Discontent.com suffered a major hard drive failure in early February. While it has been replaced and reinstalled, this blog is down temporarily pending a move to scoop, instead of b2evolution, as its backend.

Testing, testing.

GRAHAM: Number one, from a personal point of view, do you believe the attacks on 9/11 against our nation were a crime or an act of war?

ALITO: That's a hard question to answer.

GRAHAM: Good.

ALITO: That's a way of buying 30 seconds while I think about the answer.

I find it somewhat exceptional that Judge Alito hasn't already decided how he feels about this question; it's the kind of thing that I expect every politically aware citizen to have decided, one way or another.

ALITO: Senator, I think that what I think personally about this is really not -- it's not something that would be -- that would inform anything that I would have to do as a judge.

GRAHAM: Well, Judge, I guess I disagree. Because I think we're at war. And the law of armed conflict in a war time environment is different than dealing with domestic criminal enterprises. Do you agree with that?

ALITO: It certainly is.

GRAHAM: We have laws on the book that protects us, the Fourth Amendment included, from our own law enforcement agencies coming against our own citizens. But we also have laws on the books during a time of war to protect our country from being infiltrated by foreign powers and bodies who wish to do harm to us. That's a totally different legal concept. Is that correct?

ALITO: I'm reluctant to get into this because I think things like act of war can well have particular legal meanings in particular context, under the Constitution...

That's much more understandable. The first question was asking a personal political opinion; this is asking a more nuanced legal question on which a judge should not commit himself until he knows the details of the facts in a specific case.

[The rest of the interchange, available here, consists of Graham trying to get Alito to commit himself to the administration's position in Hamdi and Padilla, and Alito refusing to commit:]

GRAHAM: For those who are watching who are not lawyers, generally speaking, in all of the wars that we've been involved in we don't let the people trying to kill us sue us. Right? And we're not going to let them go at an arbitrary time period if we think they're still dangerous because we don't want to go have to shoot at them again or let them shoot at us again.

Is that a good summary of the law of armed conflict?

ALITO: I don't know whether I'd put it quite that broadly, Senator.

(LAUGHTER)

The precedent that you -- the Johnson v. Eisentrager, of course, has been substantially modified, if not overruled. Ex Parte Quirin, of course, is still a precedent.

There was a lower precedent involving someone who fought with the Italian army. And I can't remember the exact name of it. And that was the case that I thought you were referring to when you first framed the question.

But those are the precedents in the area. Then, if you go back to the Civil War, there's Ex Parte Milligan and a few others.

GRAHAM: We don't have to go back that far.
(LAUGHTER)

(Ex Parte Milligan was a civil-war era case which denied Lincoln the power to suspend habeas corpus in northern states in which the civil courts were still operating.)

ALITO: I did say that. The 14th Amendment protects liberty. The Fifth Amendment protects liberty. And I think it's well accepted that this has a substantive component and that that component includes aspects of privacy that have constitutional protection.

DEWINE: Congress has tried several times to protect our children from being exposed to pornography on the Internet. In 1996, we passed the Communications Decency Act, but the Supreme Court struck it down, citing the First Amendment. A few years later, we passed the Child Online Protection Act. Again, the court struck it down.

What bothers me about these cases is they fail to account for something that to me seems relatively simple: The core of the First Amendment is the protection of political speech, but it seems to me that pornography is altogether different. Unlike political speech, pornography has little value, if it has any value at all.

Ah, but the entire point of the first amendment is that Congress may not make that value judgement. The state may not decide that it values certain kinds of speech and doesn't value other kinds of speech, and then prohibit the latter kind on the basis that the state does not value it. This is bedrock, fundamental principle of our political system. It's a shame that certain politicians don't grasp that.

ALITO: The law, of course, as you know, constitutional law draws a distinction between obscenity, which has no First Amendment protection but is subject to a very strict definition, and pornography, which is not obscenity but is sexually related materials.

A distinction which has no basis in the constitution itself, but is drawn instead from the common-law; a better example of judicial activism would be hard to find.

ALITO: Now, in the pre-Internet world, the job of preventing minors from purchasing pornography was a lot simpler. If they wanted to get it, I guess they would have to go to a store or some place and buy it.

But on the Internet, of course, it's readily available from any computer terminal. And a lot of minors today are a lot more sophisticated in the use of computers than their parents. So the ability of parents to monitor what they're doing and supervise what they're doing is greatly impaired by this difference in computer aptitude.

And I can't say much more about the question than that. It is a difficult question. I think that there needs to be additional effort in this area, probably by all branches of government, so that the law fully takes into account the differences regarding communication over the Internet and access to materials over the Internet by minors.

That sounds ominous.

ALITO: I think that the principle of "one person, one vote" is a fundamental part of our constitutional law. I think it would be -- I do not see any reason why it should be reexamined.

Rick Hasen had expressed concern about this, given Alito's early writings.

ALITO: That was certainly true with respect to the equal protection clause. There was a long period between Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education when the true meaning of the equal protection clause was not recognized in the decisions of the Supreme Court.

And when Brown was finally decided, that was not an instance of the court changing the meaning of the equal protection clause; it was an instance of a court writing an incorrect interpretation that had prevailed for a long period of time.

It seems to me that Judge Alito is arguing here that there is an absolute truth of the meaning of the equal protection clause and that Brown did not constitute a change in the meaning, but rather a discerning of the true meaning which had heretofore lain unseen. No relativist, Judge Alito.

This may be problematic, depending on what Judge Alito believes the true meaning of things to be. What should happen when stare decisis requires one interpretation of [x], but a judge knows the true meaning of [x]to be something different?

ALITO:The Constitution sets age limits, for example, for people who want to hold various federal offices and there can't be much debate about what that means or how it applies.

But it also contains some broad principles: no unreasonable search and seizures, the guarantee that nobody will be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law, equal protection of the laws. And in those instances, it is the job of the judiciary to try to understand the principle and apply it to the new situations that come before the judiciary.

I think the judiciary has to do that in a neutral fashion. I think judges have to be wary about substituting their own preferences, their own policy judgments for those that are in the Constitution.

They have to identify the principle that is to be applied under these broader provisions of the Constitution and apply it, but I don't see that as being the same thing as the judges injecting his or her policy views or preferences or ideas about the direction in which the society should be moving into the decision-making process.

It's a shame that Senator Kohl didn't then ask Judge Alito for examples of what he thinks does constitute judges injecting their own policy views. This is, I think, the key issue in the dispute between Democrats and Republicans about whether or not Alito should be confirmed: given that everyone more or less agrees that broad principles should be applied to new situations neutrally, how does one draw the line between that and injecting your own policy preferences?

The dispute over pornography is a grand example of this. Given the principle that the freedom of the press may not be abridged by the Congress (or, through incorporation, by the states), is it application of that principle to say that Congress may not ban consenting-adult pornography? Or is that an injection of liberal policy views or preferences into the decision making process?

It's relieving to note that Judge Alito believes that there are broad principles which must be interpreted and applied, as there are some conservative activists who do not; but his statement is utterly useless in helping a neutral observer tell where he draws the line, or even given a scatter diagram of what falls on which sides of the line.

But that seems to be the general pattern of these hearings: vague answers which don't actually say anything. It's almost as though this were a Potemkin hearing instead of a real one.

KYL: According to one survey that I had access to, 93 percent of the American people support the right to say "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.

It seems to me that this is fundamentally missing the point of the dispute. Nobody is saying that it is illegal for someone to say "under God" when reciting the pledge of allegiance; the allegation is that it is illegal to *require* someone to say "under God" when reciting the pledge of allegiance. (I must say that I find the dispute to be somewhat peculiar given that the Supreme Court said more than sixty years ago that schoolchildren can't be forced to say the pledge if it would violate their religious beliefs; Newdow appears to be asking not just for the right to not say it, but for the right to say it the way he wants it to be said, in a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too sort of way).

Senator Kyl went on to make this grand argument involving the notion that sometimes rights conflict, and the role of the judiciary is to adjudicate the conflict, and that's valid, but his example is peculiar. Nobody's rights are trampled if a court rules that "under God" should not be a mandatory part of the pledge of allegiance.

LEAHY: Now, three years ago, the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department -- and you're familiar with that; you worked there years ago -- they issued a legal opinion, which they kept very secret, in which it concluded that the president of the United States had the power to override domestic and international laws outlawing torture. So the president could override these laws outlawing torture. They tried to redefine torture, and they asserted, I quote, that the president enjoys complete authority over the conduct of war, close quote. And they went on further to say that if Congress passed criminal law prohibiting torture, quote, in a manner that interferes with the president's direction of such core matters as detention and interrogation of enemy combatants, that would be unconstitutional. They seem to say that the president could immunize people from any prosecution if they violated our laws on torture. And that stated as what was the legal basis in this administration until somebody, apparently at the Justice Department, leaked it to the press. It became public. Once it became public -- the obvious reaction of Republicans, Democrats, everybody saying this is outrageous; it's beyond the pale -- the administration withdrew that as its position. The attorney general even said in his confirmation that this no longer -- no longer -- represented Bush administration policy.

LEAHY: What is your view now? And I ask this because the memo has been withdrawn. It's not going to come before you. What is your view of the legal contention in that memo that the president can override the laws and immunize illegal conduct?

ALITO: Well, I think the first thing that has to be said is what I said yesterday, and that is that no person in this country is above the law. And that includes the president and it includes the Supreme Court. Everybody has to follow the law, and that means the Constitution of the United States and it means the laws that are enacted under the Constitution of the United States. Now, there can be -- there are questions that arise concerning executive powers. And those specific questions have to be resolved, I think, by looking to that framework that Justice Jackson set out, that I mentioned earlier.

LEAHY: Well, let's go into one of those specifics. Do you believe the president has the constitutional authority as commander in chief to override laws enacted by Congress and immunize people under his command from prosecutions that they violate, these laws passed by Congress?

ALITO: Well, if we were in -- if a question came up of that nature, then I think you'd be in -- where the president is exercising executive power in the face of a contrary expression of congressional will through a statute or even an implicit expression of congressional will, you'd be in what Justice Jackson called the twilight zone, where the president's power is at its lowest point.

That response was quite clever, although I don't know if it was intended the way it was received. Judge Alito has not conceded Senator Leahy's premise that the President has overridden laws enacted by Congress. He has merely said that if the President were to do so, it would be problematic under the rules of analysis in question.

That's not to say that he thinks it isn't; merely that this answer is a carefully, cleverly crafted dodge.

SPECTER: Do you agree with Justice O'Connor's statement quoted frequently yesterday from Hamdi that, quote, We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens, when she was citing the Youngstown case? Do you agree with that?

ALITO: Absolutely. That's a very important principle. Our Constitution applies in times of peace and in times of war, and it protects the rights of Americans under all circumstances.

SPECTER: You made a speech at Pepperdine where you said, in commenting about the decision of the Supreme Court in ex parte Milligan, that, quote, the Constitution applies even in an extreme emergency. The government made a, quote, broad and unwise argument that the Bill of Rights simply don't apply during wartime. Do you stand by that statement?

ALITO: I certainly do, Senator. The Bill of Rights applies at all times. And it's particularly important that we adhere to the Bill of Rights in times of war and in times of national crisis, because that's when there's the greatest temptation to depart from them.

Not that I had any serious belief that he would say anything different; but it's still a relief to hear it.

Apparently this web log is the #1 hit for invent automobile terrible idea on certain search engines.

I've been tagged with an internet tell-all-about-yourself meme!

Four jobs you've had in your life: Tow truck dispatcher, cable television cable operator, computer lab technician, computer programmer.

Four movies you could watch over and over: Blade Runner, The Name of the Rose, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Usual Suspects.

Four places you've lived: Santa Cruz, Los Angeles, San Antonio, East Windsor (New Jersey).

Four places you've been on vacation: Ontario, the Bahamas, Norway, Turkey.

Four TV shows you love to watch:Babylon 5, Queer as Folk, Sex and the City, Remington Steele

Four websites you visit daily: HuSi, Electrolite-Making Light, The Volokh Conspiracy, The New York Times.

Four of your favorite foods: Tzatziki, Borek, Macaroni+Cheese, Espresso.

Four places you'd rather be: Lisbon, Prague, Vancouver, Berlin.

Four albums you can't live without: In Tune and On Time, DJ Shadow. The Joshua Tree, U2. Live in Paris & Toronto, Loreena McKennit. Pretaluz, Waldemar Bastos.

New tagees: Chrononaut, Erik.

The details aren't out yet - or, to the extent that they are, they're vague - but Governor Schwarzenegger's infrastructure proposal, unveiled at today's State of the State address is breathtaking. In nominal dollars, it constitutes the single largest public investment project in the State, ever. In terms of its potential impact on the state, it is the biggest project proposal since the large-scale infrastructure projects overseen by Governor Edmund G "Pat" Brown (Jerry Brown's father) in the early 1960s - the last major statewide infrastructure project.

As we understand the terms today, it is not a conservative proposal. But, in a very real sense, it is; it draws on an older conservative tradition than the one which prevails in modern conservatism: the Whig conservatism which says that if we invest in internal infrastructure improvements, we invest in economic growth which will benefit everyone. Yet rhetoric like "Think of California as a mutual fund --in particular, a growth fund. Why do we invest in a growth fund? Because we believe in the economic future. So I ask each of you... do you believe in California's economic future?" is associated in modern times with political liberalism, and therein lies the political genius of the plan: by boldly seizing the center-left, Governor Schwarzenegger may remake the state's politics entirely.

But as a voter, rather than a student of politics, my concern is less Governor Schwarzenegger's future than this: is his plan good for California? According to the Legislative Analyst's office, the general fund bond debt was $55 billion as of July 1, 2004 (no bonds were on the special election ballot, but more than $3 billion was authorized in the November, 2004 election). So this proposal would more than double the state's bonded indebtedness. The governor's proposal does claim (see page 6) that the percentage of the general fund devoted to debt service will never go above 6% under the plan; but that claim is based upon speculation about the degree of economic growth, and assumes that no other bond measures are passed in the interim (a shaky assumption at best). This is risky business.

But, just as borrowing to buy a house or pay for an education is reasonable for individuals in a way that credit card debt is not, borrowing for infrastructure is good for a state in a way that borrowing for regular, ongoing expenditures is not. So, given that details aren't truly available yet, what do we get for all of the borrowing?

The numbers are a bit hard to decipher; the overall plan incorporates money from other sources (federal matching funds, redirection of existing money), with the result that it's tough to, in a meaningful fashion, see what the effects of the bonds, per se, are. But, in summary, the plan calls for:

• 550 new miles of HOV/HOT lanes
• 750 new regular highway miles
• 9000 miles of highway reconstruction
• 600 miles of new commuter rail line
• 8500 miles of bike and pedestrian paths
• an undefined quantity of truck-only lanes (for example, in and out of the port of Los Angeles)
• 9700 new classrooms
• 38,000 modernized classrooms
• a $6 billion program to upgrade the delta levee system
• two new prisons
• a new forensic crime lab
• 101 new courts

The biggest problem that I have with this list is that I don't believe that $70 billion can pay for all of it. Certainly everything on the list is something I think we need to pay for; the highway upgrades, the school construction, and the court construction - in particular - has been necessary for more than a decade. But $70 billion isn't enough to pay for this (how much has the reconstruction of the Bay Bridge, alone, cost?) And I'm not convinced that the "other revenue" on which the plan depends will be forthcoming. Accordingly, it may very well be that only a fraction of this immense proposal ever gets built - the rest could languish as a promise made, but not fulfilled.

But that is no reason not to try. These are all needed investments; they are all, with the possible exception of the forensic labs, the kind of things which can reasonably be paid for with bond money. The governor's proposal is fantastic, the kind of proposal that I hoped Gray Davis would issue, and Pete Wilson before him. A breathtaking vision of investment in the future, of borrowing to pay for rebuilding an infrastructure which is overstrained and has been crumbling for decades, is exactly what we need.

This is what we expelled Governor Davis for; the voters are well repaid.

Looking just at the politics of Governor Schwarzenegger's infrastructure proposal ($300 billion in infrastructure spending over ten years, including roughly $70 billion financed through bonds), the Governor has flattened the opposition and, most likely, ensured his re-election in the fall. His Democratic opponent - whoever he is - has no reasonable response. He can, like Sen. Perata did briefly during his speech tonight, take the this-is-fiscally-irresponsible tack; but that leaves him in the position of being a Democrat opposed to things like building new schools, cleaning up the air in the Central Valley, and extending hundreds of miles of mass transit lines. Alternately, he can take the this-isnt-enough approach, but then he has to convince the voters that a $70 billion bond issue is too small, a proposition which will be enormously difficult to sell.

The outrage I am expecting in the Conservative blogsphere may cause problems; a Conservative revolt to oust Governor Schwarzenegger, and name someone like McClintock as the Republican gubernatorial candidate, is not out of the question or even unlikely. For a Republican to make this kind of proposal - nominally the largest borrow-and-spend plan in the state's history - is astonishing, out of character, and certain to rile the party activists; and for him to follow it up with a call for a minimum wage increase is even worse. But, presuming that he can withstand a primary challenge, that is the political beauty of the plan: by taking this tack he undermines liberal charges that he's an ultra-conservative ideologue.

Governor Schwarzenegger has seized the political center and a good chunk of the space to the left of center. He has probably guaranteed himself re-election. As a tactical move it was brilliant.

SCOTUSBlog notes that a district court judge in DC has issued an order regarding the legislation which stripped the US courts over jurisdiction over enemy combatants held at Guantanamo.

Without getting into the merits of the legislation, or of the order, I would like to note the following opening portion of the order:

On December 30, 2005, President Bush signed into law H.R. 2863, the Department of Defense, Emergency Supplemental Appropriations to Address Hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, and Pandemic Influenza Act of 2006 (“the Act”). Section 1005(e) of the Act, entitled Judicial Review of Detention of Enemy Combatants

Read it again.

What does Judicial Review of Detention of Enemy Combatants have to do with Supplemental Appropriations to Address Hurricanes, or Pandemic Influenza?

The Congress should be ashamed of itself, shoving vitally important legislation that significantly alters the functioning of our legal system into an unrelated appropriations bill. I'm not a fan of the legislation in question, but surely it deserved to be debated, and to be approved or disapproved, on its own merits.

The Sacramento Bee reports that Ted Costa, a longtime conservative activist and promoter of ballot initiatives, is putting together a new proposal for redistricting reform. The proposal follows the defeat of Proposition 77, which he had sponsored, and seems to have learned something from that defeat.

If the report is to be believed, the new proposal replaces Proposition 77's panel of retired judges with a citizen committee essentially selected by lot, assisted by a consultant nominated by the chair of the California Judicial Council. In addition, the plan would not go into effect until after the 2010 census.

This fixes two of the most heavily criticizes provisions of Proposition 77, which may be enough to win it the support that Proposition 77 could not find. If the summary in the Bee is correct - something which I cannot easily determine as Costa's website does nto appear to have been updated in months - I will almost certainly vote for the measure: the current system is broken, and any system which is not obviously fatally flawed is worth trying instead.

Besides, there's something somehow charming about a system that attempts to select public citizens by lot.

But that's not my point here. The conversation began with a brief interview of Congressman Nathan Deal (R-GA), the author of the legislation in question. During the course of the interview, he attempted to argue that one of the reasons that we need this legislative change is that it's problematic that people who come to the country as terrorists, intending to destroy it, can give birth to citizen children.

That's just a tiny bit of overreach: suddenly the "war on terror" requires an enormous change to immigration policy, and the overturning of something which has been settled law for more than a century --- in order to prevent something for which there is no evidence has ever happened!

Look for this to become a major meme in right wing circles, however. The linkage of the two issues is too powerful for the proponents of this measure to refrain from, no matter the level of absurdity involved; it's far too easy to smear opponents of changing the rules as being pro-terrorist.

Proposition 78 and Proposition 79, two dueling ballot initiatives involving the state's role in obtaining discounts for purchasers of prescription drugs, are perfect examples of things that have no business on the ballot. They are both technically complex programs with unclear economic side-effects. Unlike Proposition 76, which is even more complex, they do not implicate or threaten the vested interest of the legislature or the broader political class. There is no reason except for political cowardice that decisions of this nature cannot be mae by the legislature, and their presence on the ballot this fall is close to an abuse of the initiative process.

There's been a lot of noise, most of it essentially name calling, generated by proponents of each; and the wording of proposition 78 makes it quite clear that there is only room for one of them in state code. Nevertheless, they are more similar than they are different, and the first question for the voter is whether or not he approves of those similarities; for if the answer is no, then he should vote against both.

AN OVERSIMPLIFIED OVERVIEW

Propositions 78 and 79 would both establish a program wherein certain residents of the state could obtain a discount prescription drug card. People with discount drug cards could go to a pharmacy, which would sell drugs to them at either (a) the usual rate, or (b) a rate negotiated between the state and the pharmacy, minus a rebate amount negotiated with the drug manufacturer. Participation would generally be restricted to the so-called "working poor", although the details differ between the two initiatives. There is no requirement that either pharmacies or manufacturers participate in the program, although there are some mechanisms in Proposition 79 which would require the state to use market pressure and/or public shaming to induce participation.

That's the core concept in both initiatives and, in general, it's a perfectly fine idea: there is much to be said for the market power available when you use the state as a clearing-house for purchases in this fashion, and there is much to be remedied in the health care options available to the "working poor". It is, of course, not clear that this solution doesn't in fact aggravate the problem; more on that later.

THE DIFFERENCES IN THE PROPOSITIONS: WHAT PATIONS ARE ELIGIBLE

Proposition 78 would restrict eligibility to those who

1. are a "resident" (the law does not specify "resident of California", it merely specifies "resident");
2. Have a family income of no more than 300% of the federal poverty line;
3. Do not have outpatient prescription drug coverage from another source, except Medicare;
4. Have not had outpatient prescription drug coverage for any of the preceding three months, with certain exceptions.

Proposition 79 would restrict eligibility to those who

1. Have total unreimbursed medical expenses equal to 5% or more of family income;
2. Are enrolled in medicare and have drugs not covered by Medicare;
3. Have a family income of no more than 400% of the federal poverty line;

There are two striking differences here. Proposition 79 would allow a broader category of participants (and would therefore be likely to have more economic effect on the industry overall); there are many people with large unreimbursed medical expenses who arguably need the support of this initiative who would be covered under Proposition 79 and not under Proposition 78. That speaks in Proposition 79's favor.

On the other hand, Proposition 78 excludes those who already have coverage. That means that under many circumstances, Proposition 79 would in effect be providing discounts not to individuals but to their insurance companies. To the extent that the state is not actually spending its own moey, that may not be a bad thing; but it may be a step towards shifting the burden of health care in aggregate from insurance companies to the state. It may, in short, be the thin wedge of an iceberg of unintended consequences; and those consequences deserve consideration.

THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE PROPOSITIONS: THE COST TO THE PATIENT

Both propositions stipulate that patients with prescription drug costs will be charged the lower of the standard rate for the drug or the rate negotiated between the state and the pharmacy, less the rebate negotiated with the manufacturer; they are identical in that regard. Both charge an annual application fee; Proposition 78's is more, at $15, than Proposition 79's, at $10.

THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE PROPOSITIONS: MEANS OF PERSUASION

Both propositions say that rebates will be negotiated with drug companies. However, Proposition 79 gives the state some weapons to use in the negotiation: it would prohibit Medi-Cal from purchasing drugs from drug companies which do not negotiate, and it would require that the names of manufacturers which do and do not enter into agreements for rebates shall be made public (essentially as a means of using public pressure to force companies to negotiate). Both of these fill an important niche: manufacturers have no incentive other than altruism to participate in the rebate program under the terms of Proposition 78, while Proposition 79 gives them an incentive.

THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE PROPOSITIONS: ADDITIONAL PROVISIONS OF PROPOSITION 79

While a prescription drug program is the core of both propositions 78 and 79, proposition 79 has some additional related provisions:

• It establishes a program to assist small businesses. Those which pay more than 50% of the cost of health coverage for its employees will be able to obtain "a net price comparable to the Cal RxPlus program," using the same procedural mechanism for establishing prices;
• It prohibits "profiteering in prescription drugs", defined as what happens when someone "exacts or demands an unreasonable price; exacts or demands prices or terms that lead to any unjust or unreasonable profit; discriminates unreasonably against any person in the sale, exchange, distribution, or handling of prescription drugs dispensed or delivered in the state; or Intentionally prevents, limits, lessens, or restricts the sale or distribution of prescription drugs in this state in retaliation for the provisions of this chapter." In addition, it specifies a penalty of $100,000 as the minimum penalty for profiteering;
• It creates a nine-member "Prescription Drug Advisory Board" to review access to and pricing of prescription drugs and report on their review.

The first of these is a stunningly good idea; small businesses are often badly pinched by the cost of providing health care to their employees. While I would prefer to remove the burden of health care from businesses altogether, the limited burden-shifting envisioned here - in which small businesses which are clearly working to support their employees are provided access to discounts negotiated with the drug manufacturers and with pharmacies - is a fantastic thing and, if this measure goes down in flames, should be adopted by the legislature forthwith.

Aside from whatever the administrative costs are, the third of these ideas is harmless: a board of advisors selected to meet convoluted criteria runs around investigating and issues a report. It's unlikely to achieve anything dramatic, but also unlikely to cause any problems. I can find no compelling reason to be for or against it.

It's the middle provision which gives me fits. Libertarian economists might say there's nothing wrong with profiteering, but I don't share that objection; and yet the provision still troubles me - not only is it it sufficiently vague as to invite years of litigation, but it also is worded in such a way as to presume that the initiative is going to result in retaliatory actions by drug manufacturers. It presumes an adversarial role between people who should be cooperating, and that is troubling, particularly if that presumption is shared by those who are placed on the harmless board of advisors.

Worse yet, the initiative includes an unusually restrictive clause on legislative amendment.

AMENDMENT OF INITIATIVE STATUTES

A normal initiative statute includes a clause that reads something like this:

The Legislature may amend this act only to achieve its purpose and intent, by legislation receiving at least a two-thirds vote of each house and signature by the Governor.

The intent is that an initiative statute, passed by the people, cannot be summarily overturned by the legislature; the legislature can only act in a way which is consistent with the intent of the initiative, and only by supermajority. That is standard boilerplate language in initiative statutes.

Proposition 79 goes beyond that (emphasis added):

No provision of this act may be amended by the Legislature except to further the purposes of that provision by a statute passed in each house by roll call vote entered in the journal, two thirds of the membership concurring, or by a statute that becomes effective only when approved by the electorate. No amendment by the Legislature shall be deemed to further the purposes of this act unless it furthers the purpose of the specific provision of this act that is being amended. In any judicial action with respect to any legislative amendment, the court shall exercise its independent judgement as to whether or not the amendment satisfies the requirements of this subdivision.

OK, so the Legislature can only amend a provision if it is consistent with the purpose of the specific provision. It can't, for example, determine that a specific provision undermines the purpose of the law as a whole, and amend that provision out of existence. And every level of court gets to make an independent judgement as to whether or not the amendment is consistent.

That fairly effectively ties the Legislature's hand. I'm not convinced that's a good idea.

CONCLUSIONS

Proposition 78 is an incredibly poorly worded law; its drafting is sloppy, and reading it brought me quickly to the suspicion that it is deliberately so. I am skeptical about the wisdom of placing such a law on the statute books.

In addition, while it is less likely to result in a burden-shifting from insurance companies to the state, it excludes a large class of people - those who are not desperately poor but who are effected by large-scale medical bills. There is no principled reason to exclude them. There may be a pragmatic reason - that a program of this sort inevitably distorts the market and that, as a result, it is better to restrict inclusion to the smallest possible population so as to reduce the market distortion - but proponents of Proposition 78 have not made that argument, and there does not seem to be much available analytical data to demonstrate the difference in economic effect of the two measures. Assuming you think such a program is a good thing in the first place, there does not seem to be a pragmatic reason to support the eligibility requirements of Proposition 78 over those of Proposition 79.

Indeed, assuming you think such a prescription drug program is a good thing, there are three reasons I can come up with why one might support Proposition 78 over Proposition 79:

1. Opposition to the state using market force and public shaming to force negotiations;
2. Dislike of the profiteering provisions in Proposition 79;
3. Horror at the restrictive amendment rules in Proposition 79.

I'm in favor of using market force and public shaming to force negotiations; indeed, using the state's market power is the primary purpose of this kind of discount program. I am, however, troubled by the tone of the profiteering provisions; and that distemper is made worse by the restrictive amendment rules, which make it difficult if not impossible to fix any problems with the initiative after the fact. Yet, at the same time, it is clear that Proposition 78 is the lesser of the two initiatives; it is poorly constructed and, by setting its sights lower, guarantees that it would be less successful at achieving the goal.

It's a conundrum for me. Were I a legislator, I would vote against both and insist that someone draft a better one. As a voter, I don't really have that luxury; I can vote against both, but then the goal will likely not be achieved; the legislature has already shown that it is unwilling to touch this, and the defeat of both initiatives will resound as the defeat of the idea, not the defeat of the implementation. But I have problems with both implementations.

In the end, forced to jump off the fence by the impending deadline, my support for the goal outweighs my dislike of the implementations. Either one would be better than the current system; and, of the two, Proposition 79 would be better than proposition 78. Given that the enemy of the ok is the perfect, as the saying doesn't go, I find myself compelled to vote for Proposition 79, despite my misgivings.

Making a decision about Proposition 78 is more difficult. If Proposition 79 passes, I want Proposition 78 to fail (so that it doesn't conflict); if Proposition 79 fails, I want proposition 78 to pass. Clearly, then, my decision about Proposition 78 depends on how I think the voters are going to vote on Proposition 79; and for that, unusually, I must consult the polls. The latest Field Poll shows Proposition 79 failing 37-45-20; they also show Proposition 78 failing 36-45-19. Assuming the poll is correct, then I should vote 'yes' on Proposition 78; but with that number of undecideds, even following the normal rule that undecideds usually break against initiatives, it's hard to be sure.

I haven't yet decided where I stand in the battle between proponents of Proposition 78 and proponents of proposition 79, but Proposition 78 is one of the worst drafted initiatives I've ever read.

Some examples:

[Health and Safety Code Division 112, Section 130601, paragraph f, subparagraph 4, clause i, as added]

"Prescription drug" means any drug that bears the legend "federal law prohibits dispensing without prescription," "Rx only", or words of similar import.

What, there isn't a legal definition of prescription drugs by status, it all depends on what the label says? Seems trivially easy to get around. (To be fair, Proposition 79 has similar wording, but it still seems terribly bizarre to me).

[Health and Safety Code Division 112, Section 130605, as added]

To be eligible for Cal Rx, an individual shall meet all of the following requirements at the time of application and reapplication for the program:
(1) Be a resident.
(2) ...

Be a resident of where? I mean, yeah, it's implied that you have to be a resident of California. But shouldn't a well-drafted law say so rather than requiring a judge to assume it?

[Health and Safety Code Division 112, Section 13606, Paragraph b, Subparagraph 4, clause c; Section 13707, paragraph b, as added]

(c) In assessing the income requirement for Cal Rx eligibility, the department shall use the income information reported on the application and not require any additional information.
...
(b)(1) Private discount drug programs may require an applicant to provide additional information, beyond that required by Cal Rx, to determine the applicatnt's eligibility for discount drug programs.
(2) An applicant shall not be, under any cirrcumstances, required to participate in, or to disclose information that would determine the applicant's eligibility to participate in, private discount drug programs, in order to participate in Cal Rx.

OK, I kind of get this one: eligibility for private discount drug programs and for CalRx are not related to one another, the private programs can have higher requirements, and you don't have to participate in one of them to participate in CalRx. But since CalRx is nothing other than a clearing house for private discount drug programs, this is a meaningless semantic distinction: in effect to participate in the program you have to seperately establish eligibility, using different critiera, with both the state office and the local pharmacy filling the order.

This is unclear at best and tendentious at worst. When combined with the sloppy drafting above, it makes for a poor portrait of craftsmanship and writing. Lawyers can express themselves more clearly than this when they want to. This reeks more of a deliberate intent to be unclear and confusing than honest error.

Proposition 77 is the most revolutionary of the measures on the ballot this fall. It proposes a change to the innermost workings of the political system, something akin to the adoption of the blanket primary in the late 1990s; and its effects, if adopted, may work as profound a change on the state's politics as the abolition of cross-filing in the 1950s or the adoption of the initiative system itself. Then again, it might not; the single biggest problem with the initiative is that nobody can say with any certainty what its effects will be. There is some precedent, and there are some examples of similar systems elsewhere; but evidence which is collectible from such precedents may not apply to California, and many of the conclusions which both proponents and opponents of the measure are reaching are, in fact, the sentinels of wishful or fearful thinking.

THE BASIC PROPOSAL

Proposition 77 would change the rules under which California draws the borders of legislative districts after each census. Currently, those borders are drawn up by the state Legislature. Proposition 77 would change the rules so that tentative borders are drawn up by a party-balanced panel of retired judges, and then must be approved or rejected by the voters in a referendum. Proponents of the measure claim that this will lead to fairer districts, pointing to the current districting scheme as a rank example of political corruption. Democratic opponents of the measure claim that it is nothing more than an attempt at a partisan power grab by the Democratic party, while Republican opponents of the measure claim that it is nothing more than an attempt at a partisan power grab by the Democratic party. The proponents are closer to the truth, but there are some subtle concerns that both they and the measure's opponents are missing.

THE CURRENT SYSTEM

Article 21 of the California State Constitution provides, in its entirety:

SECTION 1. In the year following the year in which the national
census is taken under the direction of Congress at the beginning of
each decade, the Legislature shall adjust the boundary lines of the
Senatorial, Assembly, Congressional, and Board of Equalization
districts in conformance with the following standards:

(a) Each member of the Senate, Assembly, Congress, and the Board
of Equalization shall be elected from a single-member district.

(b) The population of all districts of a particular type shall be
reasonably equal.

(c) Every district shall be contiguous.

(d) Districts of each type shall be numbered consecutively
commencing at the northern boundary of the State and ending at the
southern boundary.

(e) The geographical integrity of any city, county, or city and
county, or of any geographical region shall be respected to the
extent possible without violating the requirements of any other
subdivision of this section.

The California state Legislature is responsible for redrawing the borders of legislative districts after each census. Its border-drawing is subject to federal review under the Voting Rights Act (because certain parts of the state, including Monterey County, are deemed to have been historically discriminatory against the Latino population of the state). In practice, rule (e) above is regularly ignored; a casual glance at any of the current state district maps shows little if any respect for the geographical integrity of anything.

In 1991, after a protracted fight between the legislature and then-Governor Wilson, the State Supreme Court appointed a panel of special masters to hold public hearings and return a recommendation as to what plan should be adopted. That panel rejected both the legislature's preferred plan and the Governor's preferred plan, instead proposing a third plan which was ultimately adopted. One of the signal features of that plan was that all state Senate districts were comprised of two adjoining Assembly districts. These districts were generally considered by partisans on both sides of the aisle as having been fair districts, and there were a substantial number of districts in which the district representative's party switched over the course of the decade.

In 2001, the leaders of both major parties in the state Legislature organized a plan in which every sitting legislator would be ensured a safe district. It was not, as some have alleged, a partisan districting in which the Democrats in the Legislature conspired with Governor Davis to ensure that Democrats would have as many seats as possible; it was a bipartisan incumbent protection plan in which both parties assured that every legislature would be placed in a district in which he was relatively invulnerable to competition. There have been virtually zero districts in which the representative's party has switched in the last two elections.

THE PRAGMATIC PROBLEM WITH THE STATUS QUO

One of the side-effects of an incumbent protection plan is that, as a general rule, it is now true that state Assemblypeople, Senators, and Congresspeople are more likely to be defeated as a result of opposition in the primary than they are in a general election; their districts were designed in such a fashion as to make inter-party competition difficult. This has encouraged politicians of both parties to take positions which appeal primarily to party activists (who are more likely to vote in primaries) and less likely to appeal to the state's centrists (including the approximately thirty percent of voters who are not affiliated with any political party). This has exacerbated the frustration with politics felt by the so-called "independant" voter.

In addition, the need to placate party activists has led directly to the state's intractable budget problems. Compromise between the parties at the legislative level has become all but impossible, as any such compromise risks a backlash from party activists. It is easier for Republicans to hold fast to their determination to not raise taxes than it is for them to seek a budget compromise; it is likewise easier for Democrats to hold fast to their determination to not cut programs than it is for them to seek a compromise. The incumbent-protection districting has created a situation in which everybody has a structural incentive to avoid compromise as much as possible, and has combined with the side-effects of term limits to create a politics of combative paralysis at the state level.

It is, to be sure, not fair to blame this situation entirely on the 2001 redistricting; there are other elements at play. But legislative districts in which interparty competition is less meaningful than intraparty competition encourages extremism in the legislature and discourages compromise, and the results have been unfortunate for the state as a whole.

THE IDEALISTIC PROBLEM WITH THE STATUS QUO

The 2001 redistricting has been widely recognized as an incumbent protection plan: a system in which the legislators drafted districts in order to guarantee their own re-election. A system, in effect, in which the legislators currently in office deliberately chose those voters most likely to support them. To put it bluntly, this is a perversion of democracy. If the legislature can select its voters, if it can aggregate people into districts in such a fashion as to make competitive elections nonexistent, then the people are no longer choosing their legislators in any meaningful fashion. Elections conducted under such a system are a farce, a rubber-stamp in which the people simply verify that the legislators have chosen their voters wisely.

This has always been a danger with reapportionment conducted by the legislature. It is a sin of government that has been around since at least the time of the Long Parliament. But it is also a fundamental violation of the rights of the people. It is no more acceptable than was the decision of Tennessee to forgo reapportionment for decades. And there is some reason to believe that modern technology is making the problem worse by making it harder for the Legislature to accidentally create a few competitive districts in addition to the mass count of districts designed specifically to deny the voters a meaningful choice.

This concern is felt particularly keenly by conservative activists, who believe themselves to be disadvantaged and discriminated against under the current system, and who think that a different system will grant them more power. There is substantial reaosn to think that they are wrong about this proposition granting them more political power; but setting that aside and looking only at their idealistic argument, they have a point. For the legislature to create districts that deny political competition and bear no reasonable relation to geographic communities, in order to ensure their own re-election, denies the voters a meaningful participation in representative democracy. It is intolerable.

THE PROPOSED SOLUTION: PROPOSITION 77

Proposition 77 would take the power to redraw legislative districts away from the legislature entirely and, in effect, split it in half. The power to create new district maps would be handed to a panel of retired judges selected through a complicated procedure designed to ensure partisan balance among the judges; those judges would then be constrained by a set of rules regarding what they could consider in drawing new boundaries. The power to approve new district maps would be vested in the voters themselves, through the power of referendum.

There is some precedent for involving the judiciary in the process. The 1990 redistricting was in effect done by the judiciary, and other states have from time to time had individual redistricting plans issued by the courts. In addition, since the 1960s redistricting plans in areas which are deemed to have had a history of racial and ethnic discrimination in the political process have been subject to judicial review.

More common is the principle behind involving the judiciary: the idea that redistricting should not be done by politicians but by people who are non-partisan and unlikely or ineligible to stand for political office is a common one. Iowa, for example, has for several decades vested redistricting in the hands of an independent commission appointed for that purpose, and district boundaries in most parliamentary systems are redrawn by civil servants whose only responsibility is to ensure fair districting. It is generally agreed by US experts that Iowa's districts are the fairest and most competitive in the United States; and there is very little discontent with the drawing of district boundaries in countries with civil service-drawn district borders (although this may be a result of a generally less polarized electorate in those countries, or of other cultural factors which do not arise from the district boundaries themselves).

Much of the opposition to proposition 77 seems to focus on a perception that the procedure for selecting who will draw new boundaries does not actually guarantee political independance, and may simply result in a politically biased cartel which is not, in the end, responsible to anyone. Proponents are aghast at the idea: if retired judges cannot be trusted to be unbiased and neutral, to apply the rules regarding district boundaries fairly and without a nod to political concerns, then who can be?

The proponents of the measure have a point: we expect judges to be unbiased, as a daily routine, part of their jobs. Judges hearing cases that arise out of election disputes are expected to put their partisanship aside and apply the law fairly and - Bush v. Gore notwithstanding, generally do so. It is not unreasonable to expect them to suppress their political bias in this task, and in any event the fact that their plans will be submitted as an initiative acts as a check on any political adventurism.

There is a problem, however, which opponents and proponents both seem to ignore: unbiased judicial involvement in the drafting of new districts may well lead to a perception of bias. As we've seen with the juggling of judges in the Tom DeLay case (where two judges have now been pushed off the case as a result of charges of political partisanship), it is easy for people to learn to percieve judges as being biased partisan hacks. To the extent that happens, respect for the judiciary, and willingness to comply with the decisions of courts, declines. It is possible, though by no means certain, that redistricting by judges will result in better redistricting and also cause a decline in public respect for the nonpartisanship of judges; that is one of the great risks of the proposal.

VETTING REDISTRICTING BY INITIATIVES

The other great risk in proposition 77 involves using initiatives to approve new district maps. Under the proposal at hand, the panel of retired judges is supposed to send its plan to the Secretary of State. It will go into effect immediately for the upcoming primary and general election, but it will also appear on the general election ballot as an initiative. If the initiative passes, the resulting plan is in effect until the following census; if the initiative fails, then a new panel of special masters is appointed and the cycle repeats itself.

The complaints i've heard about this focus entirely on the fact that the plan goes into effect before it is approved by the voters. If this measure passes, for example, the election of 2012 will be conducted using the districts drawn by retired judges using the 2010 census data, and simultaneously the voters will be deciding whether to accept or reject the boundaries. Doesn't that, as the opponents of the measure say in their rebugttal to the argument in favor, "take away the right of voters to reject redistricting plans before they go into effect?"

To an extent, yes. Under current rules, if the legislature adopts a redistricting plan, angry voters could circulate petitions to force a referendum at the next election, and the new boundaries would be suspended until after the election. This has never happened. The signature gathering does pose a significant barrier; and arguably a system in which the voters automatically get to vote on the plan is one which gives more power to the voters than one in which they only get to vote on the plan if they collect six hundred thousand signatures asking for the right to do so. This particular argument, as presented in the ballot pamphlet, is disingenuous at best.

There is a different concern, though: what will the campaigns over district boundaries be like? There will be expensive, high-profile campaigns; there always are, with ballot initiatives. Will they focus on contiguity (the only real concern that the judges are allowed to take into account when drawing the district boundaries)? Or will they focus on partisan outcomes? How likely is it that we will see political commercials denouncing new district boundaries for creating a democratic, or republican, partisan majority that is inconsistent with voter registration? What is the risk that plans which conform to the letter of the law will be rejected for reasons that the drafters of the districting plans are not lalowed to consider. Worse, what is the risk that plans will be consistently rejected and that, in effect, we will endure biennial redistricting?

Nobody knows the answers to this question; it is the great unknown in proposition 77.

The question that we as voters must consider is this: is that risk, and the risk of damaging the reputation of the judiciary, worth it? Or are we better off sticking with a means of selecting district boundaries which is actively undermining democracy?

In my mind, there's no contest. There are risks associated with Proposition 77; there are uncertainties. But i'd rather take those risks than continue with a system in which legislators select their voters and elections are, in effect, rendered meaningless. The risks of adopting proposition 77 can be ameliorated by further ballot initiatives if they turn out to be too great. While the risks of sticking with the current situation can also be ameliorated by ballot initiative, the failure of this initiative would discourage further attempts, and it is more likely that we would stick with the status quo than try something new. That course would do too much damage to our political culture.

Proposition 77 is a questionable idea whose time has come. It has risks, and it is not guaranteed to fix every problem for which it is offered as a palliative; but it has the potential for great improvement, and the current situation is intolerable. It is an experiment which, like the blanket primary in 1998, deserves the wholehearted support of the voters of the state.

About the best thing I can say for The Legend of Zorro is that it is only the second movie i've ever seen to demonstrate the importance of election inspectors. Otherwise, the movie was ridiculous ahistorical drivel, often unintentionally absurd, with mediocre acting and poor editing.

It's bad when the editing is so poor that the audience notices. Now, granted, because i've done video editing, i'm more likely to notice than most; but still, repeatedly showing the same [redacted] exploding shows a lack of interest in quality which would make any software production team blush deep red in embarassment. But that wasn't the worst part of the film, by any means.

The worst part of the film was the idiotic plot. Here's a summary: in 1850, as California is voting to approve a constitution and join the union, the state becomes embroiled in a plot involving the confederate army's desire for a new weapon to allow it to launch a pre-emptive strike on Washington DC. The weapon is being developed in California and will be sent to the confederacy on the transcontinental railroad.

In 1850. An army which didn't exist until 1861 is using the transcontinental railroad that didn't exist until 1869.

Not to mention the absurdity of transporting wine bottles full of nitroglycerin on a train.

"What were they thinking?" doesn't even begin to describe it.

(Jared, Ian, and I give the movie six thumbs and twenty-four fingers down. Your mileage is unlikely to vary).

There's a somewhat strange report in the news this week (Hat tip: Election Law Blog) that the Attorney General has sued the Santa Cruz County Elections department for failing to comply wiht the Americans with Disabilities Act. Attorney General Lockyer's suit claims that 72% of the county's polling places had barriers to access for the disabled.

I find this statistic to be incredible. Over the years that i lived in Santa Cruz, I worked as a poll worker in the following polling places:

• the College 8 community room at UCSC;
• the Porter College community room at UCSC;
• the Baobab Lounge at UCSC;
• a Lutheran Church in central Santa Cruz County;
• a natural history museum in the Seabright area of Santa Cruz;
• an episcopal church in downtown Santa Cruz;
• a church on the eastside of Santa Cruz.

Of these sites, all three churches and the museum had easy handicapped access and closeby parking. The polling places at UCSC were all accessible, but they had no parking nearby, and could require some effort to get to the building; but that would have been the case for any polling places at UCSC, where parking is a contentious issue and buildings are often a fair ways from parking lots.

This is anecdotal evidence, of course. But 100% of the polling places I worked in were fully handicapped accessible, and every mandatory poll worker training I went to informed me of the procedure for having poll workers take ballots to people's cars if they were for some reason unable to make it into the polling place. While I can imagine that in the more rural areas of the county, handicapped accessibility may be a problem, I simply don't believe the allegations in Lockyer's lawsuit: my experience of over ten years volunteering in Santa Cruz County polling places conflicts with the statistics he is using.

Proposition 76 is a complex initiative that attempts to make a series of highly technical changes to the budget process in the hopes that doing so will help solve the state's persistent budget problems. It is also the centerpiece of Governor Schwarzenegger's agenda for the special election. Unfortunately for the voters, it contains some good ideas, some ideas which appear to be about fixing the problem but are in fact about something else entirely, and some ideas which are questionable. The mixture of ideas makes it difficult to determine how to vote; the complexity of the initiative makes the political rhetoric surrounding it useless in helping make that determination.

AN OVERSIMPLIFIED SUMMARY OF THE INITIATIVE

Proposition 76 would make the following changes to state law:

• It would prohibit the state's General fund from borrowing money either from the Transportation Investment Fund or other special funds;
• It would change the rules for what happens when there is no budget on the start of the fiscal year, preventing shutdowns of state government;
• It would provide that shortfalls in the constitutionally mandated spending on schools would not need to be repaid in subsequent years, and make some highly technical changes in the rules for how the mandated spending floor is determined;
• It would change the rules that determine the maximum spending ceiling for the state government;
• It would grant the governor the power to unilaterally cut spending where he sees fit, under certain circumstances.

THE GOOD: INTERACTION WITH SPECIAL FUNDS

One of the things that makes California's budget process is the proliferation of special funds in which revenue from a specific source is theoretically dedicated to a specific expenditure. According to the Legislative Analyst, there are hundreds of these whose expenditures are responsible for roughly 20% of the state's annual expenditure. Usually these special funds are created by ballot initiative, with voter expectation that the money will be spent as directed in the initiative.The highest profile example of this is the state's transportation fund, in which revenue from gasoline taxes are theoretically set aside for expenditure on transportation infrastructure projects.

In recent years, when the state's general fund has experienced a budget deficit, the state has papered over the deficit in part by borrowing money from the special funds. In theory the money borrowed from the general fund is supposed to be repaid, but such repayment is often either delayed, fractional, or both. Moreover, the ability of the general fund to borrow this money means that the targeted expenditures may not happen in any given year, if the state decides the general fund needs the money more.

Proposition 76 would explicitly prohibit such borrowing, creating a firewall between the general fund and these special funds. This is a good thing: if the voters are going to create special funds, they have a reasonable expectation that the money in those special funds will be spent as they have directed, not used as a slush fund to provide backup financing for the general fund. Without the firewall that Proposition 76 would erect, the entire notion of a special fund is in fact meaningless, and most people voting for initiatives that create such special funds have always assumed that firewall to exist. This provision of the proposition inserts a common-sense barrier between different accounts which should have been placed there decades ago.

POSSIBLY A GOOD IDEA: IMPROVEMENTS TO PROPOSITION 98

In 1988, the voters of the state of California passed a ballot initiative which ensured that the public schools would receive a minimum amount of funding from the state general fund. (The schools also receive money from local property taxes; the precise nature of school financing in California is incomprehensible even to trained accountants). The guarantee provided that the public schools would receive 39% of general fund revenues in 1988-89, and then a minimum amount based upon that quantity, indexed for growth in school attendance and per capita income. However, in years in which the percentage growth of per capita income is less than one percent more than the growth in general fund revenues, a different guarantee is used; the 1988-89 baseline is indexed based upon growth in attendance and per capita general fund revenues. When the latter guarantee is used, or when the legislature declares an emergency and suspends the initiative, the difference between the amount actually funded and the amount which should have been funded (under the first guarantee) is recorded as a loan to the state, which is supposed to be repaid in subsequent years.

Proposition 98 has been derided since 1988 as depriving the state of flexibility in spending, and thereby making the entire budget process more difficult; but that was the goal of the intiative - to take public school funding off of the table for discussion when expenditure needed to be cut. The intent was to ensure that school funding remained stable, and it has largely succeeded in that. I say largely and not entirely because the legislature remains able to suspend the guarantee, because school funding can vary depending on which guarantee is used in any given year, and because the creation of large implicit loans results in an enormous state debt to schools, the repayment schedule for which becomes a heated political issue in nearly every budget cycle.

Proposition 76 attempts to remedy two of these. It remedies the uncertainty by eliminating entirely the second test; if Proposition 76 passes, the public school funding guarantee will always be based on per capita income and not per capita revenue growth. (Note that, while this is very good for the schools, it is not entirely clear that this is a good idea: if revenue growth remains significantly below per capita income growth, the total percentage of the state budget allocated to the public schools will slowly increase). The proposition remedies the problem of creating large implicit loans by ending the practice; in the future, if this measure passes, when Proposition 98 is suspended, the state does not incur a debt to make up the shortfall in the future.

There's much to be liked in these provisions; the current system is excessively complicated and the new system would simplify it, and appears to be simplifying it in a way which is in line with the intent of Proposition 98 (by permanently adopting the higher of the two possible baselines). The measure would also prevent the accumulation of an enormous implicit debt owed to the schools by the general fund. But, at the same time, that opens the door for abuse; if the legislature ever finds itself regularly suspending the guarantee of Proposition 98, there is no longer a penalty. And the permanent adoption of the higher level guarantee, particularly when combined with other provisions of the intiative, creates a serious risk that over time the percentage of the budget available for things other than education will shrink precipitously.

THE UNFORTUNATELY NECESSARY: CHANGING THE RULES FOR LATE BUDGETS

Under current California law, the legislature is required to adopt a budget by July 1 of any given year. It rarely does. When it doesn't, the state is not authorized to pay for anything (not having a budget) except for those things which courts have ruled that it is required to pay for; the result is a partial state government shut down. The intent behind this is, in essence, to hold a gun to the legislature's head: if it doesn't comply with the constitutional provision requiring a budget by the start of the fiscal year, its members must pay the political price of defending responsibility for a partial government shutdown.

The trouble is, the threat hasn't been getting results; the legislature regularly misses the deadline, and state government is as a result regularly thrown into chaos. Proposition 76 would change that by replacing the current rule with a different one: until a budget is passed, the state would be presumed to be operating under a budget identical to the one of the previous year, and spending would be authorized at the previous year's level.

The obvious drawback to this is that there is no longer a real threat to hold over the head of the legislature; there is no substantial penalty for failure to produce a budget on time. But given that the current penalty isn't producing its desired result and is regularly getting invoked, the current system is worse than the one this initiative would replace it with. It's an unfortunate admission that budgets are going to be late, and that as a result we have to have a better default than shutting down the state government every time it happens.

THE DUBIOUS: HANDING MORE POWER TO THE GOVERNOR

California's General Fund is required to be in balance when the budget is passed. If the budget subsequently falls out of balance (because revenue is lower than expected or expenditure is higher than expected), the Governor is allowed to declare a fiscal emergency and summon a special session of the legislature to modify the budget. If the legislature has failed to do so after 45 days, it is prohibited from either (a) considering other business, or (b) adjourning, until it has come to an agreement. This has been politically impractical in recent years, as a substantial minority have banded together to block any tax increases (which must be approved by a 2/3 majority), while a slim majority has rejected most spending cuts. Emergency budget rebalancing has turned into a protracted game of chicken in which the minority attempts to force unpalatable cuts on the majority, which meanwhile tries to bribe the minority into accepting tax increases.

Proposition 76 would take the issue away from the legislature: if it had failed to produce a rebalanced budget after 45 days, the Governor would be empowered to make whatever cuts he wanted (with some limitations) to the General Fund, in order to bring the budget back into balance.

Leaving aside, for the moment, the question of whether or not cutting the budget is properly an executive rather than a legislative task, this measure has two almost certainly intended political effects: it increases the power of minorities in the budget rebalancing negotiations (because a stubborn minority can always refuse to deal, threatening to kick the issue to the governor instead); and it enshrines a built-in bias in favor of cutting spending rather than increasing taxes. The governor cannot unilaterally raise taxes; he may only unilaterally cut spending. When combined with the existence of a sizeable minority opposed to any tax increase, anywhere, for any purpose, this provision serves to bolster that minority's strength in the negotiations for budget rebalancing; all they have to do is hold firm to their refusal to entertain the notion of tax increases, and the governor will be required enact budget cuts over the will of the legislative majority.

Proponents of this provision will defend it by pointing out that we need to live within our means, and that this is a value-neutral provision for ensuring that: when the budget falls out of balance mid-year, if the legislature is unable to fix it, the governor will restore the balance. They're right to an extent; we do need to live within our means. But this is hardly value neutral; when combined with the 2/3 majority requirement for tax increases and the presence of a committed minority opposed to all such, it enhances that minority's strength, frustrates the will of the legislative majoriuty, and reduces the incentive to forge a political compromise. Those who know that, if they stand their ground and refuse to negotiate, the governor will be forced by law to give them the budget cuts that they can't obtain through legislative agreement have no incentive to negotiate and a great incentive to hold out.

This provision is something of a trojan horse; embedded in an ostensibly neutral reform of the budget process, it instead changes the structure of that process in order to make things easier for those who want a particular policy outcome and harder for those who don't.

THE MISLEADING AND BAD: Reducing the state spending limit

If that were the only part of the initiative which took sides in the political debate instead of neutrally reforming the process, the initiative might still be a good thing. There are many good ideas in it, and those good ideas may well outweigh this particular biased structural change. But, crucially, it isn't the only part of the initiative in which partisanship hides in the cloak of neutrality.

California law provides, through a complicated formula, a maximum cap on the amount the state can spend in any given year. The quantity is determined by indexing forward from a base year, using as an index a calculation based on (a) population growth and (b) state GNP growth. According to the Legislative Analyst, the limit is somewhat substantially above current spending - the cap is not providing a constraint.

Proposition 76 would change the method by which the cap is calculated. In addition to the existing cap, it would add a new cap, in which spending would be constrained to the previous year's spending adjusted by the average of the increase in revenue over the preceding three years.

The intent is to ensure that the state never overspends; increases in revenue could not be spent immediately and must be, instead, saved as a hedge fund against a rainy day. That's a reasonable intent, in itself; it's a clever trick designed to force the state government to save money during boom times, and it would probably be quite effective.

This mechanism would, of course, delay the impact of tax increases: the full amount of new taxes could only be spent several years after they go into effect. That might reduce public or legislative support for new taxes - neither the legislature nor the electorate tend to like schemes which impose pain upfront in exchange for benefits later. But that isn't the real problem.

The problem with this proposal is this: if current spending is significantly below the spending cap, and this rule would allow increases in spending at a rate lower than that allowed by the current cap (which it would), this rule permanently lowers the spending cap. As years pass, it would constrain the state's options more and more; each year, the gap between the spending cap under the old rule and the spending cap under the new rule would increase. Government would be permanently limited.

Perhaps government should be limited; that's a conversation for another time. My objection is this: that's a policy decision, a political agenda, which has nothing to do with the ostensible purpose of this measure. It is not necessary to reforming the budget process; it uses reforming the budget process as an excuse to pursue a partisan ideological agenda. It is a trojan horse.

Logrolling - the combination of unrelated proposals into an amalgamation which pleases nobody - is sometimes necessary in the Legislature. It is not necessary in a ballot initiative, and in fact borders on the deceitful. A measure presented as a policy-neutral change to the budget process should not contain, embedded within it, a measure to permanently reduce the amount the state can spend. That is a seperate issue.

I can see this being a tough call for many: even if you object to the procedural logrolling, the good things in the initiative may outweigh the bad. But for me, it is clear: ballot initiatives should not encompass multiple subjects, and this one is a clear attempt to pursue a conservative political agenda behind a smokescreen of neutral budget reform. It deserves to be rejected at the polls.

No person in the custody or under the effective control of the Department of Defense or under detention in a Department of Defense facility shall be subject to any treatment or technique of interrogation not authorized by and listed in the United States Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation.

Nine Senators voted against this. The Bush administration has threatened to veto it.

No individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment .... ``cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment'' means the cruel, unusual, and inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States"

Just what is wrong with Senators Allard (Colorado), Bond (Missouri), Coburn (Oklahoma), Cochran (Missouri), Cornyn (Texas), Inhofe (Oklahoma), Roberts (Kansas), Sessions (Alabama), and Stevens (Alaska)? These men are on the record, on the floor of the Senate, as opposing a ban on the use of cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners. They should be ashamed of themselves. And the voters of those states, the men and women who sent these men to office, should be ashamed of themselves as well.

UPDATE: These Senators are objectively pro-torture.

It's been entertaining over the last day or so reading the unbelievably bad arguments people are making in favor of, and in opposition to, Miss Miers' nomination to the Supreme Court. It's enough to make me doubt the sanity and wisdom of the blogsphere, if truth be told.

Conservatives seem to have fallen into three different camps, liberals into two. One of the conservative camps and one of the liberal camps ought to be able to make common cause, although they will each have to consider whether or not it is in their overall interests to do so on this issue. The rest are going to find that it's basically impossible to talk to each other.

The first strand of thinking among outraged conservatives appears to be "Where is our Scalia? Where is our Thomas? How do we know that Miss Miers is really a conservative?" What most of those taking this position are really arguing is "we can't bring ourselves to support her unless we know she'll decide things the way we want her to decide them", exactly the sin they were accusing Democrats of during the Roberts hearing. These hypocrites are engaged in a massive betrayal of conservative legal principles; they are more interested in outcomes than in process, more interested that the president's nominees be politically correct as they define it than they are in the quality of the legal reasoning or the intellectual integrity of the jurists. They are particularly amusing to watch right now because the nomination of Miss Miers betrays the hypocrisy at the core of their argument. The gig is up.

The second, vastly more responsible, strand of thinking among outraged conservatives appears to be "This woman is utterly unqualified by just about every measure of qualification we normally use to assess Supreme Court justices. I don't care if she's a conservative, her nomination is a disgrace either way." The people making this argument are the people who really believe what they were saying during the Roberts confirmation process about the importance of a stellar record and a judicial temperament. It's almost heartbreaking to watch these people come face to face with what opponents of the Bush administration have known for years: that Bush is very good at making promises and very bad at delivering.

The third, somewhat consistent although very very scary, strand of thinking among conservatives appears to be "Bush knows what he's doing, trust him." To a liberal like myself this argument appears nonsensical, and even to many conservatives its questionable: what possible reason has Bush given to trust his decision making when it comes to appointees? "Trust, but verify" might be appropriate, but trusting without verifying is, in this case, utterly insane.

The first strand of thinking among liberals appears to be "This is an obvious crony appointment! Let's use it to show everyone what we have known all along about Bush." What this group is saying is very similar to what the second group of conservatives is saying, and I submit that liberals who are of this opinion will be more effective in blocking Miss Miers' nomination if they find a way to make common cause with those conservaitves. If, on the other hand, they are more interested in giving Bush a black eye than they are in blocking this nomination, they should be ashamed of themselves: as much as Bush may deserve that black eye, and as much fun as it may be to give it to him, to say that you believe that Miss Miers is an unqualified crony and yet blocking her nomination is less important than making Bush look bad is, in essence, to say that the quality of the Justices on the Supreme Court is less important than making Bush look bad. Is that really an idea that the people promoting it want to be promoting?

Which brings us to the second strand I've seen in liberal thinking: that Miss Miers may be an unqualified crony, but that she's less likely to successfully advance conservative interests and/or damage liberal interests than just about any other nominee Bush might put forward, so we might as well support her. Aside from the underestimation of Bush involved, this is a very disturbing proposition: at its core is the premise that protecting liberal political interests is more important than ensuring that good judges sit on the Supreme Court. That idea illuminates a lack of seriousness about key elements of our government. Not only is it the identical lack of seriousness as is exhibited by those who don't care if she's qualified as long as she's conservative, it is every bit as contemptible. Liberals, as the people who believe that government can serve the interests of the people, as the people who do not believe that a smaller government is the answer to every problem, have a particular responsibility to work towards good government; making a deal in which we support mediocre or even terrible officeholders as long as we think they will be our political allies, especially in a job which is supposed to be relatively apolitical, cheapens and weakens us.

I supported a similar argument when it came to Judge Roberts: that we should get behind him because he was the least bad thing we could expect from this President. The difference was that he was almost over-qualified for the job; I feel completely assured that Roberts is a smart man, capable of the task in front of him. With Miss Miers, I am not so certain; and I am shocked and aghast at those liberals who argue that, even if Miss Miers turns out to be an unqualified crony, we should support her because the next candidate might be less likely to be a political ally.

*If* Miss Miers turns out to be an unqualified crony, we should do no such thing. We should stand up as the party of good government, the party which believes in government, and denounce the nomination as the premiere example of why government should not be run by those who do not believe in it, and we should make common cause with all those we can in order to block the nomination. To do otherwise would be to betray both liberalism and the public interest.

I can remember, as a cadet at West Point, resolving to ensure that my men would never commit a dishonorable act; that I would protect them from that type of burden. It absolutely breaks my heart that I have failed some of them in this regard.

Some argue that since our actions are not as horrifying as Al Qaeda's, we should not be concerned. When did Al Qaeda become any type of standard by which we measure the morality of the United States? We are America, and our actions should be held to a higher standard, the ideals expressed in documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Do we sacrifice our ideals in order to preserve security? Terrorism inspires fear and suppresses ideals like freedom and individual rights. Overcoming the fear posed by terrorist threats is a tremendous test of our courage. Will we confront danger and adversity in order to preserve our ideals, or will our courage and commitment to individual rights wither at the prospect of sacrifice? My response is simple. If we abandon our ideals in the face of adversity and aggression, then those ideals were never really in our possession. I would rather die fighting than give up even the smallest part of the idea that is "America."

