brainrow

Cartoonist Mark Fiore says: Say goodbye to the good ol’ U.S. of A., and say hello to Greater Georgelandia.

L. Paul Bremer, formerly head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, was on The Daily Show last night:

Bremer: As you know, I did support the war. I supported the war because I’ve been involved in the fight on terrorism for twenty-five years now, and I was concerned that the new terrorists, the guys who showed their face here on 9/11, would get their hands on really bad stuff: nuclear, chemical or biological. And I think we need to be very concerned about that. I think that is the preeminent threat to American security.

Jon Stewart: I definitely think we’re still going on that problem. I feel that it would be nice, for once, if the debate we have in this country about our actions is the actual debate that’s going on, and not the one that was invented by the marketing guys.

The Supreme Court disappointed the Bush Administration yesterday when it upheld an Oregon right-to-die law:

The Supreme Court upheld Oregon’s law on physician-assisted suicide yesterday, ruling that the Justice Department may not punish doctors who help terminally ill patients end their lives.

By a vote of 6 to 3, the court ruled that Attorney General John D. Ashcroft exceeded his legal authority in 2001 when he threatened to prohibit doctors from prescribing federally controlled drugs if they authorized lethal doses of the medications under the Oregon Death With Dignity Act.

The ruling struck down one of the administration’s signature policies regarding what President Bush calls the “culture of life” and lifts the last legal cloud over the state’s law, which is unique in the nation. It also frees other states to follow in Oregon’s footsteps, unless Congress acts to the contrary.

If Administration officials seem oddly unconcerned about the negative ruling, perhaps they intend to appeal the case to President Bush himself, whose very word is the only law.

Today is Benjamin Franklin’s birthday.

Franklin was one of the founding fathers of the United States. He sat on the Continental Congress that approved the Declaration of Independence. He was a delegate at the Constitutional Convention that wrote the U.S. Constitution. He made a fortune as a businessman, and became one of the greatest scientists of his day. He was a prolific inventor, a successful diplomat, an early abolitionist, a philanthropist and a public-spirited citizen who formed the first public library and the first fire department in America — and we’re scarcely scratching the surface.

If he were still alive, he would be 300 years old today.

I don’t think he would have thought much of George W. Bush’s contention that the president can pick and choose the laws he will obey in time of war. I don’t think he would have kept quiet about it, either. You can bet that Karl Rove and company would work day and night to “Swift Boat” Ben Franklin.

He was born in Boston on Jan. 17, 1706, the 10th son of a soap- and candle-maker. Starting at age 12, he worked five years as an apprentice at his brother James’s newspaper, the New England Courant, establishing himself as a prankster and satirist, and, not for the last time, as “a little obnoxious to the governing party.”

…

Franklin’s greatest public triumph was probably as a diplomat, persuading France to aid the colonies in their fight against the British. But he needed no revolution to be a revolutionary, for he changed the world by living in it. “The things which hurt, instruct,” he observed.

Middle-aged eyesight led him to design a single, all-purpose set of glasses — bifocals. A struggle to raise money for a public hospital led to a plan by which private contributions would be equaled by government funds, the “matching grant” formula in use to this day.

…

“His demonstration that lightning was not supernatural had huge impact,” says Dudley Herschbach, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist. “Since lightning had long been considered a prerogative of the Almighty, Franklin was attacked for presumption, vigorously but in vain.”

Pat Robertson and the Intelligent Design crowd would feel right at home attacking Ben Franklin.

Herschbach, a Harvard University professor who has lectured frequently on Franklin, says: “Franklin’s scientific curiosity extended far beyond his adventures with electricity. He made important discoveries and observations concerning the motion of storms, heat conduction, the path of the Gulf Stream, bioluminescence, the spreading of oil films, and also advanced prescient ideas about conservation of matter and the wave nature of light.”

I wonder how Franklin would respond to the Bush Administration’s steady dismissal of global warming? If he dared to say a critical word, we can be sure they would dismiss him as a dangerous crank.

