Gentlemen, Start Your Livers…

It's that day again, the day that all political hacks and pundits dream of. Yes, I'm talking about the State of the Union. But you don't have to leave all the fun to those guys. Just pull that bottle of hooch off the shelf, turn on the TV, and get ready to play this year's State of the Union Drinking Game.

Friday Cat Blogging

Sometimes you just need someone to lie on.

Fastr, Pussycat, Fastr

I just played Fastr, a game where you have to guess what a bunch of images pulled from Flickr have in common. I think. Not really sure how it works, actually. It's a competitive game — you play against a number of other people, and you get to see everyone's score, updated in real time. I'm guessing the rest of my opponents must have been as confused as I was about how to play, because somehow I won my round. Cool!

Long vs. Short

When I was writing the software that powers this blog, I did what every copycat developer does — surveyed the competition, saw what features they supported, and then implemented the ones I could. Many of the blogs I looked at had some kind of extended content feature. The idea is that you can take long, boring posts and hide the long, boring parts behind a "Continue reading…" link. So, OK, if that's what everyone else does, who am I to argue?

I've never used this feature. I've never even thought of using this feature. If I have something to say, I just put it all out there. And while I may be mistaken a lot of the time about the quality of my own work, I figure that if it's good enough to go online at all, then it should be there in it's full glory right on the front page.

Recently, though, I've detected that my preference for the long-form layout on the front page doesn't just suit me as a writer, but as a reader, too. I'm not averse to scrolling, and being able to read a whole post while doing nothing other than hitting the space bar seems right to me, and helps me stay focused. If I don't like the post, I hit the space bar twice and I'm on to the next one. Simple.

Thus I was a little disappointed to see that when science blogger Chris Mooney moved his blog a couple of weeks ago, much of his front-page content got locked behind a "Read on" link. The strange thing is, however, that many of Chris's posts aren't very long, and in this case, the content hidden behind the link is a three-sentence paragraph. What a waste of time for me to have to click that link each time, then hit the back button when I'm done. I'm guessing this is caused by some editorial policy, but I wish they'd reconsider it.

This topic gives me a good excuse to point to a new addition to my blog roll, Michael Bérubé, who writes the kind of stuff you would expect a lefty cultural studies professor to write, only better than you would expect. Many of his posts are massive, but he just let's them flow down the page. My kind of guy.

Update: It looks like Chris Mooney has changed his style. Some posts are still continued after the click, but most now live in full glory on the front page. Thanks!

In the Navy

I see in today's Washington Post that the Navy has some issues with the movie Annapolis. While the movie does contain scenes that depict hazing, racist behavior and sex, the Navy claims it is not this kind of content that is the problem, but rather the overall lack of realism:

"You've got to keep in perspective that we did not object to particular scenes in the script," [Annapolis spokesman Cmdr. Rod] Gibbons said. "But the versions of the script we saw in 2004 did not realistically portray the Naval Academy and what we do here."

What a shame that Hollywood can't make good movies anymore that accurately reflect life in the Navy. It must be symptomatic of the decaying moral culture of those left-coast elites that we don't get the gripping realism of movies like Navy Seals or The Navy vs. The Night Monsters anymore.

11 Makes Me Sad

He's not even on the Supreme Court yet, but Sam Alito still made the 2005 50 Most Loathsome People in America list. I can only imagine how high he will rise in the years to come.

And should it come as any suprise that 3 of the top 10 are media figures? I didn't think so.

What Chris Said

I've known Chris Casey for a number of years, and I had the privledge of working with him on the 2004 presidential campaign. It was during that time that he first told me about his fight with his property owners association over its ban on political yard signs.

There are not a lot of issues that legitimately transcend partisan politics, but here is something surely all sides can agree on — the right to free political speech is one of the most basic, and most important, rights we have as Americans, and you shouldn't have to sacrifice that right when you buy a home. As Chris says his piece in the "Sunday Outlook" section of the Washington Post today:

What the Constitution gives, neither my POA nor my neighbors should be able to take away. Moving into a POA-ruled neighborhood should not mean moving out of America.

That's exactly right. If you live in Virginia, please help the cause by calling your Delegate and Senator and urging them to support HB 878 and SB 621. The speech you save might well be your own.

Absolute Power is Absolutely Great, Says Justice Department

Today I was unsurprised to learn that the crack lawyers (or is it lawyers on crack?) at the Department of Justice have determined that the President acted legally when he ordered the NSA to perform warrantless wiretaps on US citizens. There seems to be two major arguments here.

The first argument is that the resolution authorizing the use of force against Al Qaeda gave the President the authority to spy on Americans in this way. Never mind that the Congressional Research Service has already shown that argument to be bunk. And never mind that Senator Daschle, Senate Majority Leader at the time the resolution was passed, has said that the Senate explicitly decided not to give the President such authority in that resolution. But the TV talking heads will go endlessly back and forth on this question, and this "balance" will serve its intended purpose of confusing the hell out of everyone. Much like high school debate, the point here isn't to say things that are true, but to leave no claim unanswered. Mission Accomplished!

The second argument, however, is the more important one, and it goes something like this: "Fuck Congress — the President can do whatever he damn well wants!" As the Washington Post article puts it:

The Justice Department also argues that the inherent presidential powers in Article II of the Constitution — to wage war — cannot be abridged or impended in the context of a global terrorism fight. Justice lawyers say they believe that the president's powers are consistent with FISA but that if there is any question of a conflict, the president's powers trump FISA.

