in a Catholic church in the chapel of the Diocese of San Diego."

Chancellor Rodrigo Valdivia, a diocese spokesman, said the bishop’s order applies to all 98 parishes within the diocese’s jurisdiction.

Valdivia wouldn’t comment when asked to specify which of McCusker’s business activities violated church doctrine. He emphasized that the church’s decision had nothing to do with the sexual orientation of McCusker, who was gay. Instead, the decision was based on McCusker’s "public activity" as a businessman, Valdivia said.

"We received information that the business he was involved with was inconsistent with Catholic teachings," Valdivia said.

But when pressed on how frequently the Church refuses funerals based on this policy, the spokesman said he couldn’t recall any other examples. As one commenter on Kos noted, the Roman Catholic Church would not do this to a member of the mafia, but a gay nightclub owner, that violates church doctrine.

Sure to follow in the wake of growing fury this is causing in the gay community are further investigations into Bishop Brom’s alleged molestation history:

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US Oil Industry Running the Show in Iraq

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By Edward

A report by the BBC’s Greg Palast on Newsnight indicates that US "Big Oil" executives have had an alarming amount of input into how Iraq’s oil industry (and hence, elections and other things) has been run since the fall of Hussein. From secret planning meetings well before 9/11 to defeating a Neo-Con plan to privatize the Iraqi oil industry (and thereby destroy the OPEC cartel), Big Oil has been effectively putting its interest in not being barred from bidding on Iraqi reserves ahead of other concerns.

Two years ago today – when President George Bush announced US, British and Allied forces would begin to bomb Baghdad – protesters claimed the US had a secret plan for Iraq’s oil once Saddam had been conquered.

In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting off a hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, on one side, versus a combination of "Big Oil" executives and US State Department "pragmatists".

"Big Oil" appears to have won. The latest plan, obtained by Newsnight from the US State Department was, we learned, drafted with the help of American oil industry consultants.

Insiders told Newsnight that planning began "within weeks" of Bush’s first taking office in 2001, long before the September 11th attack on the US.

An Iraqi-born oil industry consultant, Falah Aljibury, says he took part in the secret meetings in California, Washington and the Middle East. He described a State Department plan for a forced coup d’etat.

Mr Aljibury himself told Newsnight that he interviewed potential successors to Saddam Hussein on behalf of the Bush administration.

We’ve always known that Bush was full of it when he suggested the invasion would not take place if Hussein complied with the weapons inspectors (and I don’t mind saying, this nullifies the defense that noncompliance with standing UN resolutions justified the war IMO), but intentions to move forward with a forced coup d’etat months before 9/11 makes all the WMD in the hands of terrorists blather that much more insulting.

But back to the Oil Industry, though. Apparently, in one way, what was good for Big Oil was indeed good for the nation (Iraq, that is). Apparently, going into Iraq, the NeoCons were in control in as much as privatization was the plan, but that idea quickly revealed itself to have been a match meeting a stick of dynamite:

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Erin go Bra-less: A Limerick Slam

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Just keep them this side of XXX, ‘kay? By jeepers, St. Pat’s Day’s is here And all along Fifth there’s great cheer But I’d trade all that charm Hell, I’d give my right arm For a nice pint of green-dye-free beer. Although, a free print of green-dye beer would do, as well, I suppose.

Note to Self: Learn Mandarin, Fast

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Yesterday’s vote in the Senate has taught me that appealing to America’s sense of pride in our land or responsibility to future generations as a means toward discouraging drilling in ANWR is a losing battle. Americans want cheap gas today, even it it means we’ll find ourselves right back where we are 5 years from now. Therefore, it’s time to appeal to the only emotion apparently still capable of motivating Americans to act politically: fear. (Hey, if Bush can constantly use it, who among his supporters can complain?)

Drilling for oil in ANWR will benefit China. China, the emerging economic superpower that’s still run by Communists, will be the real winner if a large amount of oil is extracted from beneath the Arctic soil.

Why? In a word: geography.

Tom Friedman quotes noted energy economist Philip Verleger, who explains:

"Oil in Alaska cannot easily or efficiently be shipped to our Gulf Coast refineries. The logical markets are on the West Coast of the United States and in Asia. Consumers in China and Japan, not the U.S., will be the real beneficiaries of any big Alaska find.