Whatever is said about him in the next several months, it is clear from this letter that Captain Fishback is a man who loves his country, and we have been well served by him.

Let me take this moment to remind everyone of to keep an open mind about Harriet Miers, the new nominee for Sandra Day O'Connor's seat on the Supreme Court. The lack of previous judicial experience does not necessarily make for a bad justice; nor does a close association with the executive branch (although the latter is troubling in an era when the most important cases before the court may well be issues of the executive overstepping its authority to imprison and interrogate people). The President does deserve a chance to make the case for his nominee, and we should listen to it.

That said, it had better be a good case; it really does look as though he picked someone from the vast pool of undistinguished late-middle-aged lawyers simply because she was his lawyer. With Judge Roberts, it was plausible to make the case that he was among the best possible candidates for the job. It's hard to imagine that with Miss Miers. Why her and not, say, Judge Posner? It's a tough case to make, and it will require a serious discussion of what exactly we mean by "best candidate for the job" when it comes to Supreme Court Justices. I look forward to the conversation.

(In the meantime, I'm experiencing a great deal of amusement-cum-schadenfreude watching Conservative activists tear the nomination apart and whining "where is our Scalia/Thomas?" The nomination of Judge Roberts aside, the administration's performance over the last six weeks appears to have been a series of spectacular own-goals, and Miss Miers may well turn out to be the icing on that cake).

Hurricane Rita is headed for the Texas Gulf Coast. As of current writing, *three days out*, she's a Category-5 Hurricane with a pressure almost as low as Katrina's was at her worst, and falling fast.

Houston isn't below sea level, so it's unlikely to go the way of New Orleans; but Galveston has been destroyed before.

Amazingly enough, they're predicting that Rita will still be Category-1 hurricane when it hits *AUSTIN*.

I hope everyone gets the message and evacuates this time.

I've been avoiding talking about Hurricane Katrina, mostly because every time i've tried i've been overcome by incoherent rage, but as time passes i'm slowly getting a handle on it.

Which made this report in the New York Times both heartening and disappointing. The officials of Houston, Texas, are evacuating the Katrina evacuees a full three days before Hurricane Rita is expected to hit land. It's fantastic that they're that on the ball ... and this makes the behavior of the NOLA city officials in the days before Katrina's landfall seem even more outrageous.

The disappointing thing is this:

"They've been trying to get us out early," Mr. Freeman said. "We're the working people. They don't want us here."

You'd think that someone who'd just been through one category four hurricane which left his home city under water might be a bit less suspicious of the motives of people who are saying "hey, we need to get you somewhere safe before this other hurricane that's headed right for us hits land." I mean, sure, Houston isn't New Orleans, and Rita isn't Katrina, but getting people out of harm's way is exactly what should be happening, and someone who was just in the eye of the storm ought to be better placed to understand that than anyone else is.

Apparently some activists at Baylor University are upset that Starbucks has coffee cups that have the following quote:

"My only regret about being gay is that I repressed it for so long. I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don't make that mistake yourself. Life's too damn short."

I stop at a Starbucks most mornings on the way to work, and I buy a latte, which comes wrapped in a piece of cardboard that keeps most of the cup covered and prevents me from burning my hands.

I have never noticed quotes on the cup before this news story.

Perhaps i'm particularly unobservant. Or perhaps Baylor's activist community is just looking for something to complain about. My bet is on both.

When the comic strip bizarro is on target, it's *really* on target:

On Friday of last week, a [redacted. based on PC hardware] was dropped off in my cube. I finally got around to trying to use it today.

It would not boot; it complained that there was no operating system installed. So I got a [redacted] OS image CD, plopped it in the CD drive, and attempted to install it.

The machine would not boot from the CD.

So I went into the bios. The bios said that it was set to boot from CD before trying to boot from the hard drive. It also seemed to show that there were no IDE drives present. (?!) I turned off 'quickboot mode' in the hopes that that way I would see more.

That got me a complaint about disk drive A not being found; the BIOS was configured to support a legacy disk drive that isn't installed. I turned off support for the legacy floppy drive and restarted.

No dice. At startup, the machine gives me a couple of reassuring messages (mouse found, etc), then displays a 'press any key to continue' screen showing that I have no installed hard drives, and then complains that it can't find an operating system, without attempting to boot off of the OS image install CD.

I opened the case; there are two hard drives there, both of them plugged in to the power supply. The CD is plugged into the motherboard via an IDE cable, but the hard drives do not appear to be.

I am unable to use the machine in the state in which it was dropped off in my cube; it will not boot from an OS image CD and appears to not have its hard drives connected to the IDE controller.

Can someone please take a look at this for me?

Utterly unbelievable.

Frankfurter Allgemeine has a wonderful series of images up showing district-by-district results for the recent inconclusive German election. They make clear some things which the English-language media either hasn't been reporting or hasn't understood. While it is true that the overall election results were basically a tie, it is also true that Germany appears to be breaking down into several different regions in which different parties are competitive - except for the CDU, the only party which appears to be broadly competitive in the entire country.

Some data points:

The greens appear to have little to no constituency in the east outside the immediate environs of Berlin, and are strongest in the area of the Black Forest and the environs of Stuttgart.

The SPD appears to have little constituency in Saxony and Bavaria, is weak in Baden-Wurttemburg, and is only really strong in Westphalia.

The FDP has no constituency whatsoever in the east outside of Berlin and Saxony, and is strongest in Baden-Wurttemburg and the areas west of the Rhine.

But the most dramatic of them all:

The Left party is extremely weak in the former west Germany, except for the Saarland, but it is the dominant political party in the former East Germany.

The CDU/CSU, however, seems strong everywhere in the west, in Pomerania, and in Saxony; while it remains dominant in Bavaria, its strength there is decreasing somewhat, and it continues to have a powerful base throughout the former west Germany. It is the only party in Germany which can reasonably claim to have a truly strong following nationwide (as opposed to a strong following in particular regions).

COBURN: My question relates to the Constitution and what is said in Article 3 that judges, both of the Supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behavior.

My question to you: Is relying on foreign precedent and selecting and choosing a foreign precedent to create a bias outside of the laws of this country, is that good behavior?

This sounds to me like an implicit suggestion that judges can be impeached for relying on foreign precedent. Judge Roberts seemed to take it the same way:

ROBERTS: Well, for the reasons I stated yesterday, I don't think it's a good approach. I wouldn't accuse judges or justices who disagree with that, though, of violating their oath. I'd accuse them of getting it wrong on that point and I'd hope to sit down with them and debate it and reason about it.

But I think the justices who reach a contrary result on those questions are operating in good faith and trying, as I do on the court I am on now, to live up to that oath that you read.

I wouldn't want to suggest that they're not doing not doing that.

LEAHY:Can I assume that you will hold the internment of all residents of this country who are interned just because they have a particular nationality or ethnic or religious group -- you would hold that to be unconstitutional?

ROBERTS: The internment of a group solely on the basis of their...

LEAHY: Nationality or ethnic or religious group?

ROBERTS: I suppose a case like that could come before the court. I would be surprised to see it. And I would be surprised if there were any arguments that could support it.

Oddly, I wouldn't be surprised to see such a case come before the court, in the event of a large-scale terrorist attack, and I wouldn't be surprised to see the position Judge Roberts put forth here be extraordinarily unpopular in such a case.

So i'm relieved to hear him say what he did yesterday.

SPECTER:And the question, by analogy [ed: analogy to the Dickerson decision in which the court upheld Miranda]: Whether a woman's right to choose is so embedded that it's become a part of our national culture; what do you think?

ROBERTS: Well, I think that gets to the application of the principles in a particular case. And based on my review of the prior transcripts of every nominee sitting on the court today, that's where they've generally declined to answer: when it gets to the application of legal principles to particular cases.

I would repeat that the court has already applied the principles of stare decisis to Roe in the Casey decision. And that stands as a precedent of the court, as well.

SPECTER: Do you believe today that the right to privacy does exist in the Constitution?

ROBERTS: Senator, I do. The right to privacy is protected under the Constitution in various ways. It's protected by the Fourth Amendment which provides that the right of people to be secure in their persons, houses, effects and papers is protected. It's protected under the First Amendment dealing with prohibition on establishment of a religion and guarantee of free exercise. It protects privacy in matters of conscience. It was protected by the framers in areas that were of particular concern to them. It may not seem so significant today: the Third Amendment, protecting their homes against the quartering of troops. And in addition, the court has -- it was a series of decisions going back 80 years -- has recognized that personal privacy is a component of the liberty protected by the due process clause. The court has explained that the liberty protected is not limited to freedom from physical restraint and that it's protected not simply procedurally, but as a substantive matter as well. And those decisions have sketched out, over a period of 80 years, certain aspects of privacy that are protected as part of the liberty in the due process clause under the Constitution.

"Certain aspects of privacy that are protected as part of the liberty in the due process clause under the Constitution." "It's protected not simply procedurally but as a substantive matter as well."

To be fair, Judge Roberts could be merely reporting what the Court has said in the past, repeating what the court has held the law to be without saying whether or not he's agreed with it. But given his comments elsewhere about stare decisis, my reading of this is that he accepts such things as settled law.

SPECTER: The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives. Do you agree with that statement, Judge Roberts?

ROBERTS: Well, yes, Senator, as a general proposition, but I do feel compelled to point out that I should not, based on the precedent of prior nominees, agree or disagree with particular decisions.

Somehow I don't see the social conservatives being thrilled with that answer.

I'm still struggling to find words to describe my reaction to the last week's news, to the shocking pictures and even more shocking words, to the destruction of one of my country's best known and most interesting cities.

But while i'm doing that, i'd like to echo this:

Does anyone have confidence that, tomorrow say, if Tulsa or Peoria or Dallas or Chicago where attacked by a chemical or biological weapon--that our government would be able to mount an effective response? I certainly don't. After all, the government knew a Category 4 or 5 was about to slam into New Orleans.

That doesn't say it all, not by a long shot. But it's a start.

My aunt's mom managed to get a call out yesterday afternoon saying she was fine. No word from my friend's friend (the tourist) nor from any of Jared's family in the area. Jared's parents are calling, but (surprise!) nobody's answering.

Even my aunt's mom's situation is unclear: she survived the hurricane alright, but 80% of the city is under water, and the governor has ordered everyone, including the refugees in the Superdome, out.

The government-in-exile says that people *might* be able to return in a week to get essentials and that then they'd be ordered away for a further month.

Nothing like this has happened in the United States in my lifetime; i'm a bit dazed and shocked by it all.

A MOST POWERFUL HURRICANE WITH UNPRECEDENTED
STRENGTH...RIVALING THE INTENSITY OF HURRICANE CAMILLE OF 1969.

MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS...PERHAPS LONGER. AT
LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL
FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL...LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY
DAMAGED OR DESTROYED.

THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL.
PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. ALL WOOD
FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE
BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE...INCLUDING SOME
WALL AND ROOF FAILURE.

HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY...A
FEW TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. ALL WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT.

AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD...AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH
AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY
VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE
ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS...PETS...AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE
WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK.

POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS...AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN
AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING
INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.

THE VAST MAJORITY OF NATIVE TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY
THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING...BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED. FEW
CROPS WILL REMAIN. LIVESTOCK LEFT EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL BE
KILLED.

AN INLAND HURRICANE WIND WARNING IS ISSUED WHEN SUSTAINED WINDS NEAR
HURRICANE FORCE...OR FREQUENT GUSTS AT OR ABOVE HURRICANE FORCE...ARE
CERTAIN WITHIN THE NEXT 12 TO 24 HOURS.

The NOAA is panicking. Jared's grandmother and my aunt Libby's mother have not left the city. When I talked to Jared's dad this morning, he could not reach his brother or sister on the phone (probably a good sign: it likely means they've left town).

It's ... surreal, disturbing, unbelievable ... to think that by the time I wake up tomorrow morning New Orleans may quite simply be gone.

Proposition 75 is another easy-to-understand initiative; the voters are blessed this year. It would change the rules regarding the way in which public employees' unions are allowed to operate, by prohibiting them from using any dues or membership fees for political purposes without explicit authorization from the employee who provided the dues; such authorization would have to be renewed on an annual basis or woudl become invalid.The official purpose for this proposal is that it is unfair for union dues to be used for political purposes without the consent of the member whose money is being so spent.

In a churlish mood I might be tempted to lodge the snarky enquiry: "would the proponents of this measure support the same proposal if it were framed so as to prevent a church organization from spending tithe money for political purposes without the explicit written consent of the contributor, or if it were framed so as to prevent a business from spending money for political purposes without the explicit written consent of a shareholder?" The answer to those questions would go a long way in assisting the voters to determine if the proposal is offered out of an earnest interest in the political liberty of union members or not.

But there are two other questions which spring immediately to mind whose consideration might be more productive:

(a) if it is important to protect union members from the malicious use of their hard-earned dollar by corrupt union bosses pursuing unsavory politics, why extend that protection only to public employees' unions?

(b) if opt-in schemes, in which the organization is prevented from doing something unless it is annually approved by individuals, are such a good thing, why should it only be unions which are constrained by them? If an annual member opt-in for union political expenses is a good solution to the problem of union political corruption, doesn't consistency also say that banks should be required to get annual depositor opt-in before sharing their depositors' financial information with strangers?

The second is perhaps a bit of a non sequiter, included here only because I have an axe to grind: it is pathetically symptomatic of contemporary political debate that the people supporting this initiative can, without a hint of embarassment, both proclaim the benefits of an opt-in scheme that constrains the freedom of operation of public employee unions (by shifting control of finances to their members) and denounce the perfidies of an opt-in scheme that constrains the freedom of financial institutions (by shifting control of information to their customers). It calls into question the legitimacy of the proponents' claim to be fighting for the freedom of the little guy, and it also throws into sharp relief the depressing reality that blatant hypocrisy is no longer considered to be politically damaging.

It also places liberals who value consistency in a bit of a bind. From a rhetorical point of view, it's hard to argue that people shouldn't be free to reject politics they oppose; from a consistency point of view, it's hard to argue against opt-in programs that hand more power to the individual and take away power from institutions. Isn't empowering the individual the liberal dream? If I stand for empowering the customers of large businesses to control what those businesses do with their personal information, how can I reasonably oppose empowering public employees to control what their unions do with their money?

The principle can be taken to absurd extremes: imagine a world in which everyone had to explicitly approve using their tax money on each individual program the taxing agency spends money on; it would be a bureaucratic nightmare (and the verification of all of the approval forms would almost certainly be underfunded, compounding the confusion). Yet, absent the absurd extreme case, it's a good principle: allowing people direct control over their money, their property, their data, their destiny, enriches their freedom and empowers them. I can denounce the hypocrisy of those who only support this principle when it suits their particular interest and ignore it when it does not; yet I would prefer not to be guilty of the same sin.

Still, one thing bothers me about this initiative. Sometimes selective implementation is a bad thing; the world would be better off if everyone disarmed, but unilateral disarmament is the first step down the road to disarmament (unless you can find someone else to bear arms for you). That might very well be the case here.

I asked above, why is this initiative directed at public employees' unions alone, and not at the broader union movement? Why is this done via a modification to the Government Code rather than the Labor Code? There's a simple answer to that: the public employees' unions are the last unions, aside from the Longshoremen, who have any substantial political power. The rhetorical goal here may be to improve the lot of the downtrodden public employee; the real goal is to castrate the employee unions, to deprive them of political power..

There are many reasons for this; perhaps as many as there are supporters of the initiative. Some want to destroy the political power of public employee unions because they believe the political power of employee unions is uniquely harmful to the state, creating a large political interest blocking political change and innovation, and making the state less responsive to the voters than it is to its employees. Some want to destroy the political power of public employee unions because they believe employee unions are reliably liberal and that doing so will cause a restoration of conservative power. Some want to destroy the political power of employee unions because they belive that if the public employee unions are deprived of political power, they will wither away, the last remnant of the labor movement, and labor activism in the United States will cease altogether.

If the first group, or the latter, are correct, then it suddenly becomes unclear that supporting this measure is in fact serves to enrich the freedom of, and empower, public employees. By destroying the political power of their unions, we would weaken significantly the ability of those unions to negotiate with the state (because the application of political power is a great negotiating tactic against a politician); that would *reduce* the freedom and power of public employees.

Proposition 75 is a poison pill disguised as helpful medicine. Its goal is to break the power of the public employee unions; it is being promoted in an underhanded fashion. It deserves to be rejected at the polls.

It's August; I have to get on this or the election will come by before I know it.

Proposition 74 is an amazingly straightforward ballot initiative which makes two substantive changes to state law:

1. It adds a paragraph to the part of the Education Code which specifies the rules by which teachers become permanent employees, indicating that for any teacher originally hired in 2003-2004 or later, it will take five years for them to become a permanent employee rather than two;
2. It adds a paragraph to the part of the Education Code which specifies grounds for dismissal of permanent employees by public school districts, indicating that the receipt of two consecutive unsatisfactory evaluations shall be considered "unsatisfactory performance" for which a permanent employee can be dismissed, and allows districts to fire such teachers without providing a 90-day period for the teacher to improve his performance prior to initiating dismissal proceedings.

With something this straightforward, it's unfortunate that the polemicists have decided to do their best to cloud the issue. The argument in favor of the initiative, printed in the ballot handbook, implies that it will get more money into the classroom, and suggests that the only reason one might have to be opposed to it is that ot one has been confused by union bosses. The rebuttal says that the initiative will discourage recruitment of quality teachers and that it is nothing more than an attempt to scapegoat teachers. The argument against goes even further, claiming that teachers don't have tenure (using a weaselly redefinition of the word) and outright lying with the claim that the initiative takes away the right of a teacher to an administrative hearing before they are fired.

Both are, I think, missing the point, and missing an opportunity; for it is difficult to make an informed decision on this proposition without understanding how it fits into the scheme of "tenure", and why we have such a thing in the first place.

----------------------

The first thing to ask, I suppose, is "is there such a thing as teacher tenure?" The California Teachers' Association, in their argument against Proposition 74, says there isn't: that "California teachers are not guaranteed a job for life, which means they don't have tenure." But Dictionary.com defines tenure as "The status of holding one's position on a permanent basis without periodic contract renewals", which status teachers clearly have. Moreover, teachers who have been granted 'permanent employee' status can only be fired for a select list of things, including (but not limited to) conviction of a felony, membership in the Communist party, alcoholism, and advocating criminal syndicalism; and even then, such employees are entitled to an administrative hearing, with appeals, to ensure that they are being fired for cause. Since most private sector employees live in a world where, unless they can prove they are being discriminated against in violation of the various civil rights acts, they can be fired at the whim of their employer, the status teachers have is quite different from that of ordinary employees. In common usage, "tenure" is the word used to describe that status. The CTA appears to be attempting to redefine the word away from its ordinary meaning.¹.

But why does such a system exist? Part of it is a standard, bureaucratic protection offered to all civil servants: a protection against arbitrary dismissal for political reasons, the result of decades of effort to end the patronage games of nineteenth century politics. But that's not all of it; the historical record in California shows a pernicious system whereby school boards and administrators would lay off high-salary teachers in order to reduce expenditures (much as many companies will lay-off their most senior, expensive employees during budget contractions). And the pro-tenure rhetoric claims that the issue is "academic freedom" - eg, protecting teachers from being fired for teaching things that the research community believes to be true but which the Board of Education, Superintendent, or Principal do not. All of this boils down to two general cases: tenure exists in order to (a) protect teachers from being fired for political reasons, and (b) protect teachers from being fired for failing to meet arbitrary criteria not related to their job performance.

I would submit that both of these are good things; moreover, I would argue that in concept this style of protection ought to apply to any job, anywhere. Employers in industries with highly competitive job markets understand this; few software companies would fire an employee for being a political activist in their spare time, and even fewer would require adherence to Disney-style dress codes. Yet employers in markets which aren't highly competitive are often not so enlightened; and employers who are effectively in monopoly positions vis-a-vis their workforce are rarely so enlightened. Rules like this, by infringing on the liberty of employers to not employ people who do things they dislike, extend and protect the liberty of employees to live their own lives free of interference by their employers. They are predicated on the presumption that, in contract negotiations, employers have the upper hand, and that the power to withhold a job is in effect a form of coercion - and that presumption is well borne out by the history of corporate activity, both within America and abroad. Their particular application in the world of public education is also borne out by history - given that, in a world with tenure, teachers can be fired for failing students who have committed the sin of plaigirism (if their parents are politically well connected), and given that in the pre-tenure world it was common for teachers to be fired for political activism, it is hard to imagine tenure, as such, as being anything other than a great boon to the freedom of teachers to live their own lives, free of slavish devotion to the whims of the body politic.

Yet the gap between intent and effect is often larger than the Colorado River's chasm; and - however much the rhetoric of those supporting the initiative suggests they would be perfectly happy to do away with tenure entirely - the question under consideration is not the abolition of tenure: it is, instead, the assertion that tenure has created a system in which it is impossible to fire teachers for cause, and the proposal of a specific fix for doing so. So, given that tenure is a good thing in concept, the next logical question is this: is there such a gap between the goal of tenure and its implementation, that firing teachers for cause is impractical?

The proponents of both answers to that question have armed themselves with naught aside from anecdotes. But anecdotes do not a good case make. Those who say 'aye' can cite any number of cases in which firing a particularly bad teacher was painful, expensive, and protracted; those who say 'nay' can cite any number of cases in which teachers have been fired for bizarre and quixotic reasons. There does not appear to be any reasonable statistical data on the subject. Yet I suspect the proponents have the advantage here; for who among us cannot remember, from our own educational experiences, a teacher who was simply so incompetent that he/she should never have been allowed to teach? My memories involve a teacher - let us call her Mrs. C - whose lectures were incoherent because she was drinking between classes, whose grading seemed to be based entirely on whether or not she liked the students, who was utterly unable to impart any information or passion in her classes whatsoever. She should have been put out to pasture, as the saying goes, long before she was; the fact that she wasn't indicates either incompetence on the district administrative level (in that they hadn't noticed the problem), or a sufficiently high cost of doing so that the district decided it wasn't worth it to pay that cost.

My anecdote, to be sure, does not a case make; but i'm convinced that almost every child of the public schools in California has a similar story. Most teachers are hardworking, devoted employees; but there are some bad apples, and getting rid of them seems to be impractical for some reason or another.

And yet ... how do you change the system to reduce the cost of getting rid of Mrs. C and her analogs, while also ensuring that it remains difficult for a school district to fire a teacher for attending an unpopular political rally or for getting pregnant while unmarried? In particular, does this initiative solve the former problem without recreating the latter?

The initiative is an attempt to solve the problem of Mrs. C and her cohorts, to be sure. It seeks to do so by extending the time it takes before a teacher is provided with the full protection of permanent employee status, a provision which has generated very little controversy; the idea seems to be that a longer time period will allow for more substantial analysis of the teacher's work. It also seeks to do so by changing the rules that govern when a permanent employee can be fired; and that is the point where it could become problematic.

California law already allows tenured teachers to be fired for "unsatisfactory performance", a term so vague as to be meaningless. Yet clearly it is difficult to establish "unsatisfactory performance" under the current rules - but the difficulty lies not in anything written in code or procedure, but in the mentality and mindset of teachers, administrators, and judges, and the body of precedent set in administrative hearings and their appeals. This initiative seeks to define a certain thing - "two consecutive unsatisfactory evaluations" as automatically constituting "unsatisfactory performance" and, to the extent that that same thing would not currently be construed as unsatisfactory performance, to bypass the established cultural mentality and body of precedent. Fair enough; since those are the actual locus of the problem, that is the only way change is going to occur.

But what are the grounds for an "unsatisfactory evaluation"? The California Education Code requires that each district have a uniform system of evaluation (within the district), and requires that the standards used for such evaluation shall be assessed as it reasonably relates to certain educational objectives, except that "Nothing in this section shall be construed as in any way limiting the authority of school district governing boards to develop and adopt additional evaluation and assessment guidelines or criteria." In fact, while the education code contains some provisions indicating that the evaluation criteria MUST include certain things, it contains no exclusionary limits whatsoever on what cannot be used as grounds for evaluation.

So, if Proposition 74 passes, two unsatisfactory evaluations, which can be based upon any criteria the school district chooses, shall be sufficient grounds to terminate a "permanent employee". Said employee shall, of course, be entitled to an administrative hearing and an appeal of the decision to fire them; but the law implies a presumption that the two unsatisfactory evaluations are sufficient, and it would therefore be difficult to win such a hearing or appeal. This initiative effectively allows teachers to be fired for any reason at all, providing only that the school board indicate in advance that something will be grounds for an unsatisfactory evaluation. It eviscerates, in short, the protections of tenure.

I agree with the proponents of the measure that tenure has introduced problematic side-effects that need to be remedied. I do not agree that this initiative is the way to do it. It eviscerates the meaning of teacher tenure, effectively using the existence of side-effects as an excuse for abolishing the system entirely. It attempts to fix a problem with tenure without taking into account the problems tenure was intended to fix.

¹There is an interesting and bizarre political subtext to this initiative which I'll leave for a later post. I want to look at the merits of the idea before delving into the politics surrounding it, no matter how easy it is to get distracted by the latter.

RPI's argument that "copy" does not necessary mean "exact copy" is one example of mincing and then stretching the meaning of words beyond reason."

Nobody does farce like California does farce.

Under US law (propounded by the Supreme Court in a series of cases beginning with Baker v. Carr), states are required to redraw the boundaries for electoral districts after each census. (Prior to that, it was not uncommon for states to not redraw their district boundaries for decades; Tennessee had failed to do so for sixty years, resulting in a legislature which resembled nothing so much as the 17th-century Parliament). After the 2000 census, California's legislature redrew the state's congressional districts along bipartisan lines: the leaders of both parties agreed that the Democrats, then the dominant political force in the state, could pick up the new Congressional seat, while each house of the state legislature would draw its own districts in such a way as to guarantee that every incumbent would be re-elected by almost Soviet margins.

It was a stunning concession of power by state Democrats, who eschewed the chance to pack the legislature and virtually eliminate the carping Conservative minority; and it was a stunning concession of principle by state Republicans, who thereby endorsed a scheme by which the legislators chose their voters and legislative elections became a farce.

Some Republicans, backed by both angry conservative activists who have deluded themselves into believing that "fair" districts would have returned a Texas-style legislature and angry citizen activists who are disgruntled at the effective rendering inoperable of democratic choice, have since had second thoughts, and the state's politics have in recent years been the scene of much grumbling. Grumbling which started in the Rotary Club, drifted down the street into the churches, and echoed through the halls of the legislature. Grumbling which our publicity-hungry Governor, always in search of a stick with which to beat the Legislature (and with which to demonstrate himself to be a Hero of the People) seized on and made a cause of his own.

While the Governor was hedging, trying to decide whether it would be better to seek a deal with the legislature or to go straight to the voters, the activists acted. Ted Costa, a long-time purveyor of citizen initiatives marketed to voters with a conservative bent, sent a petition in to the Attorney General for preparation of a title and summary - a petition regarding the reform of the redistricting system, which would vest the power to redistrict in the hands of retired judges, subject to a popular vote on the results. Once they got back the title and summary, his office hired an army of mercenaries to stand in front of every WalMart and McDonalds in the state, flogging the proposal at random passers-by, gathering the needed signatures for qualification.

The signatures were gathered and sent to the Secretary of State's office, Arnold enthusiastically backed the measure and made it the centerpiece of his political strategy for the year, and a special election was called. An election to deal with the urgent redistricting crisis. An election in which this ballot initiative was the paramount issue, although other issues tagged along.

There was, it seems, one small problem.

The initiative that Costa's people turned over to the mercenary signature gathering army was not, in fact, the same initiative that they'd submitted to the Attorney General. Depending on your political leanings, the differences were either minor technical trivialities, a perfidious attempt to mislead the voters, or both; and most people have only their political leanings and abject rumor to go on in determining the matter, as none of the people involved - nor the media covering them - have seen fit to provide a side-by-side comparison of the two texts.

The Attorney General responded to this by suing the Secretary of State to prevent him from placing the initiative on the ballot. Or, since this political crime was discovered after the ballot initiatives had been numbered and during the preparation of the ballot pamphlet, to remove the initiative from the ballot that was already being prepared. Various left-wing activist groups who have deluded themselves into thinking a fair redistricting would result in a Texas-style legislature attempted to join in the lawsuit but were rebuffed by the court. Ted Costa launched a small publicity campaign in which he observed that every ballot initiative faces lawsuits; what he didn't admit is that most of those lawsuits are of the rhetorical caliber of "having a recall election discriminates against Mexican-Americans!" rather than the somewhat more compelling "the law says X and Y must be identical and they aren't!".

How is it possible that Ted Costa, the most successful initiative vendor of our time, could make this mistake? Kevin Drum reports that Costa's answer, when he was asked that at a recent conference of conservative bloggers, was incoherent. As well it should be; for such an experienced outfit to have failed it so vividly on such an important and high-profile issue almost suggests the game was deliberately thrown.

The case went to court, and the pundits and activists complained. They complained in ironic ways: the same people who said that it was unreasonable for the Florida courts to not comply with the letter of an inherently contradictory law (in 2000) demanded that the California courts ignore the letter of an inherently straightforward law (in 2005). Meanwhile, those who demanded that the courts allow the county election boards to determine the will of the people in 2000 demanded that the courts direct the Secretary of State to ignore the will of the people, expressed by more than 900,000 signatures, in 2005. Virtually nobody seemed concerned that the true extent of the problem was unclear.

The court proceedings were, to judge by the decision, hysterical. The proponents of the measure were reduced to arguing that the Findings and Purposes section of the initiative was irrelevant. Granted, this is something that California voters have long suspected - but do we relaly want to introduce as a general rule of statutory construction the meaninglessness of the preamble, and its inapplicability when interpreting the attached statute? Does this actually strike anyone as a good idea?

Even the judge was in on the game, as witnessed by the opening quote. While poking fun at the absurdity of the claims before her, she could not find it in herself to identify the appropriate adverb (necessarily, instead of necessary); a fitting capstone indeed to a silly argument.

This is a serious matter, and perhaps I should not be laughing at it; but I cannot help myself. A bizarre clerical error by people who should know better has led to an inversion of normal activist principles and the collapse of the governor's high-profile political strategy. How can you not laugh?

On a more serious note, both sides have good points. If the differences really are trivial, then a court removing a ballot measure that 900,000 people have endorsed is troubling - and it remains so even when we know full well that a different measure expressing fundamentally the same concept will be back next year. On the other hand, the Attorney General's point, and that of the Judge who decided the case, are well taken: if differences not authorized by law are OK in this instance, where do we draw the line, and do we really want courts doing that on a regular basis?

WARNING: Spolers for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Friday night, as a result of a bit of advance planning (mostly in the form of extracting commitments from I_ and S_, the neighbors whose cats entertained us on Saturday morning), the four of us went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, accompannied by R_, a friend of mine from Oregon who was in town for the night passing through on his way to somewhere else. R_ and I went to dinner at a Turkish restaurant and caught up (it's been more than a year since we've seen each other), and we met Jared, I_, and S_ just seconds before the movie began. S_ had been preserving five seats for us against a small army of greedy teenagers, and did a stand-up job of protecting them without inducing bleeding, vomiting, or other discharges of bodily fluid; I_ and Jared had been waiting at the hot dog place next door, where I_ had been hoping to avoid the trailers.

There were trailers. I don't remember them all. Corpse Bride, which looks cute and comical and altogether reminiscent of Nightmare Before Christmas. King Kong, which looks like it will be an inredibly stupid story told with outstanding production values. (Thank you, Peter Jackson! How about you pick a better story for your next film?) Narnia, of course, which has been growing on me the more I see trailers for it; as much as I am leery of Disney, it looks like there is a chance that the director will be able to carry the wonder and awe of the story.

I can hope, can't I?

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was fantastic. The best movie I've seen in the theatre all year (although that's not saying much, alas). It wasn't precisely how I imagined the book - Johnny Depp was downright creepy, portraying a Willy Wonka who had become downright unhinged, and there was something somehow ... different, in a way I can't quite define ... in the Oompa-Loompas. But it pulled off the atmosphere, and I got a sense of the amazed wonder that Charlie felt while walking through Willy Wonka's world. As an added bonus, Johnny Depp was periodically funny (and his unhinged Willy Wonka was flawlessly portrayed). But best of all were the Oompa Loompas, whose songs - lyrics by Roald Dahl - turned the movie into a parody of musicals and a parody of modern music. It was hysterically funny.

Saturday, after recovering from the invasion, I went up to the city to play D&amp with H_, V_, T_, and someone I hadn't met before. My regular group had scheduled a game for that day, but a number of players had dropped out at the last minute for various uninventive reasons (nobody was kidnapped. nobody had their house fall in on them. nobody was in thrall to a dark master demanding that they devote their every breathing hour to his notorious schemes. why aren't excuses more creative and inventive?). So I rolled up a character for a temporary adventure - a gnome bard whom everyone, not having seen gnomes before, thought was a miniature dwarf; he proceeded to get squished by a raging barbarian ogre who didn't like alchemist's fire. (The party should have protected me, as the bard in the next encounter wouldn't have been able to enthrall them if they had). Amused and entertained, I went home shortly after dinner, and broke open my package from Amazon.

Amazon has to have taken a bath on this. Not only did they guarantee Saturday delivery of the new Harry Potter book to 900,000 people; they retroactively reduced the price, crediting everyone's account with $1. The economics would seem to be insane.

I was done with it by 2 in the morning. It was an entertaining read, about all I expected. I'm one of the small handful of people in the world who neither love nor hate the series. I thought much of the book was tedious and dull; it was hard to get emotionally or even intellectually interested in the various romantic schisms, or in everyone's unwillingness to believe Harry's theories, or the question of whether or not the things Harry was getting from his chemistry book were threatening or not. Maybe these things gelled better with the target audience, but for me they seemed silly and disinteresting.

That section of the book was surreal, too; the children at Hogwarts going about their banal existence while the world is literally falling apart around them. I was disappointed that JKRowling didn't do more with that theme, draw out more both the good and bad aspects of that kind of protection, show the characters realizing the banality; although it's possible that Harry did, and that realization is one of the major pieces of character growth in the story. I was also disappointed that she didn't do more with the suspense tension of having the audience know something critical about a major character which none of the other characters did - there were some stabs at it, but I think it's fair to say that JK Rowling does not have a future as a writer of thrillers.

That said, the increased dramatic tension at the end, particularly the way Harry was forced to grow and make difficult choices, made the rest of the book worthwhile. Yeah, yeah, Dumbledore was acting very strangely - something that i'm sure will be explained in book seven. But, really, his death was necessary; it's very hard for the hero to come into his own while still under the protective shield of an elderly mentor.

I spent Sunday in the protective cocoon of the Stanford Library, researching my next K5 article. I have an effective deadline of one week from today, so I needed to get working ... and it was nice to be ensconced in a library, hidden from the world, soaking up the contradictory stories told by the historians of the past. Even if the subject is more complex, and tedious, than I had expected it to be.

After, we went out for dinner. This involved complications, as my cell phone had spent the hours I was in the library frittering away its power in a desperate attempt to contact a server, shouting "here I am" into the concrete pillars of the dungeon. We did not have to resort to smoke signals and semaphores, thankfully, and Jared, I_, S_ and I settled on dinner at Palo Alto's Cheesecake Factory. (I didn't decide; my tastes run to more ethnic food than that - but Jared and I_ tend to be skeptical).

Monday night, Jared and I went over to E_'s house to hang out, have dinner, and watch a movie. My mood was somewhat spoiled (as I expect was Jared's) by a fight we'd had on the way there, which originated in my ignoring a question he'd asked - repeatedly - in IRC; but my mood lifted as we conversed, as did his.

The movie of the evening was a documentary, The Corporation. It was terrible. We ended up interrupting it almost every minute to complain or argue about it. The film purported to be a critique of corporations, but it turned into a critique of capitalism, and most of the things which it was complaining about were not a result of either the corporate form of organization or of limited liability per se; they were the result of the cultural focus on growth and profit. It's ironic, because I'm skeptical of capitalism and instinctively dislike large corporations ... but the movie completely failed to make its case, uanble to draw a connection between the evils it objected to and the cause it alleged. It was an enormous oversimplified non sequiter, and it was funny.

My dreams slowly melted away into the sound of jared grumbling. "Grumble grumble grumble", he whined. "Grumble grumble."

"What's wrong?", I asked in a groggy voice, hoping that I could soothe Jared and fall back asleep before I came fully awake.

"It's before six in the morning", Jared began, and I winced, knowing that he wouldn't be able to get back to sleep even if I did. "Something was going jingle jingle jingle and I looked, and saw Riesling, Rivka, and Princess." Three neighborhood cats had invaded our house during the night, and Jared was allergic to them all.

I tried to go back to sleep. What does it matter if there are cats in the house? They'll wander around and play for a bit, and then they'll get bored and go back out the way they came in. Jared tried to chase them out of the house. Riesling - or the one he thought was Riesling - went happily on his way, The short-haired gray cat he thought was Rivka went downstairs, and he chased her out the front door. I started to drift back to sleep, and there Jared was, complaining again: the third cat would not go outside. It had fled under the bed and was cowering there.

The cat began to cry. A pitiful, terrified cry. Yowling for its parents. Yowling for freedom from terror. A constant high-pitched high-pitched terrified wail.

I pulled the light purple sheets over my head to shut out the noise and the light. I failed. Jared continued trying to extract the cat. As I lay there, trying to pretend it would all go away (because ultimately who cares if a cat spends the rest of the night with us), I realized the problem: if this cat really was Princess, we shouldn't be shooing her outside.

Princess is one of four cats who belong to our neighbors I_ and S_. She was fostered there as a kitten and has never moved on; she's also never been out of our neighbors condo. If she had arrived here, in our bedroom, terrified, utterly unwilling to go outside (as scared as she was of Jared, and of me once I got up, outside terrified her more), we should probably try to catch her and take her home. Our neighbors were probably worried sick, and the poor cat was probably traumatized already. Kicking her outside would just result in her hiding under the building or something similar.

I got up and tried to entice the cat out. No go. Jared went downstairs to call I_ or S_; they didn't hear the phone, which he let ring for three ages. I got dressed, went next door and into the neighbors' house, up into their bedroom. S_'s eyes opened as soon as I walked in. "We have what appears to be an utterly terrified Princess in our bedroom."

I_ was shocked. "How is that possible?", he wondered. S_ came over, saw the cat under the bed, decided it wasn't Princess but rather one of the other black cats in the neighborhood. She went back next door to get some cat treats to extract the cat with; Jared proceeded to slowly force the cat out from under the bed (by moving it) and then drive it out the patio door. He succeeded, with no small difficulty; but the cat was then bewildered, unable to jump up on the roof to proceed home. S_ returned, saw the full glory of the kitten, and realized her error: it was Princess, in fact. She took Princess home, and the cat, quite happy to be back in its lair, began to play.

I was now fully awake; sleep was not going to come. I gathered up stuff and went outside to ask I_ and S_ if they wanted me to get them coffee. I saw a flash of cat movement, and realized that their other kitten was outside, too. I wandered over to their patio, and the kitten was hiding under a table. I looked around; neither S_ nor I_ were in sight, so I opened the door to get them. The kitten took a cautious step forward. I held the door open (Princess wasn't going to go back outside, and the adult cats are allowed out, so I didn't have to worry about not letting the cats out); the kitten ran inside.

S_ and I went to go get coffee. (I_ wanted to go back to sleep). We sat outside the cafe sipping our yuppie coffee drinks while people wandered by with their dogs. Among other things, we saw a giant german shepherd puppy which was almost as large as its owner, and a tiny brown dachshund which resembled a furry sausage on stubby centipede legs. (The dachshund, upon seeing the german shepherd, became aggressive and domineering, barking and growling, trying to chase it away; the German Shepherd thought this was great fun and wanted to play).

Maybe tomorrow morning I can sleep?

It's a bit early, perhaps, but I want to get a handle on the ballot propositions before the advertisors fill my mailbox with drivel and the united pundits of California fill the ethernet with bytes.

Proposition 73 is a fairly standard-issue constitutional amendment which would require, subject to some caveats, that teenage girls notify a parent forty-eight hours prior to obtaining an abortion. Despite some rumor-mongering on certain liberal websites about how this qualified for the ballot as part of a covert strategy to rile up the social conservative voters in California and get them to come to the polls (where they would presumably support Governor Schwarzenegger's agenda as expressed in other ballot initiatives), there is no evidence for that proposition - the measure was submitted for signature gathering in September of 2004, while the initiatives which form the core of the governor's agenda were not submitted until the following January. Accordingly, Proposition 73 measure deserves to succeed or fail on its own merits, rather than as a result of a mythical association with certain other initiatives.

The measure is straightforward and simple, unusually so for a ballot initiative. It specifies that a doctor may not perform an abortion on an unmarried women, under the age of 18, who is not serving in the US Armed Forces and who has not been declared an emancipated minor under California law, unless he has notified a parent who has legal custody of that woman and waits forty-eight hours for the notified parent to reflect upon the matter. There's an exemption for medical emergencies, and the doctor may also perform the abortion if he receives a waiver of notice from either the custodial parent or from a judge, and it provides a simple, timely, and free procedure whereby a woman may seek a judicial waiver.

As parental notification laws go, this is relatively unobtrusive. It does not require parental consent; it does not require the notification of both parents; it seems designed to make the judicial waiver process as easy as is practicable (and, indeed, poses no small risk of tying up the courts with parental notification waiver cases). It provides little in the way of technical excuses for opponents to the law to hang their opposition on, and an honest debate about this law will be about one thing only: should the state require doctors to obtain parental notification prior to performing an abortion on a minor? The drafters of the initiative, by meeting most of the common technical objections to such laws, have done an outstanding job of forcing the debate to center around that issue.

It's a tough call. On the one hand, there is simply no other medical procedure - including, say, tattooing - which doesn't require parental consent, and while abortion falls into the realm of sex-related subjects that most of us wish to keep somewhat private, it's also one of the most serious choices a woman ever has to make, and is arguably the kind of medical decision that is least compatible with solitary decision-making, and the most deserving of protections designed to ensure that the decision is entered into only upon serious contemplation.

And yet.

While it's probably true that many teenagers who are afraid to talk to their parents about sexuality, or pregnancy, or anything at all really, have no real need for that fear, it is also manifestly true that some do. Abusive families exist. And it's not just sexual abuse that's the problem, although - as John Kerry showed he understood in last year's presidential debate - it is the simplest explanation for liberal unease with parental notification and consent laws. Physical and emotional abuse can be just as traumatic, just as terrifying.

The authors of the initiative declare that "the People of California have a special and compelling interest in and responsibility for ... promoting parent-child communication and parental responsibility". That's all well and good for normal families in which the children don't live in fear of being beaten, for families in which the bond betwee parents and children is healthy, for families in which the destructive power of righteous anger is held in check. But those aren't the only families.

The authors of this initiative have made some effort to take that into account by providing an easy, cheap, and timely means for obtaining judicial wavers. They should be commended for that. But they have missed something important, something which makes their effort seem almost laughable. It' s understandable that they've missed it, because it's something that's difficult to truly grasp unless you have lived in the shadow of fear: for people growing up in such households, obtaining a judicial waver is going to be extremely difficult, because it means they have to trust the judicial system to be on their side. In a world where the adults you are supposed to trust the most have turned on you, in a world where nothing is safe, why should you trust the legal system to not abuse you too?

In the bright world of normal life, this question seems insane. In the dark, tortured world of someone whose life is a nightmare and whose family members have become the demons in whose torturing hands their lives have been sentenced, it is a perfectly reasonable and rational concern. And it's a concern that no judicial notification procedure, however simple, however cheap, can overcome: the emotional barrier to trusting a strange, powerful adult, is simply too high.

As a matter of oversimplification, teenage girls obtaining abortions can be broken down into three categories:

1. Girls with normal, stable home lives who talk it over with their parents first;
2. Girls with normal, stable home lives who don't talk it over with their parents first but who would not suffer unduly if they did;
3. Girls with abnormal, freakish, abusive home lives who don't talk it over with their parents because they're rightly terrified of what would happen if they did

As far as I can tell, proposition 73 is designed to force girls in the second group to talk with their parents before getting an abortion; and that's a reasonable, almost noble goal. But it will achieve that goal by significantly increasing the emotional - and, quite possibly, physical - cost to girls in the third group - to girls who are already living a life of despair, to the girls who have the least ability to bear an additional cost. In general, social policy goals should not be achieved by imposing costs on those least able to bear them; and so it is with this social policy goal. The aim may be good, but the cost is too high.

I will be voting "no" on Proposition 73 for that reason.

Never forget, and never let it happen again.

The Associated Press is reporting - and the report was presaged for me by a stunning picture on the front page of the sports section of yesterday's New York Times - that an American skateboarder spent the weekend jumping over the Great Wall of China at a speed of about fifty miles per hour. My weekend was significantly less adventurous.

Friday night, Jared and I went down the peninsula to the Shoreline movie theatres, a massive cineplex complex with a parking lot only slightly smaller than San Marino, to see Crash, which we'd heard good things about (from, among other people, Jared's mother). It was a remarkably well-made movie; the atmosphere was perfectly constructed, the music was well selected to reinforce the mood. Jared thought that, if the movie was intended to be a slice-of-life story about characters whose lives were intertwined in surprising ways, it failed; and it's certainly true that some of the intersections in characters' lives were ... implausible. I saw it as a more overtly political movie, a grand meditation on the nasty reality of race relations in modern America - and there it excelled, painting a dark and bleak picture without taking sides, and including surprisingly lyrical moments as a testament to the beauty of man and his strength and power to do great things while the world around him is turning to shit. (That terrible moment of intersection between the loving myth a father told to banish fear from his daughter's heart and the lie a different daughter told to keep her father safe from his own worst instincts was easily one of the most compelling cinematic moments ever.) The movie's great flaw was, ironically, a problem with characterization: two of the characters undergo inexplicable changes of personality without either adequate background to explain them or story elements which allowed us to see how the character grew from point A to point B. That, and Ryan Philippe is nowhere near as cute as he was when he was younger ... but it's still the single best meditation on race relations I've ever seen on the silver screen.

Saturday was mostly a slow day, but a good one. I woke up early, still on Ontario time, and made breakfast: shallots fried together into scrambled eggs with cheese, with bacon on the side. We hung out for a bit, me drinking coffee and reading and chatting with people online, Jared playing World of Warcraft, and then headed out - late - to see our friends in the city for an afternoon and evening of board gaming.

Our game day started with 1853, one of the earlier games in the 18xx series. Set in India, it has an almost nonexistent stock market, and features both metric and double-gage track. I nearly got horribly hosed due to an error in understanding how the opening bidding round worked, but pulled it out and instead transferred the hosage to Jared. Still, it wasn't good enough to come back, and I ended up a distant third. The truly odd thing about this game, though, was the rule that says that the existence of actual tiles does not limit track - eg, if you run out of a given tile, you are allowed to assume an infinite number, as long as the tile existed in the first place. Far too many companies were running metric track, so more than half the metric track on the board at the end of the game was imaginary. Made for an interesting board, at least.

M. had been feeding us salsa and cheesy poofs all afternoon, so I wasn't terribly hungry when A. made cauliflower-mustard pasta (a good thing, all said, as mustard is something of the anti-corn). While he was cooking and we ate (or, rather, Jared ate, as nobody else was terribly hungry), we played Citadels, a surprisingly fun quick card game involving using character roles to enable you to build buildings for yourself while interfering with other peoples' ability to do so. I won won game, and M__ won the other.

We finished up with Goa, a complex resource management game whose premise is that everyone is a dutch trader in the Indies in the early modern period. Again, I got fairly badly hosed at the start (I was frozen out of the bidding in the first round), but I managed to come back, and for a while looked like I had an angle on winning. In the end, I had to settle for third - but it was a close third, instead of the embarassingly distant third of the first game.

Jared was getting very sleepy, and I wasn't far behind, so we wandered off to go home. Along the way, his stomach and intestines began to grumble.

I wasn't too concerned. He has a touchy intestinal system, something he inherited from his father, and so this sort of thing happens fairly regularly. Still, it's never pleasant, and it always makes him look like exhausted, dehydrated, and miserable; so I rushed him home as quickly as possible and put him to bed, only to discover that now my intestines were grumbly. That's unusual; in most cases I have intestines of iron. My guess is it was some form of food poisoning; in the middle of the night, I was unable to drink water from concern that it would simply come back up, something that's only ever happened to me when I've been suffering from food poisoning. That, and Jared was feverish when I climbed into bed - also an unusual symptom for run-of-the-mill unhappy intestines.

My friend I. had come over the day before, trying to drag us off to breakfast with him and his wife; I'd been unable to comply, having already made breakfast. So we'd agreed to go on Sunday (a date which Jared backed out of, still feeling somewhat ill), and so Sunday started with breakfast with friends. While there, I. told me about this story, a curious tale involving unsympathetic policemen, and we made fun of the plaintiff a bit. Then he taught me the rules to Landlord, a Chinese card game, which a co-worker of his is working on adapting into a computer game. We played for a couple of hours, wandering in the middle back to his condo and sitting outside in someone else's (shaded) patio, until it was time for them to leave for a Giants game.

I wandered inside and babbled online for a bit; and then Jared and I sat down to watch the first eight episodes of season 3 of Alias.

Alias is not great TV. I think it's dubious whether it's even good TV. But it's *fun*, surprisingly so even when it's being cheesy and predictable; it's sort of a low-grade cross between James Bond and the X-Files; and, of course, the best way to watch TV series is in a continuous run, on DVD. The third season is somewhat less ... entertaining ... than the first two were; there was a serious lack of suspense, which turned into a serious lack of anything to make you interested in the series (unless you're attracted to Jennifer Garner, which works for some people). It picked up significantly around episode 6, but I'm unconvinced that if I'd been watching it an episode a week, I would have stuck with it.

Something Cheeseburger Brown wrote set me to thinking, on the way to work this morning, about my relationship with airplanes. I love the fact that I can use an airplane to travel pretty much anywhere in the world at a speed which would have been unbelievable half a century ago; and yet at the same time, like most people, I loathe the experience of flying. I understand what Cheeseburger was trying to say, I think, about perepsective, and how amazing the modern world is; and yet everytime I'm on an airplane I'm reduced to remembering one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life, the time I tried meditating on an airplane.

The way I meditate, most of the time, after centering and clearing my mind, I can sense the presence of living things around me; on some occasions, the most soaring spiritual experiences of my life, I've almost felt that I could *merge* with the trees and the grass and such around me, that the connection between all living things was palpable and I could *touch* it. Attempting to do this on an airplane is not simply unsettling; it is starkly terrifying. I quickly became aware that there was *nothing* - the people on the plane, sure, but outside the dead metal hulk encasing us, nothing that could be connected with. We were alone, inside a bullet, hurtling through a void, cut off and seperated, alienated from the rest of the world. The enervating feeling of loneliness that comes from long times spent isolated from people has nothing on this sense; it was a sudden, powerful realization of utter disconnectedness.

I am convinced that people living long-term on space stations or long-distance space missions will suffer various neuroses and psychoses due to this exact same feeling, due to the distance between them and other living things. Something of a spiritual malaise, which science will have a difficult time recognizing or treating. Perhaps the entire asteroid belt will be populated by psycopaths and decent normal people will be afraid to travel there?

The purple flowers poking up from the grass outside are being flattened by a strong wind from the north, but the trees don't seem fazed at all, and i'm inside looking down at them, fighting with a makefile that doesn't seem to be doing what's intended (so that I can test something for people working on a different project than my primary responsibility). I'd rather be outside, in the wind, in the sun, curled up with a book, or with a notepad. There's nothing quite like a vacation to remind me of how much I despise the computer industry (while loving computers at the same time). Anyone got any good advice on how to make changing industries financially feasible?

There's a particularly frustrating not-reproduceable-in-house problem that I'm trying to debug; it looks like something is failing because someone's come along and removed a file, or perhaps because a directory handle has gone stale, but it's hard to tell who and why. It's not my code, but i'm the integrator for the project, so until I can point at some code and say "hey! it's this code's fault. You, over there, fix it!" in my best Napoleon imitation, I'm stuck with debugging it. Also, apparently, while the patch I provided to version 1.3 of the product product, right before I left, worked, the *identical code change* in version 1.2 did not, and nobody answered my mail asking for a summary of what the differences between the two versions were.

I swear, every technology company needs to hire a professional historian to keep track of what's gone on so that information isn't fucking lost like this.

I got home late Wednesday night (11pm, in part because the flight sat on the tarmac for forty minutes while the airport tried to find us a gate), tired; I'd spent half of Tuesday and the entire plane flight writing my trip report. It's the first time i've ever successfully written anything while on a plane, trapped in an aluminum tube hurtling through the sky, with barely breathable air and slightly more room to wriggle around than is afforded canned sardines. My neck hurt and my wrist screamed for relief, my legs wanted nothing so much as a good run, and I was exhausted and hungry. Jared was kind enough to take me to In-n-Out for dinner, and then we went home, where I collapsed.

Much of my exhaustion was left-over from the weekend, but some of it was due to the hostel: it had no air conditioning, and the other guys in the room had gone to bed (a) without setting up the fan, and (b) with the fan unreachable without climbing over them and waking them up. Being a polite sort, I didn't want to do that, so I lay in bed much of the night, sweat pouring out of me over the sheets, unable to sleep for the heat. (The same thing happened when I stayed in a hostel in San Diego. Oddly, I never remember such an experience in a European hostel; maybe they just choose better-designed buildings?)

Work has been slow the last two days; getting back into the rhythym is a bit tough, and I feel a yearning to be elsewhere. The strangest thing is ... I feel a yearning to write. Not, as is often the case, a yearning to have written - I often have stories I wish to have written but little desire to sit down and write them. This week has been the opposite. I can hardly keep the words contained, focus on something else for long enough to let them go. I can't remember ever feeling like this before.

Last night, Jared and I went over to E's house for dinner board games (there's a san francisco area weekly gaming group whose abode wanders from place to place on given weeks; Jared and I go sometimes). We played St. Petersberg, a decent enough game; not a great one, but entertaining, and complex enough to hold my attention even though I was fighting off the urge to fall asleep. It's essentially a resource management game, in which you bid for cards that give you either more money or victory points, and the goal is to expand your revenue stream and then convert revenue into points. E was somewhat grumpy, having just gotten in from Ireland, and was quite snippy with R, who suffered from his usual analysis paralysis.

I was particularly happy about dinner; I got home from Canada to discover that I am essentially broke until the next payday (ooh, the joys of taking unpaid vacation). This isn't a large-scale problem, but it's interesting in the short term; it's been years since i had to cobble together coins from various coin stashes in order to pay for lunch. I didn't even end up being forced to do that when I was unemployed.

Tonight Jared is going to take me to see Crash; that should be fun. I hope I can make it through to the movie; I really need a day of just *sleep* to catch up with all the sleep I lost while I was travelling. Either that, or maybe more beer; beer gives you energy, right?

Thanks to someone - 606? Greener? Driusan? it's not clear - I also can't get Cows with Guns out of my head. Someone played it on a laptop Monday after I'd stopped tripping, and it's stuck there; I must have listened to it 50 times today in the hopes of driving it from my head, but each playing just made me want more. It's sooo fucking funny, and sooo fucking addictive.

"We will fight for Bovine freedom, and hold our large heads high / We will run free with the buffalo, or die."

[Niagara Falls, Tuesday, 5. July, 2005]

It's 8.30 in the morning, and I'm sitting in a comfy chair in the lobby of the bright, psychedelically colored hostel in Niagara Falls (Ontario). There's a family milling about and taking longer than I would have imagined possible to do anything. The father is obsessed, it seems, with convincing one of his children that they want to either drink the milk he is proferring or, failing that, the coffee; neither of the kids want to imbibe either substance. His preternaturally talkative daughter has cornered the receptionist, filling her ears with tales of coconut milk and how scary the hallway to their room is. A repairman with six metal studs extruding from the back of his neck is banging on something in the hopes of fixing whatever it is has that has gone wrong with the power in the computer room. All I want to do is find out where the coffee grounds are, so I can make more coffee, but interripting someone I don't know when they've obviously got their hands full is simply more than I can handle before I've had the first coffee of the morning. So I sit by the door, restless and bored, waiting for an opening that doesn't come, a breaking of the rhythym of the din which I start to fear may never happen.

Fuck it. I'll just walk down the road to the nearest Tim Horton's. Their coffee is good, and it can't possibly take too long to find one. This is urban Canada, after all.

Twenty minutes later, after walking along a curious avenue with expensive-looking brick residences on one side and decrepit businesses struggling to survive on the other, I haven't found one. I have, however, found a Czech Karaoke Bar which, sadly, is closed (it portends hours of amusement if open) - and, thank heavens, a cafe filled with ethnic Italians shooting the shit over their morning espresso, against a backdrop of syrupy Italian pop. ("Lachryma" does not belong in an upbeat bouncy song, sorry, no more than Zombie is an appropriate song for a techno remix).

How did I get here?

When Cheeseburger Brown first posted about HuSiStock, I was torn. Meeting the HuSi crowd - many of whom I knew from back in the day, when they were Kuro5hin diarists, before the great crapflood began - sounded fun, and meeting Rusty is something I've wanted to do for years. Even building a deck sounded good; with the right number of people involved, we could get that done in a day, and then we could all enjoy its use for the rest of the weekend. Yet large groups of strangers - and make no mistake, for all that we know each other to some extent, we're also all strangers to some extent; online friendships reside in a wierd in-between-land that makes it hard to predict how things will go - large groups of strangers often scare me, drawing out the shyness that I long ago put aside in my day-to-day life. And flying east is expensive, almost frivolously so when I'm still trying to pay down the debt I incurred while I was unemployed. So I wavered for months in my trademark indecision, until it became clear to me that I really had already decided, and I was merely looking for justifications that I could offer to myself and my friends, lies i could tell myself to convince me that a decision I'd already made was in fact the right one.

Once I'd decided I was going to come, the decision to package other things together with HuSiStock into the trip was a natural one. Three or four days isn't enough time for me to break out of the insidious patterns of day-to-day life, to fully relax and feel free. Moreover, having spent the money to fly out east (and rent a car, the first time I've ever been able to do so while backpacking), spending more days makes the cost easier to bear. Plus, travelling without jared makes a perfect opportunity to do things, like camping, which he would detest.

As is usually the case with travelling excursions, the rapidly approaching day of departure turned the trip into something of an obsession. Visits to foreign countries - although I admit that it's questionable at best how foreign Soviet Canuckistan really is - always loom as major events. They are a chance to step outside, to let gel the subtle shifts in personality and relationship with life and the universe which are difficult to realize in the normal world. And they are an opportunity to see a land and a world which are alien, and to learn thereby to love the world more deeply, to see facets of the beauty of the world which have heretofore been hidden. What could possibly be better than that? What could be more appealing, more intoxicating to imagine, as the days approach?

::Sunday, 26 June, 2005

I arrived in Buffalo, New York, late in the afternoon. I was hungry; United's food service in coach has gone from free and bad to expensive and worse, a stunning example of how the pressure of competition often fails to make things better, except of course in the minds of religious fanatics. United had, in addition, misplaced my luggage somewhere along the way.

I wasn't terribly surprised by that. I'd shown up at SFO fifty minutes before departure, only to find that 5.30 AM is, in fact, the busy time, and been forced to desperately scout around for options that would let me bypass the impossibly long checkin line which, had it clutched me, would have caused me to clear security after my plane had left. Yet that wasn't when the luggage got misdirected; it made that flight, despite being checked in after the official luggage cut-off time (a bureaucratic device that I don't remember ever seeing before). No, it was the second flight which gave me trouble. Though its departure was delayed by over an hour, first for someone to fix the unspecified mechanical trouble the plane had encountered on its previous run, then again for the arrival of a mechanic crew capable of replacing the ceiling panel which had fallen down when the adjoining luggage bin was closed, the ground crew still managed to miss an entire section of lugggage. There were about twenty of us leaving our name, address, phone number, luggage description, and pithy comments at the luggage office.

At least they delivered.

The rental car office was also having a bad day. Although the flight attendant made it sound like it was always like this, a result of consistent corporate greed an dmismmanagement rather than minor human error. The man in line before me, who spent most of the time complaining on his cellphone while I eavesdropped in detached amusement, had been waiting for forty-five minutes to return a car. Meanwhile, people in line to pick up reservations were processed and then told to sit down and wait for a car to arrive which they could take out. The receptionist complained, when processing me, that she'd been there for a week, and worked four hours or more of overtime each and every day.

I was glad for the solace of a book, as my wait took about an hour. Have I mentioned that I was hungry?

Downtown Buffalo, where I'd rented a room at a more-expensive-than-warranted mediocre hotel (the CAD$22/night hostel I'm staying in tonight is cleaner, and has more and better services than this pathetic excuse for a business hotel did), is dead at night. There's nobody on the street, and no cars driving by; there are merely stately brick buildings basking in the heat, dreaming of the days when the city was alive. It has a run-down, decaying feel, the feel of a place which had money once, which was vibrant once, but whose vitality and happiness have been sucked away by a quarter century of economic stagnation.

I was surprised by two things which were revealed as I walked around the area, seeking food. Though the precinct was redolent with the aura of decline and of wistful yearning for better days, it had escaped the oppressive misery of inner-city precincts in urban California. The streets did not feel threatening, the buildings and landscape, though clearly deteriorating, had not been trashed and abandoned. The city was experiencing a genteel decay, and some sort of life, some sort of hope, remained, holding on in spite of things, refraining from the temptation to despair.

The other surprise, tucked away in the corner of a circle dominated by a memorial to the swearing-in of Theodore Roosevelt, where a languid work crew removed the detritus left behind by a one-day music festival involving unknown bands, was a statue and memorial to Millard Fillmore.

Millard Fillmore!

An inconsequential president whose only claim to fame is that he presided over, and in no small measure accelerated, the disintegration of the Whig Party. Why should we commemorate him? Is this some sort of sick joke perpetrated by the Buffalo City fathers? Or, worse, is there some atavistic affection for the disaster of a politician persisting in the local psyche?

[Later, across the river from The Falls]

Somehow, the Falls are more impressive at night, when the rainbow colored lights reflect off the water and cast a romantic glow on the mist. Not that they're entirely unimpressive during the day - while not as amazing as the pictures I've seen of Iguacu Falls, the rushing water, and the mist kicked up by the rocks belowed, are picturesque enough, and the guitarist singing folk songs with a country-western accent is better than I expect to find in such places. Still, it's somewhat difficult to imagine as one of the premiere tourist destinations in North America. The serene beauty of the swamp-lakes of Algonquin was somehow more impressive.

At night, there's a somewhat spooky orange pumpkin-shaped glowy hot-air-balloon thiny hovering somewhere over the American sdide of the river like a demonic god glowering over his demesne. During the day, it's a somewhat pathetic dingy-gray jack-in-the-box offering a mediocre viewing platform for tourists with money but no desire to cross the border for a better view.

Not for the first time on the ttrip, I wish my camera had working batteries. The mist born at the foot of Horseshoe Falls is rising above the gorge in the shape of a mushroom cloud, the only mushroom cloud I've ever seen in real life, and I wish I could capture it on film before its colors fade into the nondescript haze that permeates the sky.

It's somewhat amazing to no longer mind the humidity. After a week outside in it, it feels less oppressive and stultifying, more a vivid reminder of the feeling of being alive, almost refreshing in a way. Somewone (Druisan?) I was talking with over the weekend was praising humidity, alleging that dry heats are cruel and oppressive, and for the first time in my life I can sorta see it, can feel the beauty of feeling the air, can sense the pleasantness in sweat pooling on my arms.