Franklin now seems the safest of the founders to celebrate, but when he died, in 1790, he was mistrusted by many in power as a Francophile synonymous with the excesses of the French Revolution. The Senate rejected a proposal to wear badges of mourning in his honor. A year passed before an official eulogy was delivered…

And I thought Americans hated France only because they were right about Iraq when George W. Bush was wrong.

Nasty characters in politics are nothing new. You can bet that if Ben Franklin were targeted by a Pat Robertson or a Karl Rove, he would know how to fight back.

We don’t get many leaders like that nowadays.

Happy birthday, Ben.

Last night the History Channel ran a long show on Abraham Lincoln, and these comments by Matthew Pinsker, author of Lincoln’s Sanctuary, sort of leaped out at me:

He gains a measure of empathy for people who lose loved ones. You know, this is a president who sends young boys to die in a war, and understands what that means to a family: death and tragedy. And it makes him a far more sympathetic figure as a leader, because I think the general public, through a variety of images and stories and decisions he made, realized that he was a kind of empathetic figure, in a way that they were not used to in the White House. And so it separates him from other people. It’s why he gained this image as Father Abraham.

He’s riding out the the Soldiers’ Home one afternoon in the summer of ’62, and he comes across a train of ambulance wagons that are carrying back bodies of wounded soldiers from the Peninsula Campaign, which was one of the pivotal turning points in the history of the war. And it was a brutal campaign with terrible loss of life and devastation to the Union forces.

Now, the president eagerly went up to them and was anxious to converse with them about the real conditions of affairs. That he reached out to them, risking whatever criticism or complaints they would have, in order to make contact, to talk to them. And some people who aren’t as empathetic don’t want to be exposed to angry widows or disgruntled wounded soldiers or others. Lincoln’s the opposite. And for me that defines his greatness.

Mediocre presidents hide from bad news. Great presidents reach out for it.

Personally, I think Pinsker gives George W. Bush way too much credit, calling him “mediocre.” Mediocrity is beyond this president’s reach.

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing the ground…. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will.

— Frederick Douglass

I wonder, sometimes, whether we’re doing the right thing in the way we honor civil rights pioneers like Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks.

There’s scarcely a politician in the country today who has anything but warm words of praise for King and the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Which is strange. During King’s lifetime, there were armies of politicians resisting the civil rights movement every single step of the way.

Rosa Parks came to public attention by being arrested. She was hauled to jail; mug shots and fingerprints were taken. Martin Luther King was arrested many times. He was vilified in language that makes my face feel hot even today.

His non-violent movement was met with dogs and clubs, tear gas, firehoses, guns and bombs. But today, politicians of almost every political stripe stepped up to podiums across the nation with smiles and glowing words about the civil rights movement.

Have we really changed so much since the 1960s? I doubt it.

Tomorrow, many of those smiling politicians will go back to work tying the law in knots to find ways to disenfranchise black voters. It won’t be on account of race — oh, no — they’ll have to find some dodge to explain it. They will approve tax breaks carefully calibrated to benefit millionaires, and then plead poverty to make cuts in programs for poor people.

I wonder whether we’ve made a mistake making Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks icons of the civil rights movement. I don’t think they ever intended to be put on pedestals and serenely admired as heroes of a glorious past. I don’t think they ever intended their struggle for social justice to be turned into an historical relic.

Some of the old injustices are gone, thank goodness, but there’s plenty of injustice left. To honor the memory of Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, we need to carry on the work. We need to press the fight against injustice wherever we find it.

How can we tell whether we’re doing it right? There will be an army of politicians resisting every single step of the way.

Last June, Apple Computer announced that future versions of their Macintosh computers would be based on CPU chips from monopolist Intel. At the time, I said this:

In the past year or so, Macintosh sales seemed to be inching up. Now, sales of existing Macs are going to crater. The new machines won’t ship until about the time that Microsoft’s continually-postponed Longhorn operating system does. The first Macintels will ship in about a year. The entire line won’t be converted for two and a half years. During that time, nobody will want to buy machines that Apple has already abandoned.