"With a big find, China and Japan will be able to increase imports from a dependable supplier – the U.S. – while consumers in the U.S. will still be at the mercy of unreliable suppliers, such as Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. It is simple geography. [Also], a big find will lead to lower prices in the short term, promoting more emissions and more warming."

Moreover, focusing exclusively on squeezing out a little more supply will only discourage conservation, Mr. Verleger added, setting the stage for higher prices again in three or four years – "when exhausting oil reserves and burgeoning demand from China and India will drive the price of oil to well above $100 a barrel." That will put even more money in the pockets of some of the world’s worst governments.

That’s right. Drilling in ANWR, which is being touted by the administration as necessary to decrease our dependence on foreign oil, will actually do nowhere near as much toward that end as Norton is suggesting. Rather, it will help the nation that’s set to challenge our #1 Superpower position .

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The Superiority of Live Dogs to a Dead Lion

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By Edward Jean-Paul Sarte, who would have been 100 this June, is being remembered in a major exhibiton at the French National Library. Although he’s not the only one, The New York Times’ Alan Riding is marking the occassion by asking, "But is Sartre remotely relevant today?" As political visionaries, two of his contemporary critics, … Read more

Promotion Priorities and Pretense

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By Edward

Ever have something you read bother you but not recognize immediately why?

While writing this post on Gale Norton’s scandalously misleading op-ed in The New York Times yesterday, something about her rationale lodged itself in the confusion corner of my brain (yes, that’s an opening, let your inner stand-up comedian have at it).

The troubling idea was contained in the central thesis of her essay on why we "must" drill for oil in ANWR (I broke it down for myself to see if I could figure out what was amiss with it):

[1]As part of a comprehensive energy strategy of [2] promoting conservation and [3]reducing dependence on foreign oil, [4]we must increase our energy production here at home.

It took my brain a few hours to do some shuffling of those four ideas, but eventually it all congealed to illuminate for me that the notion that BushCo has a strategy of promoting conservation that (as Norton implies it should) morally balances the necessary evil of breaking our national oath with regard to protecting ANWR is pure grade-A horseshit. Seriously. It’s total manure.

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You Call That a Crowd?

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By Edward In what is an anything-but-dull duel of street rallies, the anti-Syrian citizens of Lebanon responded to last week’s pro-Syrian (Hezbollah-sponsored) march with what is, by all accounts, a much, much bigger pro-Democracy rally: Hundreds of thousands of opposition demonstrators chanted "Freedom, sovereignty, independence" and unfurled a huge Lebanese flag in Beirut on Monday, … Read more

The Importance of Being Obstinate

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By Edward

If there’s one important lesson Rove teaches his boss and his staff it’s how to stay on message no matter what. Assimilate your critics’ rhetoric within your statements as best you can, so that to the casual observers it looks as if you’re moderate, but don’t budge from the "solution" you want to see enacted, regardless of the facts. If you don’t get what you want, just wait a while, and then start the whole process up again with the same "solution" and arguments slightly warmed over.

Gale Norton has apparently learned this lesson well. After having been told "No!" to drilling in ANWR, the Interior Secretary is once again hawking the same tired arguments with a new coat of fresh "moderation" but the same old expected outcome. She begins her op-ed in the Times today with a prose so relatively romantic even Byron would have been embarrassed to offer it (I’ll highlight the more ludicrously poetic bits):

Even though it is noon, the landscape is pitch black. The wind chill stands at 70 below zero. A lone man drives across a vast frozen plain on a road made of ice. He sits atop a large, bug-like machine with enormous wheels. He is heading for a spot on the tundra pinpointed by satellite imagery to explore for oil. When the spring thaw comes and the road melts, any evidence that a man or a machine ever crossed there will be gone.

Ahh…if you close your eyes, you can almost hear the approving whispers of the caribou in the wind. Look at the lone man. It’s absolutely amazing that the technology has advanced so far that oil can be extracted by one man and his one machine (and even more amazing is that we’re left assuming this one man built the ice road himself as well). Norton continues her fairy tale:

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Freakin’ Finally!!!