I'm somewhat shocked.

A bit away from the Falls, on the path I took to get here, is an imposing nineteenth-century gray-brick building, the county armory. In front of the building there is an understated memorial to the Ukrainian-Canadians who were interned there during the Great War.

The government of Upper Canada interned ethnic Ukrainians during the Great War? That's at least as great a blot on the history of this country as the internment of ethnic Japanese is on my country's history; and yet I've read and heard nothing about it. It's an unspoken, forgotten tragedy woven into the fabric of one of the greatest man-made disasters in history. It's something that my American liberal prejudices in favor of Canada cause me to have difficulty grasping; a striking reminder that nationality offers no barrier atall to the human capacity for vindictive evil.

::Monday, 27 June 2005

Buffalo on a Monday morning was almost entirely unlike Buffalo on a Sunday night; the roads were infested with verminous cars which swarmed hither and yon with no appearance of order and little sense of patience. It was unclear where they had come from and it was unclear where they were going. They were an alien irruption on a decaying city, and my eight-block walk for morning coffee left me with a sudden desire to flee.

The desire was exacerbated by the hostel's "Continental Breakfast", which was available in a room, slightly smaller than my living room, which was overflowing with teenage girls from Wisconsin making waffles. I was so greatly disturbed by their conclave that I ate "breakfast" at a McDonalds in Lindsay, midafternoon.

It's a long, somewhat tedious drive from Buffalo to the Algonquin Visitors' Center, but it was nice to be driving, to be out in the country, alone. I had been yearning for solitude. Jared and I have just finished our first year of living together and - while I love it, and am happy as we settle in as a couple and would not exchange it for the world - I was a loner for many a year. As a teenager, I was shyer than anyone I've ever met except Popsicle's nanny, and the combination of living with my boyfriend, and a job that's as much about people as it is about code, and the most active social life I've ever had, have been causing a mounting pressure. A desperate grasping for solitude and silence. So I was content as I drove, windows down and air conditioning blasting and radio blaring, happy to be in Canada, happy to be venturing into the quiet of the Ontario forest-swamp. Mounting hunger and a need to pee did force me off of the QEW into a Tim Horton's, where I had a snack and a nother coffee, but then it was back on the road for me, until ----

Slozo told me over the weekend that the 401 is the busiest freeway in North America. I believe him. It's a gargantuan seven-plus lanes in each direction, filled to the brim with cars which coagulate around the corners. Five times I found myself in "the parking lot that is the 401", and three times I was forced off of the freeway by an impatience with traffic that moved perhaps a mile every fifteen minutes; one of the other times I was only going one exit anyway. It's really only the sprawl which distinguishes Los Angeles from Toronto, as far as I can see from my limited exposure; the smog and the traffic are both worse in Los-Angeles-On-The-Lake.

p>---- I got off the freeway and took back roads through the suburbs, searching as I went for a way to relieve my increasingly painful bladder. Eventually the suburbs thinned out and faded into countryside, and I veered to the north, not expecting that I was driving into the great mainstay of the provincial economy: the summer road construction boom.

Somebody - Greener? - was joking over the weekend that Canada has two seasons: winter, and road construction season. I've not seen the former, but I can attest to the latter. Before arriving at MostlyHarmless and Janra's hotel on Thursday, every Canuckistani road I drove on was undergoing construction of some sort. It's an amazing conspiracy by the Ontarian politicians to keep the construction workers employed, content, and voting for the Liberal party; and as an added bonus, the youth of the villages can get summer jobs holding up signs controlling the traffic flow on roads that have been rendered temporarily one-way.

Maybe, just maybe, I should have followed the directions that Google maps gave me, ne? Or maybe not; Google appears unfamiliar with much of Ontario, as Greener can attest.

I finally rolled into the park around 7pm, checked into my campsite, and then sought dinner, and water - and lots of water - and lots and lots of water - at the Visitors' Center. My campsite was nice enough, a wide open area in a forest by a lake, and I was quickly able to set up my hammock, which hung nicely between two strong trees.

Then I made my big mistake, my one true regret about the trip, which - when combined with one of the two things I fucked up in preparing for the trip - made me utterly miserable for the rest of the night, grumpy for most of the day after, and changed completely the nature of my experience in Algonquin. I didn't put the mosquito net up immediately. I relied, for a while, on the power of my pathetic imitation environmentally-friendly DEET-free mosquito repellant. Worse yet, when I finally realized that I needed to put up the mosquito netting NOW, it failed to protect me from those insects who already surrounded the hammock, many of whom were subsequently trapped on the inside of the mosquito net. I was eaten alive.

Spacejack says I am crazy. He is right.

I lay there, awake in a hammock in still, thirty-plus air, under a mosquito net which strangled every nascent breeze, trying to kill the bugs, scratching at inflamed bites, cursing the fates, for most of the night. At first it was understandable that I couldn't sleep, I was still on west coast time. But by 2am I was bored out of my mind, distressed, angry, itchy, my cool, happy-traveller persona shattered by the torment of dozens of hungry monsters. I had become PISSED-OFF-CAMPER, a demon seething with hatred for the forest, for the insects, for life itself.

Eventually the moon rose, and so I broke provincial law. I grabbed my flashlight, drove to a trailhead, and went on a hike. It was a fantastic hike, a surreal trek down a pleasant moonlit walkway through a swamp, with burbling water and mist rising from below the grasses. It was the perfect opportunity to experiment with black and white photography. Sadly, it was then that I discovered that, when I decided that it really wasn't necessary to replace my camera's batteries before travelling, I had erred; there would be no pictures for me on this trip, alas.

My second hike, commensurate with the rising sun, was to a vista overlooking a valley, high above the canopy. It was a soothing, peaceful, beautiful moment as I sat on the rocks and looked out over the trees and the hills and saw the steam rising through them. The forest-swamp is beautiful indeed when viewed from an elevated height; but my joy was dashed by the return of the flying vermin, and I fled down the trail to my car. I crashed out, exhausted and itchy, but feeling much better about the world, at about 7.30am.

::Tuesday, 28 June 2005

A modification in dress - replacing shorts with long pants, wearing socks inside my sandals, wrapping a bandanna around my neck (said bandanna purchased in Algonquin, then lost by the time I wanted to loan it to ni on Sunday when he'd forgotten to bring his to the race) made the insects more tolerable when I went hiking after arising around lunchtime. Still, after forty-five minutes or so, a thick cloud had condensed around my face, and all of my bites were screaming out for relief, demanding "scratch me" with the incessant pulse of a breakbeat rhythym. Every part of my skin, save those tender areas not usually exposed in public, featured one - or perhaps half a dozen - aching wounds.

I can't comprehend how premodern humans, without the benefit of insect repellant and mosquito nets and screen doors and neo-fucking-sporin, withstood it. That the great swamp-forest of Ontario was ever settled atall, let alone the truly infested tropical regions, is a towering testament to the determination of men.

When I got back to my car, fleeing from the hordes, and went off in luxurious air-conditioned high speed, I noticed that the car was getting hungry. So I wandered down the highway, out of the park, to Whitney, a medium-sized village on the east end of the park which doesn't even rate it's own Wikipedia entry, and bought gas.

Gas is expensive in Soviet Canuckistan. Less so than it used to be, said Greener in a conversation on Sunday afternoon, but still enough to make my eyes bulge a little when buying gas. (Druisan asked me how I handle the conversion of gas prices from CAD/litre to USD/gallon; I don't. It's not worth the trouble when I can do the much simpler CAD/tank to USD/tank conversion).

There was a reputable-looking motel across the street, so I stopped in to enquire about pricing. I'd been debating with myself ever since I gathered myself up to go hiking in the middle of the night. On the one hand, I came here to camp; I particularly wanted to sleep in my hammock. I wanted a wilderness experience. On the other hand, the idea of another miserable, boring night - a sleepless night of impotent rage - terrified me. Yet somehow I felt that if I gave in, if I allowed the mosquitoes and the blackflies and the venemous evils of the forest to drive me from the night, I would have failed in smoething important; I would have become a lesser man.

It was the impending rain which pushed me over the edge and made me decide to enquire, and it was the cheapness of the room which decided it; and as I paid the man, the skies opened up, and it rained, a harder, starker rain than I'd ever seen in my life. With thunder. And lightning. Hitting the mountain up the road.

Where I live now, and where I have lived for the past decade and a half, we do not get such storms. Sure we get rain; heavy rain is a mainstay of the Santa Cruz winters. But I can only remember one thunderstorm in the entire time I lived there - a loud, dry lightning storm off the coast. It was an impressive spectacle to be sure, but it was quite unlike what opened up upon me in Whitney, and so I wandered outside and stood, transfixed, watching, listening in the rain, until the storm passed and the sky cleared.

::Wednesday, 29 June 2005

They fed me in the morning. Sausage and eggs and, thank the Gods!, coffee. (Real coffee, stronger than I expected in a breakfast joint attached to a motel in the middle of nowhere). A bunch of hardy-looking germans rented a canoe and went off into the swamp. I wandered off to go hiking, stopping first at a store to buy more bottled water and --

and REAL insect repellant. DEET, the bane of insects and the friend of campers everywhere. The most wonderful and beneficial poison known to man. I was never really bothered by insects again.

-- That morning's hikes were delightful; I was able to enjoy the pretty scenery of the forest without a cloud of insects harassing me. Only one really annoyed me: an adventerous bugger who discovered that I hadn't sprayed my socks and bit me through them. I was amazed at the invasion, I would not have thought it possible through such a thick fabric, but I quickly remedied the situation.

I hiked for a while that morning around a lake, a bastion of serene reflective beauty, and knew peace for the first time since shortly after arriving in the park; and with the comfortable tiredness that comes from walking for hours, my spirits began to soar, and I basked in the love of the forest for a while.

I went back out around lunchtime, to a store-cum-restaurant in the park, for lunch: a Greek salad. Wonderful, awesome food, exactly what I want on a hot, sunny, sweaty day. The restaurant was on a deck overlooking a canoe rental and launch, and as I sat there, eating my salad and watching people paddle away, I debated with myself. I'd never been in a canoe, and a number of people who are close to people who are close to me have died in freak accidents in waterborne vessels - but fuck, it didn't look that hard. I began to imagine that i could do that.

And so I did. After lunch, I rented a canoe and went out on the lake. It took me a while to get it down; at first, I was swept down to the near end of the water, before I figured out how to keep the current from turning me against my will. Even so, I struggled a bit, learning how to paddle against the wind, and there remained times when the wind would pick up and I would just have to stop fighting the current and drift until the wind died down. Later still, I began to figure out how to use the current to help me, and my speed and efficiency went up. For slightly more than three hours I wandered around the lake, paddling or not as the moment dictated, slowly gliding from shore to shore, and it was beautiful. There's a power and a freedom in a canoe that is not available to a hiker, and propelling yourself to glide across the water against the wind is exhilerating. Not to mention exhausting; I crashed out at about 7.30pm, completely drained and worn out.

::Thursday, 30 June 2005

With the help of an alarm, I woke up early, and was out and on a trail by sunrise. Morning hikes - with the sunlight breaking through the leaves and casting eerie shadows upon the trail, and sections of the trail still to dark to navigate sans artificial illumination (is artificial illumination the name of a band?), and the birds loudly chirping hello in their energetic morning voices, and the forest air still cool and damp, waiting for the sun to convert it to syrup - morning hikes are fantastic. And so is watching the sun rise from a cliff overlooking the forest canopy: stunning and beautiful. I wished I'd had a working camera.

Around mid-morning, I wandered back out for breakfast. I wanted to eat and then go canoeing - canoeing had been the highlight of the trip so far, a fantastic experience of spiritual joy and physical exhaustion, and like a greedy bastard, I wanted more. But I had a decently long drive ahead, from Algonquin to Picton, and I remembered how exhausted I'd been the night before, and quailed before the thought of a six or seven hour drive while that exhausted, and so I packed up my stuff and headed out after breakfast. I did stop first, to join a flock of other people on the side of the road watching a young moose grazing by the roadside, at least until it wandered off by crossing the highway at a curve (to the astonished horror of half of the crowd) and vanishing into the trees on the other side.

For this city boy, driving on country roads is fun. Soeeding along wide sweeping curves, threading passageways through the hills, slowing down to pass cautiously through cute little villages, stopping by the roadside to piss - but mostly the absence of other traffic, the freedom from the constant low-level stress of watching dozens, or sometimes even hundreds, of other drivers, and wondering what they're going to do and how to adjust your plans for them. It's a freedom and a joy unavailable on crowded urban byways (except maybe in the middle of the night), and it tempted me to take the most circuitous route possible, to keep going until there was nowhere left to go, no town unpassed, no road not taken. The inevitable converse of this is that, after four days of mostly country driving, arriving in a real city comes as a shock, with a whirlwind of activity and countless cars and people meandering about without any order atall; cities are vibrant and chaotic and alive and a little bit scary when you're used to less stuff moving about. So I was stressed, and disturbed, and unhappy when I arrived in Belleville on Thursday afternoon. It seemed the entire town was out on the road, commuting or doing their pre-holiday shopping, and it was overwhelming; and I proceeded to get lost, not once but twice. (It didn't help that the highway widened out to multiple packed lanes, and that staying on the highway required the ability to make sudden turns at intersections, none of which were signed far enough in advance that a reasonable driver could cut over in heavy traffic.) I ate, which made me less likely to ram the car in front of me in exasperation, but I was nonetheless thrilled to get out of the maze of Belleville and into the bucolic fields of Quinte's Isle, where I took a wrong turn down a confusingly named dirt road, on which I was passed by a gang of local kids racing their ATVs. I had to call a friend, back in California, and ask them through the almost unusable cell phone reception to find better directions on the intarweb than the ones I had with me.

The B&B was a gorgeous, expensively restored former schoolhouse. (Did Ontario sell all of its rural schoolhouses?) Apparently I was the only guest for the night, something which I found somewhat shocking for the night before a major holiday, so the proprietor kindly volunteered to upgrade me to their nest room, a two-bed suite with a jacuzzi. What unexpected luxury! A highly welcome one, moreover, even if there was almost a disaster involving massively expanding soap bubbles threatening to flow out all over the room. Even better, the woman who took my money the next morning charged me CAD$20 less than I'd expected her to; an upgrade and a discount! What fantastic luck!

After checking in, I wandered back up to the the nearest small town to go shopping. I wanted (a) sunscreen (because I'd been somewhat significantly sunburned while canoeing, and I wanted a precaution against the pain that would ensue if I didn't have protection against further burning over the weekend; a wise precaution, it turned out, especially once Janra discovered that her sunscreen wasn't what she believed it ot have been); (b) camera batteries (so that I could have my own pictures of HuSites - a doomed cause, as the drug store didn't sell the right kind, and the more specialized stores had already closed up for the night); and (c) alcohol (because what kind of party guest shows up without something to share? This also failed, alas, as I couldn't find the town's liquor store). Then, because hiking for days on end had triggered an irrepressible and somewhat psychotic desire to see a movie, any movie, I went to the town's nearly empty one-screen movie theatre and watched the second-worst movie I've seen in recent years, The Longest Yard¹. After that, as the sun ducked below the horizon but the humid heat persisted, I wandered up to a bar with outdoor seating and munched on greek salad while eavesdropping on the Quebecois family next to me and surreptitiously ogling the cute guys. Meanwhile, half the town's teenagers assembled at the Tim Horton's across the street to hang out and party, with a boombox playing reggae. The music echoed throughout the town. Isn't small town life picturesque and romantic?

[The rapids a kilometer or more downstream are more impressive by far than the falls themselves, a veritible cacophanous wooshing of water.]

The sun came out, and I headed back down the road and up the trail for another hike. There was no water on the trails, surprisingly, nor were they damp (although the road was, and the storm had come from the direction of the park). The protective screen of the foilage above remained indomitable.

So the afternoon went, with me hiking in the woods, smiling at the trees, working up a sweat and swearing at the insects and the heat. The wind picked up a bit, the sun went down, and I went back to my hotel room to sleep, ecstatically insect free. The power was out (and the room was hot), but I did not care; power is an extravagance anyhow.

::Friday, 1 July 2005/Canada Day/HuSiStock Day 1

Belleville, early in the morning on a holiday, was much more pleasant than it had been the night before. The streets were nigh empty, the people snug in their homes. Picton, on the other hand, was busy; everyone in the town who was awake was wandering around, milling about, holding a giant social hour on the streets. I stopped for coffee (while the B&B provided a fantastic breakfast, it came with a lousy, bitter instant coffee which tasted more like a lab experiment gone bad than like the nectar of the Gods) at a store which bragged of selling "Seattle's Best Coffee." The proprietor invited me back for balloons, a clown, and a speech by the mayor, all to celebrate both Canada Day and the store's Grand Opening. I demurred, then went down the street to buy a flag for my radio antenna; the velcro held fine on the country roads with a low speed limit, but the flag flew away, littering itself upon the highway, once I hit 110 on the 401.

So much for Canada Day, eh?

I was excited. Today was the day, the day the party would begin, the day I had come here for. Anticipation wasn't making me late; it was mingling with the remaining glow of joy from canoeing, helping a relaxed, happy aura to suffuse across my being.

I stopped in roughly the area which had forced me off of the freeway before, to call Mostly Harmless and let him know when I'd be at his hotel. Then I took a wrong turn onto the wrong freeway; navigation was making me late. (Carly Simon got it wrong, although I suppose her lyrics make for a catchier tune).

I got to the hotel where Mostly Harmless and Janra were staying and saw two couples waiting for a ride, a problem I resolved the way any socially shy geek would: I called Mostly Harmless and waited to see who answered the phone. Neither of them looked atall as I had expected - a common theme this weekend - and I was amazed at how little stuff Janra was taking with her for her trip to the Great Whit North. Neither of them had much stuff, to be honest, a fact which made it even more astounding on Monday when Mostly Harmless took near half a day to disassemble their campground. How could so little stuff take so much time? (Is there a koan about that, somewhere?)

We talked as I drove, about my trip about theirs, about the Great White North, about their expectations for the weekend, about Rusty and how we would almost have a quorom of K5 administrators in attendance. To be honest, I can't remember what all was said, and when; all of the weekend's conversations have converged into a formless blur, a melange of words from which sentences emerge without their temporal context. Who said what, and when, and do whom, can be hard to pick out; such is the way of the party.

Eventually we decided that traffic sucked, and Janra - a fantastic navigator, it turns out - ploutted a route over to County Highway 4, which we took into Bradford. Shortly thereafter, as we hadn't actually read the directions telling us we needed to turn right in town in order to stay on the Highway, the road we were on threatened to cross Highway 400, so we hopped back on it.

We arrived in Gilford in mid-afternoon. I almost missed the schoolhouse, but Mostly Harmless saw it, and his sighting was confirmed by the telltale "StoryZoo Studious" sign, so we parked across the road and went in. Cheeseburger Brown was there, shirtless with a tan and a small pot belly, wearing a hat, with his underwear and a wide grin showing. He seemed ecstatic, brimming with energy and enthusiasm and spirit, and I instantly felt at home. He introduced us to the others who were there - ni, a cute skinhead on whom I immediately found myself struggling to resist a crush; 256, who looked like he should be leading an anarchist revolution in inner-city Manchester; Miss Lake, 256's companion, who appeared far to sedate and normal for this crowd; Driusan, who looked like a refugee from Santa Cruz; 606, who seemed every bit the stereotypical hacker; and Spacejack, the one person at the entire event who looked as though he might, in some alternate universe, be serious and respectable. Cheeseburger Brown then took us on a tour of the schoolhouse, in which two things stood out: a beautifully framed kitchen, cordoned off from the rest of the schoolroom, both within and without; and the .... courtroom. It's a shame nobody got a picture of that.

The piles of shoes near the doors suggested that they have a no-shoes-in-the-house policy, not uncommon among people who would prefer to not spend quite so much time cleaning, so I took mine off and added them to the pile; they stayed there for more than a day and were never on my feet when I was at the stockyard the rest of the weekend. It was quickly clear that, whatever else was going on, HuSiStock was going to be taking on some of the aspects of a Hippie commune.

We moved outside and talked, and other people trickled in. I only remember the arrival of Greener, who seemed a happy-go-lucky sort and exuded the air of the unflappably tranquil backpacker. I showed him the pizza place where people were supposed to park - a deed for which Cheeseburger Brown later paid both of us; all weekend, however, we remained the only people parked in the remote lot, as everyone else left their cars in the front of the yard, where they had dropped them off while setting up their tents. Eventually, Cheeseburger Brown rousted Old Oak to set up a hammocking spot, as the originally planned one had been turned into a makeshift kennel; Old Oak bolted a couple of boards to the balcony, and then he and slozo insisted on setting up a tarp to protect me from the rain that I wasn't the slightest bit concerned about. (I grew quite fond of that tarp; it kept me from the early morning sun, allowing me to sleep later in the morning than those condemned to broil in their portable plastic ovens).

Cheeseburger Brown and I went down to pick up pizza and chatted away. Meanwhile, a band set up and proceeded, surrounded by citronella candles and tiki torches, to play music for us. A chill set in, and we all fled to the other side of the yard, where a raging fire had been born. Someone set off fireworks. Cheeseburger Brown handed out sparklers and some of us took great joy in them. Mostly Harmless made gang signs by the fireside, which I photographed so we could send them to manobes. A bottle of peppermint schnapps went around the fire; the band finished, and Littlestar led a cheer.

The rest of the night is a haze of drunk conversation by the fireside. Eventually Molasses and Rizzo showed up, carrying the entire state of New Jersey in their trunk. ("It's a small state. It's not like we could carry California or anything.") People gradually wandered off to sleep until, at the end, there was only me, the two band boys, and two other locals hanging out by the fire; we huddled there for warmth (someone who had been going to bed had decided that everyone was, so he'd been working on putting the fire out, and none of us disabused him of the notion), and I smoked some weed with them.

I love smoking weed, for all that I haven't done it in years; as a drug, it makes me incredibly happy, especially when mixed with alcohol. But it also makes me asocial: quiet, withdrawn, I become an observer of the beauty of the world rather than a participant. It was no different Friday night, and that tendency was exaggerated by being the only stranger in a group of people who all knew each other; their conversation turned naturally to its usual patterns, and I was outside. Cute band boy (band boy #1) tried to draw me in, but we were both way too high for it to work, and I wandered off and climbed in my hammock. As I lay there, a shit-eating grin on my face, happy as a clam (as the incomprehensible expression runs), the first rays of sunrise broke over the horizon.

::Saturday, 2 July 2005/HuSiStock Day 2

I woke up to the sounds of a murmuring of voices near my head, but I couldn't see where they were coming from. I ignored the sounds, figuring they were transient and people would realize they were right next to my head and move. The noise didn't go away, my prayers were unanswered, but I kept hoping it would, and kept ignoring it in vain, grasping out for just a few more moinutes of sleep, resisting the temptations of the day. One of the voices told Spacejack that there was coffee downstairs, and that added temptation lured me from my lair, so I stumbled downstairs to chat with Mr. and Mrs. Oak, and spacejack, and J, sipping coffee and slowly remembering where I was.

As the conversation wound down, and not wanting to impose too long on Old Oak's hospitality, I left the downstairs and wandered back up to the gazebos, where I saw the source of the murmuring - a circle of chaires right next to the head of the hammock. I was amazed that my snoring hadn't drowned out the conversation. I sat down to join the conversaiton, not hungover but somewhat sluggish from the morning and lack of sleep.

There was a flurry of activity as people made breakfast - sausage and eggs, plus yogurt - and slozo brought out more coffee. A lethargic quiet settled over the camp as people broke their fast and the air thickened into soup. I remained somewhat zombie-like while people organized a boat trip. Later, Cheeseburger Brown organized two cars into a store run; I got cuban rum, which I'd never before managed to have (which was surprisingly smooth, the smoothest alcohol perhaps i've ever had, but still not so much better than non-cuban rum as to make it something special. certainly not good enough to import it back into the country illegally), sambuca (because anisette liquor simply MUST be passed around the campfire), and half a bottle of Bailey's (more on that later).

We played some frisbee that afternoon, and the dogs obliged me by leaving the disc alone. I introduced spacejack to the difference between 175gm ultimate discs and the other plastic frisbees one can buy. Slozo tried to interest people in volleyball and, failing that, "frisbee volleyball." The band boys eventually got up; cute band boy looked happy and relaxed, nerdy band boy looked as though he had been dragged through hell and his bedraggled soul was badly in need of solace and comfort. Rizzo, who almost always looked like he could barely comprehend the world, took mushrooms, and went off to WalMart, a strange place to trip: who wants to hallucinate in a place which is, on its own merits, bizarre and frightening? People brought out their laptops, and we harassed rusty. Other people discussed goatse and tubgirl for the dubious benefit of someone who had never been properly exposed. A few people asked me when Jared would come to one of these events (answer: probably never. you might get him to go to dinner with HuSites, but a weekend camping around a bunch of people he doesn't know who are drinking holds little appeal for him). Popsicle wandered around periodically - at first showing disinterest in people who weren't family, then later showing active scorn for the strangers in her midst. (At one point, I don't remember which day, she wandered around the circle and looked at everyone, one at a time, and then said "no, no", shaking her head and moving on to the next person; we were clearly not the droids ... erm, geeks ... she was looking for.)

The afternoon passed in a bubble of warmth and good cheer, a merry atmosphere pervaded the premises. Some people played horseshoes, another attempt at volleyball was made. Evening came, bringing with it chili, and Isosceles Cat (sorry, couldn't find a link; if an editor could oblige that would be cool set up to spin for us. Some of us had a brief argument about the difference between a 'DJ' and an 'electronic music artist'; I think we agreed to disagree about the contentious subject, and neither of us asked Isosceles Cat what he preferred.

The fireward migration was slower tonight, as laziness kept people up by the gazebos longer. Druisan and I, talking to Mostly Harmless, Janra, and some other people, nearly split a bottle of peppermint schnapps. Nicely buzzed, I wandereddown to the fire, handing out what was left of the previous night's sparklers. I sat next to the fire, inside the ring of people, so I could see the people I was talking with; my sweatshirt, a necessary protection against the nighttime chill up near the house, saved my sunburned skin from the torture of the fire. I passed around the sambuca, which vanished quickly (a large chunk of it into ti dave and atreides. Druisan set to work roasting marshmallows to use the Bailey's with; Janra had told us of a neat trick she knew involving turning marshmallows into cups to hold liquor (something which turned out to be more difficult than expected: while it was easy to get the outer layer to seperate from the inner, keeping it from collapsing on itself was hard.) Atreides' voice echoed, booming loudly around the fire. People slowly drifted away, vanishing with the flames into the night.

p>::Sunday, 3 July 2005/HuSiStock Day 3

I was way more successful at ignoring the general murmuring of the crowd on Sunday. What I could not ignore was Cheeseburger Brown, directly above me, yelling. Yelling at his dog. And being ignored, from the sound of it.

That sound could wake the dead, and very nearly did.

The stockyard was far more subdued on Sunday morning, as two days of heavy partying and little sleep had taken their toll and sapped the energy; an air of contented exhaustion had rolled in overnight. I snarfed down a bunch of sausages (after waiting a while to see if other people would eat them) while sipping coffee, peacefully absorbing the sun's warmth and the social comity, making small talk while required.

I wandered inside for a bit, giving in to the temptation to use the internet; Atreides handed me Littlestar's laptop and asked me to push 'post' when the wireless network came back and then log out as him (he had an errand of some sort to run, I remember not what it was). I did this, and nothing more, as the microwave was making the wireless network flaky; he came back later to check on me, worried that I might be abusing his powers to muck with the site. After a bit the wireless network failed entirely, disrupted by the microwave's angry disdain for competing technologies; the microwave, like the television, will stand no competition in the battle to capture the souls of men. Cheeseburger Brown wandered by and asked if I would drive to the go-kart tournee.

Assembling the racers took more time than I'd expected, but eventually we were on our way. Two of the three cars arrived as expected, but the other one vanished for a while (apparently it went off in search of gas). The race itself was a blast. Atreides was aggressive, passing on the inside around corners more often than not, but it did him little good. 606 was impossible to pass for some reason. I wasn't lapped nearly as many times as I expected - the last time I went go-karting was at a bachelor party for a friend who is very into racing, flies each year to Indianapolis for the Formula One race, plays racing games often, etc, and I sucked by comparison with the more racing-oriented people in the crowd - and I was thrilled to find out that I hadn't come in last.

After, Druisan, 606, and I went off to get more ice. Druisan expressed amazement, not necessarily in a good way, at my music selection, while we drove around. Littlestar had recommended a gas station nearby, but they were out; the clerk recommended that we try a grocery store. When I asked where one was, she directed me to a No-Frills at the next stoplight. I thought she meant the next stoplight south, towards Bradford; Druisan thought she meant west, towards the 400. I took Druisan's suggestion, and we shortly found ourselves on 400 north (due to a driving error on my part), a 20-minute or so detour which allowed us to talk and brought us by a field of cows, the only known cow sighting at HuSiStock. We turned around at the next exit, then went down to the No-Frills (on the edge of Bradford), grabbed some ice, and headed back to the stockyard.

A bit later, someone organized a new trip to the lake, and we headed out - Janra, Mostly Harmless, NStenz, LilFlightTest, Janra's sister and her boyfriend, me, and someone else whose name I don't remember (perhaps a friend of Janra's sister?) Janra's sister had come up from her home to see Janra and go out on the lake, so that's what we did. NStenz had some trouble getting the boat moving, but eventually he and Janra's sister's boy got it straightened out, and we headed out into the water. It was a fun ride, although we periodically took on a bit of water. At one point we were swallowed up by a cloud of mating dragonflies, at least one of which curled romantically into the shape of a heart after alighting on the boat. At another point, we hit seriously choppy water, causing mild concern about the danger of capsizing. After that, we headed back, and swam - or, well, waded - off of the public boat launch. Janra's sister and her cohorts mostly stayed on land, but the rest of us went out, soaking ourselves completely in the water, trying to keep our feet out of the slimy mulch. A seaplane landed and looked for quite some time as if it were coming directly towards us - and, amazingly, it left no wake behind as it passed.

Sangria had just been brought out when we left, and it was gone when we got back. I was sorta bummed; Sangria on a hot day is the perfect refreshment, followed closely by frozen white wine slushies. Meow and her boy had arrived in the meantime, putting to rest the talk of kidnapping her. 256, MissLake, and Isosceles Cat were gone, alas, and the sense was beginning to dawn that soon the party would be over. Molasses organized a game of texas hold-em in her incredible enclosed portable patio; the game stretched from before sunset until late in the night. I did poorly; I was the third person ejected. (Druisan, who was ejected by a risky move early in the game, stayed to play dealer). Someone brought out barbecued corn, and I nearly fainted from delight - barbecued corn is the food of the gods, the sole reason the gods created life in the first place. It was followed by steak, tender and soft enough to be cut with a plastic knife, and then people broke into the cigars Gedvondur had brought. A tranquil happiness settled over the camp.

I circulated a bit after getting ejected from the game, avoiding the drunkenness of the preceding evenings. Janra, Mostly Harmless, and I all stayed up later than we should have, not wanting it to end; but exhaustion was creeping up on us and joining the importent voice of duty demanding sleep, and so I crawled off to crash about the same time the poker game broke up and the players retreated from the cold to the embrace of the fire.

p>::Monday, 4 July 2005/American Independance Day/HuSiStock Day 4

The rising sun woke me up; I contemplated obeying his exhortations, but decided against and went back to sleep. Some time later, very gently, Janra awakened me; it was 6.15, time to get up. I sprang from my hammock into the toilet, then stumbled down to the remnants of the fire, where MillMan had thoughtfully left me one smouldering log. I sat next to it, huddled as close as I could get, to absorb enough heat to ward me from the morning chill as I waited for Janra and Mostly Harmless to be ready. That didn't take long, and so we set off into town, where we had an OK breakfast at a hotel restaurant (they paid, which was nice). My meal consisted of potato pancakes - a traditional Yiddish dish - and sausage; the irony was apparently lost on the restaurant. Janra, who had cut short her dinner out of an urgent need for DEET to protect her from the blood-sucking vermin of Ontario, was ravenous.

When we got to the executive flight center - a much more congenial way to fly than the stressful commercial airlines - Mostly Harmless and I kept Janra company until the Bluebird was ready to go, so it was late morning by the time we arrived back at the stockyard. The tents had mostly been dismantled, the stockyard was mostly empty, and I felt a stirring sense of loss. The party was winding down, and there's always a bittersweet feeling when everyone leaves - and one by one they did, until of the foreigners (eg, the people who weren't regularly there), only Mostly Harmless, 606, Druisan, Greener, and I remained. Mostly Harmless wandered off to begin his interminable packing, and Druisan and I debated whether or not to take the mushrooms we'd bought the night before.

I'd been thinking about taking mushrooms all weekend. It had been years since I'd done any hallucinogen at all, and I no longer had a reliable source; and I'd never, even in the days when I was a stoner, felt comfortable shrooming in a crowd. But this seemed like a crowd I could be comfortable in.² Druisan had been contemplating as well, and so when he asked if I'd do it with him, I jumped at the chance - save only the proviso that it had to be during the day. Shrooms are more fun when you can see things; what's the point in messing with your senses if there's nothing to see?

And yet, as we watched people pack up and clear away, we were both unsure again; people were drifting out and the empty yard felt sad and lonely, not - perhaps - the ideal mood. The party was over, and we were lingering; I'd expected a late afternoon takedown instead of a morning one, preceded by a tired jovial few hours. So we talked about it, and agreed to abide by the results of a coin flip.

Druisan's explanation of why shrooms disagree with him sounds like they make for one of the most unpleasant ways imagineable to spend an afternoon, but he gave no overt sign of it while he was under their influence. We both sat under the gazebos, watching, conversing as we were able. I only moved twice - once to get water, once to rescue slozo's jerry-rigged sun umbrella from the grill it was in the process of landing on. It was a mild trip (I was way more out of it Friday night when smoking with the band), highlighted by a cute fractral in the trees, and it was fun to hang out with people for one last afternoon. Old Oak's face, as he talked with me, is particularly vivid in my mind.

The afternoon settled into a light rain, which I sat outside in and enjoyed it falling on me. The rain intensified. Slozo said something about the wireless router, which I immediately moved. The rain turned to a downpour, and we struggled to get the musical equipment, and greener's stuff, deeper under the gazebo and out of the torrent. (Greener, alas, was stranded by a failure in the break line of his car; the garage would look at it, they said, later today or tomorrow). As the storm cleared, it began to feel like time to go - both Druisan and 606 enquired "when" several times - so shortly after Cheeseburger Brown returned from shuttling Mostly Harmless to the airport, we took down the hammock (I got 606 to lay down in it first; he loved it), waved goodbye, and drove off, last - except for poor, stranded, Greener - of the guests to leave.

We drove off into the thunderstorm from hell. The heaviest rain I'd ever seen poured out of the sky, making the roadside invisible, and I focused on the dim lights of the cars ahead while 606 and Druisan played with 606's iTrip. (they kept playing good Canuckistani music by bands i'd never heard of, and while 606 told me who they were, I don't remember; I was focused on the dim headlights, not on the conversation). The airport was slightly confusing, a twisted maze of poorly signed roadways³ with absurd speed limits. (20? 20? Please.) I was ravenous, having declined food earlier on the grounds that I was still tripping and could not deal with the concept of food; so Druisan and I stopped at a Tim Horton's near his place and ate. Dinner was quiet (the conversation had finally run dry), and I was confused by his pronunciation of "honey cruller", which my mind kept trying - and failing - to interpret as a german word. Then, after a sandwich and some coffee, I dropped Druisan off and was on my way. On my way here, to this hostel.

I was greeted by an extraordinarily gregarious chap who resembled nothing so much as a very happy bottle of bubbly water exploding under high compression. He babbled at me for a while, assuring me that I could still reach the Falls, on foot, in time for the fireworks. He was wrong; they started as I was walking and, though I caught a few glimpses through the trees, they were done well before I had a chance at a decent view. That was fine; the fifteen minutes or so by which I missed them were minutes spent at HuSiStock, and how could I complain about that? It was, after all, a fantastic weekend; a great deal of fun was had by all at Littlestar's fabulous party. At the risk of sounding too much like a doped-up Santa Cruz hippie, I loved them all ... and I miss you already, especially the ones who, as Cheeseburger Brown put it, transmogrified into friends.

It was a fantastic HuSiStock; I can't wait to do it again.

¹The worst was Murder in Portland, a pathetic gay art film-cum-porno that caused everyone watching it to writhe in pain. Truly the Vogon Poetry of movies.

²My friend L____, back before her life fell apart, used to periodically go to parties, held in a state park, with friends she'd met through her homebrewing co-op. She invited me once, and it was a good enough time, with lots of drinking and smoking and game playing; but I always felt completely the outsider. This was different; it was like the same event, only with my people; and it was fantastic. I knew that I could do almost anything and nobody would judge me - except, as Druisan noted, Popsicle, was going to judge me no matter what I did.

³To be fair, the signs were fine as reminders to people who already sort of knew where they were going. We didn't, and so they were horribly unclear.

This blog will be inactive, as I will be out of town and without computer access (the longest time I've gone without internet access in three years) from June 26 through July 6.

I'll be spending one night in beautiful downtown Buffalo, hopefully catching a showing of Howl's Moving Castle, then three nights camping in Algonquin Provincial Park, followed by a night on Quinte's Island (near the end of the St. Lawrence). Then it's up to Gilford for HuSiStock, followed by two days experiencing the beauty of Niagara Falls (including, of course, 4th of July Fireworks over the falls! .

Pictures about a week or so after I get back.

Buried in the midst of the controversial "yes-government-can-take-property-for-economic-redevelopment" supreme court decision is this interesting historical datum: in 1984, the Supreme Court upheld as constitutional a land redistribution scheme in which the state of Hawai'i, using eminent domain, purchased property from landowners and then turned around and sold it to the existing renters.

The reason for this? 49% of the state's land was owned by the state and federal government, but 47% was owned by a clique of seventy-two landowners; on Oahu, 72.5% of all privately owned land was owned by twenty-two people.

According to the Sacramento Bee, the governor has finally issued the declaration calling for a special election in November. According to the Secretary of State, there are five ballot measures qualified for the next statewide election:

1. A measure to amend the constitution to require parental notification, and a 48-hour waiting period after parental notification, for abortions on unemancipated minors, except when a judge has granted an exemption;
2. A measure to increase the length of time required for a public school teacher to get tenure, and provide a mechanism for firing teachers who have tenure;
3. A measure to prohibit public employee unions from using dues or fees for political activism
4. A measure to change the proposition 98 school funding guarantee and impose an overall state spending limit;
5. A measure to take the reapportionment power away from the legislature, vest it in retired judges (subject to a mandatory referendum!), and redistrict immediately.

In addition, there are currently three measures pending signature validation which might conceivably qualify.

I've been holding off on reading these until the special election was called. I guess now I have to break into them.

And here's to you, Mrs. Robinson --

Dave Neiwert would say that this is a sign of impending fascism. I don't know that i'd go that far, but it is disturbing,a nd says a lot about the deterioration of our political culture: an auditor for the Los Alamos National Laboratory, responding to a call from someone who said they had information about employee fraud, was severely beaten by a group of thugs.

You'd think that high-level scientists would be beyond this sort of thing.

The Court:

OK, guys, pay attention. In 1941, we said that Congress had the power to pass a law restricting production of a good in order to prop up its price on the interstate market, and that it could even regulate the production of goods *for private consumption* because the mere existence of those goods would influence the price and therefore effect interstate commerce. Given that we said that, and we still believe it, of course Congress has the power to prohibit the production of marijuana for home (medical) consumption while attempting to completely eliminate the market in marijuana. They're the exact same logical problem, and everyone who disagrees either completely misunderstands our precedents or disagrees with them.

Scalia:

The Necessary and Proper Clause clearly states that Congress has the power to do things it wouldn't otherwise have the power to do, if doing them is necessary to accomplish things that it does have the power to do. This law, which effects intrastate activity and is therefore not authorized by the commerce clause, is necessary in order to extinguish the market in marijuana (which *is* authorized by the commerce clause), and therefore the necessary and proper clause allows the Congress to do what it has done.

O'Connor:

the court's decision declares any activity involving production, distribution, or consumption to be "economic activity" that is therefore eligible to be regulated under the commerce clause. This eviscerates the Commerce Clause's limitation on federal power and makes it meaningless. It thereby stifles the freedom of the states to protect the liberty of their people.

Thomas:

production and consumption are not "Commerce". Only trade or exchange is "Commerce". The Congress has no power to do this - or to pass laws regulating production and consumption in general. It does have the power to prohibit trafficking marijuana across state lines, but prohibiting medical consumption within one state is not necessary and proper to doing that, because medical users are a distinguishably seperate class.

Thomas' interpretation is, as often, frightening: he's basically saying that almost all federal regulations governing the production of goods are invalid, because production is not commerce. There *might* be a loophole for rules governing the production of goods intended for transit across state lines, but even that loophole is not available for rules governing the production of goods which don't cross state lines - eg, federal OSHA regulations governing safety in auto repair shops and restaurants are not constitutional.

But the subtext to this case - something that O'Connor deftly avoids addressing with her moderately worded opinion expressing concern that perhaps the court is allowing the federal government too much power and just a small swing back in the other direction would be enough to ameliorate it - is that this decision saw the Supreme Court faced with an extraordinarily contentious choice. In practice, it could have done one of three things:

• Issued the ruling that it issued, holding that the Controlled Substances Act was entirely within the Congress' power, as expressed in a New-Deal-era precedent (Wickard);
• Ruled that the Controlled Substances Act was unconstitutional and that Wickard had been wrongly decided;
• Found some contorted and unconvincing grounds for distinguishing Wickard from this case.

Federalists are concerned, and rightly so, that this decision basically removes any meaningful limits on Congressional power under the Commerce Clause. That's been the principle conservative critique of Commerce Clause jurisprudence for decades now.

But the flip side of that is that overruling Wickard would essentially bring the modern system of government regulation to a grinding halt, invalidating huge chunks of federal law and (perhaps worse) leaving a great amount of uncertainty as to what had been invalidated. There would be full employment for constitutional lawyers for many years as the confusion brought about a stampede to the courtroom; and after the dust settled, the nation's economic system - and its politics - would be changed beyond recognition.

That's a bit much for the Supreme Court to bite off.

The third option was, of course, a possibility; but the Supreme Court already issues far too many strange and incomprehensible distinctions between things which appear identical to outside observers. It's a good thing that they didn't do it this time, because as the number of such cases increases, the public's faith in the judiciary as something other than a high priesthood of delphic oracles decreases.

As a practical matter, then, this was the best possible outcome for this case. The choice was between either allowing more or less unfettered power under the commerce clause or imposing shackles that had been discarded sixty years ago, and thereby allowing too little power under the commerce clause. There really was no middle ground.

Up in Washington state, the dispute over the election of Christine Gregoire - who won by 129 votes after two recounts (the first of which showed her opponent winning) has been put to rest. Superior Court Judge John Bridges declined to overturn the election results, saying that the proponetns of that action had not demonstrated deliberate fraud.

This is a good thing, the expected whining from Dino Rossi's cohorts notwithstanding. An election that close is well within the margin of error for the voting systems involved. Yes, around two thousand votes (out of two million - eg, about one tenth of one percent) were illegally cast. Perhaps those favored one candidate over another; it's hard to tell without testimony from those who voted. But it fundamentally doesn't matter: an election that is that close might as well be decided by a coin toss.

So why do I think it's a good thing? After all, if the election might as well be decided by a coin toss, a court decision overturning the election would be no great tragedy, right? That's true to an extent ... except that judges determining who should win an election is a dangerous blurring of the seperation of powers. IT's far better for the legislature to lay out a procedure for dealing with results that are within the margin of error, and that the courts have nothing to do with it other than to ensure that those procedures are carried out.

That seems to have happened here. Asked to overturn an election result produced by following the procedures set out by the laws of the State and call a new election based on nothing more than circumstancial evidence and the closeness of the result, Judge Bridges declined. Good for him, and shame on Rossi and his compatriots for asking him to do anything else.

It appears that hell has indeed frozen over.

It appears that the irresistable force of the drug war has shattered neo-federalism. Not being a fan of neo-federalism, this should make me happy; but as someone who also loathes the drug war, i'm quite disappointed. I'd hoped that a doctrine I dislike might at least get used in support of a cause I favor.

The Economist, while an unusually good newspaper with the most detailed coverage of parts of the world the American press prefers to ignore, is more than occasionally guilty of infecting its news reportingwith its political biases. This isn't usually a problem, because everyone who reads them knows what their biasses are and so can use that knowledge to flavor their interpretation of its reportage, but it's rarely as amusing as it is in this week's leader. First they castigate "Euro-enthusiasts" for using their own political preferences as a frame to misinterpret the meaning of the results of the Dutch and French referenda on the EU Constitution, and then they proceed to do the same:

Europe's leaders should draw two broader lessons from the French and Dutch noes. The first is that rejection of the constitution signals that the dream of deeper political integration and, in the 1957 Treaty of Rome's famous phrase, "ever closer union", is over. Instead the EU should move in the direction of being a looser, less federalist and more decentralized club."

This is sort of like saying that the repudiation of Toryism in the last British election constitutes a mandate for the renationalization of key industries. It's nothing more than the Economist projecting its preferences onto the votes of the French and Dutch electorates.

The Economist really ought to be ashamed of itself; usually it is more subtle than this.

Having been inspired by a long biography of John Kenneth Galbraith, i've been slowly working my way through famous economic texts - "American Capitalism", for example - and, in line with that, was hoping to borrow a copy of "The Road to Serfdom" from the Stanford Library.

I can't right now, at least not in English. All copies of it are currently non-circulating (presumably because they're required reading for a class this quarter), except for the German-language edition.

It's not clear why that is allowed to circulate.

I'm sure that there will be much interesting to be said about this when the histories are written; and at least some of those things will be about the danger, inherent in our bureaucracy, of pissing off the mid-level bureaucrats.

But today, the only thing to be said is really this: the mystery was much more interesting. The act of revealing the secret often destroys the wonder and renders things mundane, and that has happened here. "W. Mark Felt" is just less interesting than "Deep Throat", and no amount of historical analysis will change that.

I'm not sure what the alleged legal basis for this is, but I don't see how it can possibly not be an establishment clause violation for a judge to insert into a divorce decree an order prohibiting the people getting the divorce from exposing their child to "non-mainstream religious beliefs".

I rarely support this sort of thing, but the judge in question should be impeached.

In what way is this not a modern inarnation of His Majesty's Court of Star Chamber?

One of the side-effects of having read (and enormously enjoyed) Richard Parker's lengthy biography of John Kenneth Galbraith is that it instigated a desire to read Galbraith's writing. (See also this complaint and its responses for further inspiration).

A Journey Through Economic Time was fairly significantly disappointing. It's the rambling memoir of an old man who can't really be bothered to focus on telling his story without detrimental diversions, and it's much less effective as a history of modern economic thought than the aforementioned biopic. But it did contain an interesting idea - the answer to a question that pops up over and over again in modern political debate: Why do liberals care about the distribution of income?

I'd always thought that the idea was that the distribution of income is important for ethical reasons, that a wide disparity between the rewards available to those favored by the system and those available to those disfavored by the system was somehow wrong. Galbraith adds a different view: a wide disparity in the distribution of income makes it more likely that the economy will enter a liquidity trap, because only an unequal distribution of income allows the accumulation of sufficient capital that failing to invest or spend it can influence the economy on a large scale. (Another way of saying this is to note that unequal distribution of income allows Say's Law to be violated, by creating the conditions in which capital can be withdrawn from the effective economy, thereby reducing aggregate demand).

I'll have to remember this point the next time i'm arguing with a libertarian online.

I've since moved on to American Capitalism, which proposes the following interesting notion in its first quarter: the excess of advertising in the modern world is the result of a lack of price competition in semi-competitive oligarchies. The empirical fact that modern (as of the time he was writing) industries developed into semi-stable oligarchies in which price competition was socially disavowed (as being destructive) forced competition to take other forms, the most dramatic of which was the use of large-scale advertising to recruit customers.

I'm not sure i'm convinced - i'm particularly not sure that advertising in the early industrial era was less prevalant than it was in the 1950s - but it's an interesting conceit.

The Supreme Court of the United States, in California Democratic Party v. Jones: blanket primaries violate the free association rights of parties who want closed primaries.

The Supreme Court of the United States, in Clingman v. Beaver: semiclosed primaries do not violate the free association rights of parties who want open primaries.

Talk about judicial activism and writing your political preferences into law ....

This is by way of an expansion, and further elucidation, of my recent remarks.

The immediate cause of my anger is the implications in post, and some of the comments to it, regarding recent events in Uzbekistan. The claim seems to be that the violence was incited and organized by a shadowy Islamic terrorist organization - and, while the post itself goes on to weakly condemn the government of Islam Karimov, the comments in that thread (and others) by the proprietor of exit zero seem to suggest that those opposed to his government are worse than the government itself.

Uzbekistan's government, led by former Soviet apparatchik Islam Karimov, has a reputation as one of the most brutal governments in the world. It's not quite as bad as things are in Turkmenistan - a state run by a certifiable madman whose cult of personality outdoes that of the North Korean president - but the Uzbek government has shown time and time again that it has no respect for the most basic of civil rights, little understanding of or respect for the notion of freedom, and a penchant for disappearing and/or killing its critics. It is one of the last true Stalinist states.

In addition to the political repression, of course, the economy is stagnant or worse, and dust storms of toxic salt periodically drift through the country, blown up from the residue of what once was the fifth-largest body of fresh water in the world.

And yet some people feel the need to seek for the hidden hand of Islamic extremism to explain why people might object to the continuance of the government sufficiently strongly as to raise weapons against it.

I don't know if some of those opposed to the government have been influenced by the ideology of the Taliban - which was, after all, actively seeking to bring about revolution in the region. But I very much doubt that everyone is, and I don't particularly care if some are. This is the kind of situation in which those citizens of Uzbekistan who are willing to act to bring about change must accept every ally available to them; the state is strong, its army is very, very long ... and anyone who will help you bring about the revolution is a friend. Even if they do have dreams of imposing a very different form of dictatorship later on, that problem can be addressed when it arises ... and they'll help you bring about an end to the much more tangible, much more real despotism in front of you now.

I am not saying that it is understandable for those who object to the Uzbek government to randomly kill civilians; it would not be. But there is no evidence that they are. There is, however, evidence that suggests that an angry population, subject to one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world, are fighting back.

Such fighting is entirely understandable, entirely predictable, and should be welcomed by the free world. Even the US government is hedging on the subject:

"We urge both the government and the demonstrators to exercise restraint at this time," he [White House spokesman Scott McClellan] said. "The people of Uzbekistan want to see a more representative and democratic government, but that should come through peaceful means, not through violence."

What possible reason could he have for thinking that this could be done? Karimov's government - like that in Turkmenistan - has shown that it has no more interest in a peaceful change of government than does Fidel Castro. The government appears to have killed hundreds, if not thousands, of protesters over the last several days.

The best way, perhaps the only way, for the people of Uzbekistan to achieve freedom in their lifetimes would be for them to rise up en masse and slaughter the leaders of the state which has no qualms about slaughtering them. That wouldn't be terrorism; that would be a just and righteous revolution.

I hope it happens soon.

Why is it that so many American conversatives, who are unwilling to say anything good about even mild socialism, have such a soft-spot for the communist apparatchiks-turned-dictators that currently keep the people of central asia under the grip of government terror?

Islam Karimov is bad enough, but Saparmurat Niyazov is literally insane, and his people prisoners of his insanity. Why are those who are so concerned with spreading freedom in Iraq so utterly unconcerned about these countries?

I haven't read the decision yet. I'm at work, and can't spare the time until lunch.

But I read the NYT headline in somewhat stunned disbelief.

The Supreme Court has apparently ruled that the laws in Michigan and New York, which allow in-state but not out-of-state wineries to make direct sales to consumers, is an unconstitutional infringement of the Commerce Clause.

"The Congress shall have the power ... To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States".

But the 21st amendment, adopted in the 1930s, close to a century and a half after that was written, says:

"The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or Possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited."

How much more clear does it need to be?

I begin to understand what had once struck me as paranoid rantings.

I see that, over at CalBlog, the debate over the meaning of the crusades, and whether or not Kingdom of Heaven is an accurate representation, has begun. The first shot has been fired by someone who hasn't even seen the movie yet.

How utterly predictable. The debate isn't really about the movie; it's about the representation in modern culture of the crusades themselves. More than anything else, really, it is about the self-image of the Christian world. Mr Levine's post is intended to debunk the idea that

the Crusades were a product of Western/Christian prejudices wherein Christian fanatics spread out around the world to kill or convert anyone who wasn't Christian because all non-Christians were worthy of being killed simply because they didn't share Christian beliefs. The implicit argument in this line of thinking is that the Crusades were an aggressive war launched by Western civilization against non-aggressive cultures that lived outside of Western modes of thinking.

Unfortunately, while he is correct in complaining that the popular impression described above is an oversimplification that misses important parts of the story, he attempts to replace it with this odious claim:

Or was it a case of religious armies counter-attacking other religious armies after being pushed out of territories that they previously had hegemony over?

The answer to that question is, quite clearly, no.

Mr. Levine is, of course, correct in his claim that the Arabs had conquered lands that were, at the time, Christian; and he is correct that those conquests were often resisted (Although, note: in the great cities of Egypt, the Arabs were, indeed, welcomed as liberators - because the dominant form of Christianity in the Coptic world was considered a heresy by the Empire, while the Arabs literally did not care about the difference between Greek and Coptic Christianity). But those conquests had ended centuries ago: the border between the Caliphate and the Byzantine Empire had remained more-or-less static since the end of the seventh century, and the furthest incursion into western Europe via Iberia had been pushed back two hundred and seventy years before the Crusades.

If France were, today, to declare war on Canada in the hopes of retaking Acadia and Quebec, we would think they the French were insane; and we would hold them to be the clear aggressors. The Crusades were every bit as aggressive, and wrapping them in the claim that the Christians were just retaking land which had been theirs is every bit as insane.

This is particularly true when you consider that the people involved in the crusade were not, with one possible exception, in any meaningful way the same people who had been pushed out of those lands. The crusades primarily drew warriors from France, England, and Germany; the Holy Land had, prior to the Arab conquest, been ruled by something that was still culturally and politically identifiable as the classical Roman Empire. While the western states could with some justification claim to be the cultural descendant of that Empire, the fact remains that there was zero political continuity, and that culturally and economically the societies which participated in the crusades were highly dissimilar to the society of classical Rome. Moreover, the political entity which was a direct descendant of classical Rome was also, in fact if not in theory, a highly dissimilar culture - and it did not, in any meaningful way, contribute manpower to the crusades.

The only theory under which it makes sense to say that the Crusades were conducted by the same people from whom the Holy Land had been taken was a theory which held that all of Christendom was united in one socio-political entity. While this theory held a great deal of currency in the popular imagination at the time, it had not been true as a political matter for well over a century at the time of the First Crusade - and, during the period of the crusades, the entire idea fell into disrepute.

To a certain extent the experience of the crusades themselves helped undermine the notion of a united Christendom. The crusades certainly did more to exacerbate conflict between Orthodox and Catholic Christianity than any other single cause.

The idea that the crusades were a response to Arab aggression, and simply a retaking of lands lost in the Arab conquest, is a myth. The lands being reconquered had been conquered four centuries previously; they had been taken away from people who were in virtually no respect politically, culturally, or socially linked with the people who were taking them back; and the people who had the best claim to be the descendants of those who had lost the land in the first place weren't involved in the crusades.

That said, there had been a significant change in the international political situation in the eleventh century which created a legitimate fear in Europe that a new era of Islamic expansion was about to begin. The problem wasn't the Arabs or the Moors - who had seemed content with static borders for centuries. The problem was the Turks.

The Turks had, in the century or so before the Crusades, crossed into Transoxania and conquered it; they had converted to Islam and conquered Persia; they had imprisoned the Caliph and turned him into nothing more than a figurehead; and they had repeatedly made war on what we call the Byzantine Empire. They took to these wars with the missionary zeal of converts - yet, their actions in the decades before they converted suggest that they would have entered into the wars regardless of their religion. They were outsiders bent on conquest who adopted the religion of the people they conquered, and who - as is often the case with conversions - became more ardent, more religious, more fanatical than those who had held that religion all of their lives.

But they posed no threat to western Europe; they had no navies, and - by descending through transoxania rather than crossing the Russian steppe - they were cut off from the main overland routes by which Europe had been invaded in the past.

Until Manzikert. Just under twenty years before the start of the first crusade, the Byzantine Empire was defeated in a decisive battle from which it never recovered. The Emperor was captured; his leading general fled back to the capital and instigated a coup; and gradually over the course of the next two decades, it lost control of most of Anatolia. By the time of the First Crusade, the Turks were on the shore of the Bosporus, and the Byzantine Empire's ability to block entry into Europe was gone.

That was the international context for the Crusades: a stable border between the Christian and the Islamic world, which had held (minus occasional skirmishes) for centuries, had been shattered by an aggressively expansionist Turkish population.

******

It is not clear what Pope Urban II's motivation was in calling the Crusade. No copies of his speech have survived, and the reports of those who heard it disagree on significant details. I do not recall the issues of disagreement, nor do I have my copy of those sources with me (they're in a box somewhere, still unpacked from when I last moved). I do know, however, that this is an area of significant disagreement among historians, even now.

But the Pope's motivation is ultimately of less interest than the motivation of the people who answered his call for a Crusade. These can broadly be classified in the following groups:

• People who were honestly motivated by Christian zeal to retake the Holy Land;
• People who were motivated by the Church's promise of forgiveness of sins;
• People who saw the Crusades as a way to obtain glory, power, or treasure.

The writings of the crusaders themselves, as well as the descriptions of the crusaders left by the Byzantines after the crusaders passed through Byzantine territory, strongly suggest that the vast majority of the nobility (by nobility I mean merely people from families which owned land and whose primary means of support were as warriors) fell into the second or third category.

There were certainly some whose motivations were, as the traditional story behind the crusades would have it, the greater Glory of God - who went into the Crusades as pious idealists. They were a minority. Probably the single largest group of such people were the immense congregation of peasants who followed Peter the Hermit overland to be slaughtered in an ill-advised attempt to attack a trained and battle-experienced Turkish army with pitchforks and farm implements; but few historians would deny the existence of genuine religious motivation among some of the more professional fighters.

A lot more were motivated by the promise of forgiveness of their sins. This raises the question of what, precisely, the Church's motivation was in offering such forgiveness - a question whose answer has not been established to any degree of certainty, and which requires access to documents not allowed out of the Vatican archives.

But many, surprisingly many in an activity long portrayed in popular culture as the outcome of the height of religious zeal, were simply interested in the typical things that warriors have wanted throughout history: treasure and land. The overwhelming majority of the warriors who fought in the crusades were the younger sons of nobility - people who were simply not going to inherit the land, title, and wealth of their parents. People who, in an earlier age - particularly in France - would have engaged in petty fights with each other, or rallied around younger scions of the royal family in an attempt to overthrow the established order. People for whom conquest of the Holy Land offered a future.

The venal nature of many of the Crusaders was demonstrated by the refusal of the Crusaders to turn the territory they conquered over to the Byzantine Empire, the political entity which had the theoretical legal claim to them, despite having agreed to do so when they passed through Constantinople. The Byzantine claim to the Holy Land itself was dubious, but the Crusaders also didn't return places like Antioch - which had been Byzantine territory within two generations prior to the Crusade - and there was significant doubt in the minds of the Byzantines as to whether or not the Crusaders were going to turn over Nicaea, long the heart of Byzantine Anatolia, a city which clearly was rightfully part of their territory.

Not to mention the travesty of the Fourth Crusade, in which those who set off to fight the Turks instead overthrew the government of a Christian country and looted its capital, then the wealthiest city in the Christian world.

So yes, Mr. Levine is right in his detestation of the myth that the Crusades were a clear example of intolerant Christianity seeking to impose its religious beliefs on the rest of the world. But his myth of a Christian world simply defending itself against aggression and retaking land that rightfully belonged to it is just as wrong.

The crusades were a complex phenomenon, not easily distilled to any single simple explanation. But the simple explanation which fits best is that, by and large, the crusaders were the greedy younger children of mid-level nobility who used religious zeal as an excuse to carve out territory and wealth for themselves, abetted by a church whose reasons for doing so remain unclear.

Only, please, not in Baltimore.

Readers of this blog may remember a string of stories, last fall, about the contentious mayor's election in San Diego, when a two-candidate runoff was bedeviled by a write-in candidate who may (or may not) have gotten more votes than the incumbent. The resultant court cases included a challenge to the legitimacy of a write-in campaign (mounted by Donna Frye),challenges to the legitimacy of certain votes, and the recusal of the entire county judiciary. In the end, the incumbent mayor was judged to have won - by a very slim margin, and only after several thousand write-in ballots were disqualified.

Last week he was named one of the three worst big-city mayors in the country by no less a publication than Time, and now he's resigning. Meanwhile, the deputy mayor - who will serve as acting mayor until the special election to replace the resigning mayor - is under federal corruption indictment and goes on trial in May.

I think that Donna Frye's point has been amply made. And I pity the poor voters of San Diego whose attempt to throw out the bums were prevented from going into effect by zealous attention to technicalities.

The historian in me is excited, even though I find this time period almost dreadfully boring:

Classicists at Oxford, using multi-spectral-imaging technology similar to that used on the Dead Sea Scrolls, have begun deciphering some of the 400,000 scraps of papyrus retrieved more than a century ago from what had been the dump outside one of ancient Egypt's largest cities.

Included in the finds are parts of a lost tragedy by Sophocles and a lost novel by Lucian.

The technique could see the number of accounted-for ancient manuscripts increase by one fifth, and may even lead to the unveiling of some lost Christian gospels.

The administration's goal is to make it easier for U.S. citizens and legitimate foreign visitors to enter the United States, said Randy Beardsworth, a top Homeland Security official.

They're going to do this by requiring that US citizens have passports in order to re-enter the country. Even if they've gone to countries that don't require a passport for a US citizen to enter them.

This is in order to protect the country from terrorists, you understand.

If implemented, this will impose an enormous expense on the passport agency, which will get flooded with applicants (only 20% of US citizens currently have passports), thereby (in all likelihood) significantly increasing the time it takes to get a passport. It will also have serious economic repurcussions by preventing most people from travelling to Mexico, the Caribbean, and Canada on short notice (since they'd have to get a passport first).

But ultimately, it's wrong on a more visceral level. The governments of our neighbors, who will allow us to enter their countries without a passport, trust us more than our own government does. We can now leave without papers, but we can't get back in without papers: pity the poor person who loses his passport, or has it stolen, in a country without a US embassy to replace it.

This is a pathetic announcement of the fear in the heart of our government, and the most visible degradation of the meaning of American citizenship in our time.

The most disturbing thing i've ever read online. Courtesy of Electrolite.

It's been a strange day. I haven't had the guts to turn on the television and see how the news is playing out there, but online newspaper reporters and webloggers have spent the day trading rumors, excitedly discussing the latest tidbit of information, and waiting. Waiting and watching as the thousands gather and pray. Waiting for the news of the final death of Karol Wojty[l]a, hanging in suspense as if this were the most important event in the world.