Now, this strikes me as a very weak legal argument, but then again, I'm not a lawyer. Fortunately, some people who are lawyers are saying the same thing. But let's step back and try to grasp exactly what they administration is saying. Properly contextualized, here's the argument:

"We're at war. This war will be long, and may never end. This war reaches around the globe, and does not stop at our borders. Indeed, it does not stop at your front door. While we are fighting this war, the President has the constitutional authority as Commander in Chief to use whatever means he finds appropriate. His authority to do that supercedes the laws of Congress. He can circumvent the Courts if he sees fit. And his constitutional authority even overrides other parts of the Constitution, such as the 4th amemdment."

Now that's pretty sobering when you think about it. The President is claiming absolute power, with no checks or balances, forever, to wage the global war on terror. And given the "six degreess of Kevin Bacon" nature of the GWOT (you get a phone call from someone who got an email from their friend who used to live next door to someone who's brother-in-law….), there is nothing that is necessarily outside of the President's absolute, unchecked authority.

No doubt some people — mostly on the other side of the political spectrum, I would imagine — will defend the President's despotic power grab on the grounds that they have nothing to hide, and that President is a good person who would not abuse his authority. It is very difficult to have meaningful arguments with people like this, however, since they've given up on the very premise that makes such an argument important — that democracy and the rule of law are inherently good things.

Even so, I imagine that many of those people haven't thought out the implications of this position very clearly, and will have a change of heart when it's President Hillary who's weilding the GWOT cudgel. But the important thing to remember here is that it isn't the person with the power that matters as much as the nature of the power itself. And as much as I might enjoy the thought of Attorney General Michael Moore doing random searches of a bunch of holier-than-thou Republicans with "nothing to hide", that's not the best thing we can do for our democracy. It's better for us all if we just agree that the Bill of Rights is a good thing and continue to insist upon having an actual President, not a king.

Feed Me, New York Times

Well, that's odd — it looks like the New York Times hasn't updated its RSS feeds in over a day. How annoying.

It's bad enough that the Times is locking some of its content behind a subscription wall. And it's bad enough that the Times will expire their normal links after a couple of weeks. But if it's not going to update the one means by which their still-free articles can be linked to permanently, then why link to them at all?

Happy Birthday to Me

Today I turn 41, but what's another year? Everyone dreads the big 4-0, but after that one passes you by, it's just more of the same. Until I turn 50, that is — now that's old.

So raise your glass of cheer for me, and have some cake. And if you're in town, I'll be at the 'Ra tonight, celebrating with — what else — glasses of cheer and cake!

Hating America

Yesterday, Bush gave a lecture on the concept of free speech in a democratic society. Let's take a look.

He said he welcomed "honest critics" who question the way the war is being conducted and the "loyal opposition" that points out what is wrong with his administration's approach.

In other words, the good critics are those who believe that going to war against Iraq was the right thing to do, and merely quibble about the operational details. If you've been against the war from the beginning, you can't be an "honest critic".

But he termed irresponsible the "partisan critics who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil or because of Israel or because we misled the American people," as well as "defeatists who refuse to see that anything is right." With that description, Bush lumped the many Democrats who have accused him of twisting prewar intelligence with the few people, mostly outside the mainstream, who have raised the issues of oil and Israel.

So even if you correctly believed that Iraq didn't have a nuclear weapons program and wasn't an imminent threat, you're still a partisan. And still irresponsible.

Bush argued that irresponsible discussion harms the morale of troops overseas, emboldens the insurgents they are fighting and sets a bad example for Iraqis trying to establish a democratic government.

And here's the punch line: those bad, partisan critics are giving aid and comfort to the enemy, and are, by definition, traitors. Who didn't see that one coming?

"In a free society, there's only one check on political speech and that's the judgment of the American people," the president said to sustained applause from a friendly audience, a gathering of Veterans of Foreign Wars. "So I ask all Americans to hold their elected leaders to account and demand a debate that brings credit to our democracy, not comfort to our adversaries."

And thus, the voters should kick out the traitors who opposed this war. QED.

This all makes sense in a kind of twisted way, if you equate patriotism with a cult of personality, free speech with treason, and demand that those who were right about this war from the start should be disqualified from discussing it. In other words, it makes sense only if you assume that America is not at all like America. But apart from its incoherence, I think the President is missing another danger with his argument.

You see, I believe that the Bush administration manipulated intelligence and lied to the American people in order to justify the invasion of Iraq. Hence, according to Bush, I'm a traitor. And according to a CBS/NYT poll from December, so are 52% of Americans. The American people have rendered their judgment, and Bush is the one in the minority here. So perhaps Bush should take his own advice to heart, and shut the hell up and stop hating America.

Sassy News Monkey?

I'm not really sure what to make of the latest interactive "feature" the local paper just rolled out. It's a flash application starring "Chopper the Sassy News Monkey". You ask Chopper questions, and he responds the next week with his "sour wisdom."

Whatever else is wrong with this idea, it's clear that this monkey is seriously misnamed. He's got the voice of Lou Grant after a weekend bender, and he smokes a big cigar. What's sassy about that? And he looks really pissed, or even a little possessed.

Of course, looking like that, I'd be pissed, too. I mean, just look at those hands and feet! He's clearly been tortured, or maybe raised in a nuclear plant. Watching him run is pretty disturbing — it's kind of how you would imagine a jellyfish would run if it could.

Clearly, the Charlotte Observer is trying to ruin my appreciation of monkeys, just as they've come close to ruining my appreciation of online news with their crappy site. So maybe there's a question in there for Chopper: "Why are your bosses such stupid jerks? (And what did they do to your hands?)"

Oh Thank God

The New York Times gives all of us who have been watching the Weather Channel obsessively over the past few days the good news: "California Vineyards Escape Storm Damage". So open a bottle from your favorite Napa or Sonoma winery and praise be to our red, tanniny savior!