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It’s about bloody time! Muslim clerics in Spain issued what they called the world’s first fatwa, or Islamic edict, against Osama bin Laden on Thursday, the first anniversary of the Madrid train bombings, calling him an apostate and urging others of their faith to denounce the al-Qaida leader. The ruling was issued by the Islamic … Read more

Art World Scandals

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By Edward

Warning: if the art world bores you, like, oh, say…NASCAR does me, you’ll want to skip this one.
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The art market is beyond white hot again and so, with success, of course, comes scandal. In fact, it feels like the press is paying a bit more than the usual amount of attention to the wheelings and dealings of the last great unregulated industry in the Western world lately (and of course, that makes everyone associated with the art world feel all warm and fuzzy for finally being noticed, on one hand, and rather anxious about strangers peering in too closely, on the other).

Two scandals of particular note are the Lehmann/Mehertu scandal and the NPR/MoMA scandal. The Lehmann/Mehertu scandal involves money, access, and ego. The NPR/MoMA scandal involves money, Nazis, and Egon Schiele.

Scandal 1:

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A Few Bad Apples

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By Edward

So the bad apples have been isolated, there is no connection to the top brass, and stricter guidelines have been put in place to keep incidents like those that happened at Abu Ghraib from happening again. All is relatively well in the world with regard to America’s relationship to torture. At least according to the recently released report by Navy Vice Adm. Albert T. Church, who "conducted more than 800 interviews and reviewed the conclusions of several other investigations."

Church concluded that no civilian or uniformed leaders directed or encouraged abuse, and his report holds Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other top defense leaders largely blameless on the narrow question of pressuring interrogators as well as the larger matter of interrogation policies.

"We found no evidence to support the notion that the office of the secretary of defense (or other military or White House staff) applied explicit pressure for intelligence or gave ‘back channel’ permission to forces in the field in Iraq or in Afghanistan" to exceed the bounds of authorized interrogation practices, the report said.

But if that’s the case (i.e., those we elected are not responsible), why do even I still feel the need to shower every time this subject comes up? Can all of the abuses now coming to light really be dismissed as merely a lack of expertise and oversight? Who are these bad apples cropping up in Afghanistan, Iraq, Cuba, and even the CIA? What’s it say about our culture or our military in general that bad apples are so plentiful? Are our troops really just that stressed out or undertrained? Why isn’t that seen as a crisis?

The report’s conclusion hinges on this one statement:

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p-art-y time: open thread

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OK, so I know I was mocking the neo-con supporters for partying over the most silly of things, and, in lots of ways, there’s nothing more silly than art, but I’m in day three of the most brutal week, party-schedule-wise, the New York art world has (it’s the Armory Show week), and I want to … Read more

The IRA Doesn’t Get It

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By Edward

In response to growing public and political pressure to hand over the IRA members who brutally murdered 33-year-old father of two, Robert McCartney, the terrorist organization offered to "shoot" the men responsible. Uh, hello!!! You’re not quite understanding what’s happening here. As the BBC’s Mark Simpson points out though, this alarming disconnect on the IRA’s part is not surprising:

Few people in Belfast were surprised to hear that the IRA’s answer to recent problems was to reach for its guns.

After all, that is what the IRA knows best.

In spite of the peace process, it remains a terrorist organisation with thousands of weapons and, when pushed, it is not afraid to use them.

So it was no great shock to find out how the leadership responded when faced with the embarrassment of IRA "volunteers" being involved in the murder of a Sinn Fein supporter, Robert McCartney.

Instead of politics, the IRA preferred pistols.

Rather than calling on the killers to go to the police, it preferred "justice" from a firing squad.

The big surprise was that the IRA made this position public.

The greater shock is that the IRA can’t seem to appreciate how public opinion is turning against them. According to the NYTimes report:

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Bad Sh*t Happens…and Happens…and Happens

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by Edward

via a diary by Harley on Tacitus
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What kind of monsters are they churning out over at the CIA? I mean, I know they must have taken lots of heat for missing the signs that the 9/11 attacks were coming, but at what point did Tenet or whomever start approving secret rendition programs and training our agents to behave just like the tyrants we’re supposed to be clearing off the earth:

In November 2002, a newly minted CIA case officer in charge of a secret prison just north of Kabul allegedly ordered guards to strip naked an uncooperative young Afghan detainee, chain him to the concrete floor and leave him there overnight without blankets, according to four U.S. government officials aware of the case.

The Afghan guards — paid by the CIA and working under CIA supervision in an abandoned warehouse code-named the Salt Pit — dragged their captive around on the concrete floor, bruising and scraping his skin, before putting him in his cell, two of the officials said.