Apparently I was wrong:

Mr. Jobs also revealed that Apple’s revenue for the quarter ended Dec. 31 jumped 63 percent, to $5.7 billion. The figure easily beat Wall Street’s expectations, as sales of the iPod portable music player more than tripled compared with the holiday quarter in 2004. Revenue for that quarter was $3.5 billion.

Mr. Jobs said the company sold 14 million iPods during the holiday quarter, up from 4.5 million during the 2004 holiday season. Perhaps more surprising was the news that Apple sold 1.25 million Macintosh computers in the quarter, up from 1.05 million in 2004, despite the worries of some analysts that consumers would delay their purchases. Sales at Apple’s retail stores rose to about $1 billion, Mr. Jobs said.

This week, Apple introduced their first Intel-based Macs, almost six months before the predictions made last year. They said that the transition would be completed by the end of this year, about a year before last year’s predictions.

Unlike the prototype machines Apple supplied to software developers last June, the new Macs won’t run any currently shipping version of Microsoft Windows, so visions of running Windows and Macintosh software on the same machine are on hold. Longhorn, the forthcoming version of Windows, has been renamed Vista. It’s expected by the end of this year, and may be able to run on the new machines.

I still don’t want one of the new machines. Intel has built DRM capabilities into many of their chips, and I’m still concerned that Apple made the switch to take advantage of those capabilities.

The point of the microcomputer revolution that started in the 1970s was that ordinary people could have complete control of computer power that had previously been available only to governments and big corporations. Once that revolution was well entrenched, Microsoft and other software vendors started trying to take that control back, with things like product activation, active updates and “digital rights management” (DRM) everywhere. Apple has always been an oasis from these anti-customer efforts. However, one apparent reason for Apple’s move to Intel now is that Intel is building DRM capabilities into their CPUs, helping ensure that, although you may have paid for the computer, someone else will control what you can do with it.

I believe it may be a year or two before we know whether Apple intends to limit users’ control over their own computers. Hard as it is to believe, I’ve been wrong before. I’d be delighted to be proved wrong once more.

This case is playing out in the Ohio Supreme Court, right here in Columbus, Ohio:

Joy and Carl Gamble say they just want to retire peacefully in the dream home where they’ve lived for more than 35 years. But the Cincinnati suburb of Norwood has other plans for the property.

Using its power of eminent domain, the city wants to take a neighborhood that it considers to be deteriorating and boost its fortunes by allowing a $125 million development of offices and shops.

…

Joy Gamble speaks bitterly about the couple’s ordeal and what it meant to see their home of 35 years, purchased after years of savings, in danger of demolition.

“When the municipalities and the people that have lots of money decide they want what you have, you don’t own it,” Gamble said. “You bought it, you paid for it, you kept the taxes up, you kept the appearance up, but it wasn’t yours.”

It might be hard to believe, but blogger Hetty Litjens seems to have a considerably harsher opinion of the Bush Administration than I do. I’ve often seen a headline from Hetty’s blog and thought, “Woo hoo! Tell it!” Then I read the blog entry itself and think, “Uh, I’m not really sure I want to link to that.”

This entry, too, comes on pretty strong. But I think it makes a point about the very nature of civilization. I have taken the liberty of reformatting the excerpts below:

When Christianity took over from the belligerent and greedy Roman empire, it did so on the basis of new ideals and tenets. These were essentially Pax et Justitia, Peace and Justice, as exposed by St. Augustine. Peace can only be based on justice. These ideals met with general acceptance and resulted in the success of the Christian church. When things went wrong in the Church it was because it became entangled in power and wealth.

“Remota itaque iustitia quid sunt regna nisi magna latrocinia?”

“Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies?”

— De Civitate Dei (The City of God), Book IV, Chapter IV.

…

St. Augustine changed the course of history by giving a new alternative to the reign of war, his new tenets were Peace and Justice. These were the guiding principles of our Christian civilization for hundreds of years. George W. Bush is wiping out not only the American Constitution, but also the attainments of thousands of years of civilization.

Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow sees where the above the law presidency is heading:

Why do liberals have to act like Chicken Little every time the president exercises his constitutional authority to rob banks?

Please note that in the real world, the arresting officer would be charged with treason.

The Senate Judiciary Committee held the first day of confirmation hearings today for Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito. I suspect Alito caused a bit of a panic at the White House and among Republican lawmakers when he said this:

And there is nothing that is more important for our republic than the rule of law. No person in this country, no matter how high or powerful, is above the law, and no person in this country is beneath the law.

Panicky Republicans consoled themselves by looking at Alito’s record and realizing he was just kidding.

New York Times columnist Frank Rich:

[W]hen a hyperventilating President Bush rants that the exposure of his warrant-free wiretapping in a newspaper is shameful and puts “our citizens at risk” by revealing our espionage playbook, you have to wonder what he is really trying to hide. Our enemies, as America has learned the hard way, are not morons. Even if Al Qaeda hasn’t seen “Sleeper Cell” because it refuses to spring for pay cable, it has surely assumed from the get-go that the White House would ignore legal restraints on eavesdropping, just as it has on detainee jurisprudence and torture.

That the White House’s over-the-top outrage about the Times scoop is a smokescreen contrived to cover up something else is only confirmed by Dick Cheney’s disingenuousness. In last week’s oration at a right-wing think tank, he defended warrant-free wiretapping by saying it could have prevented the 9/11 attacks. Really? Not with this administration in charge. On 9/10 the N.S.A. (lawfully) intercepted messages in Arabic saying, “The match is about to begin,” and, “Tomorrow is zero hour.” You know the rest. Like all the chatter our government picked up during the president’s excellent brush-clearing Crawford vacation of 2001, it was relegated to mañana; the N.S.A. didn’t rouse itself to translate those warnings until 9/12.

…

The highest priority for the Karl Rove-driven presidency is … to preserve its own power at all costs. With this gang, political victory and the propaganda needed to secure it always trump principles, even conservative principles, let alone the truth. Whenever the White House most vociferously attacks the press, you can be sure its No. 1 motive is to deflect attention from embarrassing revelations about its incompetence and failures.

…

The louder the reports of failures on this president’s watch, the louder he tries to drown them out by boasting that he has done everything “within the law” to keep America safe and by implying that his critics are unpatriotic, if not outright treasonous. Mr. Bush certainly has good reason to pump up the volume now. In early December the former 9/11 commissioners gave the federal government a report card riddled with D’s and F’s on terrorism preparedness.

The front line of defense against terrorism is supposed to be the three-year-old, $40-billion-a-year Homeland Security Department, but news of its ineptitude, cronyism and no-bid contracts has only grown since Katrina. The Washington Post reported that one Transportation Security Administration contract worth up to $463 million had gone to a brand-new company that (coincidentally, we’re told) contributed $122,000 to a powerful Republican congressman, Harold Rogers of Kentucky. An independent audit by the department’s own inspector general, largely unnoticed during Christmas week, found everything from FEMA to border control in some form of disarray.

Yet even as this damning report was released, the president forced cronies into top jobs in immigration enforcement and state and local preparedness with recess appointments that bypassed Congressional approval.…

THE warrantless eavesdropping is more of the same incompetence. Like our physical abuse of detainees and our denial of their access to due process, this flouting of the law may yet do as much damage to fighting the war on terrorism as it does to civil liberties. As the First Amendment lawyer Martin Garbus wrote in The Huffington Post, every defense lawyer representing a terrorism suspect charged in the four years since Mr. Bush’s N.S.A. decree can challenge the legality of the prosecution’s evidence. “The entire criminal process will be brought to a standstill,” Mr. Garbus explains, as the government refuses to give the courts information on national security grounds, inviting the dismissal of entire cases, and judges “up and down the appellate ladder” issue conflicting rulings.