I am not a Catholic, nor even a Christian, and death is to me as natural an event as waking up in the morning; but I will be among the hundreds of millions mourning when Karol Wojty[l]a breathes his last breath. While I disagreed with him, and while I consider the Catholic church to be an antiquated institution barely capable of coping with the modern world, I also recognize this fact: by choice or no, Karol Wojty[l]a was one of the great heroes of the twentieth century, and his legacy will not be forgotten by those to whom it mattered the most.

Most of the rhetoric of obituary we will see in the next several days will focus on his tenure as Pope, and perhaps rightly so; that is the way most of the world knew him. He is, indeed, the only pope that anyone under the age of 35 has any active memory of, and has become one of the oldest and longest-lasting world leaders of stature. But I refer not to his time as Pope, for that is to me less interesting than what came before.

Karol Wojty[la], Archbishop of Krakow, was the leading figure in the movement by which the Polish Catholic Church became involved in politics. It was he who successfully led the movement to force the state authorities to authorize the building of a church in Nova Huta (by, essentially, embarassing them into it). It was his decision as Archbishop which allowed dissidents to use church basements to set up discussion groups for anti-regime agitation. It was he who stood as the foremost advocate for the notion that there was a Truth besides that which the state had authorized.

This was a risky move. Other bishops had, in the past, been killed for less; there was a very real possibility, in the atmosphere that followed upon the dissolution of the liberal Prague government in 1968, that the Polish government could have used deadly force to suppress the resistance of the church. Archbishop Wojty[l]a and his associates took a brave gamble: they bet, with their lives, that the Polish government was too afraid of the power of the Church to suppress it. They won the bet.

And, in so doing, they turned the Polish Catholic Church into something unique: it became the only entity in the entirety of communist Eastern Europe which held a moral authority independant of the state. It was the only independant source of power which was tolerated in the communist world anywhere.

A digression, for a moment: it is of course true that the Soviet bloc was never as monolithic as many in the west believed it to have been; often the russians were not in control, used merely as an excuse for local despotism (as, indeed, became quite public in Poland after 1981). But all of the Eastern European communist states operated on the principle that all authority came from the state (which was held, by definition, to be carrying out the will of the working class). It was critical to the functioning of these states, to the success of the revolution, that the civil society of the pre-revolutionary era be utterly destroyed (as otherwise it might harbor counterrevolutionary elements). Karol Wojty[l]a was the first person to successfully challenge, and overcome, this destruction.

That challenge, that success, changed the world. For if the Church could be an independant authority, then why not the trade unions? If freedom of religion could be preserved in a socialist state, why not other freedoms? The independance of the Polish Catholic Church created the space in which Solidarity, and Charter 77, could operate.

Without Archbishop Karol Wojty[l]a first paving the way, Solidarity would have failed; without Solidarity's unmasking of the hypocrisy of state socialism, the Warsaw Pact may well have never collapsed.

And that was even before his famous pilgrimage to Poland, in 1979, in which huge crowds flocked to see him and the power of the state wilted before him.

I do not know if Karol Wojty[l]a was a good Pope; I don't even understand what the criteria are for making that judgment. I know that the Catholic Church has come a long way towards the modern age during his time; that he has sought peace with the Orthodox and the Jews, and that under his leadership the church has atoned for both its treatment of Galileo and its shameful behavior in fascist states. I also know that the church under his leadership has remained socially conservative, closed off to much of western modernity. I do not know from a theological perspective how to judge that; for Catholic Theology is, to me, as incomprehensible as the rites of voodoo, and it is not fair for me to judge Pope John Paul's performace as prelate by my religious beliefs.

Yet I know that Karol Wojty[l]a was a great man, one of the towering figures of his age. Mikhail Gorbachev, Lech Walesa, and Vaclav Havel - three of the people most qualified to judge - have all said, with much reason, that without this man, and what he did in Poland in the 1970s, the tremendous changes of 1989 would not have been possible. He did not stand alone, but he stood in front, and his footsteps brought the first cracks in the facade of the Iron Curtain, and opened the door for freedom and peace in Europe.

May he rest in peace.

Brandon and Dave will be happy to know that I finally watched Lost in Translation Tuesday night, as a result of some irritating behavior on the part of Netflix. I'd like to acknowledge that it was not what I was expecting; and, to my great surprise, I was even able to tolerate Bill Murray, whose presence in a movie usually causes me to lose interest about half an hour before he walks into it.

Indeed, quite against my will, I found myself liking the movie a great deal.

I had a hard time with one aspect of it: the characters were not behaving like people I know, and were not dealing with their presence in a foreign land in a way which was at all comprehensible to me. (Hey! We're in Japan! Lets hang out and hide in our expensive western hotel!) I had to struggle to overcome my disbelief - not to mention my disinterest - in characters who behaved this way, but somewhere along the line it occurred to me that it didn't matter, because for all that it was set in Japan and it seemed, superficially, to be about functioning in a foreign culture, that was a backdrop for an entirely different story: a story about how ennui, and about disconnected loneliness, and how hard it is to overcome them.

That's not to say there weren't moments which resonated, in the "sometimes travelling in a strange country is like that" way; it is merely to say that, as far as I could tell, that was background flavor; something to intensify the feeling of ennui and loneliness which was already present in the lives of the characters.

Oddly, perhaps, the movie it reminds me of most is Before Sunrise - albeit a less connected, more tentative and fragile version, deprived of the optimism and joy. A good movie, indeed, but a painful one.

The former Assemblyman and Senator from Santa Cruz has been unanimously confirmed, and sworn in, as Secretary of State. He did an outstanding job as my representative (persuading me to cast my first ever vote for a Republican when he ran for re-election the first time), and I expect he'll do a fine job in his new role.

Steps required to get the new Glen Phillips album, Winter Pays For Summer, on my iPod:

1. Open iTunes, go to the iTunes Music Store, search for 'Glen Phillips'. Receive error: "unable to access iTunes Music Store; try again later.
2. Try again later. Get same message.
3. Try again later, later. Get same message. Remember that iTunes is nagging me to install a new version of the software; maybe that's the problem.
4. Download new version of iTunes to install. Run install. Crash 3/4 of the way through install, probably because Firefox has an iTunes plugin and it was still running.
5. Reboot machine. Re-run install. Get cryptic error.
6. Re-download new version of iTunes. Shut down Firefox. Run install. Success!
7. Buy album from iTunes Music Store.
8. Buy a few other albums that are interesting (eg, American Idiot and the new Moby album).
9. Search for firewire cable that has the right size connector for my laptop. Find it.
10. Connect iPod. Launch iTunes. Wait. Watch iTunes decide to copy *340 songs*, many of which it has already copied to my iPod.
11. Scream in frustration when iTunes informs me that it can't copy everything it wants to because my iPod software is too old.
12. Download new iPod software installer to my laptop.
13. Reboot laptop because I have to reboot for the installer to work.
14. Install new iPod software.
15. Unplug iPod, plug it in to a real power source, so the firmware will update.
16. Wait.
17. Reconnect iPod to laptop. Start iTunes. Get same error message as before.
18. Swear. Reboot laptop. Restart iTunes. No error message, yay! Wait for 340 songs to copy.
19. Howl in frustration when my laptop crashes with a CPU temperature of 71C.
20. Wait for CPU to cool off.
21. Restart machine. reconnect iPod. Copy files. Monitor CPU temperature intently.
22. Success!

I hope it turns out to have been worth it.

I went to a meeting over lunch today in which I was going to receive training on a new procedure for releasing patches. (Fair enough). The meeting basically went like this:

Presenter: QA and Engineering management have determined that we will now use this procedure. [Explain procedure. Demo software tool which is mind-bogglingly easy to use].

Engineering: (Various different people). "That's a stupid procedure." "That's redundant. Our group [one of several] already does it this way." "But that procedure doesn't solve this problem." "Is there going to be a better procedure later?" "What safeguards do you have in place in case a virus accidentally deletes all the backup data". Etc.

I had to give up my lunch for this?

Fred Korematsu, a Japanese-American who refused the order to relocate to a detention camp during WWII and whose conviction was upheld in an infamous supreme court decision upholding the detention of all persons of Japanese ancestry on the west coast of the United States, died yesterday. He was 86 years old.

In Ohio, domestic violence is classified a fourth-degree felony and, as such, is a more serious crime than mere assault (a first-degree misdemeanor). Also, in Ohio, a judge has ruled that it is impossible to commit domestic violence against an unmarried partner.

The argument is that, because a recently passed state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and/or the legal recognition of relationships which approximate marriage, it would be unconstitutional to interpret the domestic violence law to apply to unmarried couples.

The judge is probably correct in his interpretation. And I doubt it's an unintended consequence; the people writing and sponsiring these amendments are, for the most part, in favor of a return to the sexual and social morality of a bygone era, when sex outside of marriage was frowned upon and condemned, and relationships like these never had the chance to arise in the first place. Marginalizing such relationships, by denying them any legal status whatsoever, would be a good way to decrease their prevalance.

The sad thing is that the voters of Ohio, who presumably aren't in favor of this, let themselves get snookered into it by people playing on their dislike of homosexuality.

The Supreme Court of the United States:

Our 1985 decision recognized that the Oneidas could maintian a federal common-law claim for damages for ancient wrongdoing in which both national and state governments were complicit. Today, we decline to project redress for the Tribe into the present and future, thereby disrupting the governance of central New York's counties and towns.

Once again, the word of the American government, when spoken to the Indians, is worthless.

Some things never change.

Something I missed while in DC last week for a wedding: George F. Kennan, one of the primary architects of US cold war policy, died last week.

Every civilian with a passionate opinion about the iraq war should make time to get out and see Gunner Palace. It won't change your opinion; it's not about the politics of the war. It's a chaotic hip-hop video letter from the soldiers of the 1st Armored Division, and it's fantastic.

Laura Rozen, guest-blogging for CalPundit, references an article written by an American woman with an undergraduate degree in history and a doctorate in international relations, which contains the following painful, funny, and ultimately revealing quote:

Fully a quarter of Marseille's population is of North African origin, and demographers predict that Marseille will be the first city on the European continent with an Islamic majority.

Istanbul? Edirne? Tirana? Sarajevo?

Not cities on the European continent. In the mind of the woman quoted here, "Europe" is either "Christian Europe" or "Western Europe", and the remaining outposts of the Ottoman Empire - once one of the most powerful states in Europe - aren't only irrelevant, they don't exist.

And we wonder why the Islamic world and the secular post-Christian western industrialized world have such a hard time talking to each other.

(It's particularly disturbing, by the way, that a woman with a degree in modern history and another degree in international relations, could describe Marseille in this fashion).

Some people have no business working in the tech industry.

In my current job, I end up doing some integration-related tasks. In this story, the manager of another group asked me to look at a problem wherein a particular label ("label" meaning "set of associated file versions") does not compile. It does not compile for two reasons:

1. It contains an improperly defined enum;

2. It contains code which looks like the following:

====


#ifdef SOME_VAR
#include "some_h"
#endif

some_type foo(some_other_type_defined_in_some_h bar);


====

So I contact the programmer, ask how he wants me to fix the enum, and if SOME_VAR should be defined in the build. I also tell him that i'm going to wrap the declaration *and* definition of foo() in a SOME_VAR ifdef.

The manager calls me today. He wants to know when my new label will be available, and what's going to be in it. I list the files I'm changing. He thinks I should just force the define at compilation and not wrap the function declaration and definition.

So you want the code to fail to compile when SOME_VAR isn't defined?

No. It should always be defined.

Yes, i'm going to change the build to do that. But I can't guarantee that the header will always be used in that context, and it should always compile, even if it isn't useful. Failure to compile because a type definition is wrapped inside an IFDEF and the functions using that type aren't is unacceptable in a production environment.

How can you possibly be managing a production development group and not know that?

I should be happy about this. I should be excited. Instead, i'm ... anxious. Unsettled. Afraid.

[$UnnamedCompany], the corporation with which I am contracting, is playing its internal corporate games to see if it can hire me full time. The current plan is for an integration position - which, in their world, involves being the primary engineering contact for QA and their OEM, and involves development of interface layers for new hardware, as well as build engineering.

This would be as close to an ideal job in the engineering world as I could get: a decent level fo responsibility combined with a high need for personal interaction, and the offer of genuine satisfaction in terms of helping people (QA, OEMs). The manager I talked with about it today suggested that it's important to find people who don't find that aspect of the job a nuisance; I'd find it the best part of the job.

And yet ...

It's amazing how profoundly unsettling this is; how scary it is. A full-time job is a different kind of commitment than being a contractor is. Right now, I have no attachment to this company, no attachment to anything - I'm a free agent. Being employed, regularly employed, in a salaried position, is something else entirely.

What if it turns out the way the last one did?

On one level, I know the answer: I define my limits beforehand and if they're violated, I walk. Jared, and my friends, will push me on this if I need it.

And yet.

I know these people. I've worked here for half a year. I've made a good impression. It's a relatively professional place that doesn't seem to have the weird politics of my last employer. Aside from one person who irritates the hell out of me every time he emails me, everyone is fairly low key - professional, hard working, but without the constant the-world-is-going-to-end-and-the-company-is-going-to-go-out-of-business-if-this-doesnt-happen feeling.

But how much of that is me, as a contractor, being immune, and free to ignore it?

We talked a bit about hours; the manager - who is new - was very much of the opinion that he doesn't want to run a shop where working late is a regular thing, and thinks that this project is one where, aside from occasional emergencies, it shouldn't be. But how realistic is that?

I don't like being afraid of the unknown. I wasn't, always. But the ghost of a long relationship with a company I loved, whose management took advantage of that fact and expected the unreasonable from everyone on a regular basis, spooks me.

I know that the only way to dispel that ghost is to walk forward.

I know that.

But it doesn't help defeat the spectre.

A memo to all of those who claim that the US doesn't engage in torture:

You're either lying or you are misinformed. Some of you get the benefit of the doubt. Some of you don't.

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 say.

As night fell, predictably, so did the temperature.

By morning, the Afghan man had frozen to death.

The CIA official responsible has allegedly been promoted. He should be arrested, tried, and sent to jail for a very long time. But more importantly, whatever disease it is in CIA corporate culture that allows this to happen needs to be stamped out, and those responsible for allowing it to grow should be quite publically held to account for their sins.

Outrageous and shameful don't even begin to encompass this.

(Hat Tip: Ezra Klein).

I do not support the death penalty; it is a barbaric practice better left to a more barbaric age, and the fact that the US persists in practicing it both dishonors us and betrays us as unwilling to face our better instincts as a people.

That said, the Supreme Court's logic is troubling, and the way they are measuring "evolving standards of decency" is perplexing. 30 states have banned the execution of juveniles. But 12 of those don't allow the death penalty at all. So, really, 18 of the 38 states which do allow execution allowed the execution of juveniles before today.

These numbers constitute "evidence of a national consensus against the death penalty for juveniles?" Alas, I wish the consensus were there; but it isn't. Indeed, the political trends of recent years have been towards making it easier to treat late adolescents as adults in criminal proceedings.

It is certainly a reasonable position that juveniles are "categorically less culpable than the average criminal". It is also a reasonable position that execution is cruel and unusual and is not allowed by the Constitution. But it's an absurd proposition that the fact that 18 out of the 38 states which allow executions do not allow execution of juveniles somehow demonstrates a national consensus supporting that proposition.

To the extent that today's decision by the Supreme Court - holding that such executions are barred by the eighth amendment - relies on that proposition, it is a travesty. If they wanted to overturn their decision in Stanford v. Kentucky, they should have done so; but inventing a bizarre and arbitrary form of numeracy in order to create a fake sense of consistency, thereby to pretend that they aren't throwing precedent out the window, is intellectually dishonest and, therefore, disgraceful.

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds", Mr. Emerson said. This decision would make him weep.

The board of directors of a world-famous high-profile company fires its CEO for failure to execute its strategy successfully, and the Bush administration sees a fabulous candidate to run the World Bank?

Accountability. It's not just a buzzword anymore: it's a myth.

Why is a $7 recycling fee on new bicycles, $3 of which is refundable if you recycle your bicycle, a good idea? Is there really an enormous statewide problem with unrecycled bicycle frames? (I say 'frames' because that's really the only independantly identifiable part of a bicycle; there's no way to know that the tires, seats, handlebars, etc that are attached to a frame at the time of recycling are the same ones that were there at the time of sale). And what's the basis for the claim that California landfills absorb 250,000 bicycles a year?

It's possible that Assemblywoman Karnette has a point. But I'm skeptical.

UPDATE: I've emailed Assemblywoman Karnette with an enquiry as to the origin of her statistic. We'll see if she responds.

There's a lot of talk in the state press today about public reaction to Schwarzenegger's reform proposals (regarding redistricting, merit pay for teachers, abolition of the public employees' retirement system, and consolidation of state agencies) as demonstrated by yesterday's release of a poll on the matter by the Field Institute.

There hasn't been much focus, however, on this: while a plurality of surveyed registered voters with an opinion on the subject thought that the 2000 redistricting was not "fair and balanced" (43% unfair, 18% fair, 39% no opinion), registered Democrats surveyed were generally speaking more likely to think it was unfair (48% unfair, 15% fair, 37% no opinion) than were registered Republicans surveyed(39% unfair, 20% fair, 41% no opinion).

As most of the rhetorical condemnation I've seen of the 2000 redistricting has come from conservative activists who believe it unfairly benefitted Democrats, this is a surprising result.

Another surprising result: while 39% of registered voters surveyed had no opinion as to whether the 2000 redistricting was fair, only 12% of registered voters surveyed had no opinion on Schwarzenegger's redistricting proposal. Which means a lot of people are not basing their support for the measure on their opinion of the current district lines, a datum which is reinforced by the fact that 61% of Republicans surveyed supported the plan (even though only 39% of Republicans surveyed thought the current district lines were unfair).

I'm somewhat disappointed in the at least 1% of registered Democrats surveyed who think that the current plan is unfair but oppose plans to change it, too.

This New York Times review notwithstanding, Constantine was the best b-grade movie i've seen in a long time. It had internal plot consistency; it had decent acting; it had an atmosphere nearly as effective as that in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow without nearly as many problems in the rest of the movie. It executed an interesting concept well.

I think the NYT reviewer just couldn't suspend his disbelief, which is understandable, but still means he should have been disqualified from reviewing.

Jonathon Chait argues, in the February 28th issue of The New Republic, that the liberal and conservative approaches to economics are not analagous; that, if an infallible source were to proclaim conservative economic theories empirically correct, liberals would abandon their theories (because they are only interested in outcomes and support state intervention for that purpose), while conservatives, in the face of an infallible source proclaiming liberal theories to be empiracally correct, would decline to abandon theirs (because their interest in economic policy outcomes is secondary to their ideological opposition to state intervention).

This is an interesting approach to the issue, and it contains at least a kernel of truth. Most liberals don't believe that the state is per se the answer to all problems - they view it as a preferable counterbalance to other perfidous actors, and acknowledge that it belongs in a certain sphere and should stay out of another sphere. Yet it simply isn't true that all conservatives reject this view and maintain that the state should have no sphere at all: the conservatives I've talked to all maintain that the state should have as small a sphere as possible, which is a far cry from the kind of ideological purity that Chait observes.

And yet ... I am reminded of conversations I've had with [redacted], over many years. [Redacted] is an ideological small-government conservative living in Santa Cruz County, and his politics are influenced by the defensiveness of being part of a local political minority. He is categorically opposed to any solution to any problem which involves government action (except, sadly, for government action which - like banning spam - he thinks would personally help him); his opposition often takes on an irrational, emotional form, as if he is fundamentally allergic to the very suggestion. Government, in his worldview, may occasionally be a necessary evil - but it is always an evil, always corrupt and inefficient and broken, and not only should its sphere be tiny, but every possibility of shrinking its sphere should be undertaken.

I don't know to what degree he is representative of conservative thought in general, but his views echo the general tenor of rhetoric I see elsewhere. Conservatives, broadly speaking, believe government to be the problem, not the solution; and I suspect that Chait is right when he says that they do so out of an ideology, not pragmatics.

Chait goes further than this, however, when he speculates:

If liberalism is not the mirror image of conservatism, what is? The more apt parallel is probably socialism. True socialists believe that allowing capitalists to keep some of the fruits of workers' labor is inherently immoral. They also tend to believe that free enterprise does not work very well. But, like the conservative belief that big government doesn't work well, this empirical belief merely sits atop a deeper normative belief. For committed socialists, doing away with "exploitation" is an end in itself.

I don't know if this is observation is apposite, but it does portend an explanation to something which has often puzzled me: why is it that many conservatives seem to conflate moderate liberalism with socialism? I have been told that the post office - a venerable institution whose residence within the government is a tradition dating to ancient times - is socialist. I have been told that support for public education is socialist. I have been told that any form of wealth transfer or public welfare is socialist. None of these involve state control of the entire economy; none of them presuppose a doctrinaire belief that market economics is inherently immoral. All of them stem from the general pragmatic moderate-liberal programme. Whence comes this association with socialism so prominent in the minds of their opponents?

Chait's thesis offers a possibility. If it is true that conservatives are motivated primarily by an ideological belief that markets are always good and government is always bad, does it not follow that those who believe in such a thing assume that their political opponents are also ideologically motivated? If Chait's thesis is correct, than it is possible that many conservatives equate liberalism with socialism because they are incapable of believing that anyone could have an ambivalent view of markets or of government - that the idea that one might support the pragmatic use of each tool when each tool is appropriate strikes them as simply being inchoate. Liberals must be socialists, under such a line of reasoning.

The explanatory power of this idea, of course, vanishes if Chait's thesis is demonstrated to be false. Yet, even then, it would not pass out of the realm of interesting speculations.

Jared had an amusing, and astute, observation about the news that John Negroponte, American ambassador-proconsul to Iraq, has been named intelligence czar: if there is truth in the rumors that the Bush administration has been having trouble getting people to take the job because it combines a high level of responsibility with a low level of power and authority, than Negroponte's new job isn't terribly different from his old one.

One of the common refrains during the recall election - or, for that matter, during the depressing election of the previous year in which neither major party candidate for Governor really had anything to recommend him - was a plaintive wail: "Why, oh why, can't we have a governor like Pat Brown?" Pat Brown, according to the myth embodied in this question, was the last truly successful progressive governor of California; he presided over the waning years of the glory age, when the state built the massive California Aqueduct, enlarged the University system, invested in highway construction on a large scale. He was a successful governor, who sheperded the diverse political interests of the state towards a fixation on a common goal, and harnessed the power of a wondrous land in service of the goal of building a better commonwealth for everyone.

This sort of adulation of Pat Brown easily crosses the line into hagiography. But it's a useful hagiography, and this accounts for much of its popularity. It gives conservatives a foil with which to denounce the incompetence and corruption of the current government. It gives liberals a goalpost, a heroic mythical figure whose greatness modern politicians can only aspire to. Like most such accounts, however, it is largely a myth - at least, if California Rising: The Life and Times of Pat Brown, a new biography of the Governor (by Ethan Rarick) is to be believed.

Rarick appears to have had access to a wide range of previously unmined sources, including interviews with Brown's widow, the more than 1000 cartons of papers in Pat Brown's paper collection at the Bancroft Library, and Pat Brown's heretofore unavailable diary. Such access is, of course, no guarantor of quality research - and in particular it gives rise to the inevitable concern that the book might treat Brown too gingerly. But the picture the book paints of him is hardly flattering, and the use Rarick made of his sources grants the book considerable heft.

While Dan Walters' critical review of the book is right on some counts - the book does avoid discussion of the feud between Brown and Jesse Unruh, it mostly ignores the question of his troubled relationship with his son, it skimps on the last several years of Brown's governorship, and it is entirely silent on the question of Brown's retirement - his general thesis is sufficiently off-base as to be perplexing. It is unclear to me how Walters can maintain that "Rarick only occasionally hints at the essential truth of [Brown's] governorship: While Brown sincerely wanted to be a good governor, amny of the achievements ascribed to him should be credited to others, and he was chronically indecisive, often duplicitious, and made many mistakes" when the book's entire premise is that "the kindness of nostalgia burnished memory".

The picture presented of Brown is not a kind one. He comes across as a gifted politician with a knack for making people like him - a good old boy, in short - who had a serous problem with indecisiveness, convincing everyone that he wanted what they wanted and siding with whomever saw him last. (Oddly enough, many biographies of Franklin Roosevelt present the same image). Rarick's interpretation of Brown's governorship is that it held great promise that was undermined by Brown's flaws, most clearly in the case of Caryl Chessman (an inmate executed for rape after a protracted political crisis, including numerous changes of position on Brown's part and a last-minute stay of execution while Brown asked the legislature to abolish capital punishment):

And yet at the crucial moment of the most famous capital case he would ever face, Brown's resolution flickered. Bernice Brown was right: Her husband was alone in a great big house, talking to his only son. But being in charge is about being alone, even at night, even in a great big house, even when your own son calls.

What Pat Brown needed that night was not a desire to abolish capital punishment or sympathize with his son or even listen to the futile admonitions of his own conscience. What he needed that night was a hard, rigorous self-discipline, an acceptance of an unpleasant reality, and a willingness to see it through. His wife knew it. His friends knew it. Even he knew it. And he didn't have it.

Hardly a ringing endorsement of Brown's governorship. But, harsh as that passage is, the book is even-handed. It gives Brown credit where it is due: his success in getting the voters to support the state water project (involving a bond issue equal to *3/4* of annual revenue!) was amazing, the negotiation of an agreement between the University of California and the California State College system (which agreement is, according to today's news, fraying) was a huge success, as was the cigarette tax and the creation of the fair employment practices commission. Yet at the same time, Brown's mismanagement of the politics of the Rumsford Act (a housing nondiscrimination act which was repealed by a referendum), his mishandling of the 1960 presidential convention delegation, and his utter inability to deal with the rebellion of Sam Yorty come in for well-deserved condemnation.

In the end, Rarick's book presents a diminished, but still ultimately good, view of Brown. Pat Brown was not the mythical last great governor of California, capable of achieving anything and towering over his successors as a giant; nor was he the bumbling fool of Reaganite propoganda. He was an unusually successful politician, great at making people like him, who had many successes and many failures; he was, in a way, a tragic figure whose flaws actively interfered with his achievements.

It's somewhat amazing how strong that theme is in progressive politics.

Yes, that Jerry Brown.

I can understand, and am even to some degree sympathetic to, the principle that regimes which arise as a result of revolution should not be held financially responsible for the acts of the regime against which the revolution took place¹. Even so, there is something downright sickening about the US Government's position in this case.

Seventeen American Prisoners of War, held by Iraq during the Gulf War (I), filed suit in 2002, seeking monetary damages as compensation for the pain, suffering, and mental distress caused by being tortured by the Iraqi government. The lawsuit was allowed under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996, which waived sovereign immunity for states that engaged in torture (among other things). They won their case, and were awarded $653 million in compensation (and Iraq was assessed an additional $306 million in punitive damages).

The Bush administration argues that, because Congress lifted sanctions against Iraq as part of an emergency appropriations bill to pay for the war against and subsequent occupation of Iraq, Bush was entitled to remove Iraq from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, thereby voiding the provision of the Anti-Terrorism Act which allowed the suit.

We have thus ended up in the somewhat bizarre situation that, while the US agrees that it is financially liable for damages payable to those who were tortured in Abu Gharib, it also claims that nobody is financially laible for damages payable to those American soldiers who were tortured by Hussein. Ethically speaking, this is problematic; and pragmatically speaking, it's got to be terrible for soldier morale: we're literally placing a higher value on the claims of those who say the US Army has tortured them than we are on the claims of those in the US Army who say they have been tortured.

There's a somewhat nasty rational logic to this. There's a nasty procedural logic - there is simply no authorization at law for this suit - and there's a nasty political logic - the new government isn't responsible and shouldn't be required to pay. This is, in short, a test case for the proposition that the rational application of well-intended bureaucratic rules yields results which are absurd. Or, as Timothy Burke put it in respect to a different set of issues, "A force that exerts moral or cultural authority without seeming to understand the common sense underpinnings or everyday knowledges about the issues it addresses."

There has to be a middle ground here: a way that the desire of American soldiers for compensation can be squared with the desire of our policymakers to not force the new Iraqi government to pay for the sins of its predecessor. The suit should be allowed to continue (it was thrown out on appeal, but further appeals are pending), and then the claims of these soldiers should be lumped together with all other claims against the Hussein regime, and dealt with exactly as they are, rather than being singularly tossed out of United States court as a result of a bureaucratic absurdity promulgated by the Bush administration.

--

¹There's a strong counter-argument, of course:
A general rule forgiving the debts of an odious regime upon its overthrow in a revolution may be problematic because such a rule would encourage creditors of that regime to assist it in subduing revolutions, leading to a result which would be worse for the revolutionary populace than an outcome in which they are required to repay the debts of their predecessor and foreign creditors have no incentive to take sides.

Castle In The Sky has the reputation of being Hayao Miyazki's most accessible film - the easiest for American audiences to understand and enjoy. That may or may not be true (i'm skeptical), but it's also the least enjoyable or interesting of the Miyazaki films that i have seen.

The best of Miyazaki's works combine an incredible sense for atmosphere (the train scene in Spirited Away, the cat bus scene in Totoro, the incredible scenery of the forest in Nausicaa) with interesting characters going through interesting stories. Castle in the Sky ought to have both of these: Laputa should qualify for atmosphere, and the plight of Sheeta - and the blossoming love of Pazu - ought to qualify for interesting characters and an interesting story.

Yet - somehow - it doesn't. Laputa was visually stunning, no doubt, but the sublime mixture of spookiness and beauty that Miyazaki's other films have conjured was missing. Similarly, the characters fall flat; the emotional content feels forced and doesn't flow naturally.

It's not a bad film. It just doesn't resonate the way all of his other movies do. And in that, it was a disappointment.

Hopefully Howl's Moving Castle will be better.

Apparently UPN did a Twilight Zone remake in 2002, hosted by Forrest Whittaker. Not being TV-enabled, I missed it; but I attempted to remedy that situation by adding the entire series (it only aired for one season) to my Netflix queue.

Judging from the first disc, at any rate, it's terrible. Jared pointedly commented in the middle: "if you're going to watch trash, at least watch good trash", and he had a point. Of the seven episodes on the first disc, only two of them (a story about a suburban dystopia and a story about death attempting to retire) were interesting, and only two of them were haunting (the suburban dystopia and a parable about racism). But even those three weren't new in any meaningful sense; all seven stories were retreads, and all seven "twist endings" were predictable a third of the way into the story.

I'd be exaggerating if I said I'd never been so bitterly disappointed by a tv show in my life, so I won't say that; but I was pretty disappointed. I'd expected better from Forrest Whittaker, and i'd expected better from the bearers of the Twilight Zone flag. (It is possible that i'm overreacting and prejudging; even the original series was spotty, producing some excellent episodes and some outright drivel. So i'll watch the rest of them. But at this point it's more out of a morbid curiosity "how bad can it get" than out of delight and a desire to enjoy more.)

About 3.45 on Friday afternoon, discontent.com stopped responding to connection requests from the outside world. This was annoying; my email goes through this box, and lately i've been running IRC from it while at work, as well. Nor was I the only one annoyed; Brandon called a bit after, wanting to know what was up.

What *was* up?

I was fairly certain from the way that things were responding - chrononaut.org was also down - that the problem was a networking problem, not a problem with discontent.com. My network has been shut down before when a windows box in my house became infested with an annoying trojan that drew the attention of someone who complained to my ISP, and it's always possible that I've forgotten to pay the bill. (That shouldn't happen, as it's an automatic payment, but it's at least theoretically possible that the account generating the automatic payment doesn't have the correct amount of money in it at the time the bill is supposed to be paid). I could check the latter from work, but to check the former, I wanted to be home where I could play with the network.

It wasn't the former. The guy on the tech support line was quite helpful. (I've *never* had a bad experience with sonic.net, and I sincerely hope that they're able to continue providing service in light of recent court rulings deregulating the prices that local phone companies are allowed to charge independant ISPs for the use of their wires. I've never had a good experience with SBC.) Granted, it took nearly forty minutes of being on hold before I got to talk to someone (grumble), but once that happened we poked at things a bit, tried different solutions, and discovered the following:

Tech Support's probe tools could see the DSL modem, and the DSL modem still believed that it had four machines connected to it, despite the fact that I had disconnected all four and connected one machine directly to it without going through an intervening switch. My machine could see the DSL modem if it adopted an address in the subnet of the DSL modem's internal IP address, but could not obtain an address from it, nor could it send packets through it to the outside world. Machines in the net, in other words, could see the modem but could not see through it; machines outside the net could see the modem but could not see through it.

My DSL modem had gone on strike. Perhaps it was protesting the lack of vacation. Perhaps it was upset that it has no downtime. Perhaps, instead of being on strike, it had been infested by some bizarre sort of software virus. All I knew was that it had simply ceased being willing to serve as a bridge, devolving instead into a useless chunk of plastic sitting on the countertop.

"We'll send you a new one, but you'll have to pay for shipping." OK. "Hmm. Wait. If you're still under warranty you don't have to pay for shipping." (Excuse me? I can get a replacement for free whether I'm under warranty or not, but being under warranty frees me from having to pay for shipping? How bizarre). Even better. "*If* we have one in stock, they'll ship it out Monday."

If?

The weekend passed. I did entertaining things. Jared and I watched much of the fourth season of Oz. We played board games Sunday night and had dinner with a friend. I went to see Bad Education with Jared's mom. I could even get online to read news, etc, using an open wireless network belonging to someone else in my condo complex.

But there was one small problem: I couldn't check my email.

It's been six months since the last time I went more than a day without being able to check my email. But, then, it was deliberate: I was in a controlled environment cut off from the world in any event. It's been thirteen months sine the last time I wasn't able to check my email for more than a day without being in such a controlled environment. But then I was travelling; I was in Turkey, and internet access was intermittent. It's been THIRTEEN YEARS since the last time I was unable to check my email for more than a day without travelling or being in a controlled environment.

If i'm home, I usually check email regularly. As in, once every couple of hours. Even knowing that I couldn't check email, I'd still reflexively launch a browser window, only to find myself confused, unsure what I was trying to do. What made it even more surreal was knowing that the machine on which my email is stored was *just down the hall*, that - if I hadn't turned it off to conserve power during the days when it was useless - I could connect to it just fine via the internal house network, and that it was utterly pointless to do so because it couldn't get the email in the first place.

E-mail is like crack, and there is no frustration in my experience like not being able to get it once you've been hooked.

I'm very happy to report that discontent is back. The DSL modem shipped on schedule Monday, arrived in the midst of a downpour yesterday (the UPS guy had nicely put it in a plastic bag, but i'd worked from home in any event), and we were up and running again about half an hour later.

Now all I need to do is figure out what to do with the dead DSL modem. Any suggestions?

Sunday's New York Times has an Amusing report about a plan, mooted by the CEO of Harper Collins, to change marketing in such a way as to draw attention to the publisher of books. The goal is to get people to view the Harper Collins brand as a guarantor of quality, thereby causing them to seek out the "new Harper Collins book" instead of the "new Michael Crichton novel". According to the article, this is an earthshaking change in business models with no precedent in the publishing industry.

It's an interesting idea. The movie industry used to play this game, but stopped long ago. But it is by no means a new idea in the publishing world. For all that the New York Times claims this:

[M]ost people do not walk into a bookstore looking for a Doubleday novel or a Simon & Schuster title. Rather, they go in search of a Dan Brown thriller or the new Bob Woodward best seller.

People do walk into a bookstore looking for the latest Harlequin romance, and discerning readers have long known that the label of Tor Books is a mark of quality.

I don't know if Harper Collins will succeed in its quest. But the Times' depiction of the concept as a new marketing idea, an iconoclastic fight to change the way the publishing industry works, strikes this observer as nothing more than an entertaining fairy tale.

The Supreme Court of the State of New York of New York County¹ has ruled that

under the New York state constitution, [same-sex couples] are entitled to treatment equal to that of opposite-sex couples with regard to the issuance of marriage licenses and access to civil marriage.

The case involved a challenge to the decision by the office of the City Clerk to not issue marriage licenses to five same-sex couples, who subsequently sued, claiming that the City Clerk had been incorrect in his interpretation of state law (eg, that state law already authorized same sex marriages) and that, if he had not been incorrect, state law was an unconstitutional violation of the state's due process clause and the state's equal protection clause.

The court accepted that the City Clerk was correct in his interpretation of state statute, noting that the state's family law was riddled with implicit assumptions about marriage being between a man and a woman. It then determined that the law was in violation of the due process clause of the state constitution.²

The New York state Constitution - echoing the federal constitution - specifies that:

No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.

If the right to marry is a fundamental right protected by substantive due process, then this provision makes denial of that right questionable. But is it a fundamental right? The Court, referring at length to a variety of cases which clearly place the right of marriage within the right of privacy³, held that "[Marriage] is a fundamental right of free men."It then proceeded to skewer the claim that gay couples are not denied marriage rights because they can marry members of the opposite sex if they so choose. It relied specifically on a decision handed down by the Court of Appeals, which held:

"Thus, clearly falling within [the right to privacy]'s scope are matters relating to the decision of whom one will marry.

and a different decision, in which the Court of Appeals held:

The government is prevented from interfering with an individual's decision about whom to marry.

Having established that marriage was a fundamental right which was denied⁴ to gay couples, the court then proceeded to consider whether or not the denial of the right constituted a denial of due process, under the theory which holds that the due process clause requires courts to "balance the individual's liberty interest against the State's asserted compelling need". It enquired as to whether or not the state had a compelling interest in denying gay couples the right to marry.

The attorneys for the City Clerk had offered up two arguments:

• That such a law fosters the traditional institution of marriage;
• That such a law is necessary to avoid problems which might arise if other states refuse to recognize same-sex marriages.

The Court skewered the first argument by noting:

Both the New York Court of Appeals and the United States Supreme Court have made clear that the State may not deny rights to a group of people based on no more than traditional attitudes or disapproval⁵ ... Furthermore, that prejudice against gay people may still prevail elsewhere cannot be a legitimate justification for maintaing it in the marriage laws of this State.

The second argument, according to the court, was also problematic:

At its root, defendant's second argument is that the State may excuse its own deprivation of plaintiffs' constitutional rights on the basis of discrimination countenanced by other States and the Federal government. But this simply cannot be a legitimate ground for denying a liberty interest as important as marriage.⁶

Thus:

Marriage, as it is understood today, is both a partnership of two loving eqauls who choose to commit themselves to each other and a State institution designed to promote stability for the couple and their children. The relationships of plaintifss fit within this definition of marriage.
Similar to opposite-sex couples, same-sex couples are entitled to the same fundamental right to follow their hearts and publicly commit to a lifetime partnership with the person of their choosing.

¹New York's judiciary has some seriously weird nomenclature. The Supreme Court is New York's lowest-level court, equivalent to what we would call Superior Court in California. This decision is therefore appealable, and I would expect the Bloomberg administration to appeal it.

²It declined to address the equal protection claim, seeing no point in doing so after it had already found the law unconstitutional.

³A bizarre place to find it.

⁴The decision made it quite clear what the cost of denying such licenses is (formatting added):

It is not disputed, for example, that among many other disadvantages, plaintiff couples may not

• own property by the entireties;

• file joint state income tax returns;

• obtain health insurance through a partner's coverage;

• obtain joint liability or homeowner's insurance;

• collect from a partner's pension benefits;

• have one partner of the two-women couples be the legal parent of the other partner's artificially inseminated child, without the expense of an adoption proceeding;

• invoke the spousal evidentiary privilige;

• recover damages for an injury to, or the wrongful death of, a partner;

• have the right to make important medical decisions for a partner in emergencies;

• inherit from a deceased partner's intestate estate;

• or determine a partner's funeral and burial arrangements.

⁵Opponents of Lawrence will be gleeful to note that Lawrence is one of the cases cited in defense of this proposition.

⁶Not to mention that it's a bizarre argument in the first place: "we can't recognize marriages [n] because if we do and other people don't it might cause a hardship to the people in those marriages." But isn't that less of a hardship than would be imposed if you didn't recognize them?

What's the best thing you can do when you're an unpopular king who is widely suspected of having murdered his father and brother, trying to run a country in which a weak and ineffectual Parliament seems to be opposed to almost everything you want to do, and much of the country is under the control of the world's last major Maoist revolutionary group?

Hint: Firing the Parliament and announcing that you're creating a new government answerable only to you isn't it. That road leads to a Maoist victory; the democrats in the bourgeoisie will now be more afraid of royal tyranny than of the guerrillas.

If these numbers are true - turnout of between 57 and 60 percent, with one major player boycotting and everyone else turning out despite the threat that they'll be killed if they do - the result is nothing short of amazing.

if the insurgents wanted to stop people in Baghdad from voting, they failed. If they wanted to cause chaos, they failed. The voters were completely defiant, and there was a feeling that the people of Baghdad, showing a new, positive attitude, had turned a corner.

The article demonstrates, in other passages, that execution wasn't perfect and flawless; but nobody expected it to be. Hell, elections here aren't. Regardless, the low violence and respectable turnout are incredibly good news.

California Elections Code Section 12223 provides:

Whenever a jurisdiction is divided into election precincts or whenever the boundary of an established precinct is changed or a new precinct is created, the precinct boundary shall be
fixed in a manner so that the number of voters in the precinct does not exceed 1,000 on the 88th day prior to the day of election, unless otherwise provided by law.

While this paragraph is clearly not binding on other jurisdictions, it is nonetheless useful as an estimate of what we consider to be a reasonable ratio of voters to polling stations in an established democracy with a reasonably well-run electoral system. One thousand is the number we've set as a baseline in California. Assuming 100% turnout, a polling place is assumed to be able to process an average of 77 voters an hour. (Of course, we never get 100% turnout in precinct; the combination of low turnout and absentee ballots means we usually get around 40% in-precinct turnout, in my experience).

It's somewhat difficult to reconcile that with the numbers provided in this New York Times report about the preparations for elections in Mosul. According to the report, the city has a population of 1,600,000 - for whom eighty polling places have been set up. Assuming that only half of the population is of voting age (a ridiculously high estimate of the number of children), that's 800,000 voters for 80 polling places - an average of 10,000 each.

10,000 voters per polling place. Ten times the legal standard for an election in California. Assuming the polls are open for 20 hours on election day - more time than they'll actually be open for, but it simplifies the math - that's 500 voters an hour at 100% turnout. Given the reports that elections in Mosul will call for high levels of security, is it really a reasonable assumption that precinct officers are more than 649% as efficient as precinct officers in California?

You can argue that California's legal requirements are too low (they probably are, but not by a factor of 10). You can argue that turnout will be nowhere near 100%. You can plead that having more polling places would be too expensive and too dangerous. But you cannot argue that the ratio of voters to polling places in Mosul comes anywhere close to the standard that established democracies use for such things; nor can you argue that the paucity of polling places will not discourage voters.

These numbers, in fact, guarantee two things: there will be reports on Sunday of people standing in line for hours to vote (because the number of polling places guarantees that the voters cannot be processed expeditiously), and turnout in Mosul will not break 40% (because it's impossible for the polling places to process the number of voters they are expected to in the time alloted).

It's possible there are well-founded reasons to expect turnout to be that low in the first place. But establishing a system which structurally precludes the possibility of more voters hardly seems to be setting the election, the electorate, or the state up for success.

The king's body was lain at first in the castle's Green Hall, but Maria Eleonora, now refusing any talk of burial, soon had it removed to her own bedroom. The coffin was covered by an elaborate pattern of oval pearls after her own design, but it remained unsealed, and it seems that it was not infrequently opened. More than a year after the king's death, the men of the Swedish parliament, shocked, embarassed, and indignant, petitioned the Estate of the Clergy, asking "whether a Christian could in good conscience apply for and be granted the right to open the graves and the coffins of their dead and gaze at and fondle their bodies in the belief that through these acts they would receive some comfort and solace in their state of great heart-rending sorrow and distress" ....

After many delays, and constant opposition by Maria Eleonora, the king's body was at last interred on June 15, 1634, nineteen months after his death ...

Within a day of the king's interment, Maria Eleonora pleaded for the coffin to be opened again, asking that the king should not be buried while she lived.

Today's New York Times, in the midst of a report about how Saudi officials are apparently now pushing OPEC to raise oil prices, includes the following story of self-defeating economics:

Because transactions on the oil market are priced in dollars, the currency depreciation in the last two years has been one of OPEC's main concerns and a central argument in favor of higher oil prices.

It should be noted at the outset that this a seperate consideration from the problem of population growth, combined with the peculiar economic structures of most of the Gulf countries, creating severe economic and political pressure on the governments of the region; that is a problem that has to be adressed, and raising the price of oil is guaranteed to reduce the severity of the problem in the short-term. But this is something different: if the report is true, then OPEC is seeking to counteract the effect of a decline in the value of the dollar by ensuring that they have more dollars.

If OPEC were a small player in the international dollar market, this might work - its efforts to arrogate more dollars to itself would, in that case, not dramatically change the total quantity of dollars available outside the US, and so would not have an impact on the value of the dollar relative to other currencies. But, given that US demand for oil is essentially inelastic in the medium-term, and given that OPEC is a major player in the international dollar market, OPEC's maneuvering is paradoxically self-defeating: raising the price of oil will result in more dollars flowing out of the US, increasing the supply of dollars on the international market, worsening a glut, and thereby increasing downward pressure on the dollar. With each billion dollars more they reap in income, the value of the dollar will fall further.

Presumably this is something they wish to avoid having happen; but the report is silent on what steps OPEC might take to mitigate it.

In case you weren't going to read it anyway, you should go read Ezra Klein's hystercal riff on why blogs aren't all they're cracked up to be.

Jared and I watched the made-for-cable-TV movie Truman last night, while playing our respective video games. It was a decent enough movie; the acting was good, the production values were high. I can completely see how Gary Sinise won a Golden Globe (and an Emmy) for his performance in it; he was Truman, in a way that few actors ever become the character they are playing. And the interleaving of archive footage (and faked archive footage) of era-specific newsreels with the storytelling was atmospherically interesting - it made the movie feel like a documentary, thereby causing the acted portions of the movie to be more believable.

Yet the movie had a fatal flaw, sufficient to cause me to have no interest whatsoever in watching the last ten minutes (the disc is scratched in such a way as to make that portion unplayable). It is a common flaw to movies of its genre - see, for example, last year's mediocre rendition of the life of Alexander - and, to that extent, its presence was predictable. The story just isn't that interesting.

Perhaps it is ironic that a lover of history, someone who reads historical tomes in his spare time, would have this criticism of movie biopics as a genre. But the problem remains: movies which attempt to tell the life story of historical figures almost invariably fail as movies. Even given endless hours of time, they are forced to compress individual episodes together in a way that deprives each episode of its requisite drama and makes the movie feel like a litany of unconnected stories that are forced together by means of a common protagonist. If the writer/director is trying to be comprehensive, the plot arc feels drifting and meaningless; alternately, if the writer/director clips episodes out of the story so as to streamline the plot, what episodes remain often become incomprehensible due to the lack of sufficient background. Either way, such movies have a difficult time sustaining my interest.

Truman was a decent enough instance of its genre. But I would have been much more interested in, and would have enjoyed much more, a movie devoted to one of the interesting episodes in the man's life: the fight with Pendergast over requiring his companies to bid on construction contracts; his relationship with his wife; the fight with MacArthur, etc. A more narrowly tailored movie focusing on one such episode would allow room for a kind of dramatic engagement which is nigh impossible in a general biopic film.

The Sacramento Bee is reporting that a rumour is floating around the capital that Secretary of State Kevin Shelley is going to resign rather than testify under oath before the Joint Legislative Audit Committee.

Secretary of State Shelley is being investigated because of accusations that he redirected, for partisan purposes, money given to his department under the Help America Vote Act. The Elections Assistance Commission is also considering investigations, which would represent the first time the commission had audited a state elections department. These investigations come on the heels of an investigation by the state auditor which concluded that his office was guilty of poor oversight and disregarding proper controls. Meanwhile, the FBI has been investigating allegations that, while he was in the state Assembly, Kevin Shelley arranged for a $500,000 grant to the San Francisco Neighbors Resource Center in exchange for it arranging donations of $168,750 to his campaign for Secretary of State.

None of these allegations are yet proven. But there are enough of them out in the air that an uninformed observer could be forgiven for drawing the conclusion that they reinforce one another; they come together to paint a picture of a politician who is, as it were, ethically challenged. The Committee should ask Secretary Shelley hard questions, and not flinch if a close look at the evidence leads them to the conclusion to which a cursory look leads me.

And if Secretary Shelley were to resign now, and spare the voters of this state the ordeal of the investigation - an investigation which looks likely to lead down the path to either impeachment or recall - it would be a good thing. The office of the Secretary of State is supposed to remain nonpartisan precisely because it oversees elections; if the allegations that this Secretary of State used federal election money to pay people to write speeches for him (among other things) are true, he deserves to be pushed out of office, and out of the California Democratic party, forthwith.

UPDATE: Tuesday's San Francisco Chronicle (hat-tip: Rough and Tumble) reports that State Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero, who is on the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, has called upon Shelley to resign.

I have no idea if Abraham Lincoln was bisexual, but apparently Babur was. His memoirs (at page 89 in the edition linked) contain this amazingly cute tale of his first marriage and - another thing altogether - his first love:

MARRIAGE AND FIRST LOVE

Sultan-Ahmad Mirza's daughter Ayisha Sultan Begim, who had been affianced to me while my father and uncle were still alive, came to Khodzhent, and we were married in the month of Sha'ban. In the early days after the wedding, although my affection for her was not lacking, since it was my first marriage and I was bashful, I went to her only once every ten, fifteen, or twenty days. Later on I lost my fondness for her altogether, and I was still shy. Once every month or forty days the khanim drove me to her with all the severity of a quartermaster.

During this time, there was a boy from the camp market named Baburi. Even his name was amazingly appropriate.

I developed a strange inclination for him - rather I made myself miserable over him.

Before this experience I had never felt a desire for anyone, nor did I listen to talk of love and affection or speak of such things. At that time I used to compose single lines and couplets in Persian. I composed the following lines there:

May no one be so distraught and devastated by love as I; May no beloved be so pitiless and careless as you.

Occasionally Baburi came to me, but I was so bashful that I could not look him in the face, much less covnerse freely with him. In my excitement and agitation I could not thank him for coming, much less complain of his leaving. Who could bear to demand the ceremonies of fealty? One day, during this time of infatuation, a group was accompannying me down a lane, and all at once I found myself face-to-face with the boy. I was so ashamed I almost went to pieces. There was no possibility of looking straight at him or of speaking coherently. With a hundred embarassments and difficulties I got past him. These lines by Muhammad Salih came to my mind:

I am embarrassed every time I see my beloved. My companions are looking at me, but my gaze is elsewhere.

It is amazing how appropriate this verse was. In the throes of love, in the foment of youth and madness, I wandered bareheaded and barefoot around the lands and streets and through the gardens and orchards, paying no attention to acquaintances or strangers, oblivious to self and others.

When I fell in love I became mad and crazed; I knew not this to be part of loving beauties.

Sometimes I went out alone like a madman to the hills and wilderness, sometimes I roamed through the orchards and lanes of town, neither walking nor sitting within my own volition, restless in going and staying.

I have no strength to go, no power to stay. You have snared us in this state, my heart.

Somehow I'm certain this gets left out of Pakistani and Afghani history classes.

If there was yet any doubt in your mind, rest assured: President Bush is a Wilsonian, through and through:

For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny -- prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder -- violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat. There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom.

We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.

America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of our founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the maker of heaven and earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our Nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time.

I find myself deeply conflicted over this, more so than I had expected, even having been aware of political currents and the tone in which the contemporary debate chatters. I do not trust the ability of this administration, famous for its bullheadedness and inability to listen to evidence that contradicts its preconceived notions, to carry out this mission competently; nor do I trust some parts of the administration to be saying things of this nature out of passion rather than out of a cynical attempt to use a falsified version of this idealism as a cover for more nefarious motives.

And yet ...

I understand that it is impractical to force liberal democracy on societies which resist it; that intruding into a culture with our ideas of what it should be will garner as much resentment and anger as it will success. And yet ...

I came to liberalism, originally, through Wilsonianism; through the dream of free peoples around the world working to ensure a stable international order based on law, and on the notion that human rights transcended borders and political systems. Through the idea that liberal democracy is a quantifiably better system, in Churchill's words, than all the rest. The sentiments in this speech resonate with me when I hear them.

There's a deep divide in the American foreign policy community between those who adhere to Kissingerite realism and those who adhere to Wilsonian idealism. It is particularly ironic that the party which brought Kissinger to the table has abandoned his views; it is even more ironic that the party which brought Wilson to the table, and whose idealistic commitment to human rights caused it to champion the causes of the downtrodden from places as widely seperate as Cambodia and South Africa, has adopted realism as its foreign policy analysis of choice. (Consider the particular irony of vice-presient Cheney: one of the few Congressmen to actively oppose the movement to pressure South Africa to end Apartheid is now a leading figure in an administration with the most Wilsonian foreign policy in four decades!)

My position is no less ironic. I'm a former pacifist who abandoned pacifism during the Gulf War (and was convinced by Bosnia and Rwanda that doing so was the correct thing); a former Wilsonian convinced by study of history that, most of the time, realism is a more accurate description of how states behave and a better guide to promoting tranquility between them - and yet, still tempted by the dream.

I don't believe the dream can be accomplished, particularly by this administration. Yet, if it were to be, it would be a good thing; and I am somewhat taken aback by the naked idealism of those who believe it can be.

RICE: I often say, and I don't mean it jokingly, that so far I have not seen the Iraqis, or for that matter, the Afghans, make a compromise as bad as the one in 1789 that declared my ancestors to be three-fifths of a man.

RICE: And I think we have to continually review and update the skills of our diplomatic corps. We're asking oru diplomatic corps to do more actively in, for instance, helpoing transform whole societies, getting in and helping the Iraqis with their currency exchange or getting in and helping the Nigerians root out corruption. These are skills that are of a mroe active transformational diplomacy and one that probably wasn't really forseen in the earlier stages of building foreign service skills.

There's an interesting double-edge here: these steps are almost certainly a good thing if they are welcomed by the countries we are helping. But doesn't the fact that we're now training our diplomats to do this sort of thing leave many countries terrified that we'll then have them use those skills to go about reforming societies in our image without the permission of their governments?

RICE: We are no longer in occupation of the country as we were under the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Her point here is that the legal strictures governing our behavior, and policy implementation, in Iraq changed after the creation of the Allawi government, and that we don't quite have the same freedom of action we did before that. That's a fair point. But it was a terrible thing to say, as it would be ridiculously easy to spin into being as mindless a statement as President Ford's infamous claim about the Soviets and Eastern Europe. We clearly are still in occupation of Iraq; without our army to support it, the interim government would collapse forthwith.

RICE: When they [the Baathists and many of Saddam's loyal forces] reemerged, they reemerged as an insurgency I think that, frankly, cannot be dealt with by military power aloen and certainly not by overwehelming military power, but must now be dealt with through the political mobilization of the Iraqi people - which si why these elections are so important - through economic reconstruction - and I would be the first to say we want very much to accelerate that reconstruction - and most importantly through Iraqi forces.

It has been one of my chief criticisms of our position in Iraq, since we got there, that we failed to secure the economic infrastructure of the country during the early part of the occupation, leaving it vulnerable. It has also been one of my chief criticisms of our position in Iraq that we cannot impose democracy by force, and that seeking to use force to quell an uprising which is clothed in the language of both nationalism and religion is walking down a path which is doomed.

It's nice to see that the national security advisor agrees.

RICE: We have learned a lot of lessons over the last several years, and one of them, I think, is that we need to be better able to marry civilian expertise in reconstruction and stabilization with whatever we need to do militarily to stabilize the situation. These post-conflit situations require a wide range of skills and talents that we've had to assemble in a rather ad hoc fashion from within the United States government when we faced Afghanistan or faced Iraq. And frankly, we will face these again. We face it in Liberia. We face it in Sudan - we iwll face it in Sudan if those situations can be stabilized.

Wow.

An official representative of the administration is admitting, albeit in a backhanded fashion, that what we have done in Iraq and Afghanistan could have been done better. I'm impressed.

What she says here is, of course, true: the United States has not been particularly good at reconstruction and stabilization in either theatre (although Afghanistan has fared better than Iraq). It is heartening to hear, from the horse's mouth, that the administration - whatever its political pronouncements - is aware of it and intends to do something about it.

[UPDATE]: She did it again!

You know, we didn't understand, really, the structure of terrorist financing very well. We didn't understand the role of non-governmental organizations that sounded like they were for good purposes but were, in fact, carrying out or funding terrorist activities.

For all that I stand with those who question the competence of this administration, and believe that the course of events in Iraq are betraying our operation there to have been run by the gullible and by those whose belief in their own rightness blinded them to news that might dispute it, I find myself in agreement with this:

If a person cannot walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, and physical harm, than that person is living in a fear society. ANd we cannot rest until every person living in a fear society has finally won their freedom.

I cannot say, with any certainty, what role Condoleeza Rice has played in the flawed execution of our strategy in Iraq; given the secrecy of the administration, it is a secret which she will probably take to her grave. But this sentiment, expressed by her during her confirmation, represents the best instincts of both modern liberalism and modern conservatism. This kind of idealism, tempered with a dose of wisdom, is exactly what we should hope for from our political leadership.

I only wish I were more confident in the administration's wisdom.

When I first started posting diary entries at Kuro5hin, they were mostly personal - a psuedo-anonymous way of discussing the process of coming out with strangers, since I still wasn't entirely comfortable talking about it with friends, or really with myself. That trailed off after a couple of months, for various reasons: it was less important to me than it had been, the culture of the diary section was changing and becoming somehow less comfortable and welcoming, i couldn't talk about work without potentially violating my responsibilities to my employer. When I first started this weblog, nigh on two years ago, it was similar: it was far more personal than it became. From about the time of the recall, it became entirely political; both because I was blogging a lot about the recall, and because I couldn't discuss anything personal at the time without betraying incredible anger at my employer, which I couldn't explain without violating my NDA.

But politics deprived of passion is banal, and while i am often passionate about politics, there are other places my passion takes me; and past time that I started bringing passion - both the love of the beauty of the world and the pain caused by the ugliness of the world - and feeling back to these pages.

It's hard to know where to begin.

once divided...nothing left to subtract...

some words when spoken...can't be taken back...

Jared and I have a fantastic relationship but, as with most relationships, there are occasional rough spots. Many of these are the result of two stubbornly idealistic men realizing that their idealism clashes; in many of them, one or the other or both of us gets passionately attached to something. I react poorly to conflict - as the child of a mother who wandered from one emotionally abusive relationship to another throughout my adolescence, how could i not? - and I have to struggle, when these conflicts arise, to contain the fear, the overwhelming desire to hide and make it all go away, the desperate sense that the conflict is going to hurt. But that's entirely my problem; our conflicts never in fact go that way; we don't say hurtful things just to hurt each other, we don't degenerate into screaming, we don't (in general) even refuse to concede the validity of the other person's view within their frame of reference. Compared to the fights the people around me engaged in throughout my childhood, they are tame; and yet every time they happen, the core of my being expects that it will turn into something worse.

Have I mentioned that I hate conflict? I want nothing in the world more than for people to get along with each other, for everyone to be happy, to see the good in each others souls and admit that maybe the things they are upset about aren't quite as important as they like to think, to relax, let go of their anger, and enjoy the beauty of the world around them. In particular, I find personal conflict (as opposed to professional conflict, which I've learned to tolerate, or intellectual conflict, which I can even find entertaining or energizing, or political conflict, which is (ironically) something of a way of life for me) to be terrifying: whenever I find myself engaged in it with someone I'm close to, it feels as if the entire world has been destablized, the foundations of my world unwrenched - as if suddenly everything is hostile and the universe is consumed with anger and there is no safe place.

It inevitably requires an act of will to not flee. It's equally bad when there's conflict between people in my life - in some ways it's even worse, because I'm not involved, and there's little I can do to fix it, but the same sense of destabilization threatens to overwhelm me, combined with a fear that something is going to force me to take sides. In such cases, though, instead of fleeing I will try to make peace; at least then I feel like I have control over something, that I'm working to improve the situation. Then there's hope for improvement.

It was with great consternation, then, that I realized some years ago that it was extremely important to Jared that neither of us leave in the middle of a fight. This is a core value for him; a way of acting that is fundamental to how he wants our relationship to work, to how he expects a "good" relationship to work. It is also in direct conflict with my first reaction when personal conflit arises.

It almost always takes an act of deliberate will not to flee. Over time, it has become easier to master the fear, to stay engaged and not shut down, to accept that the evidence is that conflict with Jared isn't going to turn out like all of the conflicts I saw around me as a child; but the fear, the loneliness, the sense that nothing in the world is safe, is always there.

That's the background.

Jared and I had a fight about - something - in late October. I no longer remember what it was about; it wasn't particularly important. In the course of the fight Jared said something which I took as being deliberately hurtful. It wasn't; he had no idea that I would take it that way, no reasonable way to predict it. I'm not even sure that, were I not emotionally worked up, I would have taken it as hurtful - but I did at the time.

My first instinct, when I think someone who has the power to hurt me is deliberately hurtful, is to lash back at them; to be as hurtful to them as they were to me. (The emphasis in the above statement is important; people online are deliberately hurtful all of the time, and I don't give a fuck, so I have no temptation to be hurtful back. I very rarely give in to this instinct, because I know - intellectually - that doing so will only make matters worse, will intensify the emotional disaster, and will help make the outcomes that I am so terrified of more likely. I know, with a degree of certainty that I hold for very little "knowledge", that - when I am emotionally distraught - I have the power to use words in sufficiently hurtful a fashion as to utterly destroy the relationship. Ignoring and suppressing this instinct was something it took years to learn how to do.

I do not know where the instinct comes from; a perverse form of self-protection that does more harm than good, it seems to be particularly useless. I suspect that it something I picked up from my mother; but my memory of her fights with her husbands and boyfriends is extremely hazy (to the extent that I can only remember the details of one of them: a fight occasioned by her boyfriend being pissed off that, when grocery shopping, she had only brought home a single six-pack of beer rather than a case thereof).

I had a fight with my friend and roommate Ray once, many years ago, where he said something that was intended to be deliberately hurtful; and I fled rather than utter my response, a response which I believed then (and believe now) would have destroyed our friendship utterly. I was distraught, and shaken, and aghast at what I had almost done; and I spent most of the next two weeks adjusting to a certain terror that, at any moment, I might turn around and find myself suddenly alone in a world where I knew nobody and understood nothing. (At the time I was not a seasoned traveller, and had no idea how to survive in such a situation). Eventually it faded.

In that dark October night, in my fight with Jared, I was not sure that I would be able to resist the instinct to do the same thing. I no longer remember what I was tempted to say, nor am I sure - in retrospect - that it would have had the effect that, in the moment, I was certain it would. But in that moment, I was certain that if I allowed myself to say what I was tempted to, it would have destroyed our relationship. So I did the only thing that I felt was certain to prevent that: I went next door to feed our friends' cats (they were out of town).

In so doing, I broke something that Jared viewed as a cornerstone of our relationship; even if I never walk out on a fight again - a vow I have subsequently made and intend to keep - it will never be true that this is something we, as a couple, have never done. The relationship can never be the same again; and I took it from him. (This aspect of the relationship was never as important to me as it was to him, except indirectly, in the sense that something that is important to someone you love becomes important to you thereby). I broke it, and I cannot put it back into its unbroken state.