As night fell, so, predictably, did the temperature.

By morning, the Afghan man had frozen to death.

After a quick autopsy by a CIA medic — "hypothermia" was listed as the cause of death — the guards buried the Afghan, who was in his twenties, in an unmarked, unacknowledged cemetery used by Afghan forces, officials said. The captive’s family has never been notified; his remains have never been returned for burial. He is on no one’s registry of captives, not even as a "ghost detainee," the term for CIA captives held in military prisons but not registered on the books, they said.

"He just disappeared from the face of the earth," said one U.S. government official with knowledge of the case.

The CIA case officer, meanwhile, has been promoted…

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Premature Jubilation

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By Edward

Update: cross-posted on Liberal Street Fighter

What is it about NeoCon supporters that causes them to party like it’s 1999 over the most precarious of victories? Revenge of the high-school wallflowers syndrome? Seriously, from the "Mission Accomplished" embarrassment; to the decorating of Tenet, Franks, and Bremer; to the currently spreading canonization of Paul Wolfowitz, it’s as if they have a warehouse bursting at the seams with streamers and helium balloons they can’t hold back. "Puh-le-e-e-e-aze, let’s us dance now…we’ve learned the Macarena!"

Let me back up here, though, before anyone concludes that this is about sour grapes. Back when it was first becoming apparent to me that the invasion of Iraq was less about WMD and more about Wolfowitz et al.’s desire to test their social re-engineering theories, I acknowledged openly and frequently that perhaps one day he would be heralded as a genius in our history books. In fact, I truthfully said I hope so. But the cart is being shoved out ahead of the horse all over the place where Wolfie’s concerned.

In a column stuffed with the sort of sentiments normally reserved for love-struck teenagers’ diaries, David (I really am the NYTimes’ most transparent hack) Brooks is nearly panting with adulation for the man he says has "always been an ardent champion of freedom." But, as usual, Brooks gets it exactly backwards:

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A Few Thoughts on Choosing What We Treasure

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by Edward _

I give a lot of thought to how we, as a society, choose what we treasure. It’s a big part of the art world, where works that don’t end up in museums often end up in landfills, and the process by which they do end up in museums is so complex, competitive, and often seemingly arbitrary it leaves lots to ponder.

Lately, I’ve been expanding this thinking to the world at large. Different societies prioritize what they treasure differently, but most treasure what I’ll call the Big Five: Religion, Culture, Wealth, Nationalism, and Family. Some societies place more emphasis on Family than Wealth, some more on Nationalism than Religion, some more on Culture than Wealth, and visa versa, etc. etc.

Here in the US, Family is the popular favorite of politicians, even when they’re slashing funding for programs that help children or protect workers, but if forced to rank the Big Five, I’d say collectively Nationalism is our overall first priority. I’ve thought this since my 7th grade American History class, actually, where it dawned on me that without instilling a sense of Nationalism into the children of immigrants, the US would likely be enduring perpetual civil wars. For the nation to move forward in relative harmony, Nationalism had to take priority over Religion, Culture, and even Family, because there’s no way these other things could continuously unite peoples from every corner of the world. And "Divided we fall," so….

Where what we treasure begins to get really interesting for me, however, is when it comes to what we’ll do to protect it. The old, "if the house is on fire and you can take one object" scenario usually helps clarify this for me.

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More Music Blather

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by Edward With apologies to Sebastian for co-opting his headline. Via Amygdala So it’s a bit clunky but totally funky. Plug in your own words (with some limitations) and the Let Them Sing it For You project assembles a song by excerpting snippets from popular music with the same word in the lyrics. Here’s a … Read more

“The Americans don’t want you to return alive to Italy”

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Most of Giuliana Sgrena’s suspicion that she was targeted by US forces could be explained away in terms of bias (she was always against the war) and circumstances (she was reportedly "celebrating" in the car, so it’s possible she was not watching what was happening in front of the car), but, unless she’s simply lying about what her captors said, there’s either an eerie coincidence to her car being shot up (with apparently up to 400 rounds) or something stinks to high heaven:

In an article Sunday, Sgrena said her captors warned her shortly before her release to beware of the Americans. She later told Italian state TV RAI that "when they let me go, it was a difficult moment for me because they told me, `The Americans don’t want you to return alive to Italy.’" She didn’t elaborate.