Far from “bringing justice to our enemies,” as Mr. Bush is fond of saying, he may once again be helping them escape the way he did at Tora Bora.

In T. H. White’s novel, The Once and Future King, the wizard Merlyn lives backwards in time. In the twelfth century, when he advises the young King Arthur and his foster brother Kay, he is an old man who remembers the twentieth century, when he was young. From the book:

Kay looked up, with his tongue between his teeth, and remarked:

“By the way. You remember that argument we were having about aggression? Well, I have thought of a good reason for starting a war.”

Merlyn froze.

“I would like to hear it.”

“A good reason for starting a war is simply to have a good reason! For instance, there might be a king who had discovered a new way of life for human beings — you know, something which would be good for them. It might even be the only way of saving them from destruction. Well, if the human beings were too wicked or too stupid to accept his way, he might have to force it on them, in their own interests, by the sword.”

The magician clenched his fists, twisted his gown into screws, and began to shake all over.

“Very interesting,” he said in a trembling voice. “Very interesting. There was just such a man when I was young — an Austrian who invented a new way of life and convinced himself that he was the chap to make it work. He tried to impose his reformation by the sword, and plunged the civilized world into misery and chaos. But the thing which this fellow had overlooked, my friend, was that he had had a predecessor in the reformation business, called Jesus Christ. Perhaps we may assume that Jesus knew as much as the Austrian did about saving people. But the odd thing is that Jesus did not turn the disciples into storm trooper, burn down the Temple at Jerusalem, and fix the blame on Pontius Pilate. On the contrary, he made it clear that the business of the philosopher was to make ideas available, and not to impose them on people.”

I know we could never get George W. Bush to read a big thick book like this. But I wish we could get some studio to do a faithful animated version of the whole book and put it on a DVD for him to watch sometime when he doesn’t feel like working.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy on Alito’s credibility problem:

Every Supreme Court nominee bears a heavy burden to demonstrate that he or she is committed to the constitutional principles that have been vital in advancing fairness, decency and equal opportunity in our society. As Judge Samuel Alito approaches his confirmation hearings next week, the more we learn about him, the more questions we have about the credibility of his assurances to us.

…

Alito was 35 when he applied for an important political position with Attorney General Ed Meese during the Reagan administration. Alito sought to demonstrate his “philosophical commitment” to Meese’s legal outlook….

The views expressed there raise serious concerns about his ability to interpret the Constitution with a fair and open mind. When this embarrassing document came to light, he faced a difficult decision on whether to defend his 1985 views or walk away from them. When I and others met him a short time later, he appeared to be renouncing them — “I was just a 35-year-old seeking a job,” he told me. But now he’s seeking another, far more important job. Is he saying that he did not really mean what he said then?

…

In 1990, during the confirmation process on his nomination to the 3rd Circuit, Alito disclosed that his largest investment was in Vanguard mutual funds. To avoid possible conflicts of interest, he promised us that he would recuse himself from any case involving “the Vanguard companies.” Vanguard continues to be on his recusal list, and his investments in Vanguard funds have risen from tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands. Nevertheless, in 2002 he failed to recuse himself when assigned to sit on a case in which three Vanguard companies were named parties and listed prominently on every brief and on his own pro-Vanguard opinion in the case.

…

Alito’s words and record must credibly demonstrate that he understands and supports the role of the Supreme Court in upholding the progress we’ve made in guaranteeing that all Americans have an equal chance to take their rightful place in the nation’s future. “Credibility” has rarely been an issue for Supreme Court nominees, but it is clearly a major issue for Alito.

Last night, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann had a thought about Pat Robertson’s pronouncements:

When somebody swears in a particular way, we’ve all heard somebody else respond in those situations, “Do not use the name of the Lord in vain.”

I was told by a biblical student that that admonition has been completely misunderstood — that when the Bible says, “Do not use the name of thy Lord God in vain,” it really means, “Don’t be so presumptuous as to claim God told you and only you what He thinks of something.” … Is that not sort of a description of what Pat Robertson’s doing here?