There are two potential readings on what I did that night: the charitable one - that I fled rather than say something I could never have taken back; and the uncharitable one - that I fled intentionally intending to hurt Jared thereby. I believed at the time that I was doing the former; but doubt has crept in since then, and - as the event recedes into the haze that all past conflict recedes into - that doubt is consuming me. What if it's true? It's an idea that I can only with extreme difficulty bring myself to face. Knowing what I know about how I react when hurt - about how, for just an instant, hurting the person who hurt me becomes the most important thing in the world, even if doing so ends up hurting me more; about how much work it took to train myself not to do that - how can I know that my conscious fear that staying would cause me to say something that would destroy the relationship wasn't merely a surface excuse to mask a subconscious realization that by leaving, I could hurt the person who had hurt me? And how can I live with myself, how can I have any pride, how can I look Jared in the eye if that is true?

Even if it isn't true; even if my motives were unimpeachable; the fact still is that by leaving, I destroyed something important to Jared. I hurt him, badly ... and it is not ok with me to hurt the people I love. To do so is abusive. What kind of boyfriend am I, what kind of love do I offer, if I am capable of hurting those I love? What value do I have as a lover or as a friend, if I can destroy things that are vitally important to my friends? Doing so marks me as one of the lowest forms of human life, and my love as a curse rather than a benefit.

The banal, non-emotional way of looking at this, is to describe it thusly: in a fight with Jared in November, I looked deep within myself, and saw my mother's boyfriends staring back at me.

I do not want this darkness within me. It has been all I can do, over the ensuing two months, to accept that it is there. That it is ok that it is there, that the important thing is what I do about it - something I still don't have the answer to - and that it is ok to go on. That I have something valuable to contribute, that there is more to me than the darkness I saw on that night. But i'm still haunted by it. We lie in bed at night, and I watch him huddled under blankets, and I feel a great love and affection, mixed with a terrible guilt: I am not the person I thought I was, I am not the person I held myself out to be, I am something darker, something almost evil in some ways, who has taken something important from him that I can never give back. I love him; I want to be with him; I am ecstatic that he is in my life ... and yet, how can I say I love him if I have done this? What is my love, really?

Am I even capable of love? Real love, the love that would empower me to hold back and not hurt the ones I love, even in the presence of gripping fear and pain? Or is everything I have ever believed about myself as a friend and a boyfriend in fact a lie, a delusion?

New Years' Eve, ironically in many ways, lifted some of the gloom from my soul; it allowed me to see another side, a demonstration that there is more than darkness within. The details aren't mine to share in so public a forum, but a quick summary should suffice: there was a terrible family fight between Jared and his grandfather (with other family members involved). I wasn't in the room where it was happening; I was in another room, waiting ... listening to what I could hear in the distance ... pacing. Jared's mom later described it as her mom's worst nightmare, something I could easily understand ... for being powerless while those you love are fighting, in the room next door, when the area is charged with emotional energy is a terrible thing. Still, when the fight ... suspended, I was there, supportive, trying to undo the effects of the fight. Holding Jared as he told me what happened; providing a shoulder for his mom and grandma; playing the role of the supportive, loving rock ... it was in some ways a rite of passage, as I feel now as if they are my family in a way that I didn't before. But it also showed me that there are elements of the person I want to be within me.

So not a lie, then, but still a half-truth. There is a terrible darkness in my soul, a power, a capability that I wanted to not be there. But there is also a light, which I have cultivated and which has shown me what fruit it can bear. And so I sit here, on the edge of the shore of despair, watching it recede and tranquility resume, and I wonder: how can I kill the darkness in my soul? How can I ensure that my love is worth having? How do I make myself incapable of hurting those I love?

No person shall be a Senator who, at the time of his election, is not a citizen of Kentucky, has not attained the age of thirty years, and has not resided in this State six years next preceding his election, and the last year thereof in the district for which he may be chosen.

Dana Seum Stephenson bought a home in Jeffersonville, Indiana; established residency in that state so that she could pay in-state tuition while attending Indiana University; registered to vote in Indiana; got a drivers' license in Indiana; and bought car insurance in Indiana. Nonetheless, she says, she continued to own a home in Kentucky and always considered herself to be a Kentucky resident. A circuit court judge ruled that she did not meet the residency requirement.

The Republican caucus apparently didn't care: they Senate voted, along party lines, to seat her anyway.

Senate President David Williams said he was confident the Senate had the power to determine its own membership. He said, for example, that the Senate could have a 23-year-old lawmaker, even though the constitution says senators must be at least 30.

"No court in the land could overturn that," he said.

Most people would argue that, in order to be a resident of a locale, you must actually live there. We make exceptions to this principle for deployed military personnel, and for federal officeholders who in practice spend most of their time outside of their home states, but the notion that someone who lives in a different state and adopts all of the indica needed to establish residency there, nonetheless is still resident in a state in which she doesn't actually live is a bizarre one. Still, it may be consistent with Kentucky law - yet the fact that a circuit court judge disagrees goes a long way to undermine that possibility.

Yet even in the unlikely event that the Republicans in the Kentucky State Senate are acting out of some principled belief that people who move out of the state and establish residency elsewhere are still Kentucky residents (under, perhaps, a theory that once you're a resident, you're always a resident), if the AP wire report is quoting Sen. Williams accurately, he ought to be impeached: he seems to be saying that the state constitution's restrictions on who can be a Senator are utterly irrelevant - that the highest law in the state simply doesn't mean a damn thing, and that the Legislature is not constrained by the Constitution whatsoever. If that's the case, why does the state even bother with elections?

The Republican caucus in the Kentucky State Senate ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Kevin Drum, formerly of CalPundit, has come out in opposition to Gov. Schwarzenegger's proposed redistricting scheme, arguing that - even though he is theoretically in favor of it - it would be political suicide for Democrats to support an end to gerrymandering in states where they have the power to gerrymander without simultaneously securing an end to gerrymandering in states where Republicans have that power. He may be right; but using that reason as an excuse to not support it will hurt the Democrats just as much, if not more, than supporting it would.

I'm not convinced that i'm in favor of the plan (which I assume to be similar to Ted Costa's proposal); a panel of retired judges is no more likely to be resistant to political influences and/or bribes than the legislature is, handing this sort of power off to unelected and unaccountable officials risks undermining the accountability of government, and holding a referendum on district lines strikes me as potentially leading to a regime wherein redistricting happens every two years. But even so, it may be in the interest of the state to try it: the legislature is currently paralyzed, largely as a result of extremist legislators elected by voters in safe districts, and representative democracy in California is showing signs of instability. I'm not convinced that it will work, but the chance that it will work may be worth the risk that it won't.

Yet Mr. Drum seems to be of the opinion that it is clearly the right thing to do, but that doing it would hurt the Democrats, so Democrats should not support it. This is problematic on three levels:

• It demonstrates a willingness to sacrifice the political good of the state of California for the nationwide political good of the Democratic party;
• It misunderstands the impact that such redistricting would have on California;
• And it leaves Democrats in the unenviable position of eschewing principle for short-term political gain.

The first may not matter to people living outside the state of California, and it may not matter to many Californians. Yet refusing to do something which would improve the political climate in California because you think it would lead to a smaller minority status on the national level is bizarre and shortsighted. It's not as if the situation in the House - where the powers of the minority party are extremely limited - could get much worse; California could elect a delegation consisting entirely of members of the Green Party and it would be irrelevant to the balance of power in the House. Sacrificing a chance at a local improvement in the interest of maintaining a disadvantageous status quo on the national level is silly.

Nor is it even clear that a bipartisan panel of retired judges, drawing district lines according to strict rules, would be disadvantageous to Democrats. The last redistricting was not a "get as many Democratic party seats as we can" redistricting; it was a "redraw all seats, Republican and Democrat alike, to make them as uncompetitive as possible" redistricting. Given the Democratic party's dominance of statewide elective office, districts drawn without regard to the partisan registration of their voters would not be likely to return a Republican party majority in either house of the state legislature, nor in the state's Congressional delegation. In theory, it will result in more competitive districts that return more moderate officeholders (there are some problems with that theory, but Mr. Drum clearly believes in it) - but redistricting is unlikely to change the partisan balance significantly unless the districts are deliberately drawn with that intent, which would be prohibited by Costa's proposal.

Which leaves Mr. Drum's position particularly disturbing: Democrats should, he argues, oppose a plan that is clearly correct on principle because there is a chance - albeit an unlikely one - that the plan could result in the diminution of Democratic party power in the House of Representatives, where the minority doesn't have any power to speak of in the first place. We should sacrifice our principles to preserve a nonexistent power base.

This is precisely the kind of thing that makes the right-wing talk show depiction of corrupt democrats clinging to power seem so reasonable to moderates. If there's a reason to oppose this kind of reform on principle, by all means, the Democrats should stand up for it; but if there isn't, then the Democrats should adopt it and push for it nationwide. On no account should Democrats oppose it for pragmatic political reasons while endorsing the principle behind it: to do so betrays the party as a den of hypocrites needing to be cleansed by the righteous power of populist reform.

In particular, in the context of California, for the Democrats to successfully oppose redistricting reform in the legislature would be to score a goal against themselves; an iniative on this subject sponsored by Governor Schwarzenegger will pass, and the Democrats will alienate moderates by opposing it - especially if the moderates believe it is clearly the principled solution to the problem and the Democrats are opposing it for political gain.

UPDATE, 8 Feb. 2005: Mr. Drum has recanted.

Today's Wall Street Journal has an entertaining report (subscription required) about the end of a technological era: what is believed to have been the last company in the world manufacturing professional-grade reel-to-reel unexpectedly shut down its manufacturing facility on Dec. 31.

The news has set off a frantic scramble in the music industry as producers and studios seek to secure as much Quantegy tape as possible. By the middle of last week, most suppliers around the country had sold out their entire stocks of reel-to-reel audio tape.

Apparently, the space shuttle program is threatened by the shutdown, too:

The crunch reaches far beyond the recording industry. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration uses Quantegy tape on its space shuttles to record information ranging from pressure to temperature. This week NASA has been trying to buy 20 reels from Quantegy.

I"m not enough of a "musical purist" to shed tears over this; I can't even really tell the difference between .mp3 quality and .wav quality. But, as a technology professional with an interest in history, it's a momentous occasion nonetheless: the last few bands still using a dead technology are frantically trying to corner the market on the remaining stock after the last manufacturer (a lineal descendant of Ampex, it seems) has filed for bankruptcy.

Judge Gonzales certainly fits the social conservative mold that this administration prefers. Consider this exchange between Sen. Dewine and Judge Gonzales (emphasis added):

SEN. MIKE DEWINE (R-OH):Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Judge Gonzales, thank you very much for being with us today. Judge, every attorney general is -- or most attorney generals are known for something. Robert Kennedy was known for his crusade in regard to organized crime, and then of course later on we remember him for civil rights; Attorney General Barr for his efforts in regard to guns and gangs; Attorney General Reno, her efforts in regard to children, domestic violence; Attorney General Thornburgh, internationalization of crime in the area of drugs, organized crime; we could go on and on. Four years from now, what do you want to be remembered for?

MR. GONZALES: Well, Senator --

SEN. DEWINE: Excluding -- if I could, excluding the war on terrorism.

MR. GONZALES: Senator, the -- I think the Department of Justice is somewhat unique from other agencies. I'm not sure that an attorney general can afford to focus in providing or dispensing justice in one area to the exclusion of the other. And so I would hope that, certainly at the end of four years, it would be said that Al Gonzales did the very best he could and hopefully was successful in ensuring that there was justice provided to Americans all across the spectrum on a wide variety of issues. I also -- it is my sincere hope that I would be remembered, if I am confirmed today, as someone who renewed the vitality, the importance of the work that goes on at the Department of Justice. I know that there are some -- there are wonderful people who come to work every day, and they come to work with one goal in mind, and that is the pursuit of justice for all Americans. And I feel a special obligation, maybe a special -- an additional burden coming from the White House to reassure the career people at the department and to reassure the American people that I'm not going to politicize the Department of Justice. But with respect to specific areas that I probably would like to have special emphasis on, of course the first one is the war on terror.

I also, because of my background, believe very much in the protection of civil rights, the protection of our voting rights, the protection of our civil liberties. I continue to believe that we have too many drugs in our society, and that should be a focus. I am concerned about the violent crime in our society. I am concerned about the use of certain kinds of weapons in connection with those crimes. I think obscenity is something else that very much concerns me. I've got two young sons, and it really bothers me about how easy it is to have access to pornography.

And so those are a few things that I would be focused on. But again, I think the Department of Justice is unique and that my goal, as impossible as it may be, or it may seem, is to try to ensure that justice is administered across the spectrum.

Hmm. So the things he wants to be remembered for are:

• Protection of voting rights;
• Protection of our civil liberties;
• Dealing with the use of certain kinds of weapons in violent crime;
• Dealing with how easy it is to have access to pornography;

Why is the fourth item on the list an issue that government should be concerned about at all?

I'd expected a fair amount of debate during the confirmation of Judge Gonzales about whether or not the memo arguing that al Qaeda members are not covered by the Geneva Convention was a legitimate interpretation of law. What I did not expect, and find truly disturbing, was arguments like this:

SEN CORNYN::Just take a look at all the numerous privileges provided by the Geneva Convention for traditional prisoners of war. For example, questioners could not entice detainees to answer questions by offering them creature comforts or even preferential treatment, even though that's the standard operating procedure in police stations throughout the United States. And because the convention prohibits the holding of detainees in isolation, al Qaeda fighters would be able to coordinate with each other in a way that would thwart or could thwart effective questioning.

POW status even confers broad combat immunity against criminal prosecution before civilian and military tribunals alike. Mr. Chairman, surely no member of the committee or anyone else on our side of the conflict actually believes that an al Qaeda terrorist deserves to be treated better than an American citizen accused of a crime. I certainly wouldn't think so. President Reagan didn't think so. Neither did each of his successors in office.

The Senator from Texas appears not only to be arguing that applying the Geneva Convention to al Qaeda members would be bad policy, but - to the extent that his arguments would not be changed substantively by replacing the words 'al Qaeda' with the word 'Korean' - that the Geneva Convention is bad policy in general. Leaving aside the question of how the fact that a treaty enshrines bad policy can possibly mean that treaty's provisions are not legally binding, another question arises: what is this man doing in the United States Senate?

And since when did the treatment of an American citizen accused of a crime become some sort of gold standard that we can reasonable measure other things against?

SEN. LEAHY: Well, let me then ask you: If you're going to be attorney general, and I'll accept what you said, then let's put on the hat, if you're going to be confirmed as attorney general. The Bybee memo concludes that a president has authority as commander in chief to override domestic and international law as prohibiting torture and can immunize from prosecution anyone -- anyone -- who commits torture under his act; whether legal or not, he can immunize them.

Now, as attorney general, would you believe the president has the authority to exercise a commander-in-chief override and immunize acts of torture?

MR. GONZALES: First of all, sir, the president has said we're not going to engage in torture under any circumstances. And so you're asking me to answer a hypothetical that is never going to occur. This president has said we're not going to engage in torture under any circumstances, and therefore, that portion of the opinion was unnecessary and was the reason that we asked that that portion be withdrawn.

SEN. LEAHY: But I'm trying to think what type of opinions you might give as attorney general. Do you agree with that conclusion?

MR. GONZALES: Sir, again --

SEN. LEAHY: You're a lawyer, and you've held a position as a justice of the Texas Supreme Court, you've been the president's counsel, you've studied this issue deeply. Do you agree with that conclusion?

MR. GONZALES: Senator, I do believe there may come an occasion when the Congress might pass a statute that the president may view as unconstitutional. And that is a position and a view not just of this president, but many, many presidents from both sides of the aisle.

Obviously, a decision as to whether or not to ignore a statute passed by Congress is a very, very serious one, and it would be one that I would spend a great deal of time and attention before arriving at a conclusion that in fact a president had the authority under the Constitution to --

SEN. LEAHY: Mr. Gonzales, I'd almost think that you'd served in the Senate, you've learned how to filibuster so well, because I asked a specific question: Does the president have the authority, in your judgment, to exercise a commander-in-chief override and immunize acts of torture?

MR. GONZALES: With all due respect, Senator, the president has said we're not going to engage in torture.

It seems Mr. Gonzales very much does not want to answer the question "Do you believe the president has the authority to exercise a commander-in-chief override and immunize acts of torture". And it's not clear what ignoring an unconstitutional statute has to do with ignoring the definition of torture, unless Mr. Gonzales is suggesting that the torture ban is unconstitutional.

Perhaps that's why he doesn't want to answer the question?

My memory of high school history has once again been undercut by more detailed professional historians.

On-and-off over the course of the last month or so, i've been reading a very good history of the life of Queen Elizabeth (by [Anne Somerset]). It's fairly detailed and well-referenced; even left me understanding, for the first time, why James I was the clear heir to Elizabeth - or, for that matter, why Anne was the clear heir to William III. But the real shift came in its discussion of the reign of Queen Mary (a dangerous and disturbing time in the life of Elizabeth, as you might imagine).

My half-distant memories of high school history are that the religious conflict of the period was put down to sheer religious intolerance: Mary oppressed the Protestants because she was a good Catholic who hated Protestants and wanted to force everyone back into the religious fold. In the context of the behavior of her husband (who led the charge against Protestantism for decades), this is plausible enough - especially given that neither the Catholics nor the various protestant sects were known for tolerance in that era,

What I hadn't considered, and what my history teachers never mentioned, was the very real political implications of religious affiliation in sixteenth-century England. To a certain extent, there was always a political dimension to religion: protestants denied the authority of the pope (and were therefore looked favorably upon by many northern European rulers as likely to bolster their authority) and often called for greater integration between church and state. To dissent, religiously, in either protestant or catholic states was to challenge the right of the sovereign to make a religious settlement - a direct challenge to the authority of the monarch which few were willing to tolerate. But only in England, during the reigns of Queens Mary and Elizabeth, did religious dissent constitute a denial of the right of the monarch to sit on the throne at all.

The reasons for this trace back to the theoretical origins of the English church. Everyone knows the story: King Henry wanted to get rid of his wife, the Pope wouldn't let him, so he formed his own church. The actual theoretical justification for these actions is glossed over in general histories of the period (because it is irrelevant to our understanding of the core differences between protestant Anglicanism and Catholicism, and seems overly technial to a secular audience), but the theory had important implications for both Mary and Elizabeth.

King Henry had only been able to marry his wife because the pope had granted dispensation, freeing the couple from the rules that prohibited marriage between cousins who were closer than a certain degree. Henry had not been seeking a divorce; he had been seeking an annulment on the grounds that the dispensation had not been correctly authorized. When the Church of England was formed, and granted the annulment, it argued that the Pope had never had the authority to grant the annulment in the first place; that the biblical rule prohibiting incest could not be suspended by a priestly authority. This emphasis on the importance of biblical rules, and the inability of the church to suspend them, was of critical importance in the doctrines of most 16th century Protestant sects. In particular, it was more or less impossible to support a Reformed church and not hold this viewpoint.

From the perspective of the Church of England, then, Henry's first marriage had never been valid, and he was free to marry again. The flip side of that, however, was that any children born to the couple had been illegitimate (not having been the result of a valid marriage), and could not legally inherit the throne. Similarly, under the official doctrine of the Catholic Church - wherein the Pope did have the authority to grant dispensation and had properly done so - the marriage had been legitimate, any further marriages were not, and children born to subsequent marriages were bastards and could not inherit.

This was the crux of the problem for Protestants under Queen Mary's rule: to espouse Reformed doctrines was to hold that Mary - a child of Henry's first marriage - was a bastard and therefore inelegible to be Queen. Similarly, under Elizabeth's rule, espousing Catholic doctrine was to hold that Elizabeth was a bastard, and therefore ineligible to be Queen.

The terrible repression of Protestants during Mary's reign, and the nasty fines for recusancy during Elizabeth's reign, make much more sense when set against this backdrop: while there certainly was a fair amount of religious bigotry on the part of those doing the enforcement, both policies were driven in large measure by a fear that any significant body of religious dissenters, as a result of their religious beliefs, would have no viable choice but treason - and by a recognition that, as long as religious disagreements implied a lack of belief in the right of the monarch to rule, religious dissent implied both a lack of stability in the state and a threat to the life of the monarch.

This problem was not alleviated until the coronation of James, who - by virtue of not being a descendant of Henry VIII at all - was immune to this kind of religiously-motivated challenge.

Of course, none of this is to say that Elizabeth's response to the problem was reasonable, much less that Mary's was; but it does serve to make their actions seem a bit less unreasonable.

PrestoPundit weighs in with a claim that this report in the Seattle Times demonstrates the existence of voter fraud in King County. He's correct to a point - but that point says a lot about the fragility of our election process, and goes a fair way to demonstrate the disingenuousnous of those who are squawking loudly about this.

The key piece of data in the article is found in this paragraph:

But in some cases, Huennekens said, poll workers mistakenly instructed provisional voters to put ballots directly into machines. In other cases, voters disregarded instructions and put their ballots into machines while workers were busy.

There are two different things going on here: behavior by poll workers, and behavior by voters. The behavior by the poll workers was quite clearly bad, but it's not clear where the fault lies. If the poll workers knew that this wasn't correct procedure and instructed voters to do it anyway, then it was election fraud, and the poll workers should be prosecuted. (How one proves the state of their knowledge at the time of the election is left as an exercise for angry Republican attorneys in Washington state). If, however, they believed themselves to be following correct procedure, then it wasn't fraudulent; it was either a failure in the training of the pollworkers (which should certainly be investigated), or it was understandable, if unfortunate human error on the result of the poll workers. Submit it to the harsh cleavage of Occam's scythe: which is the simpler explanation, that a decent number of elderly poll workers suffered lapses of memory and/or had difficulty in learning a new procedure, or that there was an organized effort to commit large-scale fraud? My experience with poll workers suggests the former to me, rather than the latter.

Then there is the (slightly) more interesting question of provisional voters who feed the ballots into the machines themselves. This is a serious problem which occurs in virtually all districts which have provisional balloting. In my experience (having worked as a poll worker in every election, except one, since 1992), many provisional voters simply aren't paying attention when you explain the provisional voting rules to them; it's bureaucratic gobbledygook that they don't care about. So, as a pollworker, I try to keep an eye on my provisional voters - but when it's busy, and there is a long line, and all of the voting booths are full, and there are several people with provisional ballots out - it's extremely difficult to keep track of them.

I'm not saying it can't be done; I've had elections where I've managed it. I've also had elections where I haven't managed it, and provisional ballots got dropped directly in the ballot box. Luckily, in Santa Cruz County, it is possible to discern the provisional ballots from the regular ballots after that point- the ballots are kept in secrecy envelopes when they are dropped in, and provisional ones get a pink envelope - but if it had happened while I was working in a San Mateo County precinct, where the ballots are fed directly into a reader without an enclosure, the situation would have been hopeless.

That's not to say that it couldn't have been resolved; having provisional ballots be visually marked in some fashion would do it (at the risk of violating the secrecy of a voter in a precint with only one provisional ballot cast). But, absent such a clear identifying mark, problems like this are virtually impossible to prevent; they are a normal side-effect of our election process which occurs in every district in every election.

You could argue, I suppose, that "provisional voters" are deliberately violating the rule and engaging in large-scale fraud in order to sway the election result; but that doesn't comport with my experience of provisional voters, and it is a significantly more complicated explanation than the one I believe to be the case: provisional voters, by the very fact that they are showing up in the wrong precinct without knowing where they are registered (or whatever other reason they have for voting provisionally) are significantly less likely than the average voter to understand the process, and are therefore significantly more likely than average to muck things up by not doing what they are supposed to.

This is what causes the margin of error for our election system; we've never really noticed before because very few election results are within that margin of error.

The sad thing is, these problems are solvable. There is no reason for provisional ballots not to be marked in some way. There is absolutely no reason why there should be two polling places in the same room (which can easily lead, when it is busy, to ballots from one precinct ending up in the other precinct's ballot box). It's utterly absurd that voters can't be asked for positive identification.

It would be a great thing for the future of our democracy if the people who are up in arms finding "fraud" in election details which are perfectly normal and predictable, and which require no sinister explanation, instead spent their time and energy working to fix the flaws in the system which give rise to this error margin rather than using it to score political points by alleging criminal activity for which there isn't even circumstancial evidence. Why don't they?

House of Flying Daggers is a visually beautiful B-grade cold war spy movie masquerading as a chinese action film with an overbearing soundtrack. Fans of B-grade schlock will appreciate the fake snow that bedecks an improbable duel; fans of foreshadowing will like the parallels implicit in the echo game; fans of deus ex machina will love the interventions by shadowy strangers; and people interested in the political storyline will wonder where their story went.

The visuals are, however, stunning; the use of color is pretty much unmatched by anything I've seen on the screen in years. I'd love to have zhong han design an office park for me.

A 108-year-old man reminisces about the Christmas Truce.

A seven-member majority of the Supreme Court endorsed a decision by Justice Thomas which affirms the existence of a problem in environmental law: while the owner of a polluted site may recoup the cost of cleanup from former owners who caused the pollution if he cleans up the site as a result of a lawsuit lodged by the EPA, but not if he cleans up the site voluntarily.

This is bad law, and it ought to be possible to get a coalition of environmentally-friendly politicians and business-friendly politicians together to change it. This framework discourages voluntary remediation of pollution by making it significantly cheaper for companies to wait until they are sued, and increases the cost of cleanup efforts by in effect causing cleanup to only happen pursuant to a regulator-invoked lawsuit. Assuming the Court's construction of the Superfund Amendment and Reauthorization Act is correct, it was a bad policy decision by the Congress; assuming it is incorrect, it was a poorly worded piece of legislation. Either way, it needs to be cleaned up forthwith.

In the midst of an otherwise not very interesting article about a gang rape, today's New York Times makes the following rather odd statement:

The 18-year-old, Eric Barrows of the city's Dorchester neighborhood, is said to have acted as the group's lookout, and was charged with "participating in a joint venture."

It's not clear if

1. There really is a law in Massachussets which makes it illegal to participate in a joint venture, and the state's attorney general has been remiss in allowing corporations or private partnerships to exist;
2. The law prohibits certain kinds of joint ventures, with details that the author didn't think were important or the editor cut;
3. The newspaper is just flat wrong.

Across America, people consider dogs as members of their family. The same cannot be said of cars, blenders, or thermal imagers

The denial of this premise could make for a great short story.

(Hat tip: SCOTUSblog

The Puerto Rico gubernatorial election is still dragging on, it seems, the result of a peculiar election law and an even more peculiar legal relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico.

First, the ballots: it seems that in Puerto Rico you can, literally, vote a straight party ticket. There's a place on the ballot to mark something which means, "vote for the candidate from party [x] in all races". The legal dispute regarding ballots stems from some number of ballots - which may be enough to throw the election results - in which people both marked this box and marked the box for a candidate from party [y] in a race in which there was a candidate from party [x].

There are a couple ways of handling this:

1. Ignore the vote for the candidate from party [y], arguing that the general-case selection overrides it;
2. Count the general case selection except with respect to that particular race, and count the vote for the candidate from party [y], arguing that it was obviously an attempt to override the general-case selection in that specific instance;
3. Count the general case selection except with respect to that particular race, and don't count anything for that race, arguing that it's impossible to tell which candidate the voter actually intended to select;
4. Count only the specific vote, arguing that its existence invalidates the general case vote;
5. Throw out the entire ballot.

All of these arguments have merit, and none of them except the last one are clarly absurd. (If it were up to me, I'd say the third option would be the right one, but I can see legitimacy in the others). It does seem, however, as if a system in which this was a possibility ought to have had a rule covering that possibility included in the design of the system - yet it didn't, and so the question is working its way through the courts.

The Puerto Rico Election Committee said that the votes should be counted (eg, as if option (2) had been selected above), as did the Puerto Rico Supreme Court.

You'd think that would be the end of it, but one of the sides sued in US District Court. Ordinarily this wouldn't be possible; state interpretation of state law is something the federal courts avoid touching unless it clearly violates the federal constitution (see, for example, the Supreme Court's refusal to touch constitutional challenges against the Massachussets gay marriage law). But, because this is Puerto Rico, the District Court reasoned, that rule doesn't apply; it's a territory, not a state, and therefore the federal courts have jurisdiction, even over the interpretation of territorial law.

A three-member panel of the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments on this issue Monday.

I don't know what the legal situation is, but politically this is absurd: there's no reason whatsoever for the US court system to get involved in interpretation of Puerto Rico territorial law. This kind of situation in which major legal and political decisions are made by distant officials not in any way responsible to the locals is precisely the rhetorical excuse for the American Revolution. "The Founders" would be turning over in their graves.

On the bright side, maybe this will finally push the Puerto Ricans to endorse statehood.

One of the lawsuits in the San Diego Election case consisted of a claim, put forward by the League of Women Voters and supporters of the write-in candidate, that ballots in which the candidate's name were written in, but the bubble next to the write-in box was not filled in, should be counted. The San Diego County Elections Office demurred, noting that state law explicitly requires that the bubble be filled in, and the courts agreed with them. The number of votes meeting this description is not known, but could well have been sufficient to ensure that the write-in would win.

Almost certainly in response to this, Assemblyman Juan Vargas - whose district encompasses part of San Diego and its suburbs to the South - has introduced a bill which would change that section of the election code:

Existing law requires that a ballot for a qualified write-in candidate be counted if, on specified voting systems, the candidate's name is written on the ballot in the blank space provided and the voting space next to the write-in space, if provided, is marked according to voting instructions. It further requires that, for other voting systems, a ballot for a write-in candidate, if otherwise qualified, be counted if the name is written in the manner described in the voting instructions.
This bill would instead require, as to any voting system, that a ballot be counted if the name of the write-in candidate is written in the manner described in the voting instructions. It would require a liberal construction of this provision to ensure that a ballot is counted if the voter's intent can be determined, regardless of whether the voting instructions have been literally complied with.

SECTION 1. Section 15342 of the Elections Code is amended to read:

15342. (a) Any name written upon a ballot for a qualified write-in candidate, including a reasonable facsimile of the spelling of a name, shall be counted for the office, if it is written in the blank space provided and voted as specified below: (a) For voting systems in which write-in spaces appear directly below the list of candidates for that office and provide a voting space, no write-in vote shall be counted unless the voting space next to the write-in space is marked or slotted as directed in the voting instructions.
(b) For voting systems in which write-in spaces appear separately from the list of candidates for that office and do not provide a voting space, the name of the write-in candidate, if otherwise qualified, shall be counted if it is written in the manner described in the voting instructions. This section shall be liberally construed to ensure that each ballot is counted if the intent of the voter can be determined, regardless of whether the voting instructions have been literally complied with.
...

This is a relatively small adjustment to existing election law which would have the effect of making it easier for write-ins to win, and as an idelogical matter I have no problem with it. It's in the tradition of liberal construction of votes, and follows up on the principle that the voters' intent should be followed wherever it can be determined.

As a technical matter, however, with respect to optical scanner systems, I see a problem: it may not be possible for such machines to determine the presence of a write-in from marks in the box, absent a mark in the bubble. This can be ameliorated with the system they use in Santa Cruz County, where precinct officers manually scan for write-ins; but it could also have the unintended side-effect of requiring county vote processing facilities to manually inspect each ballot for write-ins. That would have deleterious effects on both the speed of result reporting and, possibly, the accuracy of results. It's much easier to miss an entry when hand scanning than it is when the computer announces the write-in bubble has been filled in.

The argument in favor of the change in the law is that the voters' intent should be followed when it can be determined; the argument against is that there are cases in which not requiring the bubble next to the write-in box to be filled in may make it extremely difficult to determine which voters have selected write-ins. I suspect, but do not know, that this was the reason for the wording of the existing law in the first place.

This is totally bizarre.

Up in Montana, control of the lower house of the state legislature is still up in the air: the legislative election in house district 12 appears, after a recount, to have ended in a tie. The Democratic party candidate and the Constitution party candidate each got 1,559 votes, with the Republican trailing. If the Democrat wins, control of the lower house is tied; if the Constitutionalist wins, the Republicans will have a one-vote majority (50-49-1 split). If the tie holds, the Governor appoints someone.

The Democrat has sued, claiming that five of the counted votes for the other candidate were in fact overvotes which should not have been counted, and that the three-member recount board had attempted to throw the election to guarantee continud Republican control of the legislature (two of the three board members were Republicans). Republicans have accused the Democrats of trying to use legal manuevering to steal the election and of trying to delay the issue until after the new governor is sworn in.

(It's not clear to me how you can "steal" the election when the result was a tie. Most states proscribe a coin flip at this point).

One of the most curious [mistranslations of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Latin] was at Exodus 34, where the Hebrew describes Moses' face as shining when he came down from Mount Sinai with the tablets of the Ten Commandments. Jerome, mistaking particles of Hebrew, had turned this into a description of Moses wearing a pair of horns - and so the Lawgiver is frequently depicted in the art of the western Church, even after Humanists had gleefully removed the horns from the text of Exodus.

One of the things I've never understood about the Christian belief in the Bible as representing the unadulterated Word of God is the question of translation: given that the old testament was originally written in either Hebrew or Aramaic, and the new testament primarily in Greek, and has had to be translated in order to appear in English, how is it possible that the bible on sale at Borders is an inerrant representation of the Word of God? Translation is not that simple when it occurs between two contemporary languages; it is extremely difficult when the source of the translation is a dead language which is no longer spoken natively by any human being. (The presence of a modern Greek does not make ancient Greek any less a dead language).

The typical response i've gotten whenever I make enquiries about this is that God guides the hand of the translator, ensuring that there are no errors. That's fair enough, as far as it goes, but it does not account for the fact that different translators create different texts. The Bible, as the Catholics understand it, is different from the standard Protestant ones; the King James Bible is significantly different from the New Standard, etc. If you accept the translation-guided-by-God thesis, then either one of two things must be the case:

• God must have guided the hands of all of the translators, in which case each translation is equally valid, and the apparent differences between them are meaningless;
• God must have guided the hands of one set of translators, and the others must all have not been so guided.

The first is difficult to swallow given the wide difference in meaning between, say, the Lutheran Bible and the Catholic one; the differences and changes are not minor twitches in the corners. That leads the second option as the only consistent one; but then a new question arises, namely: how does one determine which set of translators were in fact guided by God and which were not? Ultimately, this is going to boil down to argument by authority (for the vast majority of believers who know none of the ancient languages in question) - but upon what basis do you select any given authority as the right one, when the authorities quarrel?

As an outsider, the only conclusion that I can reach is that there is no legitimate basis for such a determination; that people choose the particular authority they credit based upon their preferences - eg, whichever translation they or their social cohort happen to like better, for whatever reason, is asserted to be the unfiltered word of God, without any particular reliance on textual evidence. But if that is so, then the entire thing is a farce.

Does anyone know if the renaissance humanists ever discussed this issue, and what conclusions they reached?

A group of Greek nationalist activists have announced plans to sue Warner Bros. over the upcoming movie Alexander, complaining that the movie lies when it suggests that Alexander the Great was bisexual.

I thought this was settled history, that it was commonly known that bisexual behavior was common and accepted in pre-Roman Greece. Certainly Hollywood has hinted at it before - in Spartacus, for example - and the histories i've read of the period have all been very clear about it. So I don't understand the controversy. (Nor do I understand what court could possibly have jurisdiction; even if this were a slander, how do you enforce slander rules against a man who has been dead for more than 2300 years?)

Dave passes along a link to a game involving publically declaring, at the risk of embarassment, the first ten songs that pop up in a randomized selection of your computer music.

My results are:

1. Adrenaline Rush, the 8 Mile Soundtrack
2. For All It's Worth, Nickel Creek, off of a concert bootleg
3. Jam, Toad the Wet Sprocket
4. Airhead, from Speed Limit 140 BPM vol 4
5. Revolution 1, the Beatles
6. The Council of Elrond, the Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack
7. Hosanna, the Indigo Girls version of Jesus Christ Superstar
8. Bella (She's All I Ever Had), Ricky MArtin
9. Night Ride Across the Caucasus, Loreena McKennit
10. Brandenburg Concerto #4 in G Major, Allegro

I'm not sure whether #5 or #8 is more embarassing, to be honest.

Down in San Diego, Judge Charles E Jones (of the Imperial County Superior Court, filling in after the entire San Diego County Superior Court recused itself) weighed in on the question of whether or not the city charter prohibited the write-in candidacy of Donna Frye, who is (at last count) winning the election for mayor. His ruling: while the city charter might, in fact, prohibit the candidacy, the people trying to stop it should have filed their suit before the election and not waited until it looked like Frye might win. Says the San Diego Union-Tribune:

Jones said that no one objected to Frye's candidacy then, noting that the other two candidates, the city attorney and others all "sat mute" while the campaign began and continued for five weeks.

It was, Jones said in a comment that caused a ripple of laughter through a courtroom packed with lawyers, political observers and media, "just the sound of silence," referring to a popular Simon and Garfunkel song.

Only after the voting, when it appeared the write-in might win, was an objection raised, Jones said. The judge invoked a legal doctrine known as "laches," which penalizes a party in a lawsuit who neglects to assert a claim in a timely manner, to the disadvantage of the other party in the suit.

This is a good thing. Regardless of the merits of the case, waiting until after the election and then challenging the candidacy after determining that the possibly-illegal-candidate might win is an abuse of the process, designed specifically to thwart the clearly expressed will of the electorate. Judge Jones was right to toss the case out on its ear.

I had sympathy for the Republican cause when they argued, in 1994, that Dan Rostenkowski - who had been indicted on seventeen felony charges - should be forced to step down from his chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee. The idea that a sitting congressman could be so corrupt as to have been indicted was an embarassment, and certainly such a congressman should be persona non grata in the halls of government, right? Gingrich and his cohorts were right in their outrage at the fact that he wasn't immediately removed from power.

But apparently things are different, from their viewpoint at least, when it's a Republican who is potentially under indictment: they're considering changing the House rules so that congressmen who are in leadership positions do not have to step down if they are indicted in state courts.

Many of us on the left have long suspected that Republican outrage at the corruption of the Democratic House was a pose that they cynically donned in order to wield it in the gaining of power. The fact that this rule change is even under discussion is proof that we were right.

As a defeated Senate candidate in the most red of red states, many people have asked me for insights into the Democratic Party's failure to connect with culturally conservative voters. Much has already been written on this topic, and scholars will add more. But I do know this: The culture war is real, and it is a conflict not merely about some particular policy or legislative item, but about modernity itself. Banning gay marriage or abortion would not be sufficient to heal the cultural gulf that exists in this nation. The culture war is about matters more fundamental still: whether nationality is, in a globalized world, a random fact of no more significance than what hospital one was born in or whether it is the source of identity and even political legitimacy; whether one's self is a matter of choice or whether it is predetermined, before birth, by the cultural membership of one's family; whether an individual is just that--a free-floating atom--or whether the individual is part of a long chain that both predates and continues long after any particular person; whether concepts like honor and shame, which seem so quaint, are still relevant in a world that values only "tolerance." These are questions not for politicians but for philosophers, and, in the end, it is the failure of liberal philosophy that we saw on November 2.

For the vast majority of Oklahomans--and, I would suspect, voters in other red states--these transcendent cultural concerns are more important than universal health care or raising the minimum wage or preserving farm subsidies. Pace Thomas Frank, the voters aren't deluded or uneducated. They simply reject the notion that material concerns are more real than spiritual or cultural ones. The political left has always had a hard time understanding this, preferring to believe that the masses are enthralled by a "false consciousness" or Fox News or whatever today's excuse might be. But the truth is quite simple: Most voters in a state like Oklahoma--and I venture to say most other Southern and Midwestern states--reject the general direction of American culture and celebrate the political party that promises to reform or revise it.

Down in San Diego, the usually sleepy political combat for the mayor's office has turned downright bizarre. With some enormous number of provisional and late absentee ballots yet to be counted, a write-in candidate appears to be winning by a slim majority (1%) over the incumbent mayor and his official opposition.

According to the results at the County of San Diego Election Department web page, 145.271 votes were cast for the write-in in the initial canvas, as opposed to 142,157 for the incumbent; as of this evening, slightly more than 66,000 have been confirmed for Donna Frye (who is presumed, not without reason, to have gotten almost all of the write-in votes). This is a painstaking process that requires that every single ballot be checked to see who was written in. (Pity the poor elections department). That count must be done *before* provisional and late absentees are counted. (This is going to run right up against the state's 28-day canvas deadline and might even go past it).

Meanwhile, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports, a local lawyer has detected that the City Charter appears to not allow write-in votes, despite the fact that the city's municipal code does. He has filed a suit to get the entire election thrown out and force the city to hold a new election in which Frye is not a candidate and write-ins are not allowed.

Making it even more bizarre, the entire Superior Court of San Diego recused itself from the case (on the grounds that the incumbent mayor is a former judge) and kicked it over to an Imperial County judge.

Regardless of the outcome of this case, it's amazing that a write-in candidate is winning anything, let alone something that requires more than 120,000 votes; something extremely peculiar appears to be happening in San Diego politics. And the chutzpah of a lawyer trying to get 120,000 write-in votes disqualified is breathtaking.

I emerged from the subway at Powell and Market last night to find myself - unexpectedly - in the middle of a protest. Signs were everywhere; most of them fell into two categories - "Stop the Attack on Fallujah" and "End the Police State". (Note: guys, if this were a police state, you wouldn't be able to have this protest). A not-very-good orator with a microphone was busy denouncing the war crimes being committed by western imperialist types in Haiti.

Excuse me?

I can understand an anti-war protest. I didn't support invading Iraq, after all. And I can understand the argument that what we're doing in Iraq is symptomatic of a broader policy failure. But ... what does Haiti have to do with it?

While the US' behavior in that country is hardly unimpeachable, neither can it any sense be called the author of the current crisis. Nor is the impulse driving our actions in Iraq plausibly related to the impulse driving our actions in Haiti.

Not unexpectedly, I have spent most of the day flirting with the temptation of despair. The scope of the defeat yesterday was breathtaking; the Republican grip on the Senate tightened, Bush was re-elected, gay marriage was banned in ten states, and the Republicans have managed to gain a lock on the judiciary which they'll hold on to for as long as the Federalists did. I don't so much need to mourn as I need to vent anger: to fight and take out my rage on someone, anyone, that I can point a finger at and cast blame; because if I let go of that anger, there's nothing left but a growing chasm of numbness, a conviction that the American people are deciding to abandon the best aspects of her history, that liberalism in America is dead (as well as fiscal probity and the entire post-world-war-two project of building an international superstructure that would end the anarchy of the state system and prevent another global war). It's a dark day for anyone on the left in this country, in particular for those of us who viewed this election as the most important one we'd ever voted in. If we couldn't beat Bush, despite the clear incompetence of the operation in Iraq, his abandonment of any pretense of fiscal probity, and a truly frightening and disturbing debate performance - if we couldn't make our case to the american public under those conditions, then what's the point? We'll never be able to. We've lost for a generation or more, and many of us will be grandparents before we see the rise of a new progressive coalition.

It was in this mood that I ran across a comment by John Scalzi:

Okay, guys. Have your moment of loss and depression. It's cathartic. You'll feel better.

When you're done, the US will still be here. You can give it to the people you fear or you can fight for it to be what you want it to be.

No skipping over the border to Canada. No languid wallows in pity. No throwing up of hands, saying "well, I did what I could," and holing yourself up in your study. This is officially a long-term project.

There are some luxuries you can no longer afford. Despair is one of them. Mourn, quickly, and then for God's sake get a grip.

It's time to start working like you are in the early days of a better nation. Because, if you do, they will be.

He's right. We may lose when we fight; we will certainly lose if we abandon the field. And the time to begin fighting is now or, at any rate, as soon as we can shake off the ephemera of grief. Not because we are right and the conservatives are wrong; not because we despise Bush or think his supporters are fools (or worse); but because there are important things that we believe in, that we believe are a critical part of what it means to be an American, and the greatness that the American political culture has brought to the world. Because this is our country, and we're not going to run off to some other country and hide. Because, in the end, democracy is the best form of government, and in the end, our vision of America is strong and vibrant and will prevail.

But only if we work to make it so. Political change does not come overnight. The conservative movement took forty years to get where it is today; the civil rights movement, and the womens' sufferage movement, took longer. Expecting to reshape the political landscape when the standardbearers of our beliefs are afraid to admit it; when our party leaders compete to be as much like the Republican party as they can get away with; when the terms of political debate are almost entirely framed by the conservative movement and our politics have become the politics of obstruction rather than of innovation - that expectation is insane. Expecting to promote the Democratic party when nobody outside of it - and few within it - have the remotest idea what it stands for is absurd. Expecting to find success through the election of craven candidates who will not stand up for their beliefs is self-defeating. Selecting candidates on the basis of 'electability', and watching the polls to tell us which way the wind is blowing, gets us nowhere.

If we are to retake the hearts and souls of the American public, if we are to convince them that Democrats are strong leaders with a vision for a great America of the future, then we have to actually do that: we must have a vision and stand for it regardless of the political risk, and we must have orators and telegenic candidates who can communicate that vision. The Democrats have had neither in the last three elections, and have gotten whalloped every time.

I know that every Democrat is afraid of this, because it could tear the party apart, but we need to have a debate: what do we believe? what do we want for America? how can we capitalize on what is great about this country? We need to have this debate not so that we can figure out what the American public wants to hear; we need to have this debate so that we can figure out where we want to lead the American public, and who the right standard-bearer is for that message. For, make no mistake, different politicians are better front men for different visions. This is the debate we should have had during the primary but didn't; this is the debate we should have had after the bloodletting of 2002, but didn't. Until we have this debate and rally behind its outcome, the Republican party will continue to portray us as socialists in disguise; and, having failed to stand for anything, we will be unable to defend against the charge, and our electoral fortunes will continue to decline. We have the chance to stop this before we hit our Donnybrook, if we choose to take it.

If we choose to take it.

It is, as I said, a dark time for liberalism. Bush won yesterday, and he won cleanly, fairly, and decisively; Teresa Nielsen Hayden is wrong when she says we should not accept these election results. The Democratic party is being driven from the halls of power by the choice of the voters, and as people who believe in Democracy, we must accept that. And we should begin the process of rebuilding our party and our movement from the ground up, so that we may once again be as strong and vibrant as the revolutionary republicans of this decade. Liberalism is down and out, the Democratic party defeated; but the fight has only just begun, and victory - be it tomorrow or be it in a generation - will be ours, if we want it.

Proposition 70 is, for all intents and purposes, the mirror-immage of Proposition 68. Rather than trying to force the indian tribes to renegotiate compacts to our advantage, the measure seeks to require that the state renegotiate compacts to the advantage of the Indian tribes. A number of the provisions it embodies are bad ideas, one of them cannot possibly work, and the measure deserves the defeat it is going to get on Tuesday.

In genesis, Proposition 70 was a response to Proposition 68; it operates under the theory that the best way to defeat a ballot iniative you don't like is to confront the voters with a competing one, confusing them into either (a) voting against both or (b) voting in favor of both (the one with the more votes takes effect). It's unclear how well that's working, as both are trailing in the polls, but it does make the political subtext more clear: the tribes felt threatened by Proposition 68 (enough so that a number of them have renegotiated their treaties in a way that provides the state with revenue), and this is their defensive response.

But that doesn't explain why the voters of the state should buy into it. The measure would amend the state constitution to require that the governor agree to treaties with indian tribes which would:

• Be valid for 99 years. (Yeah, right. We can't even manage to go *four* years without an attempt to change these treaties).
• Abolish the restriction on the types of casino gambling allowed on Indian reservations
• e limitation on the number of machines allowed in Indian casinos
• Require that Indian casinos contribute money to the state budget. The rule would be that the casinos must pay an amount equivalent to the state's corporate income tax, unless the Indian monopoly on casino gaming is ended, in which case they would pay nothing. This amount is significantly less than is being paid under the compacts that several tribes voluntarily renegotiated this year.
• Specify that only simple environmental reviews be allowed. The compacts authorized by Proposition 5 (Nov 1998) and Proposition 1A (Mar 2000) require simple environmental reviews, but the renegotiated compacts specify more complicated environmental impact reports.

This is problematic for several reasons. It purports to create a 99-year agreement, locking in the terms for a century, and providing no mechanism for renegotiation as circumstances change. It results in less net income for the state than is available now, and reduces environmental protection. It attempts to set up a situation wherein the tribes can blackmail the state in order to keep their ethnic monopoly on gaming (which is ironic, to be sure). It is a net loss for the state, and - aside from members of the tribes who stand to benefit from it - I fail to see why anyone would support it.

Proposition 68 is that rare thing in modern politics: a bald-faced, open-handed attempt at blackmail and extortion. It deserves a thundering repudiation at the polls on Tuesday.

Gambling on Indian reservations is governed by a thicket of federal, state, and tribal laws which almost nobody understands; I will not claim to be one of those who does. However, the general rule is that gambling is legal on tribal land if the tribe which owns the land has entered into a compact with the state allowing it. In California, most tribes entered into a compact with the state following the rules set aside in Proposition 5, a ballot measure adopted by a 62% majority of the state's voters in November of 1998. That measure required that the state offer a set compact to all tribes who wanted it, which among other thing allowed slot machines, card games, and lotteries; set the gambling age at 18; established trust funds to share revenue with tribes that didn't have casinos; required that the tribes pay for certain emergency medical services and for programs to help compulsive gamblers; and required them to provide money (estimated by the Legislative Analyst, in his Proposition 5, to be in the low tens of millions of dollars annually) to local governments.

The voters overwhelmingly approved this measure. But, by 2003, the situation had changed: the state was in a budget crisis, and desperately seeking a way out. Someone hit on a solution: lets tax the Indian casinos! That wouldn't work, of course, as the tribes running the casinos had signed agreements that would last for decades ...

Proposition 68 was the 'innovative solution' devised to fix this. It would require that every tribe currently operating a casino under a compact with the state renegotiate their compact and replace it with a new one that promised to pay the state 25% of net revenue ... or the state would change its law to allow various card rooms and racetracks to offer the same gambling that is currently allowed only on Indian reservations. In short, Proposition 68 says "give us 25% of your revenue or we'll take your monopoly away."

Proponents of Proposition 68 argue that an ethnic monopoly on gambling is unfair and contrary to our understanding of equal protection. They have a point; but that point should have been raised in opposition to Proposition 5. And, even if their point is valid, abrogating the monopoly (by, say, legalizing gambling outright) is a different act entirely from threatening to abrogate the monopoly if the casinos don't bribe the state not to: the latter is reprehensible in any case, and seems particularly indefensible when directed at the state's Indian tribes, who have - more or less - never signed a treaty with the state, with the federal government, or with a European power which was not abrogated. Proposition 68 would not actually abrogate the treaties - the treaties do not specify that gambling shall be restricted to Indian lands, merely specifying that it shall be allowed on Indian lands - but it is clearly an attempt to force the tribes to renegotiate the treaties in a way that is more favorable to us and less favorable to them.

I thought this kind of behavior went out of style at the end of the nineteenth century. In any event, it is not something the state should be doing; we signed a treaty, we should abide by it.

The politics of Proposition 67 are a riddle enclosed inside an enigma, as the saying goes. The measure trails in the polls (at least so says Field, the only entity which has even asked the question as far as I can tell), but - to my mind - it is the most easily defensible of the health-related iniatives on the ballot this year. That said, its proponents are guilty of misleading advertising, and its oppnents have been able to exploit that guilt mercilessly.

Proposition 67 does not, as its proponents would have it, impose a modest increase in an existing tax; it increases a .75% tax to be a 3.75% tax (albeit with a cap in some cases). Nor is it particularly targeted at rescuing the 911 system from whatever deficiencies with which it is faced. It does something much, much more important.

The State of California, like many jurisdictions, requires that hospitals which provide emergency care provide that care to any patient, regardless of ability to pay. Hospitals and other emergency care providers run up hundreds of millions of dollars in unreimbursed expenses because of this; and hospitals and other emergency care providers are slowly going bankrupt - 26 have closed in the last eight years - putting the system of hospitals under increasing strain.

Proposition 67 is an attempt to fix this problem by imposing a rule that the state must pay for such unreimbursed expenses. This is a rational suggestion: if the state says, as a policy matter, that people should be treated even if they cannot pay, than the state should pay for it, and distribute the costs across the entire taxpaying base rather than just the companies which are engaged in this business.

It chooses a slightly bizarre mechanism - a 3% tax on phone bills (with a cap of $0.50/month for residential bills), but not one without precedent; there is already a tax on phone bills to pay for the 911 system. Yet, perhaps because it builds on an existing tax, this does not strike me as being particularly outrageous.

Fundamentally, I suppose, there are three questions encapsulated in the iniative:

• Should it be state policy that people who cannot pay for emergency medical care should nonetheless be treated?
• If it is state policy, should the state pay for such treatment?
• Is this mechanism for funding it appropriate?

I would hope that the first question is one of those rare things that polite society agrees on; but, given the tenor of the times, perhaps it isn't any more. In any event, in my mind, for a rich society to not find some way to provide emergency medical services to those who can't afford them is unconscionable; and asking hospitals to determine eligibility to pay prior to providing emergency services seems like a recipe for disaster. The law requiring that emergency medical services be provided to all is a good one, and we should keep it.

That said, there is a problem with it: an unintended side-effect on the economics of the medical industry. The state, as the author of that side-effect, should ameliorate it; we should pay for the service that we are requiring hospitals and doctors to provide. (Again, this seems like it ought to be the kind of thing that everyone can agree on).

So, the real debate is over whether or not this is a good mechanism. As usual, the arguments for and against in the ballot handbook are not helpful: the argument for tries to convince me that preserving emergenc medical services is a good thing, and the argument against complains that the iniative is a scam because it doesn't go to the 911 system (and, to top it off, the rebuttal to the argument in favor complains that the iniative doesn't provide health insurance to the uninsured while at the same time complaining that it raises taxes by too much!)

I'm not wildly enthusiastic about the method endorsed by the proposition. But, as a pragmatist, I realize that I'd probably not be wildly enthusiastic about any method ... and this is, ultimately, a problem which it is the state's responsibility to solve. Imposing a 3% tax on phone bills in order to reimburse doctors for providing emergency medical services to those who cannot pay for them seems like a good trade-off. The state needs to pay these bills; the money needs to come from somewhere in order to do that; and this mechanism, while not particularly appealing, is also not particularly unappealing. Proposition 67 is a band-aid being applied to a gashing wound ... but it's a band-aid being applied to hold together a stretch of skin which otherwise might tear in a way that causes the innards behind the wound to pop out and drip onto the street.

So why is it trailing in the polls? And does this fact have anything to do with the rash of ballot measures - like two currently under consideration in Santa Cruz County - to do away with the tax that funds the 911 service?

The amount spent today by physicians and hospitals on uncompensated emergency medical care is not known. Physicians and hospitals reported that, in 2000-01, the cost for this care was approximately $540 million. However, this estimate may be low, because physicians and hospitals may have underreported the cost of the care that they provided.

This doesn't make any sense; i'm unable to come up with any reasonable argument by which there would be an incentive to underreport this, and several by which there would be an incentive to overreport. I wonder if the Legislative Analyst botched this one.

The Economist has endorsed Kerry.

YOU might have thought that, three years after a devastating terrorist attack on American soil, a period which has featured two wars, radical political and economic legislation, and an adjustment to one of the biggest stockmarket crashes in history, the campaign for the presidency would be an especially elevated and notable affair. If so, you would be wrong. This year's battle has been between two deeply flawed men: George Bush, who has been a radical, transforming president but who has never seemed truly up to the job, let alone his own ambitions for it; and John Kerry, who often seems to have made up his mind conclusively about something only once, and that was 30 years ago.

If Mr Bush is re-elected, and uses a new team and a new approach to achieve that goal, and shakes off his fealty to an extreme minority, the religious right, then The Economist will wish him well. But our confidence in him has been shattered. We agree that his broad vision is the right one but we doubt whether Mr Bush is able to change or has sufficient credibility to succeed

After three necessarily tumultuous and transformative years, this is a time for consolidation, for discipline and for repairing America's moral and practical authority. Furthermore, as Mr Bush has often said, there is a need in life for accountability. He has refused to impose it himself, and so voters should, in our view, impose it on him, given a viable alternative. John Kerry, for all the doubts about him, would be in a better position to carry on with America's great tasks.

Electoral-vote reports, and electionlawblog confirms, that the Ohio Democratic Party consists of idiots who can't be bothered to figure out what the rules are. The party, in its state convention, selected as one of its electors a sitting congressman, Rep. Sherrod Brown.

Sitting congresspeople are, of course, federal officeholders; they are thus constitutionally ineligible to the office of elector.

How could nobody have noticed this at the state convention? And why didn't the Ohio Secretary of State's office notice it? If I were a voter in Ohio, I would be demanding blood; vetting the constitutional qualifications of candidates is one of the primary responsibilities of an elections office.

It remains to be seen how this will play out in the election. There are basically two questions:

• Can Brown legally be replaced as an Elector, under Ohio law? Electionlawblog says he's resigned, which is good, but it's unclear what the procedure is; does the party simply get to replace him on its list (because it is before the election), or does the legislature get to appoint an elector in his place?
• If Brown can't legally be replaced as an elector, or the story that he is resigning is false, and Kerry wins, what happens? His vote can - and will - certainly be challenged by the Congress; can the Congress use this as an excuse to challenge the entire Ohio slate?

For want of someone reading the Constitution, the election could be lost.

One of the more interesting pre-election lawsuit/political manuevering stories involves an issue mentioned in brief in a New York Times article today: the handling of provisional ballots cast outside of the voter's registration precinct.

A provisional ballot is a ballot cast by a voter whose eligibility cannot be determined at the time of the election; eligibility is to be verified by the relevant elections office during the final canvass and the vote is to be counted if the voter is deemed eligible. Provisional ballots have existed in California for more than a decade, but they are appearing in many states for the first time this year as a result of the Help America Vote Act, which requires them. A precinct is the lowest level of jurisdiction for elections; for federal elections, they are required to consist of no more than one thousand registered voters (although precincts can be consolidated so that they are larger).

In California, everyone is registered in a precinct, and is supposed to vote at their precinct; that's where their name is on the roster. Provisional ballots, however, can be cast at any precinct, and - so long as the voter is registered and is eligible to vote - those votes which are cast in contests on which the voter has the right to vote will be counted. (As an example, if I show up to vote in Menlo Park, for some strange reason, my vote for President, Senate, and the state ballot propositions will be counted, but my vote for Assemblyman, Congressman, and the local city propositions will not be; i'm not eligible to vote on those contests). However, provisional votes cast in the wrong county will be discarded: while precincts are where the votes are cast, counties are where they are tabulated, and where policy decisions regarding the conduct of elections are made and implemented, and allowing voters to cast votes outside of the county would be problematic - especially since it's the county officials who will be verifying the voter's eligibility.

In twenty-seven states, according to the New York Times, the rule is that provisional ballots are only counted if they are cast in the precinct where the voter is registered. In Ohio and Michigan, this has been the subject of lawsuits: unhappy democrats have alleged that HAVA requires that provisional ballots be counted regardless of what precinct they are cast in.

The US Circuit Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit recently ruled, in two different cases, that there is no such requirement. It was correct to do so, as a matter of law: HAVA cannot reasonably be construed as containing such a requirement.

That said, as a matter of policy, I think all twenty-seven states have it wrong, and are not acting in the best interests of democracy or of the voters.

I've seen quite a few provisional ballots cast in more than ten years as a pollworker, and quite a few of them have obviously been cast in the wrong precinct. Those ballots which I could tell were cast in the wrong precinct usually fell into one of the following scenarios:

• The voter had moved a number of times since the last time he/she had voted and could not remember where he/she was registered;
• The voter had requested an absentee ballot but never recieved one in the mail;
• The voter was unable to find their polling place;
• It was 7.45 or later in the evening and the voter did not have time to get to their precinct before the polls closed.

Assuming that the voter was registered and legally eligible to vote, I can not imagine a single principled reason for not counting his or her ballot in these cases. The added work involved in verifying the eligibility of out-of-precinct provisional ballots is zero, and the added work involved in counting them is negligible (they are, at most, 1-2% of votes cast in California). Assuming that final ballot processing and result reporting is done at a higher jurisdictional level than the precinct in these other states, the rules against counting out-of-precinct provisional ballots are undemocratic and should be abolished forthwith.

Mental illnesses are extremely common; they affect almsot every family in California. They affect people from every background and occur at any age. In an year, between 5 percent and 7 percent of adults have a serious mental illness as do a similar percentage of children - between 5 percent and 9 percent. Therefore, more than two million children, adults, and seniors in California are affected by a potentially disabling mental illness every year.

Either

1. The data are wrong, intentionally or not;
2. The definition of serious mental illness needs to be reconsidered as it is broad enough to encompass things that are in fact perfectly normal;
3. There is a serious crisis of lunacy in the state.

I vote for option two. Your mileage may vary.

Proposition 69 asks the voters of California if we wish to enlarge the state's DNA database to include DNA samples from anyone convicted of any felony and, beginning in five years, from anyone arrested of any felony. In addition, it asks us if we wish to increase all criminal fines - including traffic violation and marijuana possession fines - by 10% in order to pay for this program.

The general presupposition of the measure is that expanding DNA testing is a good thing. This is something which the official opponents concede, choosing instead to focus their opposition on the implementation within the program. It is an idea whose case is fairly easy to present: wider use of DNA testing makes it easier to use DNA evidence to acquit (or convict), reduces the likelihood of false imprisonment and conviction (assuming that the DNA samples are not tampered with), and generally smooths out the criminal process. Reasonable observers might, however, be forgiven for doubting whether the public is actually sold on the merits of this technology: a ballot proposition asking the voters to authorize the sale of bonds to construct forensic labs specializing in DNA analysis was defeated in March 2000.¹ Still, the idea seems sound: collecting DNA samples from criminals will make it easier to identify any other crimes of which they are guilty, and the collection of DNA samples from people accused of crimes ought to make it easier to determine their guilt.

And yet ...

Why does the measure designed so that the onus is on a person who is acquitted to get their data removed from the database? As written, the measure calls for DNA samples taken from accused criminals to be entered into a statewide (and possibly national, as data can be shared) database. Upon acquittal, someone whose DNA sample was gathered can seek a court order to have it destroyed; but a judge can decline to issue such an order, and such a declination is not appealable.

To my mind, and to the mind of many of the opponents of the measure, this turns the intent on its head. It's one thing to have a database of convicts that you can check against; it's another thing to have a database of anyone who has been accused of a crime. It's one thing to make it easy for people accused of crimes to demonstrate their innocence via DNA evidence, or to make it easy for prosecutors to demonstrate their guilt using the same evidence; it's another thing entirely to hold on to the data used in that proceeding indefinitely, adding people to a database of suspects despite the fact that they've been acquitted of the crime of which they were accused. The rules embodied in this initiative constitute an invitation to fishing expeditions, and provide little to no effective recourse to those who are not guilty and do not wish to bear the scarlet letter of inclusion in a criminal database.

A better system would provide for the collection of DNA samples upon arrest, with a provision that such samples are held out of the database until conviction and automatically destroyed upon acquittal. Why this measure doesn't do that, I'm not sure. I'd vote for it in a heartbeat. But this measure is seriously flawed; its stated goal is admirable, but its implementation is broken, and I cannot vote for it.

That decision is easy to make without even examining the bizarre funding provisions. Proposition 69 would levy a 10% tax on all criminal fines paid and redirect that money to fund the DNA database. Anyone who is assessed a fine for anything, by the State or any of its subunits, would have to pay more in order to fund this measure. In essence, this measure shares a common flaw with Proposition 63: a single subset of the population is being singled out to pay for the common good. Except that - arguably - the subset of the population being singled out is both larger (as an absolute percentage of the citizenry) and less able to pay. The former may mitigate the flaw, but the latter exacerbates it.