The US account of what happened differs significantly from Sgrena’s:

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All Ideas (that I agree with) Are On the Table

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via Marshall Repeatedly since his re-election, President Bush has said he’s willing to listen to "all ideas" about how to reform Social Security. And supposedly, that’s why he’s taking to the road and holding townhall meetings. To share his ideas, but also to hear how the people he represents feel about them. As New Jersey … Read more

Sunny News for Solar Towers

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hat tip to constant reader wilfred for this item
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Solar Towers are making the news again thanks to a deal in Australia that just might see the first major one get built.* But what is a Solar Tower, you ask? A Green energy generating system (see this image) that works off the fact that heat rises.

If built, it will be nearly double the height of the world’s tallest structure, the CN Tower in Canada.

The Solar Tower is hollow in the middle like a chimney. At its base is a solar collector — a 25,000-acre, transparent circular skirt. The air under the collector is heated by the sun and funneled up the chimney by convection — hot air rises. As it rises, the air accelerates to 35 mph, driving 32 wind turbines inside the tower, which generate electricity much like conventional wind farms.

But the Solar Tower has a major advantage over wind farms and solar generators: It can operate with no wind, and 24 hours a day. Thanks to banks of solar cells, the tower stores heat during the day, allowing it to produce electricity continuously.

The standing argument against building Solar Towers essentially has been the costs. But the costs are beginning to look more attractive all the time. As TocqueDeville (on Kos) states:

It will cost about 500 million bucks. Standard coal powered plants that generate 200MW cost around 750 million and that doesn’t include the cost of mining, processing, and transporting coal.

Alternative Energy Blog, however, suggests the cost will be more, but only initially:

EnviroMission and SBP estimate the cost of their first 200-megawatt solar thermal tower at $670m, and say the cost of subsequent towers would fall. An engineering infrastructure, materials manufacturing plants and trained workforce would be in place and the design and construction would have been refined.

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SCOTUS Strikes Down Death for Juveniles

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by Edward _ Calling death an unconstitutionally cruel punishment for killers who were under 18 when they committed their crimes, the Supreme Court of the United States has ended the practice used in 19 states.  The 5-4 decision prevents states from making 16- and 17-year-olds eligible for execution (and apparently throws out the death sentences … Read more

Quick Central Asia Elections Update

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by Edward_ Kyrgyzstan held very important parliamentary elections yesterday and the voting was peaceful. The story is changing by the hour, but the Central Asian nation is awaiting the results and holding its breath, as some are predicting more (and widespread) protests if the results seem less than fair. Early results suggest that up to … Read more

A Decision

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After a frank exchange of emails, and according to the new banning procedures, the ObWi authors have voted to reverse the ban on Tacitus. The final decision was mine, and I’m personally happy about the decision. I cut my blogging teeth, so to speak, on Tacitus.org and consider its host one of the best writers … Read more

Gannon

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by Edward _ The only thing more pathetic than hiding behind one’s family as an excuse for taking down your website and disappearing from the scene when you’re exposed as an alleged whore is to relaunch your site as if you hadn’t tucked your tail between your legs and scampered away in disgrace in the … Read more

Did Invading Iraq Make Us Less Safe, Part 26

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by Edward _

Yes, one could argue that that horse is all but glue at this point, but news out today asks us to examine again whether invading Iraq has made us less safe. It’s not only a matter of whether we have enough troops to fight other enemies (you know, ones that actually have WMD); apparently now it’s a matter of whether we can get enough troops to even maintain current needs:

The Iraq war’s dampening effect on recruiting has led to a plan by the Marine Corps to put hundreds of additional recruiters on the streets over the next several months and offer new re-enlistment bonuses of up to $35,000, military officials said Thursday.

Recruiters and other military officials say the "Falluja effect" – a steady drumbeat of military casualties from Iraq, punctuated by graphic televised images of urban combat – is searing an image into the public eye that Marine officers say is difficult to overcome.

The Marines make up about 21 percent of the 150,000 military personnel in Iraq now but have suffered 31 percent of the military deaths there, according to Pentagon statistics.