If large-scale DNA collection and analysis is a good thing, if it is something we as the voters of the state want, why isn't it good enough to be funded out of the general fund, and paid for with a general tax? Why attach the fee as a tax on fines?

Proposition 69 is put forward in service of an admirable goal, but its implementation details are flawed, and its funding scheme is bizarre and acts to further obfuscate the flow of money in a state where it's already next to impossible to figure out. It deserves a smashing defeat in the polls enxt week.

¹It is, I suppose, open for debate whether or not the voters of the state opposed the construction of forensic labs per se, or if their opposition was more directed at the bond issue. Given that a number of other bonds were adopted at that same ballot, however, it seems that at the very least the voters were distinguishing between bonds they liked and bonds they didn't. Forensic labs didn't make the cut.

For the first time in my life I find myself tempted to not vote on a proposition.

Proposition 64 modifies the Business and Professions Code, in the division of "General Business Regulations", to specify that individuals cannot file lawsuits against companies for unfair competition unless they (a) can demonstrate that they have individually been hurt, or (b) are filing a class-action lawsuit that meets the class-action requirements. The intent is to make it more difficult to file such suits, as (allegedly) businesses are being hit by a raft of frivolous lawsuits under this division.

Fair enough. In general, this seems like a reasonable limitation. But wait: what is unfair competition? Section 17200 specifies: "unfair competition shall mean and include any unlawful, unfair, or fraudulent business act or practice and unfair, deceptive, untrue, or misleading advertising and any act prohibited by [some specific chapter of the law]". (I'd think that last was included in the first part, but that's a side issue).

So, basically, "unfair competition" means "any illegal business act". Which means the change in the law is to specify that a private individual can only sue a business for any illegal action if (a) they've been harmed, or (b) it's part of a class-action lawsuit.

Using an absurd hypothetical example, then, if I personally witness Intel dumping Arsenic in Lexington Reservoir, then I can't sue because I haven't been harmed (because my water comes from elsewhere), unless I can qualify the case as a class action.

Is that really the intent of the law? Clearly not, as the proponents of the proposition say that my example isn't true at all; that's covered under the environmental protection laws, and this change in law doesn't apply. Or does it? The opponents of the proposition say it does apply.

I basically can't tell unless I read the entire state code or ask a lawyer specializing in this sort of thing.

This is precisely the kind of thing that I should not be called upon to vote on; I don't have sufficient information, or sufficient time to gather such information, to determine what the effects of the change will be. This kind of question ought to be left to the professionals.

I suppose on some level there's a broad policy question here: do we as voters want to allow individuals to use the court to enforce business law when those individuals have not actually been harmed? If your answer to that is a clear "no", then this proposition is a good idea. If it's a more nuanced "well, sometimes yes, sometimes no", then this proposition is clearly a bad idea. If it's a clear "yes", then it's also clearly a bad idea, albeit for different reasons. To that extent, as a matter of broad policy, it may be a reasonable subject for a proposition; and yet we're not being asked to vote on a policy guideline, we're being asked to vote on a specific implementation without a clear explanation of what that implementation is.

My viewpoint is that private-individual enforcement lawsuites are sometimes a good idea and sometimes a bad idea (as a policy matter), and that I really need more information about specific cases to derive an adequate judgement. The propoents of the measure have offered me a hammer and not given me sufficient information to determine if the object is a nail; I will be voting "no", and hoping that the proponents of the idea pursue their goals via the Legislature next time.

Proposition 63 is a (relatively speaking) simple proposition devoted to a simple idea: tax millionaires to pay for improving mental health services. Specifically, add a 1% tax to all income earned beyond $1 million earned by any individuals in California, and put that money in a special fund devoted to this purpose.

Proponents and opponents both agree that mental health services are a good thing and that there is a serious problem with the way they are provided to California citizens who do not have insurance that covers them; there is no controversy there. What is under debate is:

• Will the proposed programs work?
• Is taxing millionaires the best way to pay for them?

To be honest, i'm a bit puzzled by the debate, because I find myself utterly unqualified to answer the first question (and not convinced by the rhetoric of either side) and unconvinced of the relevance of the second question (X may not be the best way to provide Y, but it's arguably better than the alternative of not providing Y, unless there's an argument that it's a particularly bad way to provide Y. I'm more interested in these questions¹:

• Is there a theoretical problem with a measure which explicitly taxes population A to provide services for population B (as opposed to a general measure which taxes the entire population to provide services for population ?
• Is there a good reason to constrain the legislature by directing that the money be spent a particular way?

As usual, the arguments in the ballot pamphlet are useless. It's not just that they don't address my questions - my questions are often skewed from what is being contested by the majority of activists. It's that they don't even seem to address each other's concerns, and often seem to be unrelated o the law at all:

California's teachers support Proposition 63 because it will help children succeed in school and life

I'm particularly upset with the argument against and the rebuttal to it. The argument against heavily implies that existing programs are ineffective and that the programs being funded by the measure are short-term fixes to a more complicated problem, without ever explaining how that is true or rebutting the claim made in the text of the law:

A recent innovative approach, begun under Assembly Bill 34 in 1999, was recognized in 2003 as a model program by the President's Commission on Mental Health.

The rebuttal fails to mention that or to address in any way the other dominant thrust in the argument against: that structuring an important program such that it depends on the highly variable revenue stream of taxes on million-dollar incomes is dangerous². There's an ample amount of statistical evidence to demonstrate that tax revenue from the highest tax bracket varies wildly and is far less consistent than tax revenue from lower brackets; the argument that having a program depending entirely on that revenue stream isn't in the interest of the clients of that program is a compelling one, and it's a shame that the proponents of the measure never seem to address it.

There's a political logic to it, though, which is this: millionaires are a small minority of the population, so placing a tax on their income is more likely to draw popular support than a broad-based tax which everyone would pay. Thus, while such a tax is less likely to be efficacious in the long run, it is also more likely to be adopted at all; and if the program is important, surely an inconsistent revenue stream is better than none at all. (Of course, the rejoinder to this is that if it's truly important, than a more broad-based tax will pass ... a claim which is hard to credit given the simultaneous voter revolts against the vehicle license fee increase and the state's confiscation of local government revenue from the VLF).

Yet there's a troubling philosophical issue here, one that goes to the heart of my problem with the iniative: is it ok to single out one subset of the population and make them pay for the needs of another? As the size of the paying subset decreases, at what point does such a measure become tantamount to a bill of attiander? This is an issue which is much more troubling with an income tax than it is with an excise tax, because entrance into the class of paying citizens is in some sense voluntary for most excise taxes in a way that it isn't for income taxes.

Libertarians - and Alan Keyes - would allege that this is a fatal poison that undermines all income taxes. But it clearly doesn't for a broad-based income tax (since that touches almost everyone) whose revenue goes into the general fund (whose expenditures touch almost everyone). Nor does it for a progressive income tax which goes into the general fund - such a tax does cause different classes of people to pay different amounts, but it does so in the context of an overall system of gradients to which everyone is subject.

What's different about this tax is that it is imposed on a specific group of people (it doesn't apply at all to people making less than a certain amount of money, and it is independant of the general income tax) and the money is set aside for a specific program. This is troubling, and it raises a specter that passing this tax will set a precedent that leads to a plethora of such special-case taxes. That would be unfortunate.

And yet the earliest income taxes were special taxes in the sense that they singled out a small subset of the population and taxed them; and the income tax appears to have been vindicated by history. And it was usually a special tax in the sense that the money was set aside for specific purposes; it was not until later in the evolution of the income tax that its revenue was dedicated to the general fund. The reason for this was that political support for taxes is often higher when they are directed; the faith of the populace that the politicians will adhere to the budgetary priorities of the voters has never been particularly high.

This ties in with my general concern about directed taxes: they restrict the flexibility of the elected legislature to determine how to spend the state's money, and (over time) act as a calcifying agent that restricts the budgeting process by restricting options. California's budget crisis of recent years is not entirely a result of high spending by Governor Davis, or of legislative gridlock caused by excessive partisanship; it's also a result of the propensity of the state's voters to set aside portions of the budget as untouchable.

An uncharitable reading of Proposition 63, then, would argue that it is an unfair singling out of a particular population to pay for the needs of another population, in a way that will contribute to budgetary gridlock. That's the preconception I had of the measure before I read it, and the arguments for and against did nothing to dissuade me. Yet, albeit with a bit of unease, I will be voting in favor of the measure.

Why?

1. Mental health programs are a common good, not a population-specific good. While only a small part of the population directly benefits, the general good is nonetheless served - in much the same way that only a small part of hte population directly benefits from state-financed higher education. Proposition 63 is thus a tax on a particular population to pay for general benefits, and is therefore in line with the way the income tax originally developed, and is less objectionable than I have painted it as being above.²
2. Proposition 63's special/directed tax provisions are meaningless. The measure does, it is true, direct that the revenue be placed in a particular fund, and prohibits the state from reducing the money being spent from the general fund on mental health:
   

   The funding established pursuant to this act shall be utilized to expand mental health services. These funds shall not be used to supplant existing state or county funds utilized to provide mental health services. The state shall continue to provide financial health programs with not less than the same eneitlements, amounts of allocations form the General Fund, and forumla distributions of dedicated funds as provided in the last fiscal year which ended before the effective date of this act.

   But this provision is meaningless as it also specifies:

   All of the provisions of this act may be amended by a two-thirds vote of the Legislature

   Thus, with the same majority that enables the Legislature to pass a budget in the first place, the budget-lock-box provisions of the bill can be overridden.

eft with, then, is a vague sense that the voters shouldn't be setting tax levels and spending priorities ourselves; that's what we hire a Legislature to do. And yet, at the same time ... if this is an important issue that the Legislature is unable or unwilling to address, is it better to leave it unaddressed than it is to take on the Legislature's job ourselves?

I'm uncomfortable with this measure for many of the reasons I've mentioned above. And yet, it has a goal that everyone agrees with; the worst-case analysis of the methods involved are not reasonable, and once they are dispensed with the methods seem consistent with historic practice; and the Legislature is unable or unwilling to address the issue. So, reluctantly, i'm voting in favor - wishing, once again, that we had a better Legislature.

¹I suppose it's obvious from these questions that i'm marginally predisposed against the measure.

²Note that I'm nonetheless still uneasy about it.

Proposition 61 asks the voters of California if we wish to authorize the state to sell $750,000,000 (which is to say, 750 million dollars) worth of bonds for the purpose of constructing or renovating children's hospitals. That bonded indebtedness would be added to approximately $30,000,000,000 (30 billion) in currently outstanding bonds and another $40,000,000,000 (40 billion) in authorized but unsold bonds. Except for the standard complexities that accompany all bond issues, it is a straightforward measure with little controversy surrounding it.

Gary Wesley, the traditional author of nay-saying ballot pamphlet arguments, bases his opposition to this measure on two arguments. One, put forward in the rebuttal to the argument in favor, is bizarre and non-responsive:

The principal problem in California - and across America - is that we have an estimated 44 million legal residents (including children) who have no health insurance and tens of millions more who have inadequate coverage.

Persons without adequate health insurance delay seeking care (until they end up in operating rooms) and government-operated hospitals, as well as the many so-called "nonprofit" corporations that run most hospitals, seek to charge the uninsured up to 3 times the rates negotiated by public and private insurers.

The current health care system in California and in our country is littered with middlemen and profiteers who steal limited resources from actual care.

Put differently, the current system is wasteful and unfair. We need a "single-payer" health care system in which every legal resident receives basic health coverage.

Mr. Wesley's point may be true; certainly his complaint about hospitals charging the uninsured much more than they charge insurance companies is valid (i've been bitten by that in the past). And yet his argument seems somewhat orthogonal to the issue at hand here: regardless of who pays for it, if there aren't sufficient hospitals, or the hospitals don't have a sufficient number of beds, care will still be unavailable. This measure is about building and renovating hospitals, which is presumably a good thing even if the way health care financing works is flawed.

The argument he puts forward in his argument against the measure is more salient:

California voters have already approved billions of dollars in bond sales and have mortgaged the future.

The supporters of the measure begin their response with an entertaining bit of attempted character assassination:

We've never heard of this attorney who opposes Proposition 61. Have you?

(Well, yes, I have. He writes arguments against ballot propositions all the time. He's something of a regular at the ballot-proposition-opponents club. Whether or not I've ever heard of him outside of the context of the ballot handbook, however, seems irrelevant to the quality of his argument.)

They then, as is usual, fail to address his point at all: their argument demonstrates that building and renovating Children's hospitals is a good thing, not that borrowing the money to pay for them is. It's a sad commentary, yet again, on the poor quality of argumentation in the ballot handbook. Almost everyone can agree that children's hospitals are good - and that isn't the question the initiative asks us to consider.

So the question remains: should the state of California borrow three quarters of a billion dollars to help renovate, repair, and equip children's hospitals?

There are a couple of general questions that I ask before voting for bond measures:

1. Does the bond measure only fund capital expenses, or does it also fund ongoing expenses?
2. Does the bond fund economic infrastructure?
3. Does the bond fund school construction?
4. Is the bond measure for an amount which is outrageous given current indebtedness?

The general principle behind this list is that bonds which pay for capital investment in infrastructure are a good thing in that they will, over the life of the bond, repay themselves through inreased tax revenue due to higher economic growth. Schools are an exception to this - but not really; for education is the most economically significant form of capital investment. Without an educated population, our economy will stagnate, and our system will collapse.

These bonds, albeit their intention to fund an admirable cause, are not infrastructure investments; nor are they investments in education. They do only fund capital expenses, rather than underwriting ongoing costs, but they're for hospitals (which are, essentially, consumptive in nature).

This proposal thus fails my standard test for bond measures, and I will be voting against it. I recognize that there is an argument by which hospitals, and health care, is just as important to the pursuit of happiness as is education; and I would happily vote in favor of a tax increase to serve this cause. But it is harder, for me, to justify borrowing money to fund a good cause than it is to justify raising the money now to fund a good cause; and the question that has been put to the voters is the former.

Propositions 60 and 62 are intimately entwined with one another; they are polar opposites that would undermine and undo one another, and they conflict in every way imagineable. The state constitution specifies that, if both pass, whichever one gets the most votes will take effect. Together, the measures constitute one of three sets of competing propositions on this year's ballots.

Proposition 62 was placed on the ballot by an initiative drive - eg, someone gathered signatures from citizens and drummed up enough support to get it on the ballot. Proposition 60 was placed on the ballot by the legislature in an attempt to derail proposition 62.

The Background

In March of 1996, the voters of the state approved (by a 59.5/40.4% split) Proposition 198, which changed the state's primary system and adopted what came to be called a 'blanket primary'. The measure recieved broad support from throughout the state.

The blanket primary replaced the existing system, in which closed partisan primaries were held in the spring and the top vote-getter in each primary was placed on the ballot in November, with a system in which each voter got the same ballot in the primary, and could vote for a candidate of any party. The top vote-getter in each party then appeared on the November ballot.

The system was reasonably popular with the electorate, as shown by the election results from Proposition 3 (in November of 1998). When the two major parties threatened to reject California's delegates to the 2000 nominating conventions if it did not adopt a partisan presidential primary, the voters refused to do so, voting by 53.8%46.2% to keep the existing system. In the following election, voters defeated Proposition 23, an attempt to add a 'none-of-the-above' option to the ballot, by a 64%/36% margin; the argument against the measure emphasized that the blanket primary made such a change unnecessary.

The blanket primary was, however, highly unpopular with the leadership of the two major parties, who led a legal challenge to the system, alleging that it violated the first amendment right of party members to freely associate with whomever they choose (by forcing them to associate with members of other parties); the United States Supreme Court, in June of 2000, agreed with that logic, and blanket primaries were declared unconstitutional¹. In the wake of that decision, California reverted to a modified version of its previous system: closed partisan primaries that are open to voters registered with the party and, if the party so chooses, to voters registered with no party, but not to voters registered with other parties.

Proposition 62

Proposition 62 is, at its core, an attempt to bring the blanket primary back, in modified form. Its key proposal is that, instead of the current system in which the state runs primaries in which the seven-or-so official political parties select their candidates, and general elections in which the candidates so selected run against each other (and any candidates who are able to summon the signatures to run as a non-partisan candidate), California should instead have a system in which all candidates from all parties appear on a common ballot (at the same time that the primary is currently held), and only the two most popular candidates advance to the general election. In a sense, the general election can then be considered to be a runoff, while the primary functions as the first round in a (usually) two-round election.

This would not apply to the Presidential election, which would continue to function the way it does now: voters vote for a particular candidate in a partisan primary, and delegates are allocated to that party's convention based on the results; later, voters vote for a particular candidate in the general election, and electors are named based upon the result. It would change the way all statewide and legislative elections function.

What the actual effect of such a change would be is a matter of some dispute. Proponents of the measure claim that it would result in more moderate candidates being chosen, and would consequently shift the membership of the legislature away from the bitter divide of the current era and towards a more genial middle ground. They also claim that it would make it easier for representatives of third parties to get elected (these two claims appear to be inconsistent with one another, one of the more entertaining things about this debate). Some opponents of the measure agree with the first effect, and oppose it bitterly because (in their eyes) it would destroy the ability of the state's conservatives to maintain their dying grasp on the political direction of the state². Other opponents suggest that it would lead to candidate selection by party cognoscenti in smoke-filled rooms; yet others claim it would destroy the state's third parties by making it impossible for them to appear on the general election ballot; and other opponents still claim that the measure would inevitably produce runoffs with extremists on both sides, leading to the election of California equivalents of David Duke. The problem is that the actual effects are entirely hypothetical until the system is adopted, that Louisiana - the only state to have a system similar to this - has a strikingly different political culture and so is not useful as a comparator, and that there are plausible theories portending each result.

How could the system proposed by Proposition 62 result in more moderate candidates being chosen? The theory is that political power in California rests in the hands of those who are affiliated with no party, and that the primary voters of each party are significantly skewed, ideologically speaking, from those voters. Moreover, allowing cross-voting (eg, allowing democrats to help vote for the republican nominee and vice-versa) will result in less ideologically ocnstrained, more moderate candidates. Democrats will vote for the more liberal Republican candidate on the ballot, the theory goes, while Republicans vote for the more conservative Democrat; the result will be that the two most popular candidates come from more centrist wings of their respective parties. There is some evidence in the data collected during California's years with a blanket primary that this theory is valid.

And yet this theory presupposes that there are multiple candidates to choose from. In races without incumbents, that might be the case. But in races without incumbents, the incumbent isn't going to recieve a challenge from within his own party, and could potentially win an absolute majority of the vote in the first round (in which case there would be no second round). Moreover, if there is a danger that one party will split its vote in a contested race and the other party won't, the leadership of that party will probably pressure candidates to drop out, resulting (in effect) in the candidates not being chosen by the voters at all, but being cherry-picked by the local party leadership. If that happens, then what is being promoted as a great leap forward for voter choice will in fact be a great leap backward. There is some evidence, in the way elections were run before primaries were introduced, that this could be a problem. It is mitigated by the (not necessarily applicable) experience of Louisiana, and by the fact that special elections to replace dead or retiring legislators operate in a fashion very similar to what is proposed here, and regularly see competitive elections with multiple candidates in each party.

The biggest dispute about the effects of Proposition 62 come when the question of third parties is considered. Some allege that it will help third parties; the argument against it in the ballot handbook alleges that it will harm them.

The idea behind the second argument is simple: the top vote-getters in each district will always either be (a) one democrat and one republican, or (b) two democrats, or (c) two republicans. Under such a system, third parties will never appear on the general election ballot, and will fade to irrelevance.

And yet, surely if it's possible for (say) San Francisco to have two democrats as the candidates who advance to the general election, it must also be possible for the same city to have a democrat and a green; and, depending on the profiles of the candidates, it ought to be possible for the green to have a good showing. Similarly, Orange County voters ought to find it possible to advance a libertarian and a republican to the final ballot. This would no doubt redound to the advantage of the small parties, right?

Perhaps. Perhaps not. The truth of the matter is that it's all speculation, and nobody really knows what the effect of the core proposal in Proposition 62 woudl be. The best argument in favor of it is that the current system of selecting candidates is broken. If it has resulted in a legislature in which the republican minority is significantly more conservative than the state's voters and are obstructionists, clinging to the power of tax refusal in order to force their preferences on the rest of us, and in which the democratic majority is significantly more liberal than the state's voters, and the voters are desperate for a middle ground that neither party will offer ... if that caricature is valid, then surely the current system is a diaster, and a speculative change is worth trying? After all, if it's worse, then we can switch back, right?

Proposition 60

The proponents of Proposition 60 reject that notion in its entirety. The current system of holding primaries and advancing one person from each party to the general election is a good one, they insist. In order to protect that system, they would add this paragraph to the state Constitution:

A political party that participated in a primary election for a partisan office has the right to participate in the general election for that office and shall not be denied the ability to place on the general election ballot the candidate who received, at the primary election, the highest vote among that party's candidates

Leaving aside the possibility that this would mean that, say, a candidate who won a primary and was later determined for some reason to be ineligible (imagine, for example, he'd lied about his age) would still appear on the general election ballot, this is a straightforward proposal and a straightforward initiative: approving it would keep the current system and would prohibit, absent yet another constitutional amendment, any tinkering with it.

The controversy at hand

The decision voters have to make, then, before inspecting the details of Proposition 62 - a massive, sprawling body of code which inserts itself throughout the elections code and takes up nineteen pages in the ballot pamphlet - is this: Do you believe the current system of selecting candidates is a good one? If not, do you believe it is worth taking a risk with a system whose side-effects are unknown and whose theoretical underpinnings are in dispute?

If you like the current system, or at the very least are unwilling to take a chance on the new one, vote for Proposition 60 and against Proposition 62.³ I don't like the current system, and I did like the blanket primary, so it's not that simple for me; I have to look at the fine print.

The fine print

So, aside from setting up a system by which there is an open primary followed by a runoff, what does the 18 pages of text that constitute proposition 62 do? And why does it need 18 pages to do it?

The simple answer to the latter question is that this is a complicated legal duct tape job, requiring that every reference to certain terms - "party nomination", say or "partisan office" - be changed everywhere they occur in the entire election code. Thus, much of the 18 pages consists of existing law with minor changes; in order that such changes be understood in context, the entire paragraph in which they occur is reprinted in the ballot pamphlet. The drafters of the measure made this even more obnoxious by deciding to change "decline to state" to "no party" for reasons which are not explained and which do not appear to be implied by the logic motivating the overall proposal. Thus, evyer instance of "decline to state" or a derivative term must be changed; this, like all search-and-replace jobs taken in context, requires paragraph after paragraph of mind-numbing text.

Another simple thing that takes up much space in the text of the initiative is changes to the formatting of simple forms. All of the forms relating to elections - petition forms, for example, or the forms used by the county election offices to communicate with the Secretary of State (and vice-versa) - are explicitly detailed in the law, and their detailing needs to be changed to account for the removal of partisan designators. (As an example, the Secretary of State currently certifies to the counties the list of candidates in each partisan primary; this form specifies the name of the party, and needs to be modified to be a certification of all candidates from all parties.

Most of the measure's text is tedious and boring - but nonetheless important - stuff of this nature. One section even adds a line item for a candidate's email address to the nominating papers.

Yet there are a few sections which represent actual policy changes, rather than implementation details:

• Nomination papers in the primary are no longer party-specific; which is to say, voters registered with party [x] can sign nomination papers for candidates registered with other parties. (This is implied by the logic of the open primary proposal, but was not inevitable).
• Petition circulators collecting signatures on nominating papers or in-lieu-of-filing-fee signatures can be from anywhere in the state, not just the jurisdiction in question. (This matches practice for iniatives).
• Elections officials are not allowed to create partisan subcounts that would document how members of particular parties voted in a race (thereby making illegal the dodge used to keep the national parties happy in the 2000 presidential primary
• In the general election, parties would be allowed to decline to endorse a candidate, thereby not allowing that candidate's party registration to appear next to his name on the ballot. (It is hoped that this will prevent the "David Duke" problem whereby someone whose views are outside the political pale qualifies for the runoff and is allegedly the standard-bearer of a particular party; it also gets around the freedom-of-association complaint that was used to torpedo the blanket primary).
• The number of registrations or signatures required to qualify a party to participate in primaries (for party central committees and/or presidential electors) is decreased substantially, from 1% of registered voters to (1/3)% of registered voters.

In conclusion

These are all fairly innocuous, as far as I can tell, and seem unlikely to undermine the cause of the iniative. Thus, if you believe the current primary system is broken, and are willing to risk the unknowns involved in a system wherein all voters from all parties select the top two candidates from all candidates available, and advance them to a runoff, then Proposition 62 should look good to you; contrariwise, if you believe the current primary system is fine, or you are unwilling to take risks with the political system, then Proposition 60 should look good to you.

I find myself allied with the former group.

¹There is currently a legal proceeding in Oklahoma which turns this on its head: a particular party wants to allow members of other parties to vote in their primary, and state law prohibits it, so that party is trying to get the law tossed on first amendment free-association grounds.

²The conservatives in the state legislature have a de facto control over budgetary matters due to the state constitution's supermajority requirement for passing tax increases: the republican party - dominated by the party's conservative wing - has just enough votes to force the issue.

³What happens if both pass? In that case, the one which passes with a larger percentage of yes votes goes into effect, and the other is ignored. That's the standard procedure for conflicting initiatives, and has been followed for years.

I spent the weekend celebrating the wedding of one of my closest and longest friends, [he_nameless], and his girlfriend of four years, [she_nameless]. It was a blast, if a bit exhausting (as a member of the wedding party, and next-door-neighbor of the lucky celebrants, I was called upon to perform all manner of last minute tasks, including fetching donuts from Krispy Kreme and searching the county high and low for a store selling clear mailing labels at midnight the night before the wedding. Maximum pity points, though, go to the best man, who made a three-hour round trip to deliver the bride's shoes which he'd stolen without realizing that it would interfere with the last-minute dress fitting).

The idea was, there would be a ceremony on a hillside in the Santa Cruz Mountains, looking out over a beautiful late-afternoon visage of Palo Alto and Hayward beyond. What we got instead was a ceremony under a pavilion on a hillside enshrouded in fog and mist; a romantic, mystical setting that resonated as a setting from a mediocre fantasy novel (or, perhaps, a celtic romance). It was beautiful to see the fog lingering in the trees, and the fall-leaf bedecked arch in front of the covered hillsides. For all that the wedding party needed umbrellas to keep the bridesmaids' hair from being destroyed during our entrances, the actual weather was far more entrancing and beautiful than what we had planned.

It did put a bit of a crimp in travel plans, though; all of the main routes up to Skyline were closed at various different points during the day.

Jared and I arrived at 11.30 (the wedding was at 2) and began preparing and setting up; the other groomsmen trickled in, followed (at a significant remove) by the bridesmaids. Somewhere around 1.30, the mistress of ceremonies (the behind-the-scenes force who was tasked with coordinating events on the day of the wedding, allowing the celebrants to focus on memorizing their vows and struggling to contain their excitement) reported that we'd lost a bridesmaid.

"How do you lose a bridesmaid?"

She's still getting her hair done.

Jared was officiating. We'd been practicing his speech for days, but he was still nervous, and kept forgetting his lines, which made him more nervous. So we hid in his car and recited them; I lost my set of keys in his car while doing this, leaving me on the edge of panic for the rest of the day. ("I lost the keys! In the grooms quarters! They aren't anywhere to be found! Jared will kill me!").

Eventually the missing bridesmaid showed up, with the news that the bride's mother was still at the hairdressers. Oops. "The wedding will now be starting ... um, later, we don't know when, would you mind mingling for a bit while we figure it out? You can go inside to warm up, we'll tell you when to come back out in the cold."

The guests were much more tolerant of this than I would have expected.

Eventually the ceremony got started. The wedding party processed in, followed by the bride; she was accompannied by the sounds of a guitar version of "Alegria", arranged and performed by the groom's mother (a fabulous woman I had met for the first time at the bridal shower in August. I like her a great deal, and look forward to encountering her in the future). The bride looked radiant; the weather and the delays didn't matter in the slightest. As a groomsman, I saw her face throughout the ceremony (this is an oddity in American wedding custom; the groomsmen get to watch the bride and the maids of honor, the groom), and she looked on the edge of tears the whole time.

Jared's speech went over well. He didn't match the exact text (nobody except me noticed, really), but his voice was filled with passion and fire and deep belief; he spoke from the depths of his soul with a poetry that few have ever seen before. Various members of the audience kept relaying - to him, to me, and to some of the other groomsmen - how blown away they were.

The vows were beautiful. Each celebrant wrote their own, and the passion behind them was touching. I cried. My friends whom I love were celebrating their love for each other, and it was exciting and beautiful to behold.

Picture-taking was, as always, interminable. (Can we eat yet? Please? No. OK, can you at least bring us some wine?)

The highlight of the reception was listening to the bridesmaids (all but one of whom are single) talking about the one eligible groomsman (oops) and the unusually cute-on-average waiters. (The bridesmaids arranged pictures with them. )

Dancing in a tuxedo turns out to be difficult. Especially when your shoes get wet whenever you go outside.

The evening had one last surprise which only some of us got to witness: [he_nameless] had arranged the arrival of his wedding present to [she_nameless]: a new BMW SUV which she had been drooling over for some time. (She was shocked. The astonished look on her face was priceless.)

All in all, a great - if exhausting - weekend. I was particularly happy for the time spent with the groom's family, most of whom I had never met before, and his best friend from high school (with whom he had lost contact four years ago); great people, all of them.

Since Dave informs me that Greg asks:

What greater thing is there for two human souls
than to feel that they are joined together to strengthen
each other in all labor, to minister to each other in all sorrow,
to share with each other in all gladness,
to be one with each other in the
silent unspoken memories?

Jared was the officiant at the wedding of two of my dearest friends this weekend; I was a groomsman. Details to follow when i'm not exhausted. In the meantime, here is his homily on marriage:

As I sat down and read over the script for this ceremony and who says what when, I asked myself 'what's so special about marriage?' People will fly around the world to attend a wedding. The wedding party will often buy and dress in clothing they're never going to wear again after the wedding. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears go into planning what might be described as a bit of public speaking with a big party to follow. So what is it that's so special about weddings and about marriage that people go to such great lengths to have them?

Maybe it would help to answer this question if we asked ourselves 'how will things be different for * and * after they say their two little words?' If we knew what would be different about their relationship then we'd know what exactly it was we came here to celebrate and to be a part of. Will * and * love each other more after this wedding? No; they are already deeply in love with each other and a few words aren't going to change how much in love they are. Will they be able to say or do certain things with each other that they aren't able to do now? No; they already have a very healthy, expressive, intense relationship on many different levels. Will they just revel in all of the different wedding presents that they are going to get out of having a wedding? Probably not, and even so we're not here to celebrate gift giving. So what will be different in their relationship; what changes after those two little words are spoken that wasn't there before?

In rereading the vows that * and * put into the script it hit me what was so special, so unique about getting married that people will do so much to plan a wedding and travel to be at others' weddings. When two people say 'I do' to one another they create a promise, a commitment to each other that wasn't there before. They tell each other in front of their friends and family and all of the people who are near and dear to their hearts that they will from this moment on bare their souls to another human being, that they are so devoted to another person that they are willing and eager to say 'I have no idea what's coming tomorrow or next week or next year, and even not knowing anything about what the future holds I know that more than anything else I want to be with you and share myself with you for every single moment of the rest of my life.' Marriage is the most selfless act that people are ever likely to undertake, saying to another person 'You come first above all other people, things, concerns, problems, desires, wishes, and so on. You come first. When I wake up in the morning, you come first; when my boss tells me that I have to work late tonight, you come first; when all is said and done about whatever, you come first.' Marriage is about strength, about two people creating an unbreakable bond of trust, of love, of beauty, of passion, of devotion and wanting to share that bond and that power with everyone they care about so that they make the world a better place for having come together. Marriage creates unity as two people create a single harmony, a single sound that resonates within them and fills them with joy, with hope, with certainty that there is another person in this world who truly feels and hears and sees what's inside them. Marriage is all of this and more, and what makes marriage so special that people will move heaven and earth to be at a wedding is that it is so rare these days or any day for people to be so selfless, to really show someone what it is that they are feeling, to be present and focused on goodness and happiness and joy and love... Weddings are so precious because they are times when something is created that is good, and pure, and so unique that that it doesn't happen anywhere else other than weddings.

Which brings us to today, to the here and now with * and * standing before all of us at their wedding. What they have come here to do today is create something undying and everlasting, to create in their relationship the beauty and truth and selflessness that is marriage. They have brought us all together so that they may share with us their spark, that 20,000 volts that will forever shoot through their spines when they are together, and to share with us the beginning of the rest of their lives as people so totally and utterly committed to one another that they will not allow anything stand in the way of their love and devotion. And so I again invite you to be an a part of * and * wedding by bearing witness to the creation of something new, something precious, something that will inexorably bind the two of them together, and in doing so forever enrich their lives.

It's somewhat well known that the army reservists are stretched thin, that their equipment sucks, that their morale is low, and that they get terrible healthcare.

The situation is getting worse. There are now reports that a reserve platoon in Iraq has refused an order to go on a convoy mission.

A whole unit refusing to go on a mission in a war zone would be a significant breach of military discipline.

This unit clearly has more problems than the average unit ... and yet the entire reserve system is on the precipice. Something needs to be done, quickly, by whomever wins the election. Fixing the reserve system deserves to be priority #1.

The Field Poll's most recent poll on the subject shows that 48% of likely voters have no opinion of Republican Senate candidate Bill Jones.

Clearly he's doing a bad job of campaigning; he's attracted the attention of fewer than half of the state's voters.

And yet it's not just the campaign's fault, and there's something peculiar in the numbers: how has a man who was elected to statewide office twice - and who once won an outright majority during a blanket primary - managed to leave no impression whatsoever on a slim majority of those whom the Field Poll thinks are likely to vote?

It's a stunning condemnation not just of his campaign's efforts on his behalf, but on the level of political awareness of the state as a whole. We voted for this guy *three times* and still don't know who he is.

Google began working on the program, code named ``Fluffy Bunny,'' about a year ago, Mayer said, in response to a familiar refrain: ``Why can't I search my computer as easily as I can search the Web?''

You can. It's called grep. It's easy to use, fast, and efficient. Programmers have known about it for decades. Now, you too can spread the word.

I want to set the stage for this discussion by asking the question that I think hangs over all of our politics today and is probably on the minds of many people watching this debate tonight. And that is, will our children and grandchildren ever live in a world as safe and secure as the world in which we grew up?

This question epitomizes all that is wrong with contemporary American politics. It was breathtaking in its chutzpah and grandeur, and both candidates gave answers that were fundamentally disappointing.

The fact is, we live ina world which is safer and more secure than the world in which President Bush, Senator Kerry, and Mr. Schaeffer grew up. The Soviet Union, especially in the 1950s, posed an existential threat to the United States; it was an entity which desired the elimination of its political opponents and had the capacity to achieve it. The political world of their childhood was an era punctuated by repeated crisis any one of which could have led to a war that would have changed the world, and which could very well have left us in the same ashes from which we were assisting Europe to rise.

Al-Qaeda and its allies do not pose an existential threat to the United States; they are an entity which desires the elimination of its political opponents and does not have the capacity to achieve it. That's why they choose terrorism as their weapon of choice; because they cannot defeat us on the battlefield, and they know it. They can kill many of us; they can harass us, and terrify us, and make us afraid to go out on the street at night - but they cannot defeat us, and they cannot, as a result, destroy us.

The entire notion that "the terrorists" are more threatening than the spectre of worldwide communist revolution was is absurd, and the fact that it persists in the public imagination is bizarre.

[Mikhail] Khodorkovsky's biggest acquisition, however, came when he managed to gain control of Yukos. This was a by-product of what was called "loans for shares". Because very few Russians were paying taxes, the Yeltsin government was having a difficult time paying its bills. To help out, Russia's banks - including Khodorkovsky's Menatep - offered to lend the government the money it needed. As collateral for such loans, the banks asked the government to provide them with shares of stock in companies that had not yet been privatized. This included several of the most productive petroleum companies, including Yukos. The agreement was that once the taxes were collected, and the loans repaid, the collateral would be returned to the state. Since few of the oligarchs, Khodorkovsky among them, were paying their fare share of taxes, everyone understood that there was a good chance the state would not be able to repay the loans. Not to worry; should the loans remain unpaid, the loans-for-shares agreement then specified that the banks would auction off their collateral. Presumably this would fetch a high enough price to provide the state with funds not only to repay the loans but to fund other expenditures.

What happened of course was that the auctions run by the banks were rigged. In almost every instance, competitors were prevented from bidding so that the winner was in fact a cover for the bank that conducted the auction. In this way, Khodorkovsky was able to pay a mere $300 million for control of Yukos, a company that a few months later had a market value of between $3 billion and $5 billion. Similarly, the buyers of Sibneft, another oil company, paid only $100 million for stock worth between $1 billion and $2 billion.

It was disturbing enoufh for the public when it began to learn of how these one-time state properties were acquired by Khodorkovsky and a dozen or so others, but at the same time the Russian economy was all but disintegrating. Between 1990 and 1998, Russia's GDP shrank by 40 to 50 percent.

No wonder the government of Vladimir Putin, which has thrown Khodorkovsky in jail and appears to be trying to break the political and economic power of the oligarchs (with negative repurcussions rippling through the international oil market) is enormously popular despite his anti-democratic instincts (shown by actions such as mandating that previously elected state governors should be appointed by him): the Russian economy is dominated by thieves and swindlers that make the storied American businesscrooks of the Gilded Age seem pathetic by comparison.

A small majority of voters appears to want to replace George Bush in the White House, judging him to be too conservative, too stubborn, and too eager to get the nation involved in dangerous foreign conflicts. At the same time, a small though different majority of voters seems resistant to selecting John Kerry, regarding him as too lacking in leadership (the "flip-flop" image), too liberal, and too unlikable personally.

Exactly right; that's a perfect summary of where the electorate is today. Which is why, at this juncture, it really could go either way.

Although I still believe it was an unfortunate word choice because it gave powerful ammunition to the other side, Rivka has put up a compelling argument that the standard interpretation of Kerry's 'global test' is wrong.

The latest Field Poll reports on the state of support for the various health-care related iniatives, and why people are and aren't supporting them.

One of the least surprising bits of information, though, is this: people who have no health insurance or are afraid of losing it overwhelmingly support Proposition 72 (the referendum on a law, passed in 2003, which would require small businesses to provide health insurance to their employees), while people who aren't worried at all about losing their health insurance oppose it.

That was predictable.

Jared and I spent the weekend in Santa Cruz helping a friend adjust to her temporary post-ankle-operation incapacities, so I didn't get to see Friday night's debate until last night, when we ran it as a preface to Black + White Movie Night.

Bush did substantially better in this debate. He appeared more focused and less petulant, and he managed to carry off defending himself without appearing defensive. His sparring was more on target. And yet, Kerry still got the better end of things; he defended himself well, shifted the topic quickly when he needed to, and was generally just a bit better at deflecting than Bush was.

And Bush went a long way to reinforce my single biggest criticism of his administration: that it, institutionally, lacks the capacity for self-reflection necessary to identify and correct mistakes.

GRABEL: President Bush, during the last four years, you have made thousands of decisions that have affected millions of lives. Please give three instances in which you came to realize you had made a wrong decision, and what you did to correct it. Thank you.

BUSH: I have made a lot of decisions, and some of them little, like appointments to boards you never heard of, and some of them big.

And in a war, there's a lot of -- there's a lot of tactical decisions that historians will look back and say: He shouldn't have done that. He shouldn't have made that decision. And I'll take responsibility for them. I'm human.

But on the big questions, about whether or not we should have gone into Afghanistan, the big question about whether we should have removed somebody in Iraq, I'll stand by those decisions, because I think they're right.

That's really what you're -- when they ask about the mistakes, that's what they're talking about. They're trying to say, "Did you make a mistake going into Iraq?" And the answer is, "Absolutely not." It was the right decision.

The Duelfer report confirmed that decision today, because what Saddam Hussein was doing was trying to get rid of sanctions so he could reconstitute a weapons program. And the biggest threat facing America is terrorists with weapons of mass destruction.

We knew he hated us. We knew he'd been -- invaded other countries. We knew he tortured his own people.

On the tax cut, it's a big decision. I did the right decision. Our recession was one of the shallowest in modern history.

Now, you asked what mistakes. I made some mistakes in appointing people, but I'm not going to name them. I don't want to hurt their feelings on national TV.

No, Mr. President, that's not what we're talking about when we ask about mistakes. What we're talking about is this: if you can't look at your behavior and determine when and where you did something wrong, you can't fix it. If you are unable to identify three mistakes you've made in three and a half years, you cannot be trusted to adjust your policies when they're not working correctly.

That's what we're talking about, and you failed to reassure us.

The debate in general was unusually hostile; the vitriol, and the dark tenor of the accusations directed at one another, seemed much more palpable than in 1992, 1996, or 2000; I got a strong sense that these two men despise one another and were pretending not to for the camera.

The highlights, in my mind:

I can see why people at your workplace think he changes positions a lot, because he does. He said he voted for the $87 billion, and voted against it right before he voted for it. And that sends a confusing signal to people.

Perfect. Exactly the way to seed that meme: anyone capable of the complexities of being a legislature, where you have to support things you hate that are linked with things you want - or torpedo things you want that are linked with things you hate - is incapable of being President because such complexities are "confusing".

And the unique threat was that he could give weapons of mass destruction to an organization like Al Qaida, and the harm they inflicted on us with airplanes would be multiplied greatly by weapons of mass destruction. And that was the serious, serious threat.

That's unique? What about Pakistan?

Senator Richard Lugar, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said that the handling of the reconstruction aid in Iraq by this administration has been incompetent. Those are the Republican chairman's words.

Senator Hagel of Nebraska said that the handling of Iraq is beyond pitiful, beyond embarrassing; it's in the zone of dangerous.

It's great that Senators remain independant and thoughtful in a way that seems to be out of the ordinary in the House.

He said he was optimistic when he came here, then he turned on the TV and listened to the political rhetoric and all of a sudden he was pessimistic.

You see, if you just don't listen to the evidence, there's nothing to be worried about.

General Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, told him he was going to need several hundred thousand. And guess what? They retired General Shinseki for telling him that.

Nice. It's pretty hard to counter this one.

That answer almost made me want to scowl.

Wow. Bush actually has a sense of humor about himself. That's the first time in his five or so years of being on my radar that i've noticed that. I'm stunned.

I'm going to run a foreign policy that actually does what President Reagan did, President Eisenhower did, and others.

We're going to build alliances.

Reagan built alliances?

HORSTMAN: Mr. President, why did you block the reimportation of safer and inexpensive drugs from Canada which would have cut 40 to 60 percent off of the cost?

BUSH: I haven't yet. Just want to make sure they're safe. When a drug comes in from Canada, I want to make sure it cures you and doesn't kill you.

Yes, because we all know that Canada's quality control is pathetic and that they're a third-world country whose industrial and medical processes can't be trusted.

The Clear Skies bill that he just talked about, it's one of those Orwellian names you pull out of the sky, slap it onto something, like "No Child Left Behind" but you leave millions of children behind. Here they're leaving the skies and the environment behind.

How about we pass a general-case "Truth in Legislative Naming" act?

You can't stop all outsourcing, Charlie. I've never promised that. I'm not going to, because that would be pandering.

Beautiful work, defusing the allegation that he's a panderer.

I met a man who spent eight months in prison, wasn't even allowed to call his lawyer, wasn't allowed to get -- finally, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois intervened and was able to get him out.

This is in our country, folks, the United States of America.

Welcome to the Brave New World. Do we want to be paying this price for our illusion of security?

Chris Reeve is a friend of mine. Chris Reeve exercises every single day to keep those muscles alive for the day when he believes he can walk again, and I want him to walk again.

It isn't Senator Kerry's fault, but it was quite ... surreal ... hearing this yesterday.

I wouldn't pick a judge who said that the Pledge of Allegiance couldn't be said in a school because it had the words "under God" in it. I think that's an example of a judge allowing personal opinion to enter into the decision-making process as opposed to a strict interpretation of the Constitution.

Another example would be the Dred Scott case, which is where judges, years ago, said that the Constitution allowed slavery because of personal property rights.

Dred Scott is becoming a potent political issue, again: many pro-life activists equate it with Roe.

Secondly, with respect to parental notification, I'm not going to require a 16-or 17-year-old kid who's been raped by her father and who's pregnant to have to notify her father. So you got to have a judicial intervention. And because they didn't have a judicial intervention where she could go somewhere and get help, I voted against it. It's never quite as simple as the president wants you to believe.

Awesome; that's the best summary I've ever heard a politician give of the liberal take on this issue. And, better yet, it helps cast the complexity vs. simplicity argument in a way that truly highlights the differences between the candidates, and which shows why Kerry would be preferable to Bush: he'll think about the complexities and take all of the factors into account, while Bush won't.

The SCOTUS Blog informs me that one of the cases being heard today

presents the question whether driving under the influence of alcohol, and thereby causing serious bodily injury, is a “crime of violence,” as defined by 18 U.S.C. 16, for which an alien may be deported.

This strikes me as being an uncommonly silly argument; normal everyday use of the phrase "crime of violence" would not be understood to encompass killing somebody in a car crash. This is yet another example of the Bush administration twisting the clear intent of the legislature, and it deserves to be laughed out of court.

The opponents of Proposition 60A¹ believe that it is extraordinarily important that everyone understand one simple fact about the measure:

Proposition 60A doesn't force the sale of surplus property -- it only directs that the money raised IF surplus property is sold be used to pay off bond debts.

This strikes me as being a peculiar objection: "Vote against Proposition [x] because it does [a], not [b]." [b] may or may not be a good thing, but if [a] doesn't actually prevent [b] or make [b] appreciably harder, who cares?

Politics is a funny business.

Proposition 60A would require the state, if it sells surplus property, to devote the money from that sale to paying off the economic recovery bonds authorized in the last election. It is retroactive in that "any proceeds from the previous sale of surplus state property that have not been expended or encumbered" must also be devoted to the same purpose. It places this requirement in the state constitution.

As such, the initiative requires that voters consider two seperate questions: is the use of such revenue to pay off these particular bonds a good policy, and does that policy decision belong in the state Constitution?

The useless-as-usual arguements for and against the measure in the ballot handbook entirely ignore the second half of this question, and the arguments against entirely ignore the first half (choosing instead to focus on what the initiative doesn't do, and not bothering to make the case that half a loaf is worse than none). But that part of the question is, to my mind, the more interesting part.

Why does stuff like this belong in the state Constitution?

It may or may not be a good policy decision; I think the measure's supporters have a good case. The Legislative Analyst thinks that the measure would reduce the amount of interest paid on the deficit bonds by tens of millions of dollars (depending, of course, on how much property the state sells), and additionally believes that the impact on the General Fund will be limited. On the other hand, it may well be that particular programs more directly tied to the proprety being sold should benefit from the sale.

And yet - either way - it doesn't belong in the Constitution. Writing it into the Constitution is problematic both as a practical matter and as a symbolic one. Practically, it continues the trend of paralyzing the state government and depriving the legislature of options - it deprives the government of the flexibility to change its mind if - for example - the legislature decides that it's more important to use this money to help rebuild after a serious earthquake; it locks in today's spending preferences and makes it more difficult for the state to change that preference at a later date. Symbolically, it claims that this notion - that surplus state property sales should be used to pay off bonds² - is one of the pre-eminent principles governing the state of California.

Budgetary policy preferences should only in rare cases be enforced by iniative, and should not be written into the Constitution; whether this is a good policy practice or not, it's a bad idea for an iniative, and it deserves to go down in defeat.

¹Why the strange numbering? Proposition 60A was originally combined with Proposition 60 into one initiative, but the California Supreme Court ruled that the combination violated the state constitution's rule that initiatives must address a single subject only (The combined initiative had addressed both primaries and the sale of surplus state property, two subjects which aren't really related at all).

²And not just any bonds, either, but these specific bonds which are otherwise not mentioned in the constitution at all.

UPDATE: In comments, Wade asks what happens once the Economic Recovery Bonds are paid off. It's a good question, worthy of an answer:

Once the principal and interest on those bonds are fully paid, the proceeds from the sale of surplus state property shall be deposited into the Special Fund for Economic Uncertainties, or any successor fund.

Via Dave I encountered an incredibly disturbing story about absentee ballots in Michigan.

First, I find it disturbing that the actual ballots have 'vote straight party ticket' options, but that may just be my California-independant political streak showing.

The real kicker is the presidential portion of the ballot. The entire ballot is scanned at the link above, but Dave has kindly truncated it to just the Presidential section:

Please tell me that all of the votes mailed in on this ballot get invalidated, and that the voters are notified of alternate voting options immediately.

The people have the right of access to information concerning the conduct of he people's buisness, and, therefore, the meetings of public bodies and the writings of public officials and agencies shall be open to public scrutiny.

That's the heart and core of Proposition 59, and it's a sentiment with which few citizens of a modern democratic republic would disagree¹. Indeed, the argument against the measure published in the 2004 voter information pamphlet doesn't disagree with it:

This measure does not go far enough in guaranteeing the people access to information and documents possessed by state and local government agencies.

On the surface, this objection, coming from one Gary Wesley,a well-known Mountain View gadfly, is bizarre²: surely it's better to enshrine this principle in the state Constitution, even if the implementation doesn't go far enough, than it is to leave the issue entirely out of the Constitution. After all, in a democracy, the right of the people to know what their government is doing in their name is of critical importance; absent that right, democracy cannot easily function at all.

And yet, a closer inspection of the measure suggests that something strange is going on. After all, the measure does also specify:

Nothing in this subdivision supersedes or modifies any provision of this Constitution

and

This sundivision does not repeal or nullify, expressly or by impliation, any constitutional or statutory exception to the right of access to public records or meetings of public bodies that is in effect on the effective date of this subdivision.

So this measure guarantees the right of access to public information but doesn't actually increase access to public information that isn't currently accessible?

It's completely unclear to me what this constitutional amendment is actually supposed to do.

The legislative analyst seems to think it's about providing guidance for the courts to interpret existing statutes:

[Proposition 59] does, however, create a constitutional right for the public to access government information. As a result, a government entity would have to demonstrate to a somewhat greater extent than under current law why information requested ny the public should be kept private.

Which is quite clearly articulated in the law itself:

A statute, court rule, or other authority, including those in effect on the effective date of this subdivision, shall be broadly construed if it further's the people's right of access, and narrowly construed if it limits the right of access.

That's a good idea, and is in and of itself sufficient reason to vote for the amendment. At the same time, I don't understand why the inserting into the constitution original declaration - the first quote in this post - is not sufficient to achieve the goal; and, while Mr. Wesley shows every sign of being a crank, and his argument does not constitute a reason to vote against the measure, I am sympathetic to his general complaint.

¹It does seem to make it impossible for any public official to keep a private diary, be he a school board member or a Senator; and it could conceivably be interpreted to mean that someone who is both a public official and an author - along the lines of, say, Paul Simon, has no exclusive copyright on his written works. But these are implementation details which, while potentially implied by the principle, may be ameliorated by the implementation.

²His rebuttal to the argument in favor is even more bizarre, featuring the off-topic rant that "Moreover, anyone who blindly trusts a computer program to count votes (without any "paper trail" for potential verification) is foolish." A sentiment with which I agree, but which is silent on the wisdom of the proposition at hand.

About two weeks ago, Jared was horrified to discover that neither I nor our friend Erik had ever seen most of the "classic" black-and-white movies, our tastes instead running to cheesy B-grade 50s sci-fi flicks. He insisted that we had to do something about this, and so we started a weekly black-and-white-serious-movie night, inaugurated last Monday with The Maltese Falcon.

Why does this have the reputation of being one of the best movies ever made? I can see its value as an example of good directing and cinematography, and of innovative filming ... but the story doesn't make any sense, the characters aren't believable, and the denouement is disappointing.

Perhaps its significance comes by way of comparison with the great movies of the 30s; perhaps it represented a stark contrast and an exciting new method of filmmaking. Perhaps. But isolated from its historical context, it seems, at best, a pale reflection of what its reputation claims for it.

Much better was this week's entry, Casablanca. The story was a bit predictable, but it held up well in spite of that, and the acting was superb (although Peter Lorre did seem to be playing the same character he had played in Maltese Falcon); it was particularly interesting to see an American take on the war, during the war. (I wonder if it was controversial at the time because of that?) . I remain unconvined that it's the best movie ever made, or that Humphrey Bogart was the actor to end all actors; but these claims are at least being made about a good movie this time.

Next week's entry is The List of Adrien Messenger, which Jared assures me is the best black and white movie ever.

UPDATE:Jared wishes to add the following note:

I don't think that I ever said that LoAM was the "best" movie ever; just really really really really cool and amazing and wonderful. :-)

I tried to add that comment to your blog and got a yucky error message in non-English. *grumble*

Today's San Francisco Chronicle has a strange report about how the US Air Force is apparently researching the possibility of antimatter weapons. The report fails to add much in the way of substantiation and notes that the research is unlikely to go anywhere soon:

Another problem is the terribly unruly behavior of positrons whenever physicists try to corral them into a special container. Inside these containers, known as Penning traps, magnetic fields prevent the antiparticles from contacting the material wall of the container -- lest they annihilate on contact. Unfortunately, because like-charged particles repel each other, the positrons push each other apart and quickly squirt out of the trap.

It's not entirely clear what's going on here - whether there is such a research program which the Chronicle is blowing out of proportion, or whether there are rumours of such a program which the Chronicle is passing along, or if there is such a program which the Chronicle is doing a poor job¹ of documenting.

It doesn't surprise me that such research might be going on, and I suspect that it's going nowhere fast; this is an example of the hardware and research guys trying to chase down theoretical possibilities which are so far impractical. As long as it remains impractical, it's harmless; a waste of money, perhaps, but perhaps not, if it keeps these researchers busy with something harmless.

And yet, the irony is, once it becomes practical, there's a problem: do we really want to be inventing this kind of weapon? What's the military case for its use? Especially when you consider that modern warfare isn't about large-scale conquest or pitched strategic battles; it is about small-scale tactical fighting with insurrectionary guerrilla forces. Who, and what, are we going to use this kind of weaponry against, and how will it help us control populations (which is the really difficult aspect of modern geopolitics?)

Harmless now, pointless later, is how this measures up in my mind.

¹Consider such reportage as "When large numbers of positrons and antielectrons collide, the primary product is an invisible but extremely dangerous burst of gamma radiation."

"It's like waiting for a parade that's late," said Ms. Horton, who was running a hot dog stand on the mountain, selling mostly to reporters who were among the dozens camped out at the lookout point. "It's like waiting for a baby."

(From a report on the crowds waiting for Mt. St. Helens to erupt).

As some of you know, I recently started a new job, as a contract test engineer for [redacted]¹. It's fairly boring work - I'm currently running performance testing on software that runs on 5-machine systems - but it pays well, and it seems likely to have interesting points from time to time.

The corporate headquarters is a 10-story building in the Foster City swamp, which made this week's earthquake in Parkfield interesting (yeah, we could feel it). My cubicle fronts on to a window from which I can see the city skyline in the distance, airplanes floating in for a landing, and - on a clear day, which today isn't - the bay bridge. Candlestick Point and San Bruno Mountain loom large, and I can see the radio towers on the hill behind UCSF. (At least I could before the fog rolled in).

The contract should last 3-6 months with some possibility of going permanent, although I'm unsure I want that.

¹The company in question is extremely paranoid about security, with internal checks going from point to point on the same floor; I need my badge to go to the bathroom. As such, publically announcing their identity would be poor form, at best.

Despite the gradual introduction of cheaper writing material (paper instead of parchment) and of a more compact 'miniscule' scropt, books remained scarce and beyond the reach of all but the richest readers; a manuscript of 400 leaves could cost half the annual salary of a high-ranking civil servant.

Emphasis added, from The Oxford History of Medieval Europe, on the cost of reading in Byzantium during late antiquity.

Jared and I watched the debate last night, on a bit of a tape delay, ripped off of C-SPAN. C-SPAN had a split screen, allowing us to see both President Bush and Senator Kerry throughout. The camera people worked hard to ensure that their heads appeared at the same level in the split screen, leading to a closer-up view of Bush than was available for Kerry.

Bush appeared defensive almost throughout. Kerry did a fantastic job of making the debate about Bush's current foreign policy and what is wrong with it, and of explaining the nuances of his "this was the wrong war but now that we're there we've got to win it" position. Bush appeared visibly uncomfortable and annoyed at the attacks, and he allowed himself to get flustered several times.

Tactically, what Kerry needed from this dbate was to shore up his base and to neutralize - for independants - the concern that he is going to walk away from Iraq. He succeeded in both, and came out of the debate a clear winner. He appeared decisive and in command of the facts, while Bush appeared confused and defensive.

Bush's biggest failure was his repetition: even after Kerry had successfully explained his position, Bush kept harping on "the wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place" and "mixed messages" until it seemed like he was a one-track record.

Kerry was particularly successful at framing the debate: not only did he make it about Bush - putting Bush on the defensive and neutralizing the concerns about Kerry - but he effectively presented the case that the war was wrong and yet we no have to sustain the course, a case that I didn't think he could effectively present (because nobody had before last night). It was an amazingly good job.

The most memorable quotes in the debate, for me:

The President just said the FBI had changed its culture. We just read on the front pages of America's papers that there are over 100,000 hours of tapes, unlistened to. On one of those tapes may be the enemy being right the next time.

We just don't have enough Arabic speakers. Is anyone doing anything about this?

You know, the president's father did not go into Iraq, into Baghdad, beyond Basra. And the reason he didn't is, he said -- he wrote in his book -- because there was no viable exit strategy. And he said our troops would be occupiers in a bitterly hostile land.
That's exactly where we find ourselves today.

The President's own father correctly predicted disaster; why didn't he listen?

Well, you know, when I talked about the $87 billion, I made a mistake in how I talk about the war. But the president made a mistake in invading Iraq. Which is worse?

*giggle*

My opponent says we didn't have any allies in this war. What's he say to Tony Blair? What's he say to Alexander Kwasniewski of Poland? You can't expect to build an alliance when you denigrate the contributions of those who are serving side by side with American troops in Iraq.

He's got a point: you don't attract new allies by denigrating the ones you have.

You know, every life is precious. Every life matters. You know, my hardest -- the hardest part of the job is to know that I committed the troops in harm's way and then do the best I can to provide comfort for the loved ones who lost a son or a daughter or a husband or wife.

(Bush was visibly holding back tears during this part of the debate - ironically enough, that's to his benefit (a sure sign of how our culture has changed since 1972).

Saddam Hussein didn't attack us. Osama bin Laden attacked us. Al Qaida attacked us. And when we had Osama bin Laden cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora, 1,000 of his cohorts with him in those mountains. With the American military forces nearby and in the field, we didn't use the best trained troops in the world to go kill the world's number one criminal and terrorist.

They outsourced the job to Afghan warlords.

Ouch. Not only does this introduce a resounding campaign refrain, but it links two disperate issues - outsourcing and Bush's foreign policy - in a way that reinforces and strengthens both of them. Incredibly well done.

First of all, of course I know Osama bin Laden attacked us. I know that.

Double-ouch.

The President is trying to convince us that he knows who attacked us.

This is the sort of thing that shouldn't even be in question, and the fact that it was was the strongest, most clear sign that BUsh was losing the debate.

I mean, we can remember when President Kennedy in the Cuban missile crisis sent his secretary of state to Paris to meet with DeGaulle. And in the middle of the discussion, to tell them about the missiles in Cuba, he said, "Here, let me show you the photos." And DeGaulle waved them off and said, "No, no, no, no. The word of the president of the United States is good enough for me."

How many leaders in the world today would respond to us, as a result of what we've done, in that way?

That's the true cost of our current disdain for international consensus and our bearing and demeanor on the international scene, and it's great to see it crystallized this clearly.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean, "passes the global test," you take preemptive action if you pass a global test.

My attitude is you take preemptive action in order to protect the American people, that you act in order to make this country secure.

Good response, probably Bush's finest moment of the night. Kerry fucked up royally by saying what he said, and even his follow-up (see the de Gaulle quote, above) didn't completely mitigate it; and unlike other times, when Bush seemed flustered and confused, he took this and ran with it. We'll see how much mileage he can get (compared with how much mileage Kerry will get with his outsourcing line).

The voters of the City of San Mateo will be voting on a ballot initiative - Measure P - whose ballot heading reads

Shall an ordinance be adopted to amend the City of San Mateo's General Plan to maintain policies on building heights, residential densities, commercial and office square footage, and affordable housing originally adopted by city voters in 1991, subject to certain specified revisions?

The text of the ordinance, which would specify the revisions in question, is not included in the sample ballot; only the ballot heading, the analysis by the City Attorney, and an argument in favor are. Attached to the City Attorney's analysis is a set of directions for how to obtain a copy of the text from the City.

This is evidently legal. California Elections Code Section 9280, which deals with municipal ballot measures, specifies in part that

In the event the entire text of the measure is not printed on the ballot, nor in the voter information portion of the sample ballot, there shall be printed immediately below the impartial analysis, in no less than 10-point bold type, a legend substantiallya s follows:
"The above statement is an impartial analysis of Ordinance or Measure ___. If you desire a copy of the ordinance or measure, please call the elections official's office at (insert telephone number) and a copy will be mailed at no cost to you."

A similar section applies to ballot measures introduced at a county level. Yet, at the state level, it wouldn't be:

9084. The ballot pamphlet shall contain all of the following:
(a) A complete copy of each state measure.
(b) ...

It's probably a historical leftover of some sort, but I find it peculiar that state law requires that voters be given complete copies of every statewide ballot initiative and not copies of every city or county ballot initiative. This is inconsistent at best, and the rules should be harmonized. In particular, it's absurd that cities and counties don't have to provide copies of the text to all of their voters; adding the extra step of requiring people to call the city or county and ask for the text will significantly reduce the number of people who bother reading it, and will encourage people to vote blindly.

And yet it wouldn't matter if city and county elected officials, who have the authority to direct that the entire text be provided, had more dedication to democratic principles. In the case of Measure P, the San Mateo City Council explicitly directed that the full text not be made available via the sample ballot (see City Council Resolution #68 (2004)).

The County Clerk is requested to conduct the election. Pursuant to the Elections Code, the voting methods to be employed at all precincts established for the conduct of this election shall be voted in the manner specified and the canvass of ballots be made by the County Clerk of San Mateo as request by this Council, and pursuant to the provisions of the Elections Code relating to the conduct of municipal elections, the use of voting methods and other applicable sections. Sample ballots shall be in the form provided by, and shall be mailed pursuant to the applicable provisions of the Elections Code. The agreement attached hereto as Exhibit B is approved. The voter pamphlet shall inform voters that a full copy of the proposed ordinance is available upon request at the City Clerk's Office. The full ordinance shall not be published in the voter's pamphlet.

This is a clear example of the City Council choosing to do something which is legal but which they nevertheless should not do. I find it hard to imagine that their reasons for doing so - which I suspect are an aversion to the expense involved in paying for a copy of the measure to be sent to every voter - are worth the cost of making the election a farce.

I understand that not everyone reads the fine print, but it's really disturbing to me when the putative authors of it appear not to have read it.

I'm in a conversation with [staffing agency name redacted] about starting a two-month contract providing programming and debugging services to [company name redacted]. My conversations with their client have indicated that they consider themselves to have an enormously complex code base, and that they believe that contractors don't offer much value unless they're willing to be converted into permanent employees.