The Army and other services have often increased the number of recruiters and dangled incentives to bolster their enlistment efforts in lean years. But for the Marines, steps of this magnitude, including the largest one-time increase in recruiters in recent memory, are unheard of in a service whose macho image has historically been a magnet for young people seeking adventure and danger in a military career.

Gen. Michael W. Hagee, the Marine Corps commandant, predicted on Thursday that the Marines would achieve their overall recruiting goal for this fiscal year, even after the service missed its monthly quota in January, the first such lapse in nearly a decade. But General Hagee indicated that recruiters were facing some of toughest conditions they have ever faced, starting in the homes of their prized recruits.

"What the recruiters are telling us is that they have to spend more time with the parents," General Hagee said. "Parents have influence, and rightly so, on the decision these young men and young women are going to make. They’re saying, ‘It’s not maybe a bad idea to join the Marine Corps, but why don’t you consider it a year from now, or two years from now; let’s think about this.’ "

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Scary Christian Soldiers

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by Edward _

Via Kos

Preface: There’s enough confusion about where this was originally published to make me question whether a bit of grape vine reporting has altered the full story. However, there’s more than enough highly disturbing about it (including photos) to warrant discussion.
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Liminal, on his anti-war blog Shlonkom Bakazay? (whose tag line is "an iraqi-american ashamed, in denial"), offers some disturbing images and commentary by a writer named "locomono" whose original post is apparently no longer available (or is for members only).

In a nutshell, locomono attended a Father-Son function at their local Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky, and the militaristic nature of the presentation disturbed him enough he began taking photos after a film was shown:

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Kafka Didn’t Foresee the Half of It

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by Edward _

Via Crooked Timber

Having read this absolutely nightmarish story of passengers on a charter flight who were arrested for complaining about the way French Police were handling the deportation of a hysterical, young Congolese man, I…well, I want to be really angry at somebody, but I don’t know where to start.

Franco La Cecla, one of the arrested passengers, offered this account:

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Get to Know Ahmed Omar Abu Ali: You’re Gonna See a Lot of Him

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So today Paul Krugman predicted that the Administration would soon conjure up some new national security crisis, like it always does when Bush can’t get what he wants done domestically. No, the terror alert wasn’t raised to orange just yet, but there is sensation afoot to distract us from the drudgery of personal accounts and all that, just like Paul predicted:

The campaign against Social Security is going so badly that longtime critics of President Bush, accustomed to seeing their efforts to point out flaws in administration initiatives brushed aside, are pinching themselves. But they shouldn’t relax: if the past is any guide, the Bush administration will soon change the subject back to national security.

And, well, right on cue comes this news:

A Virginia man has been charged with plotting with Middle East terrorists to assassinate President Bush, either by shooting him on the street or by detonating a car bomb, the Justice Department said today.

The department said that the suspect, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, had conspired with terrorists in Saudi Arabia, with whom he lived there from September 2002 to June 2003, and that he had obtained a religious blessing from a co-conspirator to carry out the killing.

Of course, it’s possible that Ali was indeed plotting to kill the president, but considering he’s been arrested and there’s likely not much you can do yourself to affect his trial, you may wish to spend your time focused on important domestic issues like Social Security reform. If so, here’s a handy, bite-sized, disposable summary of the key elements of the unfolding drama:

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What Was All That Fuss About?

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by Edward_ Hail Britannica! Five years after being forced by EU law to lift its ban on gays in its military, Great Britain is now taking their policy one logical step further. They are about to begin actively encouraging gay and lesbian Brits to enlist in their Navy. The navy announced today that it had … Read more

First they ignore you: Open Thread

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By Edward _ OK, so I’ve poked around in the typepad adminterface and cannot locate how to make the byline appear at the top of the page (anyone who knows how to do that, please let me know…I’ll sing your praises far and wide), but in order to help readers know before they commit to … Read more

Worst Weddings Open Thread

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Constant reader rilkefan requested a "things that went terribly wrong at weddings" thread. I’m due to be the best man at a wedding in September (and have admittedly been reworking my toast nonstop for a month already), so this is a very good time indeed to review folks’ worst wedding moments (as cautionary tales). Because … Read more

Doing the Math

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Via Marshall NY Senator Chuck Schumer has posted an actuarial calculator to help citizens see the personal effects of Bush’s proposed efforts to "strengthen" their social security benefits. I lose about $4500/year under Bush’s plan. Let the parsing begin.