So far so good. I'm potentially ok with that, if I like the company and the work.

I was quite surprised, then, when the contract agreement the staffing agency wants me to sign said this:

5. COVENANTS. While providing services for the Project and for a period of one (1) year after, regardless of the reason for seperation of employment, Employee shall not directly or indirectly:

• (a) apply for or accept a position of employment with, or perform any work or consulting services for, the client whom Employee provided services to on the Project; and/or
• (b) induce or attempt to induch any employee of or consultant to [redacted] to discontinue such person's association with [redacted].

I'm sure this is just standard biolerplate. The intent is clear: I can't use my position with this company to lure its other associates away, nor can I use it to gain an in with a client of theirs for my own purposes. And yet ... if their client wants to be able to hire me full time and tells me so in my first interview with them, perhaps -- just perhaps -- this clause shouldn't be there. (Or, at least, subparagraph (a) shouldn't be there. I have no objection to the second half of the clause).

As it is, though, i'm not going to sign it; i'm waiting on further instructions at this time.

Friday's St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports on a controversial decision by Missouri's Secretary of State: the state of Missouri will be allowing soldiers stationed overseas to cast ballots via e-mail. Their absentee ballots will be scanned and converted to PDF files, which will be emailed to the Defense Department, printed out, and then faxed to Missouri.

I'm in favor of helping soldiers vote; this is a democracy, everyone should be able to vote. Yet I'm deeply skeptical of this proposal, for two reasons:

• The plan depends on e-mailed ballots being printed out and faxed by the Defense Department but does not provide any safeguards against soldiers being sanctioned for how they have voted;
• The transmission method is inherently technically insecure

It's a firmly established doctrine, at least in the United States, that an employer should not have the ability to sanction his employees for their voting behavior. (Back in the nineteenth century, of course, they could; but the reforms of the progressive era put a stop to that). It would be bad enough if WalMart could control the votes of their employees; but it's highly disturbing to see someone creating a plan which could allow the Pentagon to control the votes of its employees. Democracies have been historically prone to being upended by powerful militaries; creating a system which allows officers to see, and sanction, voting behavior by enlisted men would grant the military bureacracy too much political power.

It's true that there is no plan in place to sanction soldiers for their votes; but the plan being adopted does not include safeguards against that - and this is precisely the type of political power which, if available, will be abused, sooner or later.

This flaw in the plan could be ameliorated, of course, by having the soldiers email their ballots directly to some agency of the State of Missouri, rather than to the Pentagon. I hope that the State of Missouri considers adopting such a procedure.

Doing so, however, would not solve the other problem with the proposal: email is an insecure method of transferring a vote. The official in the news report is quoted as saying that, because it's a scan of the ballot, the signature can be verified; but there's absolutely no reason that the packets containing the scanned image could not be intercepted, and the image changed so that the *votes* are different but the signature is the same. Intercepting the packets is trivial; changing the image is more difficult, but wouldn't tax the skills of the average professional web designer.

This is a terrible idea. A better idea would be to allow the votes to be cast via e-mail provisionally, under a scheme in which the e-mail must be received by the date of the election and the actual physical ballot must be sent seperately and received no later than the date of the final canvass of votes. This would allow the actual ballot to be compared against the e-mailed ballot while, at the same time, providing soldiers with a way to cast a ballot on election day rather than two weeks beforehand.

Republicans recognize that our progress in the War on Terror has been achieved with the help of other responsible nations.

That's a nice way of suggesting that those nations which haven't helped in the war on terror aren't responsible. The thinly veiled gratuitous political insult has been highly honed here.

We also question the credibility of our opponents, who claim to support global alliances while nominating a candidate who has insulted our allies by calling the nations fighting in Iraq "window-dressing" and referring to them as a "coalition of the coerced and the bribed."

They've got a point. Kerry should drop this rhetoric as being patently offensive to Spain, Britain, Poland, and other countries who supported us.

Directing ugly rhetoric at America's allies in a time of war is irresponsible.

And suggesting that those allies (France and Germany, to name two) who haven't helped in Iraq are irresponsible isn't?

And here it is again:

The United States is working with responsible governments and international institutions to convince the leaders of North Kroea and Iran that their nuclear weapons ambitions are deeply contrary to their own interests.

The governments that aren't with us against Iran aren't responsible?

Today, we are filled with hope for the most dramatic advance of liberty in 60 years.

The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism doesn't qualify?

Is this really the Republican platform? I guess the Cold War really is over - and its victims forgotten.

UPDATE: Sixty years ago is 1944, right?

Today, Afghanistan is a world away from the nightmare of the Taliban> Twenty-eight million people are free. That country has a good and just president. Boys and girls are being educated. Women are respected.

If Afghanistan is defined as Qabul, maybe.

Iraq, which once had the worst government in the Middle East, is now becoming an example of reform to the region.

That's a bit premature. Come back in six months and let me know how it's going.

Yet the Afghan people can known that their country will never be abandoned to terrorists and killers.

Like it was after the Soviets left? (Yeah, I know, that's a cheap shot; this administration isn't responsible for the sins of the previous Bush administration - except for those who were in the previous Bush administration).

We also know that Iraqi sovereignty is a tribute to the will of the Iraqi people and the courage of Iraqi leaders.

What does that mean? I sorta know what the intent of the clause is, but the words don't seem to carry that intent at all.

We will not allow the world's most dangerous regimes to possess the world's most dangerous weapons.

Except Pakistan.

Republicans have always been the party of fresh ideas and new thinking

Except during the period 1920-1964. But, then again, the modern Republican party doesn't want to remember those years: years when conservatism was defeated by its own hubris and forced to cower in the corners while a dynamic liberalism dominated the national scene.

This platform makes clear that the American people will have a choice on November 2nd.
A choice between strength and uncertainty.
A choice between results and rhetoric.
A choice between optimism and pessimism.
A choice between opportunity and dependency.
A choice between freedom and fear.
And a choice between moving forward and turning back.

If that's true, i'm perplexed. I can't tell which of Bush and Kerry represents strength and which represents uncertainty. I don't see any evidence that either of them represents results. Kerry's supporters may be unduly pessimistic, but Bush's administration is unduly optimistic, and I reject both. And the Republican activists seem to be the ones that want me to be afraid.

"When the President came to office, our economy was faltering, seniors were having trouble paying for their prescription drugs, and schools were stuck in a pattern of low expectations and poor results."

The first is arguably still true, the last is definitely still true, and the second has changed somewhat: now seniors are having trouble figuring out how to pay for their prescription drugs.

One hundred and fifty years ago, Americans who had gathered to protest the expansion of slavery gave birth to a political Party that would save the Union ...

That's a rather odd telling of the tale, since it was the election of a President from that party which precipitated secession. Sure, he went on to resolve the crisis; but, at the same time, he was the flash point which instigated it.

I'm not a great fan of Francis Fukuyama - I thought the entire end of history think was absurd - but it's nice to see him disagreeing with Charles Krauthammer:

Reading Krauthammer, one gets the impression that the Iraq War - the archetypical application of American unipolarity - had been an unqualified success, with all of the assumptions and expectations on which the war had been based fully vindicated. There is not the slightest not towards the new empirical facts that have emerged in the last year or so: the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the virulent and steadily mounting anti-Americanism throughout the Middle East, the growing insurgency in Iraq, the fact that no strong democratic leaership had emerged there, the enormous financial and growing human cost of the war, the failure to leverage the war to make progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front, and the fact that America's fellow democratic allies had by and large failed to fall in line and legitimate American actions ex post.

Mr. Fukuyama proceeds to argue for a new vision of neoconservative foreign policy, which I may come back to in another post; his disparagement of Mr. Krauthammer serves merely as an introduction. But it's worthy of note in its own right; Mr. Krauthammer's oversimplified jingoism is one of the most pernicious influences on the foreign policy debate today.

And then I recieved the following peculiar auto-reply to a resume submission:

I will be out of the office starting 11/25/2003 and will not return until 01/01/2010.

Thank you for your interest in [redacted].

We will consider your background and experience against our current openings. If there is a match, you will be contacted within four weeks. If there is no current match, you will not be contacted; however, we will keep your resume on file for consideration against future openings.

Once again, we appreciate your consideration of [redacted] as a potential employer.

That's a might long vacation.

There's a peculiar report in the New York Times to the extent that the US Olympic Committee has requested the Bush administration to abandon one of its ads. The ad features a narrator saying

Freedom is spreading throughout the world like a sunrise. And this Olympics, there will be two more free nations and two fewer terrorist regimes.

The US Olympic Committee insists that this violates US trademark law¹, which they say grants them the exclusive right to the word 'olympics'.

I have no idea if their claim is correct, and if the law does any such thing. But, even if it does, their claim is ridiculous. Stating a fact about the olympics - "there are [n] countries in the Olympics" - is clearly not a violation; neither is stating a politically slanted fact - "there are [n] fewer communist countries in the Olympics". The position of the USOC, if it is accurately reported, is tantamount to saying that nobody except them should be allowed to talk about the olympics in any way.

It was ridiculous when the beef industry tried it against Oprah; it's ridiculous now. Trademark protection is reasonable to an extent - but when trademark holders attempt to stifle discussion of their products, or discussion of public events, the right of the people to speak freely should trump their concerns.

¹The article says that the USOC alleges a copyright violation, but its description of the problem makes it clear that copyright law wouldn't apply.

I don't suppose anyone would be terribly surprised if I opined that Alien vs. Predator is a prime candidate for the title of "worst movie ever made", beating out the execrable Event Horizon, would they?

I didn't think so.

It's not that the premise is silly; The Fifth Element and Pitch Black had equally silly premises, but both ended up being passable movies. It was the implementation of the premise, a debacle which falls squarely on the head of Mr. Paul WS Anderson¹ . The story was both incoherent and unconvincing; a particularly silly moment came when a woman, climbing the face of an ice sculpture in Nepal, stopped to answer her cell phone.

Ironically, the movie got significantly better once most of the humans died²; while the relation between the heroine and the monster didn't actually make any sense, at least it didn't involve the insanely idiotic dialogue that the humans had required.

The effects were at least good, and the action was entertaining, although even here there were problems. Everyone was underdressed for Antarctica in winter, and I was particularly disturbed that I couldn't see anyone's breath. I can suspend belief enough to accept the possibility of monsters conducting a ritual hunt on Earth; I can't suspend belief enough to accept an Antarctica which isn't cold.

Zero out of Five stars.

¹He was also, sadly, responsible for Event Horizon. I suppose there's a great competition for the title of bigger mystery: why do people like me keep letting themselves get suckered into seeing his trash, and why does Hollywood keep giving him money to make it?

²If you're tempted to think this is a spoiler, you might reconsider: the movie follows the standard monster movie formula, without succeeding in giving the audience a reason to care about most of the characters before feeding them to the monsters.

Everyone please go give him a welcome to the weblogging world.

The California State Senate was no doubt nonplussed last week when Sequoia Voting Systems attempted to show off its new baby, a touch-screen voting system with a paper trail. The first run of the demo, with an English ballot, worked fine; the second run, with a Spanish ballot, failed to report two votes on ballot propositions.

Seqouia claims that the vote was recorded correctly, but that it was not reported correctly due to a configuration problem: "We had a demo ballot that we designed in a hurry that didn't include all of the files that we needed to have the machine present all of the voter's selections on the screen and the printed ballots."

You need seperate files for that? It's not a service that's automatically available based on what the voter was asked to vote on? That speaks to some serious design problems. But I digress.

It is of course impossible to tell if this is a recording problem or a reporting problem without either takign Sequoia's word for it or inspecting the code. But note the subtle way in which Sequoia is undermining itself: by arguing that the vote was recorded correctly and just not reported accurately, Sequoia is saying that it is possible for the paper trail to inaccurately report the way someone voted, and that it is possible for the reported votes to differ from the stored votes. Which means that the paper trail is useless as a means of verifying the stored votes.

Bottom line: paper trail or no, in any jurisdiction which allows absentee balloting and uses these machines in the polls, the only way to be sure that the vote that is counted is the vote you cast is to vote absentee. The accuracy of these machines cannot be independantly verified.

I understand why this is popular, but it's terrible social policy. Charging inmates room and board, and then confiscating their assets and/or re-imprisoning them for failure to attend inquiries into their failure to pay, is a uniquely predatory scheme. In general, these people are on the edge financially to begin with; charging them money while at the same time depriving them of any ability to earn it, is the closest thing to pure evil that i've heard of our government doing in modern times. Carrying that debt over as an obligation after they're released, and using that debt as an excuse to confiscate things like cars which make it easier for the former inmates to earn the money to pay the debt, is even worse: regardless of its intent, it makes it significantly more difficult for these inmates to get out of their economically marginal lives and become "productive members of society". It reeks of vengeance carried out across vast time scales.

In substantially ... weird ... news, the Governor of New Jersey has announced that, despite having married a woman twice, he is in fact gay; that he has had an affair with a man despite being currently married; and that

It makes little difference that as governor I am gay. In fact, having the ability to truthfully set forth my identity might have enabled me to be more forthright in fulfilling and discharging my constitutional obligations.

Given the circumstances surrounding the affair and its likely impact upon my family and my ability to govern, I have decided the right course of action is to resign. To facilitate a responsible transition, my resignation will be effective on November 15th of this year.

His resignation announcement - available here among other places - is sad:

Good afternoon. Throughout my life, I have grappled with my own identity, who I am. As a young child, I often felt ambivalent about myself, in fact, confused.

By virtue of my traditions, and my community, I worked hard to ensure that I was accepted as part of the traditional family of America. I married my first wife, Carrie, out of respect and love. And together, we have a wonderful, extraordinary daughter. Carrie then chose to return to British Columbia.

I then had the blessing of marrying Dina, whose love and joy for life has been an incredible source of strength for me. And together, we have the most beautiful daughter.

Yet, from my early days in school, until the present day, I acknowledged some feelings, a certain sense that separated me from others. But because of my resolve, and also thinking that I was doing the right thing, I forced what I thought was an acceptable reality onto myself, a reality which is layered and layered with all the, quote, good things, and all the, quote, right things of typical adolescent and adult behavior.

Yet, at my most reflective, maybe even spiritual level, there were points in my life when I began to question what an acceptable reality really meant for me. Were there realities from which I was running? Which master was I trying to serve?

I understand why he is resigning; his first priority as a man has to be to figure out how to put his life back together, what to do with his marriage, etc, and acting as governor is a distraction from that. His willingness to make this announcement, and to resign in order to put his life in order, increases my respect for him tremendously, and I hope to see him on the political stage again in a few years' time.

But part of me wishes he wasn't resigning; he's now the first openly gay governor of an American state. A historic first that he was certainly not aiming for and about which, I imagine, he is somewhat ambivalent.

The California State Legislature has decided that moving our presidential primary to March was a mistake, because it unnecessarily prolonged the campaign season for state and local races. Accordingly, it has passed a bill to move the primary back to June (the same date the primary is held in non-presidential election years), thereby ensuring the irrelevance of California to the presidential nomination process.

Question: why is nobody even discussing the possibility of delinking the presidential primary from the primary for all of the other offices? Couldn't we do what many other states do and hold our presidential primary in, say, March, while holding our non-presidential primaries in September? That would shorten the campaign season for Congress, Assembly, and what have you, while still allowing us to have some influence in the presidential nominating process; and the cost could be offset by passing the cost of the presidential-delegate primary on to the parties.

Apparently Mike Garza, the Republican party candidate for Congress in my district, believes that we should increase the rent charged for private exploitation of federal land for timber, oil, cattle, and minerals. I agree. So do the Democrats; Clinton proposed this and was forced to backpedal due to opposition from Republicans in the Congress. So, tell me, if that's a high priority item for the federal budget, why should I vote for someone who will make the Republican majority more powerful?

In a backwater Congressional district in Tennessee, where my local friend assures me the Democratic machine is guaranteed a victory, the Republican party organization neglected to field a candidate, and were horrified when the only candidate on the ballot - who defeated their hastily arranged write-in candidacy - was this man, whose web page prominently asserts that segregation is the only reason America was able to invent the automobile, the light bulb, and the airplane. The Republican candidate for Congress also believes the state should enact a war on poverty genes, calls for a ban on usury, and has an incomprehensible platform section called "Stop Looting Social Security Fill It with Congressmen".

Way back in October, when I was crushed under work pressure, my attempt to install iTunes on my home machine resulted in a catastrophic failure that basically killed the machine. After a few furtive efforts, I decided I didn't have time to deal with it, and shelved it as an unimportant problem. I got the machine (more or less) working after we moved, with a shiny new operating system and none of the software that I want (literally: it doesn't even have Word or a Word-capable clone yet), but could not get it on a network. The land line was upstairs, and the wireless wouldn't work. So I replaced the wireless, and then that didn't work, and I threw my hands up in despair and decided, yet again, that it wasn't important.

When discontent and chrononaut moved here, the land line moved into this room, but I ignored it; i've been busy with other things. Yet, lately, i've wanted an office I could retreat to, to work when Jared is home and I want to work, and part of that - for me - is music; and to get music, i need the machine working, and i know i'll want it on the net, right?

So, ten months later (!?), the machine is up and running, network aware, hooked into the musical world, ready to go. I'm happy to announce that i'm posting this from that very dead machine.

Allow me for a moment to disagree with my friend Dave in his assessment of the Village, M. Night Shmyalan's newest venture into the Twilight Zone. His assessment of the movie was basically "When was the last time a film left you feeling this badly ripped off?" - a question which it's impossible to answer without conceding the point. My impression was significantly more positive than his, and Jared's was even more positive than mine.

I'm a sucker for atmosphere, in movies and in print, and Shmyalan and his otherwise mediocre crew of actors succeeded in pulling off the atmosphere well. I didn't believe in most of the people, but I believed in the place, and the society that the people constituted; the tenor of the village was convincing to me, even if the individual characters often were not. It was genuinely spooky, in a way that Signs never was.

The plot, on the other hand ... the plot was disappointing. The surprise at the ending was one of those surprises that ... well, it was kinda a surprise, but it was kinda not a surprise. Worse yet, unlike the surprises at the end of the Sixth Sense and The Usual Suspects, the surprise didn't actually change the meaning of the movie; the motivations and experiences of the characters in the primary plot were identical with and without the surprise.

That said, Shmyalan could have done more; it could have been a great meditation on the tragedy of the village. Instead it was a mediocre Twilight Zone episode with great atmosphere. Which is a lot better than some of this summer's films have been.

Jared and I went to see the Bourne Supremacy on Saturday. Aside from the fact that our first choice movie was sold out, and a brief contretemps involving a sudden discovery that the people we'd intended to go see this movie with had ditched us to see it on their own, and a frustrating moment where each of us wanted the other to make a decision, we went in prepared for much fun, with a high-energy, low-calorie action movie.

It was terrible.

It wasn't terrible because it was utterly unrelated to the book; movies that are unrelated to the text which gave birth to them can be entertaining. It was terrible because the action was slow and tedious (chase scenes that felt like they went on for hours, poorly choreographed fights that just wouldn't end) and because the actions of the characters were simply nonsensical. If Bourne's memory isn't fully back, then how can he remember some of the details he does remember (eg, which house to go to to find a fellow agent)? How does his seeming nemesis suddenly figure out what is going on? What motivates Bourne at the end of the movie?

I expect action movies to be mindless. But one of the sterling qualities of Ludlum's novels is that they aren't mindless; they're tightly plotted spy stories with qualities reminiscent of a more action-oriented Spy Who Came In From The Cold. The movie version of the Bourne Supremacy could have been a great tribute to the legacy of those stories; instead, it was the sort of mindless drivel I'd expect from a Vin Diesel flick.

Deep in a Calpundit^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HWashington Monthly comment thread I ran across this terrifying report of teacher incompetence:

Ah, your faith in the basic intelligence and education of workbook preparers is truly touching. My child came home from an elementary school class in a Louisiana public school some years ago with a social studies worksheet [prepared by one of those multigrade "programs" schools buy now] that informed students that "the Continental Congress wrote the new Constitution of the United States in 1787." Being a professor of American Revolution at the state university, I sent a polite note to the teacher involved, pointing out the error [the Constitutional Convention wrote the Constitution of 1789, not the Continental Congress] --- and got back a frosty note stating that she intended to teach according to the publisher-supplied material, and if I had a problem with that, I could take it up with the publisher.

Same teacher some weeks later sent home worksheet on georgraphy, which asked this question: "To travel to Hawaii from the mainland United States, you have to travel by:
(a) boat (b) train (c) car (d) plane." My kid had circled (a) as a correct answer. It was marked wrong, and the teacher circled (d) as the correct answer. Another polite note went in, pointing out that Hawaii is an island, and that people travel from the mainland US to Hawaii by boat, therefor, all the time. Some on freighters, some on pleasure craft, some on tour boats. Got back yet another starchy note pointing out that the grading key provided by the publisher was the only standard of right and wrong she was prepared to accept, and that if I had a problem with that, I could take it up with the publisher.

So, I find your assumption that the botched study guide was the result of malevolence rather than incompetance to be doubtful.

I'm usually predisposed to distrust rants about the horrible quality of our teachers as being loudmouthed opinions put forward by people who know nothing about the job. But this, if true, is truly disturbing. The grading key provided by the publisher was the only standard of right and wrong?

Incredible.

As early as December 1993, a team of al Qaeda operatives had begun casing targets in Nairobi for future attacks. It was led by Ali Mohamed, a former Egyptian army officer who had moved to the United States in the mid-1980s, enlisted in the US Army, and become an instructor at Fort Bragg.

Some revalations really just speak for themselves.

Says the 9/11 Commission on page 66 of the WW Norton & Company edition of their report:

The reports describe friendly contacts indicate some common themes in both sides' hatred of the United States. But to date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen any evidence indicating that Iraq collaborated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States.

In general, the Commission seems to be of the impression that al Qaeda's early attempts to contact Iraq for the purposes of working together were rebuffed by the Hussein government, and that when Hussein changed his mind, al Qaeda was no longer interested.

Hopefully this can put to rest the repeated public claims by many on the right that Iraq and al Qaeda were in bed together. Such allegations are not supported by the evidence.

Evidently, a man in San Francisco, in a misguided attempt at social commentary, faked a video of his beheading by terrorists. The story has found its way to Arab television, where it will no doubt reinforce the popular belief that all of the terrorist and counter-revolutionary activity in Iraq has been staged by the US government in order to make Arabs look bad.

I see how it could be considered disrespectful. But I think people, if they look at it, will understand two other big issues it brings up.

Possibly. The one I can't get past is how this just gave critics of Iraq an enormous propoganda coup: Mr. Vanderford just single-handedly made paranoid allegations that the beheading videos were forgeries - allegations which were already common on the Arab street - seem reasonable and rational.

Today's New York Times offers up an interesting and entertaining article about how Washington, DC, officials are irritated and annoyed at the federal government's closure of, or establishment of security checkpoints on, certain streets, and how that is having significant traffic flow (and parking revenue) impact on the city. The city officials have a point about process - there ought to be some consolidated, streamlined procedure for this sort of thing which flows through a single office - and the city probably deserves financial compensation for the lost parking revenue.

In addition, something almost certainly needs to be done about traffic impact; the city's street system and traffic planning were designed with different assumptions about what streets would be open, and traffic flow on other streets may need to be reconfigured if the closures and checkpoints around the White House and the Capitol are going to be semi-permanent.

That said, this proposal - attributed by implication to Dan Tangherlini, the head of DCs' transportation department - is one of the silliest things i've heard a public servant say in quite some time:

And the closing of Pennslyvania Avenue and E Street near the White House has caused such severe disruptions that the city is studying plans to build a tunnel under the White House complex to speed crosstown traffic.

I hate to break it to you, Mr. Tangherlini, but if the Secret Service won't allow crosstown traffic to pass by the White House (out of fear that the traffic might provide the perfect platform for a bombing or other terrorist attack), it's not going to let that same traffic go under the White House, either. If bombs are what we're worried about, that's just as much a threat as traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue would be.

When did honoring our fallen dead become an objectionable political act? It was bad enough when people lambasted Nightline for alleged political motivations when they did an episode consisting of nothing but tributes to our war dead, but this AP report is just shocking.

Last December, the governor of Michigan issued an executive order requiring that flags in that state be flown at half-mast from the day of the death of an active-duty soldier from Michigan until the day that soldier's body is buried. An official with Oakland County, Michigan, has refused to comply with the order, on the ground that putting the flag at half-mast "politicizes the war and promotes opposition to the war."

Lowering our flags out of respect for the men and women who have given their lives for us somehow politicizes things and promotes opposition to their sacrifice? I guess, in the minds of some people, it's far better to forget that there are sacrifices being made, to not notice that people are paying prices - including, for some, the price of their very lives - for our policies.

There's something immensely dishonorable about this. The men and women who have given up their lives in Iraq deserve our respect, and flying our flags at half mast is a traditional way of giving such respect, and refusing to do so out of fear that remembering the prices they paid might cause someone to wonder if those prices are worth it is not only cowardly; it is a betrayal. Mr. Patterson ought to be ashamed of himself.

Today's New York Times inserts this egregious editorial judgement into a news report about the woes caused by provisional balloting:

The majority of the 93 percent that were thrown out were disqualified because of technical errors caused by election workers; these included more than 1,200 ballots filed in the wrong precinct.

Ballots cast in the wrong precinct are NOT the fault of election workers. They're the fault of the voters that can't be bothered to remember which polling place they are supposed to go to. Many of the people i've had vote provisionally have shown up at the polling place with a list of six addresses they've lived in in the past four years, with no clue which one is where they are registered, and no clue where they are supposed to vote. I call the county and work to find the correct place for them, but I'm seriously peeved at the notion that, if they then refused to go to the correct place because it was too far away, their vote might be disqualified because of a technical error that I'd committed. Nonsense!

It's worth noting, however, that disqualifying the ballot may in fact be a technical error on the part of the county elections staff: there's no reason that that portion of the ballot which would be valid for the voter's actual precinct should not be counted.

As expected, it took me less than a day to devour The Iron Council, China Mieville's latest novel, once it materialized on my doorstep. The book - while flawed - is a worthy successor to his previous novels, and it shows moments of brilliance: the beautiful, tragic stiltspear, observed by a cultural anthropologist gone native; the vicious "tardy" cactacae; the whispersmith; the breathtaking solution to the problem at the end of the book. The descriptions are vivid and descriptive (as always). It was great to experience the scale of the novel; it's always been obvious that Mieville's world was deeply textured, and this is the most in-depth look he's provided us of that texture.

And yet ... I had a serious problem with one part of the book: there are a number of subsidiary characters who are ... entirely throw-away. People whose name is mentioned, who are travelling companions and ought to be important, whose demise is supposed to make me grieve, who never showed up in any meaningful way. Perhaps this has been a problem with the other books, but it was jarring in this one. Who are these people? Why are they here? Why is he telling me about them if they don't actually exist?

That said, once the story picked up - the intro dragged on longer than I would have liked it to - it was more interesting to me than the stories in his other books; he's eschewed what Henry Farrell has derisively termed monster hunts in favor of a political crisis that threatens to completely change the world. In great measure, the book is an allegory of socialist revolution in a fantasy world - a fascinating and impressive feat for the author to have pulled off.

I have two plot quibbles that i'm not going to post here, as they would contain spoilers, but they basically revolve around people doing unbelievably impressive stupid things; and perhaps, given the fact that the Soviets once tried to reverse the flow of a river, that isn't something I should quibble over after all.

All in all, despite some misgivings, I was impressed; I enjoyed the book immensely, and it will stay on my bookshelf, ready to be re-read when memory fades.

Friday's Albequerque Journal has a somewhat peculiar report that the Cheney campaign has taken to requiring, as a precondition of admission to some of Cheney's campaign speeches, that atendees sign a statement endorsing the candidate.

The article contains a fair bit of blather about how this is an unreasonable act in which the government is denying citizens access to the vice-President unless they sign an oath of allegiance to a particular political party. It would be a grevious problem if Cheney were in fact doing that; but the speeches to which access is being restricted are all plainly campaign rallies, so that line of criticism does not apply.

And yet ... as a matter of tactics, this is bizarre. Surely campaign speeches are, at least in some measure, intended to persuade the people who are sitting on the fence - the people who have not yet decided whom to support. Requiring an endorsement before selling someone a ticket would seem to reduce the usefulness of such speeches; it turns them into devices for energizing the faithful, rahter than devices for convincing the unconvinced. Cheney would not be doing this if his campaign had not determined that the potential benefit to be gained by allowing undecided voters access to his rallies was too small to be worth the potential cost of allowing Edwards supporters to interrupt.

It's a terrible day in American politics when even the candidates have no interest in convincing people who don't already agree with them.

And it's a frightening day in American politics when you can't find out what a candidate is saying on the campaign trail if you haven't already endorsed him.

Jared and I will be away, out of phone and internet access, until Monday the 26th. Enjoy the week!

Tomorrow's New York Times has this entertaining and disturbing report:

Citing intelligence that the Pentagon is the second most likely target for a terrorist attack in the capital region after the White House, military officials want to shut the day care building next to the Pentagon by the fall. Officials said that they hoped to build a new center nearby but that it would not be finished until 2007.

I'm certain the intent here is to ensure that the children in the day care building are protected from potential terrorist attacks. After all, the employees can presumably be vetted just as well as the Pentagon's employees themselves, and the children aren't a threat.

Yet ... if that's the intent, then why close it today and not replace it for three years? Why get your employees up in arms and demoralized because they now have to drop their children off at day care centers across town and deal with nasty DC commute traffic?

It seems like a silly move. Unless the Pentagon is really telling us that it can't introduce security measures which would ensure that the employees and/or customers of the day care center are not terrorists. But if that's true ... if we can't even ensure that the people teaching at a day care center for children of high military mucky-mucks aren't terrorists ... what does that say for the war on terror in general?

According to Oxford fellow Eric Christiansen, as mentioned in passing in his book on the Baltic Crusades, the fort (and later city) of Königsberg was founded in the thirteenth century and named after Bohemian King Ottokar, who went on a Crusade to Samland, and conquered the peninsula on which the fort sits.

Stepping back a bit from the actual speeches and looking at the overall strategic picture, it seems to me that today's defeat of the federal marriage amendment represents not only a loss for the forces that are pushing it, but a political disaster of the first magnitude. If I were a conservative i'd be calling for Majority Leader Frist's resignation.

There are a couple of bizarre things here:

• How did the whip's office so badly calculate the vote? Either they knew they wouldn't muster a majority - in which case i've got to wonder why they bothered bringing it to the floor - or they were surprised, in which case the whip should be fired.
• Why did they reject the minority's proposal to allow a straight up/down vote instead of a cloture vote? More than likely they wanted to portray the Democrats as obstructionist, and they probably thought losing a vote rather than a cloture vote would make them look sillier ... but since the story got out that the Democrats were willing to bring it to a vote, any political mileage the Republicans were going to get out of painting the opposition as obstructionist is lost.
• Why did they let Kerry and Edwards get away without voting? An actual vote which would force them to choose between alienating their base (by not voting) or alienating supporters (by voting against) would seem to have been a tactically much better move than a cloture motion which the candidates could duck.

Looking at this, i'm not convinced that Frist, et al, actually wanted the measure to pass. It seems to me that, for all ardent proponents of the measure played it up as the most important thing in the country, the vote's purpose was really to settle a question in internal party politics. Either it was intended to provide ammunition to allow conservatives to go after moderate Republicans, or it was intended to show social conservatives that they can't win on this issue, that it's already too late, and to convince them to step aside and shut up so the party can focus on more important things.

I'm not close enough to GOP politics to know which is going on. But the inefficacy of the party leadership, and the fact that to all appearances they knowingly walked into a disaster, strongly suggests that passing the amendment was never the intent at all.

CORNYN: Respected British demographer Kathleen Kiernan drew on the Scandinavian case to form a four-stage model by which to gauge a country's movement toward Swedish levels of out-of-wedlock births.

She said in stage 1 the vast majority of the population produces children without marriage, such as in Italy. In the second stage, cohabitation is tolerated as a testing period before marriage, and it is generally a childless phase, such as we currently have in America. In stage 3, cohabitation becomes increasingly acceptable, and parenting is no longer automatically associated with marriage. While Norway was once at this stage, recent demographic and legal changes have pushed it into stage 4, along with Sweden and Denmark.

In the fourth stage, marriage and cohabitation become practically indistinguishable, with many children, even most children, born and raised outside of traditional marriage.

According to Kiernan, once a country has reached a stage, return to an earlier phase is very unlikely.

As you can see, Mr. President, the dissolution of marriage is passed on to children, to the next generation, and the devaluation of marriage as an important institution continues.

In America, the results could be even more significant than in Scandinavia or the Netherlands because, after all, we already have a significant problem of out-of-wedlock childbirth in our own country. When the example of traditional marriage is removed, when cohabitation and marriage are equally respected and when childbearing is no longer something that ought to ideally come in the context of traditional marriage, I fear the problem of single-parent households will only worsen.

Isn't this an argument for recognizing, and honoring, a distinction between those gay couples who wish to make a long-term commitment to one another, who view their relationship as something more than just cohabitation, and those who are merely cohabiting? Wouldn't encouraging that increase the respect people have for marriage and decrease the respect granted to cohabitation?

It seems to me that using that description of Mrs. Kiernan's research to denounce gay marriage requires that you first completely fail to understand it.

CORNYN: I want to speak for a few minutes about the social impact of the marginalization of the American family

The American family has been marginalized? I'm a gay man living in one of the most socially liberal parts of the country, and I haven't noticed that. Family events are a significant and important part of my life, and my boyfriend's life, and our life together.

The great fear that social conservatives have that social liberalism will destroy, or has destroyed, or is destroying the family is utterly bizarre. A lack of commitment on the part of married individuals, and a general societal fear or dislike of serious commitment, may be destroying the family. But liberal morality is not.

SESSIONS:In Planned Parenthood in Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, the court reaffirmed the substantive force of the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause.

That is broad language, trust me. I don't know what that means, but it is not good.

It's not good that the court has reaffirmed that liberty is protected?

I understand that we have a dispute about how liberty should be protected. But surely we can all agree that it is a good thing that it is?

SESSIONS: You cannot survive a situation in which some States recognize certain benefits, other States recognize other benefits, other States don't recognize any, others recognize same-sex marriages, others, civil unions, and so forth.

We had exactly that situation with respect to divorce, or for that matter interracial marriage, for many a year; why would it be any harder to deal with now than it was then?

BUNNING: Traditional marriage has been central to the understanding of family in Western culture from the very beginning, and the central reason for marriage has been for the rearing of children.

Not in the middle ages, it wasn't; many poor people couldn't afford marriages and didn't bother, and the wealthy got married for reasons of property and power. Marriage as an institution for the rearing of children is a concept that didn't become widespread until after the reformation, at the earliest.

BUNNING: Mr. President, I thank the chairman for yielding. I rise to discuss probably the most important issue this body or I have ever debated on the floor of the Senate since I have been a member, 6 years.

More important than the authorization of war against Iraq or, for that matter, the authorization of a response to the events of September 11, 2001?

That's a pretty bold statement.

HATCH: They believed it was a spiritual principle of the faith. But when Reynolds v. Simms came down, the Supreme Court case not allowing plural marriage, basically my faith did away with plural marriage. I have to say no one would argue that it should ever come back.

He clearly isn't aware of the news in Utah. How out-of-touch can a Senator be?

HATCH: We might differ on some other matters, but it is difficult for me to see how anybody could differ on traditional marriage, even though I know my gay friends do. Does that justify the laws in some, if not all, States that prohibit a gay partner from being able to go into an intensive care unit and care for his or her gay partner? That doesn't justify that. I think that is terrible, that our laws do not take care of that. Does it mean a gay person can't benefit from the laws of estates and trusts? I believe under current laws they can, but if they can't, we ought to correct those laws. Does it mean they can't buy insurance for their gay partner? We ought to make it possible that they can. You could go through various things where there are inequities, but we don't solve those inequities by changing a 5,000-plus-year definition of traditional marriage.

Pardon me while I faint dead away. This might be the one truly good thing that comes out of this debate: civil unions, which were a controversial far-left thing only six years ago, are now mainstream; and one of the most conservative Senators in the country is endorsing changing the laws to make the benefits of marriage, if not the name, available to gay couples.

It's a bone, of course; a sop to distract the advocates of gay marriage and break up the political support for it so as to prevent it. But that doesn't make it any less phenomenal and amazing.

HATCH: In polling, as in life, however, the devil is in the details. A CBS News/New York Times poll in March asked whether laws should be determined by the ``Federal Government or by each State government.'' This sounds as if the choice is between the Federal or State legislatures. That, however, is not the choice and never has been. The choice today is between the judiciary and the legislature.

Couldn't that be resolved by an amendment which read:

Marriage in the United States shall be defined by the legislatures of the several states.

The fact that social conservatives aren't pushing language of that nature suggests that, however much gay marriage may be a pawn in a fight whose real goal is to reduce the strength of the judiciary, the fight against the evil judiciary is just as much a pawn in the fight against the forces of social liberalization.

HATCH: In the last few months, polls by reputable news organizations such as CBS News, FOX News/Opinion Dynamics, Newsweek, Time/CNN show that by at least 2 to 1 Americans would not redefine marriage.

Not only is this polling overwhelming, but it exists in the face of a barrage by the liberal media urging a different answer to this question.

What media barrage? I've missed it. Can someone fill me in?

SANTORUM: I have heard two complaints about constitutional amendments: This issue is not important enough to rise to a constitutional amendment. That is No. 1. This is not important enough. No. 2, this limits rights, and no other constitutional amendments have limited rights.

The last constitutional amendment, the 27th amendment to the Constitution, limited pay raises for Members of Congress. So let's throw out the limiting rights. My rights have been limited as a result of the 27th amendment. As a Member of Congress, we cannot pass a pay raise and accept it midterm. Constitutional amendments have been used to limit rights.

Of course, Sen. Santorum, you are an employee of the people, elected to represent us, and something which restricts your rights because of that employment is not, in theory or in practice, the same thing as something which would restrict the rights of all citizens.

You may be right that Constitutional amendments have been used to limit rights. Prohibition would be a good example. But this is a terrible one - one which, moreover, suggests that you really don't understand the relationship of a representative to the citizenry, or of an employee to an employer, at all.

SANTORUM: Let's see if we can find the language that would address this issue and stop what I believe is the death knell of our society, which is the ultimate breakdown of the traditional family and the meaning of that to future generations of children.

Two gay men, or two gay women, who fall in love and want to live together, may not be a traditional family. But they're a damn sight better for the children around them than serially monogamous single mothers who can't hold a relationship together for more than six months at a time.

Wouldn't our time be better spent trying to help them put their lives back together?

At least Senator Frist, on some level, gets it:

Marriage is no longer to be understood as a covenant between a husband and wife in the interest of their future children but, rather, the consummation of romantic attraction between any two adults.

What he doesn't realize is that this isn't an idea being forced on the people by the courts; this is the definition of marriage that the entire secular community has, and has had for some time. This is romantic marriage as it is understood by almost everyone I know. Why is it outrageous for the courts to recognize a definition which our culture has already largely accepted?

Sen. Lautenberg interrupted the FMA debate to rant about Bush's recent advertisement attacking Sen. Kerry for missing Senate votes. To a certain extent that's fair; Bush's ad attacked Kerry's performance as a Senator, and for another Senator to rise to his defense on the floor of the Senate seems a reasonable reaction. But that isn't what Lautenberg did; he proceeded to bash Bush for his failure to go to Vietnam and the possibility that he might have been AWOL in the 1970s.

It's not clear how this was relevant. But that's ok; evidently Sen. Lautenberg didn't feel the need for relevance. Maybe the search for relevance, comity, and intelligence in the Senate is quixotic.

Later in his speech, (see below for an introduction to his remarks) Sen. Cornyn tosses out this throwaway remark:

So what people are saying--if they want us to wait until after the Federal courts declare traditional marriage unconstitutional, if they want us to wait until that time to raise this constitutional amendment--they are, I suggest to you, inviting the same sort of chaos we are seeing happening in Massachusetts.

There's chaos in Massachusetts? I have friends and family in Massachusetts, and none of them have made that particular complaint. What sort of chaos is Sen. Cornyn hearing about, and from whom?

Immediately after Sen. Bond announced, on the floor of the Senate, the release of the report of the Select Committee on Intelligence on intelligence failures regarding Iraq, Senator Cornyn of Texas rose to the floor and said:

But I concur with the comments made this morning by the present occupant of the chair, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, that there is no issue more important in this country today than the American family and preserving the traditional institution of marriage as the most basic building block in our society, one created for children in their best interests.

In a time in which the US is ostensibly engaged in a war on terrorism, and still has troops in Iraq maintaining order after a war there, and still has troops in Afghanistan maintaining a war there, and recieves almost daily notice of new terrorist threats, the ability of the intelligence agencies to gather meaningful and accurate data regarding these wars strikes me as being the single most important issue in politics. Intelligence failure is literally a life-and-death issue; it precipitated the war in Iraq, and is at least partially responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans on Sept 11, 2001. The accuracy of our intelligence will directly effect the next war we enter into as well as our ability to prevent further terrorist attacks. There is nothing more important for the administration and the Congress to be discussing at this time.

It's an outrage that Sen. Cornyn, and others on his side of the aisle, disagree.

There is an obviously rational basis for legislation that protects traditional marriage. Only a discriminatory animus against people who hold any religious beliefs at all could lead someone to conclude otherwise.

So, according to Sen. Hatch, believing that laws that make it impossible for me to marry my boyfriend are irrational automatically makes me a bigot? That's a pretty dangerous form of political rhetoric. It takes the same form as this argument: "There is an obviously rational basis for invading France. Only a discrimatory animus against people who don't like Frnace could lead someone to conclude otherwise."

This isn't the quality of argumentation I expect from seasoned politicians. I am extremely disappointed in Sen. Hatch for proferring it.

Part of the FMA debate may well be about power, about the frustration conservative legislators feel that their attempts to reshape the judiciary have failed, and that their understanding of what the Constitution means has proven incapable of swaying a majority of the electorate or a majority of the Supreme Court:

State laws protecting traditional marriage will be challenged as violating the Federal Constitution. That the U.S. Constitution protects no such right will hardly be an obstacle to these suits. The death penalty is explicitly provided for in the fifth amendment, but that does not stop liberal interest groups from attempting to undo this through judicial action. They cannot get these matters through the elected representatives, so they always try to get these activist court judges to do their bidding for them and to enact legislation from the bench that they could never get through the elected representatives of the people. This is a perfect illustration.

The first amendment was obviously intended to guarantee political speech, but that does not stop the ACLU from getting nude dancing declared a constitutional right. Nothing in the Constitution guarantees a right to an abortion, but, through a creative analysis of the text, the Court was persuaded to create a right to privacy extended in recent years to include ``the right to define one's own concept of existence of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.''

These cases will inevitably wind up in Federal court. We cannot wash our hands of the implications of this issue's likely judicial resolution. As a Senator, my oath obligated me to protect the Constitution. That includes protecting it from corruption at the hands of the judiciary. These corruptions have become commonplace, and they are extremely difficult to undo once secured.

We have tried in the past, when constitutional meaning was violated in the moment-of-silence cases, in abortion rights cases, in religious liberty cases, in flag burning cases--all judicial activists' decisions--we attempted to undo these decisions and to restore the original Constitution. We have never been successful in succeeding along those lines.

Senator Hatch seems a bit confused:

Our case is simple. Last fall, in its Goodridge v. Department of Public Health decision, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts declared same-sex marriage to be the policy of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Today, same-sex marriage couples live in 46 States, and activists are implementing a well-funded, multifaceted, and highly coordinated legal assault on traditional marriage.

Look at this. Not one legislature has voted to recognize same-sex unions. But in 1996, States with same-sex marriage couples, zero; in 2004, States with same-sex marriage couples, 46. That is what has happened as a result of this particular decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

I admit that it's not entirely clear to me what a 'same-sex marriage couple' is, but assuming that Hatch means a same sex couple who live together and consider themselves to be married, I knew married same-sex couples before 1996. His information about the past is wrong; and the implication he's trying to get people to draw, that these "same-sex marriage couples" only exist now because of Goodridge, is sheer demagaugery. These couples have existed for years. The only difference is that conservatives have started noticing them now.

AFTERTHOUGHT: Later in his speech, after spending some time denigrating John Kerry, Sen. Hatch makes clear that he means same-sex couples with official marriage licenses. In that case, he's right that there were none in 1996; but he's wrong about the number today, as the validity of many of those licenses is currently an issue for litigation in the state of California, and it's unclear whether or not they would be recognized by other states even if our courts eventually declare them to be legal under our law.

Mr. Hatch seems to be arguing from fear - if we give the legal system time to do its thing, the results will be bad (from his point of view), so we have to act now to pre-empt it. Fair enough, I suppose, if you believe the results will be a bad thing - yet in order for the argument to work, there must be a presumption of either gross incompetence or evil motives on the part of the court system. If Mr. Hatch truly has that level of disdain for the legal process and the courts which oversee it, shouldn't he be devoting his energies to fixing that problem?

Discontent has moved to a new machine in a new location, and as a result of the move, we're abandoning Movable Type. This is the new home for this weblog, but the move is caused a bit of chaos and confusion. Please bear with me.

The same issue of the local paper I referred to below featured another story about misguided local activists: "Housing Not High-Rises" has collected roughly a third of the signatures necessary to force a referendum to overturn the Redwood City City Council's approval of a 1930-unit high-density high rise project along the former Redwood City Marina.

The article quotes a spokesman for Housing Not High-Rises as saying the group's primary objection is a lack of affordable housing - only 15% of the units are rated as affordable, and 5% are rated as low-income. (The idea that only 15% of units in a complex are "affordable" suggests either a bizarre change in the meaning of the word or a serious problem in local economics). The lack of affordable housing is particularly important given the fact that the previous residents of the area - most of whom lived in house boats - have been evicted as part of the run-up to construction.

The group's name belies their official rhetoric, suggesting that the fact that the project involves high-density high rises, not single-family dwellings, is the real cause of their ire. But regardless of the real cause of their opposition, the result of their opposition is troubling; if the referendum qualifies, and then fails - an outcome the group is presumably seeking - the result will not be the construction of more affordable housing; it will be the non-construction of 1930 housing units.

1930 housing units. Homes for over 4000 people. In the middle of an urban area which continues to experience a serious housing shortage, resulting in inflated property values and making it difficult for working class people to buy their own homes.

High-density housing projects in the middle of a moderate-density urban area with a serious housing shortage are a good thing. This isn't Santa Cruz, nor the San Mateo Coast; it's Redwood City, in the nexus of the peninsula and the valley. This is the ideal place for such a development.

I'm not going to speculate about the real motivation for opposition; I can engage in cynical games of motive analysis all day and merely succeed in inventing tales of dubious validity which would nonetheless frighten small children. But it's sad that this group is putting whatever it is they are attempting to achieve ahead of the overall community interest in more housing.

Yesterday's San Mateo Daily News - the full contents of which are available archived as a single .PDF, a means of archiving which provides limited search capacity and is generally only useful if you already know what date an article was published - featured a peculiar report about a protracted political battle over the renevoation of a Safeway in Burlingame. A local activist group evidently suspects the company of hiring fake activists to circulate petitions in support of the renovation, which the first activist group opposes.

In a world in which most petition circulators are paid by the signature, i'm not sure how one could tell the difference between a real petition circulator and a fake one; the allegation, on its own, seems somewhat strange and out of place. (On the other hand, maybe it's a good thing if activists are trying to drum the professionals out of the signature-gathering business - it would make me far more likely to sign a petition, and vote for the thing being petitioned, if the circulator actually believed in what he was circulating and had knowledge and passion to convert me when I encountered him).

But I digress.

The truly peculiar thing in the story was not this somewhat bizarre allegation. The local activist group, which calls itself "Citizens For a Better Burlingame" is evidently opposed to a suggestion that the town hold an advisory vote in which the residents could tell the City Council if they're in favor of the project or not. The reason? Holding an advisory vote would set a bad precedent.

Excuse me?

I'm all in favor of activists trying to make a better community; I even think there should be more of them. But when the City Council is paralyzed - as the Burlingame City Council is made to appear in this article - decisions of this sort should be made by the voters. That's the entire point to our system of government. Give the people the facts, present them with your interpretation, and let them decide.

I'd think that a citizen activist group would be the first, not the last, to agree with this point.

Jared has been going through a phase wherein he has been renting lots of gay-themed movies. It's amazing how bad so many of them are. It seems to be de rigeour for gay-themed movies to be populated with flat-out bizarre characters (almost as if it's percieved to be impossible for there to be more-or-less normal gay people), incomprehensible plots, and mediocre acting (and this is true even when the movie isn't obviously a first attempt at a regular film by a production team that's used to making porn flicks). The underworld of bad gay movies is at least as large as the underworld of bad science-fiction/action movies, it's just less well publicized.

It was with great pleasure, then, that we watched His Secret Life last night. It's an Italian film about a woman who discovers, after husband is killed (in the one utterly ridiculous scene in the movie), that for seven years he's been having an affair ... with a cute guy. The characters were all interesting and felt real; and the story was charmingly romantic. The acting, mostly by unknown-in-the-US Italian actors, was good. It was one of those rare gems of the cinema: a sweet, charming romance, about people who really care about each other, and who - while they have their problems - never rise to hollywood levels of melodrama.

It's the gems like this that make wading through the trash worth it.

In an article about cards that parents of teenagers can get to allow their children access to all R-rated movies, the NYT included this amusing quote:

He's always turning the cat into an accordion or something like that.

I recieved my first communication from my new congressman, Tom Lantos, today. Like the communications I recieved from Congressman Sam Farr, it was a four-page newsletter, in two colors; there must be some sort of standard for these "constituent reports" in the Congress.

Mr. Lantos reports to me that he is taking an active role in getting federal grants for firemen, including $31,155 for Millbrae's fire department and $401,794 for Daly City's fire department, and points out that five peninsula fire stations have either been shut down or had their working hours cut back in the past few months. (To whatever extent Mr. Lantos is responsible for the plight of local fire stations, that's hardly a ringing endorsement of his efforts). I'm not quite sure why this is a federal issue and not, say, a state issue; nor am I sure why communities facing fire department cutbacks can't adopt local taxes to prevent it. (Well, actually that wouldn't help; the state would then confiscate the local tax money as a required 'contribution' by local agencies to help float the state's budget deficit. But the state shouldn't be doing that).

Mr. Lantos proceeds to brag about how much the Sierra Club likes him, and to indicate that the Census Bureau is now going to be studying demographic information on a yearly basis, and that I might be getting something similar to the census long form shortly.

Inside the brochure, Mr. Lantos talks about how he is working to improve the medicare reform bill (without details), talks about how he has awarded the Congressional Award Medal to a local high school gradute, and reprised the contents of an op-ed he wrote for the local newspaper. He has pictures of himself meeting with members of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, and a discussion of how he has helped UCSF get money to help provide security in the hospital.

The back of the flyer talks about how Mr. Lantos is working on getting funding for a ferryboat stop at Oyster Point (what a bizarre place for a ferry stop; there's no good public transit infrastructure there, and few residences) and a widening of Highway 101. In addition, Mr Lantos talks about his sponsorship of the 'End Racial Profiling Act', making promises without discussing implementation at all.

sigh

I'm in favor of communication between politicians and constituents. I believe that an informed electorate is the only electorate capable of fully participating in the political process, and that the process only works if everyone is paying attention and engaging in the public debate on the issues of the day. But this isn't communication of anything meaningful. It is not a discussion of the important issues of the day; it is not a statement of belief or principle. It's an advertisement designed to convince me that Mr. Lantos is doing a great job on issues of local importance, and (by implication) that I should vote for him.

I'm aware that this isn't Mr. Lantos' fault, per se; it's a systemic issue, and every Congressman does this. I would not be surprised if they do it because a political marketing firm discovered that, for many voters, this is an effective technique. There are reasons, good reasons even, for playing the game this way.

But I still wish our leaders showed more fealty to the ideals of the system and the process than they do to winning the game.

Today's New York Times reports on security precautions being taken in Turkey in preparation for the upcoming NATO meeting there. (The report comes on the heels of yesterday's bombings in Ankara and Istanbul).

One of the things the report mentions is that Turkey is planning, for the duration of the meeting, to close the Bosporus to cargo ships.

It makes sense to do this; unsearched cargo ships could contain enough explosives to take out large chunks of Istanbul. But at the same time ... doesn't this violate the Montreux Convention? Turkey agreed, and the agreement is still in force, that

In time of peace, merchant vessels shall enjoy complete freedom of transit and navigation in the Straits, by day and by night, under any flag and with any kind of cargo, without any formalities, except as provided in Article 3 below.

The Army Times, a notoriously pacifist rag, has issued a muted call for the removal of certain key administrative officials. To wit:

On the battlefield, Myers? and Rumsfeld?s errors would be called a lack of situational awareness ? a failure that amounts to professional negligence. ... This was not just a failure of leadership at the local command level. This was a failure that ran straight to the top. Accountability here is essential ? even if that means relieving top leaders from duty in a time of war.

That's incredibly strong stuff coming from soldiers, and the authors of the editorial are right.

Today's New York Times reports on an argument in Hamtramck, Michigan, about whether or not the local mosque can broadcast the call to prayer over a loudspeaker. The mosque, trying to be a good neighbor, asked permission from the city council (which it was not required to do); the city council granted permission, but angry locals are threatening a referendum to overturn the decision.

Opposition seems largely to be based on either concerns about noise or on a feeling that Christians are discriminated against and that discrimination must stop. One woman is quoted as objecting (emphasis added):

My main objection is simple. I don't want to be told that Allah is the true and only God five times a day, 365 days a year. It's against my constitutional rights to have to listen to a nother religion evangelize in my ear.

No. It. Isn't.

I'm not a big fan of evangelism and proselytism; I believe what I believe because those beliefs stem from my interpretation of my experience, and people proselytizing are time-wasting annoyances that will not shake those beliefs. But the first amendment to the united states constitution protects the right of people to proselytize. It does not grant me some vague protection from proselytism.

I admit that i'm biased; I think the call to prayer is pretty and enjoy hearing it (despite adhering to a significantly different religious tradition). The people complaining about noise are overreacting. But be that as it may, the argument that the Constitution protects people from proselytism is absurd.

This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and, having thought, to have second thoughts.

--George Will

This is precisely the problem I have with the way the administration responded to Clarke's book, and with their unwillingness to admit to having made any mistakes, ever, anywhere.

They cannot be trusted to govern.

The time for them to go is now.

Having convinced themselves that if they just said "fuck off" to the EU and the Turks they could get a deal in which they got more and the Turks got less, the Greeks in Cyprus did exactly that over the weekend. The EU-sponsored peace plan that would reunite the island with a common government and allow both halves into the EU was turned down by the Greeks, and approved by the Turks.

The Turks came a long way on this. The Greeks could have reciprocrated. But they didn't, because there was little to no benefit to them to doing so (some of them would get their houses back, or compensation; nobody who wasn't actually evicted from the Turkish sector, or who doesn't have family or business intentions there, had anything to gain by voting for the agreement, and would have had to have given up their idealistic attachment to the Greek Cypriot Cause in order to do so). To a certain extent, the failure reflects a structural problem - everyone expected the Turks to be the difficult ones, so the negotiations were set up with a meagre carrot and no stick for the Greeks and a huge carrot, combined with a huge stick, for the Turks.

But that doesn't excuse the Greeks for the pig-headedness. The opportunity to end the division of the island, the best one they've had in a generation and probably the last one they'll ever have, slipped through their fingers like a wet bar of soap in the shower. The Turks rose to the occasion, the Greeks did not. Is anybody really surprised?

It's a terribly sad day for Cyprus. I wonder if the Greeks wanted it that way.

But in what sense is a government which has no authority to enact new laws sovereign?

Did they reprint the dictionaries overnight and give the word a new meaning? Are the language police about to take me away?

Do they even care how ludicrous this sounds?

Today's Chronicle reports that the FBI, the ATF, and miscellaneous other local and federal agencies have conducted a raid on a warehouse near the Oakland airport. What were they looking for? Vehicle-based rocket launchers.

The FBI, in a bit to reassure the public, indicated that the search was not related to terrorism. Since the technology in question is only really viable for shooting down planes, if it's not intended for terrorism, it must be intended for war. Whose war against whom, I wonder.

This is the story, from my perspective, of how al Qaeda developed and attacked the United States on September 11. It is a story of the CIA and FBI, who came late to realize that there was a threat to the United States and who were unable to stop it even after they agreed that the threat was real and significant. It is also the story of four presidents:

• Ronald Reagan, who did not retaliate for the murder of 278 United States Marines in beirut and who violated his own terrorism policy by trading arms for hostages in what came to be the Iran-Contra scandal;
  
• George HW Bush, who did not retaliate for the Libyan murder of 259 passengers on Pan Am 103; whod id not have an official counterterrorism policy; and who left Saddam hussein in place, requiring the United States to leave a large military presence in Saudi Arabia;
  
• Bill Clinton, who identified terrorism as the major post-Cold War threat and acted ot improve our counterterrorism capabilities; who (little known to the public) quelled anti-American terrorism by Iraq and Iran and defeated an al Qaeda attempt to dominate Bosnia; but who, weakened by continued political attack, could not get the CIA, the Pentagon, and the FBI to act sufficiently to deal with the threat;
  
• George W. Bush, who failed to act prior to September 11 on the threat from al Qaeda despite repeated warnings and then harvested a political windfall for taking obvious yet insufficent steps after the attacks; and who launched an unnecessary and costly war in Iraq that strengthened the fundamentalist, radical Islamic terrorist movement worldwide.
  

This is, unfortunately, also the story of how America was unable to develop a consensus that the threat was significant and was unable to do all that was necessary to deal with a new threat until that threat actually killed thousands of Americans.

So begins Against All Enemies, the controversial book by Richard Clarke, the former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure, Protection, and Counterterrorism. Whether you agree with his conclusions or not, this is one of the few must-read books on contemporary national security policy, and one of the most interesting books on public policy, period, since the publication of Hedrick Smith's The Power Game.

When Against All Enemies was published a few weeks ago, it was greeted by a flurry of press and blogsphere discussion, almost entirely focused on the book's criticisms of the Bush administration. Those criticisms are largely contained within the book's final chapter, a chapter that feels grafted on, and which is significantly different in tone from the rest of the book. It's unfortunate that that chapter has become the focus for discussion of the book - a fact which argues that, perhaps, the chapter shouldn't have been included at all.

The majority of the book is a discussion of how the first Bush administration and the Clinton administration gradually came to realize the existence of al Qaeda and tried to figure out what to do about it. The story is framed, at the beginning and the end, by the events of September 11, 2001 (during which Clarke was one of the people primarily responsible for government operations during the hours until President Bush took charge) - but that is simply the framing; the real meat of the book takes place in an earlier time. The time that laid the groundwork for that day.

Little noticed by most Americans, including in its government, a new international movement began growing during the last two decades. It does not just seek terror for its own sake; that international movement's goal is the creation of a network of governments, imposing on their citizens a minority interpretation of Islam. Some in the movement call for the scope of their campaign to be global domination. The "Caliphate" they seek to create would be a severe and repressive fourteenth-century literalist theocracy. They pursue its creation with gruesome violence and fear.

The story Clarke tells begins with the Reagan administration. It places the Iran-Iraq war in the context of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the continuation of the great power game in central asia, and discusses how the decision to give Stingers to the mujahadeedn related to the two. "Even with hindsight, I believe the Reagan administration was right to assist the Afghans and to drain the Soviet Union's resolve," Clarke says, decisively picking sides in what remains a contentious debate. Yet the book also notes the side-effect: "As they sat together in Kabul, Kandahar, and Jalalabad, they mused on what was now happening to the Soviet Union. Among them were the Saudi Usama Bin Laden, the Pakistani Khalid Sheik Muhammad, the Indonesian known as Hambali, and others we did not know then. In the wake of their Afghan defeat (and, the Arabs believed, because of that defeat), the Soviet Union was now unraveling. Some Afghans and Some Arab fighers pondered what you could do with money, and a few good weapons. You could overthrow an infidel government. More important, you could destroy a superpower."

It goes on to discuss the Gulf War, which decisively changed the scope of American military engagement in the Persian Gulf, and pinpoints two mistakes as being critical for the evolution of the politics of the region: the US' failure to continue the war for long enough to destroy the Republican Guard (thereby insuring a need for a continued presence in Saudi Arabia), and the decision to stand by and watch, without preventing, the Iraqi government's murder of the Shiites and the Kurds (thereby engendering distrust among our previous allies, a distrust which remains to this day). But he argues strongly against the "we should have gone to Baghdad" line, pointing out that (a) it would have shattered the coalition, and (b) there was never any such plan in the first place.

Those chapters, however, constitute a background and an introduction to the main subject matter of the book: the Clinton administration's engagement with the growing menace of al Qaeda. That part of the story begins, of course, with the first world trade center bombing, in which the government was able to pin the blame on Omar Abdel Rahman, but was unaware of the larger organization of which Rahman was a part. "Usama bin Laden had formed al Qaeda three years earlier. Not only had no one in the CIA or FBI ever heard of it, apparently they had never heard of bin Laden either. His name never came up in our meetings in 1993 as a suspect in the World Trade Center attack." Similarly, the Clinton administration was unable to connect al Qaeda to the militia that attacked US soldiers in Somalia in 1993 - a connection which it came to understand only in hindsight, much later.

Much of the book is like that - terrorist attacks not understood and not averted because of that lack of understanding. Probably the first success that Clarke describes was the events that followed on the disvcovery, in January 1995, that Ramzi Yousef was planning to blow up US airplanes in the Pacific - a lucky break, courtesy of the Filipino government, that allowed them to avert a disaster. Much of the story is like that, too - acts of terrorism prevented not because there was a well-executed plan to prevent them, but because someone happened to be in the right place at the right time and understood what was happening.

The book is scathing in its description of the FBI, and only slightly less critical of the CIA. One revealing story describes FBI Director Louis Freeh's response to a Saudi report that they had traced, to Canada, a member of the group responsible for the attack on the Khobar towers: Freeh wanted to confront the guy and solicit his cooperation in exchange for a light sentence, the same way one would go about flipping a low-level mafia boss. They approached him, he agreed, came to the US, and then refused to cooperate - instead seeking political asylum (as protection against extradition to Saudi Arabia)!

The general picture the book presents is of a white house / national security advisor staff which, by 1996-1997, understood (more or less) what was happening: that a group of radical islamic terrorists was engaged in a long-term campaign to destroy the United States via terrorism, but which found itself unable to convince the Pentagon, the FBI, or the CIA of the accuracy of its interpretation. Their resistance, combined with traditional bureaucratic infighting, resulted in the creation of an office of counterterrorism - a terrorism czar - which had the responsibility for dealing with terrorism but none of the tools or the authority to get the job done.

That's a fairly critical analysis of what happened in the Clinton administration, but the analysis of the Bush administration is even more critical and contentious - Clarke alleges that the incoming administration basically rejected the conclusions that Clarke and his coworkers had reached, without looking at the evidence, because the political appointees were mostly convinced that the problem was Iraq, and that all of the acts of terrorism which Clarke's office had been fighting had been orchestrated by Iraq. Large-scale terrorism was impossible without state assistance, they believed.

----

In analyzing any book of this sort, there are a couple of questions which need to be considered vis-a-vis the integrity and motivation of the author. Is this book published as a way of scoring points in an old debate? Is it unbiased and accurate, or is it heavily slanted? What are the author's institutional and political biases?

It's fairly clear from the author's employment history and the tone of the start of the book that the author started out as a Reagan-era cold warrior; his political biases on foreign policy appear to lean towards conservative realism. (Unfortunately, he never comes out and directly states his political biases, making it harder than it should be to uncover them). The question of institutional biases is a more difficult one, though: the picture his book paints is explicitly one of the white house staff being in opposition to the FBI and the CIA, his book is highly critical of the intelligence agencies, and he was a white house staffer. Is it possible or likely that he's exaggerating their failures?

It's possible, yes. But one of the things that reuces the likelihood is the disarming forthrightness Clarke has in assessing white house failures: even the Clinton administration - the administration Clarke's book is most sympathetic to - is portrayed as thrashing around, either not getting it or just barely getting it, being a step behind where it should have been. To a great extent, the book is a chronicle of failure - failure at the white house, failure at the CIA, failure at the FBI, failure everywhere. Clarke is quite clear about this, and his willingness to admit where he failed adds punch to his criticism of other people - people who, to a large extent, have still not admitted their failure.

The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, by Michael F Holt, is one of the great books of American history; it is a detailed explanation and analysis of why the party enjoyed the successes it did, and why it unraveled in one of the most spectacular losses of political power in American history. It was my experience with that book that caused me to pick up Grand Old Party: A History of the Republicans, by Lewis L. Gould.

My experience with the preceding book was misleading.

Perhaps this was inevitable; a history of the Republican Party is, by its very nature, broader and more sweeping than a history of the Whigs; rather than being allowed to focus on a single era in American history, it must reach across a century and a half. As a result, it is less detailed, and less able to convey a sense of place - less able to insert you into the mileiu and paint a picture that shows how all of the actors and issues of the time fit together. It is, by necessity, a survey.

As a survey, it isn't half bad; it does a decent job of explaining how the main shifts in Republican party history happened, and of showing the continuity of thought between the 1850s and the 1990s, of illustrating how the party's ideals in some respects could switch to the exact opposite. (The Republican party of the 1850s was the party of protectionism and tariffs, for example). But it spends an unusually large amount of time explaining context, to the point that it becomes more a history of the United States as viewed by the Republican Party, and less a history of the Republican Party. Eventually, as is the case with many surveys, the continuous stream of names and dates becomes tiresome.

One of the big problems, actually, is the level of detail: it's not sufficiently detailed to allow you to see how each school of thought arose naturally out of the debates and issues of the preceding era. Instead, people and ideas are introduced sui generis, and the litany of connection-free actors becomes overwhelming.

This is a book that would have been better off as a series of volumes. Unfortunately, its implementation was not sufficient to support the scope of its ambitions.

TENET: "But I think that the important thing is it's very hard fo rpeople when they're sitting in the inbox and the crisis of the day to be reflective."

How do I assess our performance? The intelligence that we provided our senior policy makers about the threat Al Qaeda posed, its leadership and its operational span across over 60 countries and the use of Afghanistan as a sanctuary was clear and direct. Warning was well understood, even if the timing and method of the attacks was not.

The intelligence community had the right strategy and was making the right investments to position itself for the future against Al Qaeda. We made good progress across intelligence disciplines. Disruptions, renditions, and sensitive collectiona ctivities no doubt saved lives.

However, we never penetrated the 9/11 plot overseas. While we positioned ourselves very well, with extensive human and technical penetrations, to facilitate the takedown of the Afghan sanctuary, we did not discern the specific nature of the plot. We made mistakes.

At last, a responsible man in the administration, willing to analyze both the good and the bad, to stand up for what he did right and what he did wrong. A man capable of honestly analyzing success and failure, strength and weakness. A man, to be sure, with institutional biases and blindspots (as the rest of his testimony demonstrates); but also a man capable of admitting failure, and of seeing the world for something close to what it is.

What a great administration this would be if Rice, Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, etc, were cut from the same mold.

I'm not really surprised that this didn't play well in Texas - Mr. Walls lost the primary yesterday - but I am nonetheless disappointed in the voters of the Fort Worth area. And, for that matter, in Mr. Walls; cross-dressing is hardly something one need apologize for, nor is it something that should be an issue in a political campaign. It really shouldn't be the kind of thing that can take a former front-runner and cause him to lose.

The New York Times, in a heavily modified version of an AP report, reports:

Bartholomew, the patriarch of Constantinople and spiritual leader of 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide, has accepted an apology from Pope John Paul II for the sacking of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, by armies of Crusader knights, beginning in 1204.

A friend of ours agreed to go see Kill Bill, vol 2., with us on Friday night, if we managed to enable her to watch vol 1. before Friday. So Jared ordered it from Amazon, next-day delivery, and we expected it to arrive today.

It didn't; UPS mislaid the package, didn't deliver it, and found it again when they returned the truck at the end of the day. It's supposed to go out tomorrow morning.

So I wrote Amazon's Customer Service department a note, asking them to cancel the charge for next-day shipping in light of the fact that their carrier of choice hadn't delivered it when they were supposed to.

Amazon replied that they were sorry the package was lost and they were shipping me another one.

Erm ... thanks, but that's not what I was asking for and, incidentally, is far more expensive to you than what I was asking for.

It's about time somebody made this nonpartisan observation:

[The FBI] failed and it failed and it failed and it failed. This is an agency that does not work. It makes you angry. And I don't know how to fix it."

I was bicycling today - and, in light of what i'm going to say, i'm not going to say where - and after forty minutes or so stopped at a park bench. It was along a well-maintained paved bicycle trail, with light but steady use (occasional joggers, old people out for walks, bicyclists passing by and being passed by me). A few feet from the park bench was a structure which was giving off a loud buzzing noise; I went closer to investigate. It was fenced off, but the fence was not electric, nor was it barbed-wired or razor-wired. There was a sign on it.

The sign informed me that it was US government property, that it was used by the FAA for air traffic control, that deaths could occur if I tampered with it, and that it was a felony to do so.

What we have here is an air traffic control radar station.

Doesn't it seem odd that it isn't protected by razor or barbed wire? (Especially when you consider that the San Mateo Bridge *is*, at least where the bicycle path passes under it). And doesn't it seem odd that it announces what it is for the benefit of anyone who might be looking for it with intent to tamper with it?

KERREY: And I've got to tell you I believe a number of things. I believe first of all we underestimate that this war on terrorism is really a war against radical Islam. Terrorism is a tactic. It's not a war itself. Secondly, let me say that I don't think we understand how the Muslim world views us. And I'm terribly worried that the military tactics in Iraq are going to do a number of things and they're all bad. One - please do not do that. Do not applaud. I think we're going to end up with civil war if we continue down the military operations strategy that we have in place. I say that sincerely as someone that supported the war in the first place. Secondly, I don't know how it could be otherwise. Given the way that we're able to see these military operations, even the restrictions that are imposed upon the press that this doesn't provide an opportunity for Al Qaeda to have increasing success at recruiting people to attack the United States. It worries me. And I wanted to make that declaration. You needn't comment on it. But as I said I'm not going to have an opportunity to talk to you this closely. And I wanted to tell you that I think the military operations are dangerously off-track. And it's largely a U.S. Army, 125 out of 145, largely a Christian army in a Muslim nation.

GORELICK: At the outset of the administration a commission that was chartered by Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, two very different people covering pretty much the political spectrum, put together a terrific panel to study the issue of terrorism and report to the new administration as it began. And you took that briefing I know.

That commission said we are going to get hit in the domestic United States and we are going to get hit big. That's No. 1. And No. 2, we have big systemic problems. The F.B.I. doesn't work the way it should and it doesn't communicate with the intelligence communities.

Now you have said to us that your policy review was meant to be comprehensive. You took your time because you wanted to get at the hard issues and have a hard-hitting comprehensive policy. And yet there is nothing in it about the vast domestic landscape that we were all warned needed so much attention. Can you give me the answer to the question why?

RICE. I would ask the following. We were there for 233 days. There had been recognition for a number of years before, after the '93 bombing and certainly after the millennium, that there were challenges, if I could say it that way, inside the United States. And that there were challenges concerning our domestic agencies and the challenges concerning the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. We were in office 233 days. It's absolutely the case that we did not begin structural reform of the F.B.I.

Now the vice president was asked by the president, and that was tasked in May, to pull all of this together and to see if he could put together from all of the recommendations a program for protection of the homeland against W.M.D., what else needed to be done. And in fact he had hired Admiral Steve Abbott to do that work, and it was on that basis that we were able to put together the Homeland Security Council, which Tom Ridge came to head, very, very quickly.

But I think the question is why over all of these years did we not address the structural problems that were there with the F.B.I., with the C.I.A., the homeland departments being scattered among many different departments? And why, given all of the opportunities that we'd had to do it, had we not done it? And I think that the unfortunate, and I really do think it's extremely tragic, the fact is that sometimes, until there is a catastrophic event that forces people to think differently, that forces people to overcome old customs and old culture and old fears about domestic intelligence and the relationship, that you don't get that kind of change.

And I want to say just one more thing if you don't mind about the issue of high-level attention. The reason that I asked Any Card to come with me to that meeting with Dick Clarke was that I wanted him to know, I wanted Dick Clarke to know that he had the weight not just of the national security advisor but the weight of the chief of staff if he needed it. I didn't manage the domestic agencies. No national security adviser does.

No. The question was "why did this specific document not include any reference to the information contained in this specific other document." The answer wasn't an answer.

BEN-VENISTE. Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the Aug. 6 P.D.B. warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that P.D.B.

RICE. I believe the title was Bin Laden Determined To Attack Inside the United States. Now, the P.D.B. -

BEN-VENISTE. Thank you.

RICE. No, Mr. Ben-Veniste -

BEN-VENISTE. I will get into the -

RICE. I would like to finish my point here.

BEN-VENISTE. I didn't know there was a point.

RICE. Given that - you asked me whether or not it warned of attacks.

BEN-VENISTE. I asked you what the title was.

RICE. You said did it not warn of attacks. It did not warn of attacks inside the United States. It was historical information based on old reporting. There was no new threat information. And it did not, in fact, warn of any coming attacks inside the United States.

A document entitled "Bin Laden Determined To Attack Inside the United States" may not have warned about specific attacks. It may not have warned about attacks in a more general sense, in the same way that a document saying "Congolese militia determined to invade San Antonio" - eg, saying that someone is determined to do something does not constitute a warning that they are going to if there is no reason to believe that they have the capability to carry it out.

Yet either (a) Rice is lying and the document did warn of attacks, (b) Rice is lying and the document was called something else, (c) Rice is telling the truth and the administration didn't believe that al Qaeda had the capacity to carry out the attacks it was determined to make, or (d) the title of the document and its contents had nothing to do with one another.

None of these possibilities is particularly flattering to the administration.

RICE: I believe very strongly, and the president believes very strongly, that this is really the generational challenge. The kinds of issues that you are addressing have to be addressed. But they're not - we're not going to see success on our watch.

Absolutely. So why is it that, before we decided to go into Iraq, nobody in the administration said that it would be an effort that would take decades, and how is it that we, as a country, found ourselves committed to a decades-long effort without realizing we'd done so?

I'm a big fan of B-grade science fiction and comic book movies. I thoroughly enjoyed Hulk, for example, and have highly approved of such cinematic wonderpieces as Independance Day and Dungeons + Dragons: The Movie. So it is with great familiarity and appreciation for the genre that I report that Hellboy, the most recent entry in the field, is a terrible movie with little to no redeeming value. Sadly, it is a bad movie that doesn't even manage to be quite so bad as to turn into a self-parody - thereby depriving the B-movie fan of the last refuge of B-movie fandom.

The effects aren't bad - indeed, the computer-driven baby hellboy was so much more effective than the makeup-enhanced actor who played the adult that one wonders at the incompetence of the art design staff. But the effects are never impressive enough to carry the movie, the acting is mediocre at best, and the story is a set of holes desperate for a patchwork to connect them. Nothing is explained, and the attitude seems to be that nothing needs explanation; they don't even bother with a "it's magic therefore it works" explanation. (Nor is there an interesting puzzle to be had in seeking an explanation, as there are no threads on which to hang it). None of the characters are particularly endearing, the romance isn't engaging, and the movie, taken as a whole, is the worst use of theater space i've seen since Event Horizon.

It's something of a shame, too, as Guillermo del Toro has, with his incredible movie the Devil's Backbone, proven himself to be a fine director. There must be a story here somwehere, that would explain how the horrors of Hollywood politics destroyed his vision and turned the movie into a terrible not-quite-laughingstock. I look forward to the book with glee.

THOMAS KEAN: As we understand it, when you first came into office, you'd just been through a very difficult campaign. In that campaign, neither the president nor his opponent, to the best of my knowledge, ever mentioned al Qaeda. There'd been almost no congressional action or hearings about al Qaeda. A very little bit in the newspapers. And yet you walk in and Dick Clarke is talking about how al Qaeda should be our No. 1 priority. Sandy Berger tells you you'll be spending more time on that than anything else. What did you think and what did you tell the president as you hit that kind of, I suppose, new information for you?

CONDOLEEZA RICE: Well, in fact, Mr. Chairman, it was not new information.

Does the Bush Administration, or Condoleeza Rice in specific, have a reason for being this defensive? It's almost as if she can't admit to being wrong about anything, anytime. Which is a shame; the ability to admit it when you've fucked up and to hold your head up proud and say "this is what i'm doing to fix it" is an important attribute in a coworker or in a leader. Why can't she do it? Why can't her boss?

This is what it means to be a colonial power. To send our armies across the world to impose order in a country our citizens do not understand, or even like. To be resented as an occupying power despite our belief that we've made things better. To be forced to choose between capitulating and adopting the very tactics of the previous regime we had condemned. To fight a brutal war of attrition which we can win, but only by staring into the abyss and becoming that which we deplore.

It's a terrible shame that we had to learn it for ourselves, again, instead of learning it from the experiences of the British, or the French, or the Portuguese.

I don't know what the solution is; pulling out today would create a power vacuum and a bitter civil war. But this will continue until we go.

Thursday's edition of the Good Times, a weekly newspaper serving Santa Cruz County, announces the results of a year-long investigation (that link may age out after a week) into behind-the-scenes political dealmaking in the county, and reveals that there are plans afoot for a WalMart in the Pogonip, and a convention center on Lighthouse Field. It's truly a despicable revalation about some of the most underhanded politicians in the state.

When Jared and I went to Canada a few years ago, I was in a bookstore looking for something to read one afternoon and picked up some fiction by fantasy author Guy Gavriel Kay (a Canadian). I was enthralled; while many of his books are obviously set in fantasy worlds that are modelled on real historical milieus, he does a fantastic job of capturing the feel of the cultures in question. The Lions of al-Rassan, which I picked up later, and The Sarantine Mosaic, which I picked up in Vancouver, both did an incredible job at this.

In the intervening years, i've read all of his books, and liked each of them. Transplanting real historical cultures into fantastic worlds may be missing something of the inventiveness of Tolkein, but it avoids the myriad problems of counterfactual historical fiction; and Kay does a superb job of vividly painting the cultures in question.¹

So I was eagerly looking forward to the release of his new novel. It came out in Canada before it came out in the United States (no surprise), so I ordered it from the canadian version of Amazon as soon as it was released (and proceeded to enter into an annoying contretemps in which Amazon.Ca helpfully provided me with a "free shipping upgrade" to a shipping service provided by a company that refuses to deliver to my post office box and has been unable or unwilling to make alternate shipping arrangements), and then purchased it when it was released in the United States (as the other version had yet to arrive).

The Last Light of the Sun is different from its predecessors in two ways. It is, in a sense, more slight; the plot is not world-shaking in the way that the plots of most of Kay's other books are. What happens in the story will not change the course of empires and will not remake the world in which the story takes place (unlike, say, Tigana, or The Lions of al-Rassan). Yet the story is no less engaging for that; it remakes the lives of the characters - proving yet again that less intrinsically important characters still have interesting lives. That's particularly appropriate given the milieu, in which (on one side of the conflict, at least), the societal lack of hierarchy makes it difficult for there to be intrinsically important characters whose deeds shake the world.

The other significant difference is one of tone: the Last Light of the Sun is much darker than it spredecessors. It takes place in a colder, harsher, less pleasant world, and the worldviews of the characters reflect that, carrying less hope and more fatalism. Which is appropriate, and in some sense good - but it makes the book a less pleasant, more difficult read.

Not that it's a bad book; it's a good story, and the setting is well drawn. I enjoyed it, and ran through it in less than a day. But the expected happy ending was more ambiguous than normal, and the story's darker tone made it less fun than his preceding books.

¹It says something sad about the way I percieve genre categories that I feel a really strong need to defend my liking for Kay's books; fantasy in which the world is entirely a copy of historical milieus is something that i've had a strong negative reaction to in the past, and have to a certain extent looked down on as uncreative. Kay's work doesn't fit my stereotype.

If both you and your plane are on time, the airport is merely a diffuse, short, miserable prelude to the intense, long, miserable plane trip. But what if there's five hours between your arrival and your connecting flight, or your plane is late arriving and you've missed your connection, or the connecting flight is late, or the staff of another airline are striking for a wage-benefit package and the government has not yet ordered out the National Guard to control this threat to international capitalism so your airline staff is trying to handle twice as many people as usual, or there are tornadoes or thunderstorms or blizzards or little important bits of the plane missing or any of the thousand other reasons (never under any circumstances the fault of the airlines, and rarely explained at the time) why those who go places on airplanes sit and sit and sit and sit in airports, not going anywhere?

In this, probably its true aspect, the airport is not a prelude to travel, not a place of transition: it is a stop. A blockage. A constipation. The airport is where you go when you can't go anywhere else. A nonplace in which time does not pass and there is no hope of any meaningful existence. A terminus: the end. The airport offers nothing to any human being except access to the interval between planes.

There is no genre of writing quite so entertaining as the matter-of-fact rant, and the opening of Ursula K. Le Guin's new book has that down to perfection. The rest of the book has a different tone, and is in fact less entertaining than the opening, but is still an enjoyable afternoon's read: a light stroll through various different allegories, all of which are amusing on their face and vaguely disturbing once you realize what she's really talking about. Le Guin has always had a knack for that, and it's great to see it put to such good use here.

The story about immortality was my favorite; i'd never considered immortality in quite that way before.

The Secretary of State's office reported yesterday that the referendum petition being circulated to overturn California's the-same-as-marriage-except-for-tax-purposes domestic partnership law failed to qualify for the ballot.

Three cheers!

A while ago - when, for some reason, I went to Borland via the circuitous bus route that runs up Graham Hill Road instead of the one on Highway 17 - I noticed that there was construction going on on these large fields that had previously seemed to be used for polo and horseback riding (except when the circus was in town). Later, it became clear that the construction was in the forest behind the field, in the redwoods.

Construction is evidently finished, as there is an advert in today's San Francisco Chronicle for the complex. 60 homes in the redwoods, between 3374 and 5170 square feet each; 4-5 bedrooms, with optional mud rooms, exercise rooms, home offices, etc. Priced between 1.2 and 1.6 million dollars.

This would be the upscale version of Leavittown. It's odd, though, to see it in Santa Cruz (it's not within the city limits, to be sure, but it's between the city and Felton, in an area where one wouldn't ordinarily expect this kind of development). To be sure, Santa Cruz has no dearth of million dollar homes ... but they're usually old, and have ocean views; million dollar new construction with no ocean view is bizarre.

As she prepares to leave her job at the end of the year, Ms. Rice, the president's national security adviser, now finds herself at the center of a political storm, furiously defending both the White House and her own reputation.

The New York Times, March 26, 2004

Eugene Volokh has, twice now, objected to the use of the polemic "Benedict Arnold CEOs" on the grounds that it is a hyperbole intended to make people think that the businessmen in question are traitors, and that it is therefore every bit as objectionable as other use of the term "traitor" to smear one's political opponents. That's a perfectly reasonable argument to make; the rules of civility in public discourse prohibit denouncing people as traitorous because they disagree with you without evidence that they are engaged in actual traitorous activities (such as, say, selling state secrets to governments with which we are officially or tacitly at war).

But there is a realm in which it's perfectly reasonable to tar someone with the term 'traitor', and it's the meaning that I assumed the term "Benedict Arnold CEOs" carried until I was informed otherwise: businesspeople who deliberately avoid paying taxes by structuring their tax liability through shell corporations in tax havens. That isn't a matter of pursuing foreign policy, or economic policy, which may or may not be injurious to the interests of the state (said level of injury to be determined by the beholder); it is, rather, a case of corporate executives deliberately trying to defraud the US of tax revenue. That strikes me as being a perfectly reasonable activity to tar with the traitorous label.

I was flipping through the San Francisco Weekly¹ at the train station today, while I was waiting for a train to the airport. The articles were dull, and the coverage of upcoming theatre and music was almost entirely useless; eventually my eyes fell on the employment ads.

Small-town newspapers like the San Mateo Daily News don't have much in the way of interesting employment ads, and neither does the Weekly; the listings mostly consist of exciting business opportunities that can allow you to make up to thousands of dollars a week from the comfort of your own home, solicitiations for jobs in poorly-paying activist roles and/or petition gathering, offers for training as a bartender (for a small fee!), and searches for caretakers for the disabled and disheveled elderly.

Hidden amongst all of these unpalatable listings is a solicitation for people to do paid volunteer work helping with public works projects in small African countries.

I'm not going to run off and do that, although the idea is on some level appealing; i have a lease and an apartment with my boyfriend, and he wouldn't come with me, and neither of us wants to be seperated for the 12-18 months that such a commitment would require. But in some undefinable way, this is a realistic possibility in a way it wasn't before I moved. It's almost as if moving ... decrystallized? by changing the surroundings it changed my sense of what is and isn't feasible, what is and isn't right.

A number of my friends have been of the opinion for some time that staying in santa cruz has in some sense been limiting my world and restricting my options; i'm starting to get a glimmering of what they meant.

¹It's a horrible newspaper; i'd much prefer the Bay Guardian, or even the Chronicle, but when you're waiting for a train that won't come for twenty minutes and it's threatening rain and you don't have either a thing to read or fifty cents to feed the Chronicle's news rack, you take whatever free media you can find and thank the combined journalism staff of the entire california state university system for its existence.

I rented a car today and drove back down to Santa Cruz to do some stuff that fell through the cracks last weekend - cleaning, mostly, plus turning off mail delivery and utilities, and retrieving the handful of things that didn't make the move (a fan, table knives, my tea collection, some lamps, a leather jacket, and the vacuum cleaner). The whole rental car thing still seems bizarre to me - you pick up a piece of paper and then walk into a garage full of cars that have their keys in them, pick the one you were told to pick, and then drive off with it? - but the drive itself was pleasant; little traffic on 92 and 1, and enough rain to force me to overcome my fear of driving in the rain without actually posing a serious threat to my well-being.

Being here, on the other hand ... it's wierd being in an empty apartment. Well, not empty, as it's filled with scattered trash that somehow failed to be dealt with and random occasional things of importance that were missed when we were filling the truck (or, in some cases, deliberately left). But it's empty ... empty of my stuff, empty of my emotion; it's no longer home. I lived in this apartment for four years, and there should be more of my spirit left here; but it's gone. It's now nothing more than the decaying corpse of a former life.

With echoes.

One of the most moving things to happen in the days immediately following September 11, 2001, was the outpouring of emotional support from people in the rest of the world: the flowers left at the American embassies in the great european cities, the candlelight vigils in Brussels and Berlin. The sense of solidarity with the rest of the world - that we were not alone in our pain. For a brief period, while we recovered from our shock and looked around the world with eyes unclouded by our previous preconceptions about it, policy differences were put aside and most of the world was sympathetic - both the people and the leadership.

If this AP wire report is to be believed, we didn't send any high-ranking government official to today's memorial service for the people killed in the Madrid bombings on March 11. In a previous age, the President would have gone, or the vice-President. But not now. Now we're too busy, or too self-absorbed, to participate in symbolic diplomacy; and we are too self-righteous as a people to repay the debt of solidarity by expressing shock and sympathy on behalf of the bereaved parents of Castilla.

It's a minor thing, not going to a funeral; the kind of thing that friends forgive one another for. But it's also the kind of thing that, when repeated or done without good cause, can cause one to wonder if the friendship is real - or, at the very least, to consider the absentee to be something of a self-absorbed asshole. In the realm of diplomacy, going to funerals like this is a cost-free way of showing symbolic solidarity; not doing so tends to irritate the friends who invited you.

So why didn't we send someone? There was no harm in going and some (ephemeral, hard to pin down, yet real nonetheless) harm in staying. Does our government really not care at all what the people of other countries think?

Der Mann behauptete, eine Karawane habe sich vor Jahren auf dem Weg nach Konstantinopel verlaufen und irre seitdem in grör Verzweiflung üie Straßn Anatoliens als Opfer einer Verwüng. Von Zeit zu Zeit begegne sie einer anderen Karawane, und ihre verirrten Teilnehmer fragten nach dem Weg oder stellen die ungewöichsten Fragen. Wer immer ihnen antwortete, und sei es nur mit einem Wort, ziehe seinerseits die Verwüng auf sich und müit ihnen bis zum Ender der Zeiten umherirren.

Warum wurde die Karawane verwü? Es heiß, die Riesenden häen ihren Angehöen erzehlt, sie wüsich auf die Pilgerreise nach Mekka begeben, obschon sie in Wahrheit nach Konstaninopel aufgebrochen sind. Der Himmel habe sie sodann dazu verdammt, ewig umherzuirren, ohne je ihr Ziel zu erreichen.

Unser Mann berichtete, er sei der Geisterkarawane schon zweimal begegnet, ihren Tächungsversuchen indes nicht ins Netz gegangen. Die verirrten Reisenden köen sich noch so sehr um ihn bemüihm zuläeln, ihn am Ämel zupfen, ihn füh einzunehmen suchen, er habe getan, als ob er sie nicht sehe, und auf diese Weise sei es ihm gelungen, den Bann abzuwenden und seine Reise fortzusetzen.

Woran man die Geisterkarawane erkennen kö? fragten unsere ästlichen Kameraden. Es gebe keine Möchkeit, antwortete er, sie äele in allem einer gewöichen Karawane, ihre Teilnehmer sän aus wie alle Reisenden, und das sei der Grund dafüshalb sich so viele verzaubern ließn.

Amin Maalouf, Die Reisen des Herrn Baldassare

Not quite the Flying Dutchman, but pretty cool nonetheless.

Anatol Lieven, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has an interesting - if somewhat meandering - piece in this month's Current History which makes the argument that "many Americans are in revolt against the world that America itself has made." It's an apt observation. While at some level the debate over invading Iraq last year was about how to make international institutions "work" (note, for example, the Bush administration's insistence that UN action in Iraq was needed in order to prevent the UN from achieving the same fate as the League of Nations), on another level the debate is about whether or not the international institutional framework that the US and the remaining European powers set up after WWII is worth maintaining, or if the American national interest is better served by abandoning it.

Except that there is no debate; nobody is willing to stand up and loudly proclaim that the United Nations, the IMF, the World Court, or any international institution which has independant agency is a worthwhile thing whose existence serves our interests. Nobody in a position of power is calling for the abolition of these things, to be sure; but the number of people who desire such abolition is growing, and proponents of the system have no standard-bearer.

It's unclear how this happened; it's almost as if the proponents of liberal internationalism lost heart as soon as they had a chance to implement their dream. It's possible to blame the change in the political climate after the attacks of September 11, 2001 - but such blame would be misplaced; President Clinton and his administration never attempted to make a forceful case for liberal internationalism, either. Is it just that systems which require everyone to play by the same rules seem unduly repressive to a power which could otherwise do just about anything it wants? Or is it more a visceral reaction to the idea of foreigners telling us what to do?

A lot of the rhetoric of political conservatives suggests that it's the latter; that the issue is that ceding power to international institutions allows them to make decisions for us, and that cannot be tolerated. We are more virtuous than they are; we are more correct than they are. They don't really understand democracy or justice or freedom the way we do.

A perfectly rational case can be made that certain types of political decisions should not be entrusted to a body made up of representatives from non-democratic states; an equally rational case can be made that governmental decisions which effect culturally-determined patterns of behavior should not be made by bodies comprising people from outside our culture. But neither of those are applicable to the International Court of Justice, nor do either truly explain the insistence of the US that the UN had no authority to prevent it from overthrowing the government of Iraq.

Mr. Lieven's argument at this point would be that the people of the United States still experience nationalism the way Europeans did in the nineteenth century: "other nations are declared to be irrationally, incorrigibly, and unchangingely hostile. This being so, it is obviously pointless to seek compromises with them or to try to accomodate their interests and views. And because they are irrational and barbarous, America is free to dictate to them or even conquer them for their own good."

This may be an overstatement; certainly it paints America's political culture in a less pleasant way than most Americans would like. Yet it nonetheless is an accurate depiction of the way our international behavior appears to outsiders; and if that's not the intended interpretation, it would be well worth our while to investigate why our intentions differ so greatly from the appearance of our actions.

Since we don't have network access at our new place yet, i've been trying to find out where the wireless access points nearby are. It turns out that there are seventeen Starbucks locations within five miles of home.

Seventeen.

(Peets, a much better coffee shop in my mind, only has three).

I moved to Santa Cruz in the fall of 1991. I was excited; I was getting away from an emotionally abusive stepfather and my mother (who seemed to have subsumed her entire personality in her new relationship), and I was getting away from the horrible, endless, smoggy, oppressive urban wasteland of the San Gabriel Valley. Everything was fresh and new, somewhere where I could experience more than had been available to me as a teenager in the suburbs of Los Angeles.

I fell in love with the place instantly; with the redwood forests; with the college whose dorms and classrooms were nestled in between them; with the ocean, and the cliffs above them, wind-swept bluffs with oak trees and wild grass; with the quaint smallish college town with a downtown in ruins and businesses operating out of hastily erected tents. I loved the town, and when I graduated from college I stayed, and settled in, and continued to make it my home long after most of my friends had left. This was a mixed blessing; I was in a place I loved, but cut off from the people I loved, and most of my attempts to (as it were) replace them with new people foundered.

My first years in town were spent on campus, and the town itself was a mysterious place, something to be ventured into and explored from a distance; a curious bit of the real world that could be visited when I wanted a vacation from the self-contained and somewhat self-obsessed world of the university. When I moved into town it was in part because my friends were doing so and I wanted to be with them; and that was exciting, too, in a way.

The University campus has long since ceased to be home - and with it, to an extent, the redwoods. Traveling up there, as I did recently to return some library books, is strange, vaguely uncomfortable; this is a place that once was mine and is no longer; it exists in a peculiar half-world between foreign and domestic, at once familiar and strange. When I was taking classes last winter, I felt both a sense of belonging and a sense of alienation; when I audited classes earlier this year after being laid off, I felt mostly a sense of wrongness, as if - even if I choose to go back to school and study law, or pursue a graduate degree in a subject which fascinates me, this is not the right place to do it; however much I loved the place, it will no\ longer meet my needs.

The same has been true, for some time now, of the city of Santa Cruz itself. I am comfortable here, to be sure; the yellow blossoms on the trees between here and Scotts Valley that herald spring, the wind-and-rain blowing across the town, the atmosphere of downtown, the smell of the sea and the sound of sea lions barking on a quiet night - these are all cool, and comforting, and make the place feel like home. They provide the town with a certain romance. Santa Cruz is, in the end, an idyllic beach town trying to maintain its personality against the twin evils of gentrification and overdevelopment, unwilling to recognize that it must choose between these evils and lacking the self confidence to understand that, whichever path it takes, it will remain a place of stunning natural beauty with a social character unlike anywhere else in California.

Yet, no matter how much I love this town, I have known for several years that it was no longer where I needed to be. It provided me with a place to heal the wounds of adolescence, and to grow into a profession; it gave me a comfortable and comforting background against which to accept my homosexuality. And yet, after I came back in 1998, it has never quite felt the same; the connection, the magic that I felt in the town before that, has never resurfaced, and most of the last several years I have stayed here out of a combination of inertia and a desire not to change jobs.

That last reason declined in importance slowly over some time, and for several seasons now I have been waiting for the right moment. waiting, and watching, and trying to breathe in a sense of the beauty of a place I know I will be leaving soon. Once I have gone, even if I come back to visit, it will not be the same; it will no longer be home, and the love of the beauty of home is distinctlydifferent from the love of the beauty of the world. It is good to look around you with open eyes and see that what you are leaving behind; itis good to love it and feel the melancholy of departure. It is less good to remain suspended in time.

Allowing myself to remain suspended in time, clinging to comfort and the needs of yesterday instead of anticipating the needs oftomorrow, is a vice to which I am easily susceptible. I probablyshould have left Santa Cruz four years ago, when I tried to quit myjob, but it's hard to say; perhaps it was better for me to be here in the fall of 2000 than to be somewhere new. But I knew then that coming out to my friends and family was, aside from work, thelast remaining thing keeping me in Santa Cruz; I should have moved the following summer, or at any rate a year and a half ago.

And yet the end came, as ends always does, seemingly from out of nowhere, as a surprise; and the denouement feels to some extent rushed. I informed my landlord on Monday that I am leaving; leaving the apartment, leaving the town, leaving the county. Leaving the redwoods and the beach (and the smell of beach air, which I know I will miss, and hope some day to experience again). Jared and I are moving in together, next to close friends, in a place that's perfectly situated for looking for a job.

I'm happy to be moving in with Jared; i've been looking forward to it for a long time now. I'm happy to be moving to the peninsula, happy to be closer to San Francisco and to the majority of my friends, happy that I will never have to commute over highway 17. I know that this is the right thing to do; moving out of Santa Cruz was the right thing todo years ago.

And yet part of me can't help but think it's too soon, and criesout for more time. More time for what, I'm not sure; i've been working myself up to say goodbye for a long time now.

There's a lot that's annoying and problematic in John Ralston Saul's "The Collapse of Globalism and the Rebirth of Nationalism" (Harper's Monthly, April 2004), including the implication that the world doesn't know how many people died in Rwanda because it doesn't care¹, but these sentences near the end of the article are particularly egregious:

Because the United States is so powerful, people say its actions are all about empire. But empires are mere extensions of nationalism. They are not a phenomenon of either Globalization or internationalism.

In point of fact, very few empires are "mere extensions of nationalism", except in the imagination of the jingoes who sell broadsheets designed to whip up public support for the empires. Rare indeed is the empire which manages to completely ignore politics in its periphery, and impose its will without reference to local forces; equally rare is the empire in which the balance of economic power between the periphery and the core is entirely to the benefit of the core and to the detriment of the periphery.

This is not a panegyric of empire; politics in empires are always driven by their core, as are economics, and this often creates a relationship within the empire that can only be described as predatory. But that the entire empire serves as an extension of the nationalism of the core, and that local economics and politics are irrelevant and need not be considered by the imperial government (which serves exclusively the interests of the core) is fundamentally a description of the world portrayed by imperial hagiography, not a description of imperial reality. Those imperial administrators who believe in such a worldview have, in general, been terrible administrators; inflexible, unwilling or unable to find the compromise between the interests of the core and the interests of the periphery (skewed, of course, to favor the interests of the core as much as possible) which make the empire work.

Empires are about compromise; an imperial overlord who is unwilling to compromise with the locals and adjust the policies preferred by the government as required on a case-by-case basis will quite quickly find himself no longer an imperial overlord. It's a compromise that's long on the interests of the imperial power and low on the interests of the colonies, but there is compromise involved, all the same.

¹It probably doesn't. But even if it did, casualty figures for mass slaughter of groups whose numbers weren't well documented before the slaughter, by organizations which don't keep track of who they killed, are always hard to come by. We don't know with any reasonable precision how many people were killed in the Holocaust; we don't know with any reasonable precision how many people were killed by the Khmers Rouges. It is not surprising that we don't have any reasonably precise estimate of the casualty count in Rwanda. It would not be reasonable to expect that we would; Blaming a lack of caring for the west's failure to attain something which nobody could reasonably expect to attain is absurd. The west has much to atone for with respect to the things that happened in that country; castigating it for failing to calculate precisely the number of casualties does nobody any good, and asserting that it's failure to perform that calculation stems from apathy is to completely misunderstand the difficulty of performing the calculation and, ironically, to trivialize the act of performing the calculation.

Meanwhile, a bill (HR 3799) calling itself the "Constitution Restoration Act of 2004" has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee which would prohibit the Supreme Court from reviewing in any fashion a case that arises because the federal, state, or local government, or an official thereof, acting in an official capacity, represented God as being the source of law. The measure would also nullify any Supreme Court decision in such a case made before it was passed, and would specify that any justice on a court which heard such a case could be impeached.

An identical bill (S 2082) has been introduced in the Senate by Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, and is currently before the Senate Judiciary Committee. It has five cosponsors: Wayne Allard of Colorado, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, and Zell Miller of Georgia.

It's unclear how broad its effect would be; a narrow reading would simply prevent the Supreme Court from ordering that the ten commandments be taken out of courtrooms or prohibiting public Christmas displays, but a wide reading would also prohibit the Supreme Court from banning prayer in the public school or ordering city governments not to engage in campaigns to convert the denizens of their city to a particular religion. It's also unclear who would determine whether a narrow reading or a wide one should apply; since any judge who tries to coalesce the vague fog imposed by the law into a hard line could theoretically face impeachment should the Congress believe he has overstepped his authority, my guess is that the courts would give the entire subject of the establishment clause a wide berth.

The President has endorsed a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

In the eyes of the President, preventing gay couples from marrying is comparable in importance to protecting the right of the people to speak their mind to speak their mind or to worship the god of their choice.

This isn't about states' rights; the proposal is to prohibit states from recognizing gay marriages, ever. It's not about protecting families; it's about declaring that certain kinds of families aren't good enough to be considered families. It's about using the Constitution to prevent evolving social values from causing legal change. It's a strident declaration that gay couples are inferior to straight couples and that that inferiority is one of the fundamental principles of the nation.

At last the administration's true colors are out. We already knew that it doesn't believe in fiscal responsibilityand that it doesn't believe in attempts to impose order on the anarchy of the international state system. We now know that it doesn't truly believe in states' rights, either.

This is a revolutionary administration out to restructure the national social and political order and to undo the social changes of the last three decades. It is not compassionate, nor is it conservative (in the sense that a conservative is resistant to change).

It is an administration that needs to be thrown out as soon as possible.

One of the primary reasons that Constantinople was only conquered twice in the more than 1100 years after the city's refounding was an enormous set of walls constructed by the emperor Theodosius. Running from the Golden Horn to the Marmara, approximately five kilometers inland from the point, the walls encompassed an enormous city, and were considered next to impossible to breach. Early on it was discovered that the walls were meaningless unless the city also controlled the sea. This was generally a not terribly difficult task given the ease of controlling the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, but when the Goths were invading, control could falter from time to time, and so the Emperor had the walls extended to face the sea, forcing those who wanted to launch a naval assault to scale imposing walls from which the city guard could pour burning pitch.

Significant portions of these walls still exist, especially around the area where the Bosporus and the Marmara meet. (The walls along the Golden Horn are almost completely gone, however, owing to the area's use for centuries as the primary Ottoman port).

In the Hippodrome there is an ancient Egyptian granite obelisk (thought to date to roughly 1500 BC) brought - with much care so as not to break it - to Constantinople by Theodosius, two and a half centuries prior to the conquest of Egypt by the Arabs, and still standing. Behind it is a monument to a later Emperor whose decorations were stolen by the evildoers of the Fourth Crusade.

When I took my film from Turkey in to get it developed, it included some pictures from Vancouver, in the Spring of 2002. Here are two of Jared:

One of the first things I noticed when descending down towards Izmir on the bus the other day was that it was green. Central Anatolia is dry as a bone, dusty, without a thing growing except where it has been explicitly irrigated to do so. The valleys along the Aegean are more fertile and well-watered, with some of the local ruins sitting in pools of water among swamp grasses, and evergreens dotting the hillsides. And the major local cash crop isn't a vegetable at all: it's cotton.

Cotton. Wide fields that are underwater, waiting for the cotton to sprout. The entire Meander Valley seems to be set up this way. But old times do seem to be forgotten here; the pre-Turkish history of the area may draw huge numbers of foreign tourists, but the locals mostly don't care; it's not their history, after all.

Apparently mountain lions aren't just a problem in Orange County; the local Santa Cruz mountain lion population has been descending into the city streets, with three sightings in the last week. (This is the first time i've ever heard of them being sighted in a populated area in Santa Cruz).

The #2 international news story here - after the dysfunctional negotiations between the Turkish Cypriots and the Greek Cypriots, which seem to be going nowhere - is a bizarre story of an orphaned eight-year-old boy whose father was a taiwanese fishing boat captain and whose mother was brazilian. Mom died when the boy was three, and Dad died three years ago in Taiwan. The boy, who was in Taiwan at the time, has since then been the subject of a custody battle between his paternal uncle and his maternal grandmother. The courts decided in favor of the grandmother, but the uncle refrused to give up custody, and the police had to be sent in to forcibly remove the boy, causing an international furor. I have not been able to get a satisfactory answer to the question: does the boy speak Portugese?

The last night I was in Ankara, knowing that I would need to pay my hotel bill in cash the next morning, I wandered down the main street to an ATM. I tried to withdraw money, but it complained that it could not give me anything - since it was a Visa/Mastercard machine only, and I don't have a debit card, this was reasonable. So I wandered down to another one, and tried there; it complained that it couldn't contact my bank (something that has happened on previous trips - sometimes my bank just goes offline for a day or so in a massively annoying fashion; in the states I deal with this by having accounts with two banks but for security purposes i only have one atm here). Annoyed, I tried a third ATM, telling it I wanted TRL 250,000,000 (about USD$190).

I was extremely perplexed when the machine told me that that was more money than it could dispense at one time. So I tried a smaller number, TRL 150,000,000. That amount was ok; the machine proceeded to spit out 30 TRL 5,000,000 bills. Since I actually wanted the total amount i'd requested earlier, I asked it for TRL 100,000,000 more; that worked, too, but now I had *50* 5-million-lira notes.

At least i'll never again have a problem with not having enough small change.

One of the more interesting things about the ruins at Ephesus is that nobody seems to know where the church that housed the Council of Ephesus is. The sign outside the ruins of a large cathedral near the old shoreline indicate that it was quite clearly constructed after the council. So what happened to the old one?

A large portion of the area inside the old city walls appears to be still unexcavated, and is closed off to tourists (so as to prevent them from disturbing whatever is there). Significant portions of the site seem to have been reconstructed by Austrians (why Austrians?), The two theatres are impressive, especially the clear signs that one of them is still used from time to time.

When I was there it seemed to be populated largely by german tour groups; i listened to one guide explain to his group that anytime you see a sculpture in which someone is laying down, it's a roman sculpture and not a greek one. Other than the large groups the park was mostly deserted, especially in the afternoon when the cold storm off of the aegean finally started dumping its wares.

I was generally surprised at how little was there. It's reputed to be one of the largest in situ ruin collections in the world, and the people at the hostel who'd gone there the day before raved about how it just went on and on ... but it was basically three streets, on which only a handful of buildings were in any state to write home about. On the other hand, each of the streets was lined with extensive collapsed-and-unidentifiable buildings, many of which seemed to have been homes of one sort or another but were now merely collections of half-standing walls and the occasional archway. In that sense it was very cool; you could totally get a sense that there had been a *city* here as opposed to, say, a few random buildings (as in Verona).

Marble is slippery when wet.

There's been a fair amount of muttering around the blogsphere about the wording of the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment and how, despite claims to the contrary, the second clause will in effect ban civil unions:

Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.

By explicitly prohibiting courts from construing a law which confers any of the legal incidents of marriage upon unmarried couples as doing so, the amendment clearly has the effect of banning civil unions and domestic partnership laws. So why are the proponents of the amendment claiming that it doesn't do that?

I've been wondering today if it isn't an incredibly clever way to manipulate the debate over the proposal. By pushing this wording, proponents create a situation wherein the opposition naturally objects *only to the clause which would ban civil unions* and implicitly accepts the marriage ban itself. After a period of time in which the debate is exclusively about the civil union clause, proponents of the measure can give in and allow the amendment to be amended ... with the implication that since that's what everyone has been objecting to, everyone should now be able to get behind the revised amendment. It's a technique to shift the debate from being about gay marriage to being about civil unions ... and then to use the concession that civil unions are allowed as a means to secure a majority behind the marriage ban.

It's a clever strategy that there's no easy way to counter.

The Annenberg Public Policy Center has conducted a survey of attitudes towards gay marriage and the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment, with some surprising results:

• The strongest opposition to the FMA comes from the midwest, where only 37% of people surveyed support it;

• People over the age of 65 are overwhelmingly opposed to the FMA, with only 38% supporting it;
• 24% of self-described liberals support the FMA

And some not surprising ones:

• People who attend church more than once a week are the strongest supporters of the amendment;

• People under the age of 29 oppose the amendment by 58% and are the only group except self-described liberals to favor laws allowing gay marriage.

But the really telling numbers come from these statistics: people with a gay friend, family member, or colleague are 22% more likely to oppose the FMA (56% vs. 34%) and 17% more likely to favor legal recognition of gay marriages (42% vs. 25%). That's the reason public opinion on this subject has been shifting, and it's the reason why eventually gay marriages will be recognized in the US - although it will take several generations if this FMA is adopted.

This afternoon, after recoverıng from the ill effects of last night's venture through siberian anatolıa, I wandered through the remains of one of the most famous churches ın Christendom: the cathedral of St. John (as in, the Gospel Accordıng to John).

As the story goes, after Christ was crucified, John and Mary (mother of God) retired to Ephesos, where - except for a period during which he was exiled to live on an island, during which time he suffered hallucinations and wrote about the apocalypse - they lived until the end of their days; John is alleged to have reached the advanced age of 100. (This story was ratified by the Council of Nicaea). After his death, the local Christian community erected an ornamental tomb for him, on top of a hill not far from Ephesos (and now in the center of the modern town of Selcuk). Sometime in the second century, they built a church, in the traditional style of graeco-roman building; it was felled by an earthquake in the sixth century, but Justinian had it rebuilt. That church was felled by an earthquake in the fourteenth century, but the Seljuks had come by that time, and did not care about rebuilding it. (Have I mentioned that the hostel i'm staying in is built out of brick? Everything in this part of the country seems to be constructed from brick, an averrance of safety I think is bizarre in the extreme).

The ruins are still there, spread out over a hill, inside the ruined walls of the byzantine castle. The tomb itself is in fine shape, at least the pillars and the marble slab over where the body was buried; whatever stood atop the pillars is gone. Both the footprint of the greek church and the footprint of the byzantine church are evident, and it's clear how the byzantines reused some of the columns and stones from the original greek structure (an interesting admixture as the byzantine work is, as it was in constantinople, mostly red brick, while the greek work was mostly marble).

For reasons I don't completely understand, this was more impressive than the hagia sophia was. I'm not christian, so am not awed by the fact that (according to the story) this is the grave of a man who personally knew christ; but it is the first time i've seen an extensive in situ ruin, and that may make the difference. Either way, it's quite a sight: the ruins of a church built on a church, high above a farming village-turned-tourist-haven, with a seljuk castle in the background.

İ took an interminably long and uncomfortable bus rıde from Nevşehir to İzmir last nıght, a thirteen-hour long trek through the dark and ice. İ was mostly unable to sleep in part by vice of being seated in an aisle seat next to the galley (not for lack of trying; the bleak dry scape of anatolia isn't very interesting at night with nothing to illuminate it).

The guy sitting across the aisle from me was reading a book on Delphi 6. I felt a surge of pride at this and wanted to talk to him about it and brag, but was of course unable to, the language barrier being what it is. Still, it was instructive: I am done with Borland, and it with me, and our paths will not cross again; but I will not lose that sense of pride in having been part of Delphi for so many years.

This is, of course, a big part of how they kept me there so long, and is as much a curse as a validation. But the difference between a curse and a blessing is rarely as clear as popular mythology would have it be.

İ stepped for the fırst tıme on Asıan soıl today. Lıterally, ın a sense; the soıl was that of Roman Asıa. It's questıonable exactly how deservıng the land ıs of beıng classıfıed ın modern asıa; geographers would say ıt ıs, but ıt has more ın common wıth Italy than ıt does wıth Thaıland, so what do the geographers know?
The occasıon was the arrıval of a Bosporus excursıon ferry - see the prevıous post - ın Anadolu Kırağı, a tourıst trap-cum-fıshıng vıllage on the Anadolu shore about four-fıfths of the way from İstanbul to the Black Sea. The quay was fılled wıth restaurants and streetsıde stands sellıng waffles, ıce cream, and fısh kebap (ı'm utterly unwıllıng to try sardıne or anchovy kebap, no matter how much the chefs ınsıst ıt's the fınest ınventıon sınce baklava). I had a waffle wıth fıg marmelade, ıt was delıcıous. (The waffles here functıon about the same way roadsıde crepe stands ın Parıs do; ın fact, the waffles were called 'krep', even though they were nothıng of the kınd). Beyond the quay was a standard-ıssue vıllage, albeıt somewhat wealthıer than I would have expected for a fıshıng vıllage (and ıt defınıtely was that; the road along the Bosporus was lıned wıth fıshıng boats). Up on a hıll over the vıllage was a castle, a remnant of Byzantıne tımes - but whıle there was too much tıme alotted before the boat returned to explore the vıllage, there was not enough tıme to hıke up to the castle, explore ıt, and get back wıthout beıng stranded for the nıght. (Perhaps a not entırely unappealıng prosepect ın summer, thıs would be a nıghtmare rıght now).
The peculıar thıng was thıs: ın other places, a self-conscıous tourıst trap whose economy seemed to revolve entırely around sellıng thıngs to tourısts would have ırrıtated me to no end. But here ıt dıd not; ın part because the standard prıce ınflatıon of tourıst traps had not set ın; ın part because there was no kıtschy tourıst brıc-a-brac for sale; ın part because the tourıst-trap area was bounded by two blocks ın each dırectıon (and these are tıny medıeval-vıllage blocks, not massıve modern cıty blocks); and ın part because there was an honesty about ıt that seems utterly lackıng ın the underhanded grab-your-attentıon-and-change-the-subject-to-carpet tactıcs of the old town of İstanbul. The experıence drove home somethıng i'd started to realıze yesterday: whıle there ıs much beautıful stuff of hıstorıcal sıgnıfıcance to see here, and ıt's worth seeıng and i'm glad to have seen ıt - nevertheless, İ don't lıke İstanbul very much. It's a huge cıty, whıch i never lıke much when travellıng, and the area around the maın tourıst attractıons ıs *predatory* ın a way that far exceeds anythıng i've encountered elsewhere ın Europe. (İ'm lıkıng ıt better as i spend more tıme outsıde of the tourıst dıstrıcts - now that i'm not sıck the language barrıer ıs less overwhelmıng - but ıt stıll wıll go down ın my book as one of those places that everyone thınks ıs wonderful for reasons i don't understand, sort of lıke Parıs).

Rıdıng up the bosporus on an excursıon boat, and sıttıng or standıng outsıde for the duratıon, ın February, at sunset, on a clear wındy nıght, even ıf you are wearıng thermal underwear a sweater a jacket gloves a wool hat and a scarf, ıs really fuckıng cold.

After the last post, I wandered through a back-residential district to the sea walls. While the entire byzantine sea wall is not still there, that part fronting onto the bosporus is, as is that part fronting onto the marmara near the bosporus. There's a busy thoroughfare running along the outside of the sea walls now (presumably they did some sort of land engineering to shore up the beach for this), and a pedestrian path on the outside of the street. The water in the marmara was rough, choppy; a storm was coming in (it poured overnight). The bosporus is *small*; a tiny little strait which makes the site of the city perfectly understandable. The path curves around past an unimpressive statue of Ataturk (the one i saw in a schoolyard in the residential district was more impressive), from were it is possible to take a footpath through the gardens of the great palace.

It's winter. The gardens aren't being maintained; many of the paths are covered in fallen leaves. The main walkway would be a great place for a summer stroll, with tall shade trees towering over the path - but, leafless against the gray sky, they feel grim and almost foreboding. Most of the park benches in the park seemed to be occuppied by young couples seeking a sequestered spot to hold hands and possibly make out - risque behavior like holding hands is better saved for out-of-the-way corners of a large wooded park, where your grandparents can't see you and be shocked.

Then I went to the grand attraction, the first destination of all visitors to Istanbul: the Hagia Sophia. For centuries the largest church in christendom, with a giant dome and little to no internal support, it was commissioned in te sixth century AD and is still standing (albeit with external structural support, and minarets, added over time). All of the mosaics were plastered over when it was converted to a mosque, but some of them have been restored, and those that are there are stunning; they're currently working on restoring the dome (but it's a decades-long project), which means there is massive scaffolding in the center of the floor.The scaffolding interferes with the sense of space, and makes the dome less impressive; but if they succeed in restoring the mosaics, it will be worth it.

Yesterday I was sick - fever and chills, travelers' diarrhea (surprise!) - so all I managed to get to was a large underground cistern, dating to te sixth century or so, which was used to supply the city with water during sieges. It's been remodeled, with walkways put down so you can walk between the pillars and see them all (above the standing water), and speakers blasting strange vaguely ethereal music.

I arrived last night at close to 6pm, but it took an hour or so to get through customs and passport control. The price for visas for Americans was amusing; it cost either $100 or 100 Euros; the choice between the two at current exchange rates is obvious. (I wonder if it adjusts with exchange or not; eg., when the relationship between the currencies was inverted, was the euro price higher?)

Getting into town was easy enough; the transfer point at Zeytinburnu was amazingly well marked. It was early evening, though, and the trains were crowded. I managed to find a corner to huddle in with my bag, but I couldn't watch the city go by, or really even do much crowd watching. There was an announcement on the metro which I couldn't understand but which suggested that my stop was closed (I recognized the name of my stop and the name of the preceding stop and concluded that it was saying i should take the latter for the former; a wrong conclusion, it turns out), so i got off a stop early and followed the tracks; a young man from ankara asked me for the time and chatted me up for a while, but left me when our paths diverged.

The hostel is right around the corner from the hagia sophia and the sultanahmet mosque; there's a view of the sea of marmara from my room (although i can't see the other side). The street it's on is a backpacker ghetto, empty (it's january, nobody in their right mind comes here in january); it's interesting and vaguely cute. It reminds me for some reason of the first time I went to Prague, when things were calm and the crowds were gone (unlike just a few weeks later, by which time the tourist crush had come).

I got lost in a nearby neighborhood this morning; it was a residential neighborhood on the side of a hill in the old town, with the minarets of sultanahmet visible from time to time through openings in the narrow winding streets. It was nice; unlike the area near sultanahmet, or on divan yolu, nobody stopped me, struck up a conversation in english, and then tried to sell me carpets, leather, tourist guides, or anything else i didn't want. It was surprisingly easy to get lost, though, almost disconcertingly so: i hadn't expected the steepness of the hill or the windingness of the streets, and the shift from tourist trap/shopping mall to a residential neighborhood with small hole-in-the-wall stores was sudden.

The monument to Constantius, a towering ten+ story monument along divan yolu, is encased in steel and undergoing 'reconstruction' due to earthquake damage. In the hippodrome, next to sultanahmet, are three obelisks. One, made of brick, has a crumbling facade with no adornment; it dates from the time of Constantine Porphyrygenitus and - for all that it towers as high as everything else there - carries the distinct air of a monument erected to celebrate current glory in a vain attempt to compare it with the past; it feels almost ... run down ... as if the architectural beauty of previous eras could never be recaptured and the people of the time knew it. Next to it is a bronze spiral, dating from the time of Constantine, which broke about a third of the way up an age ago. Like almost all bronze ornaments anywhere, it is in serious need of cleaning. Further down is a slate obelisk on four bronze pillars atop a marble base. Decorated in egyptian hieroglyphics, it is a *reconstruction* of a monument to theodosius; the slate looks ... out of place, as if it had been placed there yesterday. hopefully it will age well (although for now it appears that it might topple over in the next earthquake).

The flight was, of course, interminable; 10 hours or so to Frankfurt (where the runways were decked with snow when I arrived) plus another several hours in the airport and then a two-and-a-half hour flight to here. I didn't sleep on the first flight, of course, so I was exhausted when I got here; the guy next to me had to wake me up so I would eat on the second flight. But it was neat how quickly I fell into German-speaking mode once I was there.

Sacramento Bee reporter Dan Weintraub passes on this terrifying summation of the budget crisis by a financial advisor to the Controller's office. The key point: if the bond measure on the ballot fails, and the courts rule last year's fiscal recovery bond illegal, the short-term bonds issued last year to cover the deficit will be repaid using registered warrants, issued by certain key state banks, under rules that require that they be repaid in full prior to any state spending other than:

• payments to schools;
  
• debt service on general obligation bonds;
  
• repayments of borrowed money to special funds
  
• federally mandated payments
  

It's customary that people, when they go travelling, send postcards to all of their friends as a way of teasing them: "see what you're missing?". I'm leaving the country on Tuesday for just over three weeks in beautiful, icy Turkey; if you would like a postcard and you think I don't have your address, please email it to me or post it here.

Walking through downtown Santa Cruz this afternoon I noticed that Joe Simitian's campaign staff have set up a local office in the St. George Hotel and are seeking precinct walkers (but not phone callers or envelope stuffers). There was nobody there, so I was unable to walk in and ask them to explain to me why I should choose Mr. Simitian over Mr. Lempert in the upcoming primary; I'll have to try this later (and, if they're particularly convincing, offer my services in some non-precinct-walking capacity). But in the meantime, all I can do is look at what they're advertising in their windows, and according to them one of the reasons to support Simitian is that, while he was in the assembly, he led the (ultimately victorious) fight to spare basic-aid school districts (eg., the districts which generate more than the minimum standard revenue on their own, from local property taxes) from budget cuts.

Announcing that you helped save the wealthy school districts from budget cuts during a massive fiscal crisis doesn't strike me as being a good platform from which to announce a candidacy for nomination by the Democratic party; any sense of progressive fairness or concern for the common weal would suggest that these districts should have been the first ones to have their support taken away (if there were to be any education cuts at all). I understand that, because he was the Assemblyman from Palo Alto, political necessity dictated he ardently oppose cuts that would directly effect the Palo Alto School District; and yet that hardly seems to be a good reason for citizens of a different town, with a less well off school district, and an alleged devotion to ideals of social justice, to vote for him.

But then again, maybe i'm wrong; it would be easy for "he saved state money for basic aid districts" to become "he saved the schools" in political sloganeering, and it's possible that the social injustice of continuing state aid to the wealthy while cutting programs for the poor is irrelevant to socially-conscious wealthy voters. Advertising his activity on this issue may not hurt Mr. Simitian in the slightest with the greater electorate; but it does make me question his commitment to the values of the political party whose nomination he seeks.

I'm certain that he didn't mean it the way it came out, but Congressman Steny Hoyer, the House Minority Whip, issued this self-parodying statement last night:

In education, we promised to leave no child behind, but this President now proposes going to Mars, where there is no education for children.

I wish there were a transcript of his entire remarks somewhere rather than just the New York Times quote; it's hard to tell if the context justifies this bizarre statement (and the New York Times is quoting it in a way to make it look ridiculous) or if Rep. Hoyer really is as stupid as he sounds. It's sort of hard to imagine a context that justifies it, however.

While riding the bus last night it occured to me that to say that "Catalonia" was effectively independant in the tenth century was to engage in anachronism: the term 'Catalonia' or, for that matter, the concept of Catalonia, did not come into use until sometime after the dynastic union of the Rex of Aragon and the comtes of Barcelona. The point, however, remains.

When the lands to the north and east of the Llobregat, and the east of the Segre, were annexed to the Empire under Charlemagne, they were added to the duchy of Gothia, which encompassed much of the area between the Rhone and the Garonne, and was populated mostly by Visigoths. A rebellion by Bernard of Gothia was successfully put down by the King of the Franks, after which point the dux of Gothia faded into irrelevance, and the local counts - of Toulouse, of Barcelona, of Carcassonne - captured effective power. For much of this time the count of Toulouse was the nominal overlord of the duchy, but the title fell into disuse, and by the twelfth century, the concept of Gothia, as a region of the Kingdom of France in which the population was primarily Visigothic, and traditional Visigothic law still obtained, no longer existed.

The borderland - what historians often call "the Spanish March" - was in theory under the authority of a marquis, but the earliest recorded marquis was also the Count of Urgell, and over time, as he was unable to project political power beyond the county of Urgell, that title also fell into disuse. For all practical purposes, by the end of the ninth century, the various counties south of the Pyrenees were all effectively independant of the King (whose power, in any event, rarely extended outside of Ile-de-France) and of the Count of Toulouse; and Visigothic law remained the law of the land - in particular, the administration of justice remained centralized in the hands of the counts (while it broke down completely in much of France proper during the tenth century).

The counts of the region continued to date their documents in the regnal year of the King of the Franks, however, well into the twelfth century, and they continued to send emissaries to the royal court until both Kings proved unable to muster any arms to defend the counties against the invasions of Al-Mansur. It was at that point that the Count of Barcelona, by virtue of having put together a force that drove Al-Mansur back across the Ebro, attained pre-eminence among the counties south of the Pyrenees. Effectively, he was in control of the entirety of the march, but theoretically he still owed allegiance to the King of the Franks, a state which continued for centuries (until the county of Barcelona and its neighbors were amalgamated into the Crown of Aragon). Even so, there was no name for the region as a whole; each county was an individual entity which deferred in large measure to Barcelona, but the notion that the counties together represented a whole unit did not come into common currency until they were merged with Aragon, in which case the obvious difference between Aragon, on the one hand, and the counties of Catalonia on the other, necessitated the concept.

Still, my error of anachronistic terminology does not defeat the general point: the counties south of the pyrenees were indendant in all but name from the end of the ninth century, a fact proven by their successful defeat (without any aid from anywhere north of Toulouse) of Al Mansur.

Field Poll has released a new survey of California voters that asks them how they would vote on this spring's ballot measures, and the results are grim: Proposition 57 is trailing badly.

Proposition 57 is a terrible idea which is nonetheless essential. Last year the state borrowed $11 billion to cover the deficit - flouting the constitutional requirement that long-term borrowing be approved by the voters. That bond issue is the subject of a legal challenge; it is highly likely that the state's issuance of the bonds will fail the challenge (since the issuance was, in fact, illegal). Proposition 57 is a $15 billion bond issue which will (a) authorize refinancing of the $11 billion bond (thereby making it legal), and (b) generate revenue to pay for the vehicle licence fee refund.

I'm not in favor of part (b), as I don't think there should have been a refund. And I thought borrowing the $11 billion instead of either cutting programs or raising taxes was a terrible idea; we should not be funding ongoing operations with bonds.

But that money has already been borrowed. If a court invalidates the bonds, the bill comes due *immediately*. We'd have to find $11 billion in this year's budget to cover it, and the results would be catastrophic. The voters of the state are in a bind here: funding ongoing operations with bond money is a bad idea, but refusing to retroactively authorize a bond that has already been sold is an even worse one. Yes, this is tantamount to judicial blackmail. Yes, we should be angry about it.

But voting against Proposition 57 is insane.

Over in this CalPundit comment thread, someone suggests that the doctrine of state sovereignty is in essence medieval and ought to be jettisoned. He may be right that it ought to be jettisoned; both the America-as-empire and the world-community-as-arbiter-of-individual-rights views of the future depend on that.

But I have to take serious issue with the allegation that state sovereignty was a medieval doctrine.

In the (western European) medieval world view, God was sovereign, and the King, dux, count, or whatever who ruled over the local demesne was (in theory) a representative of God. The lines of political control in various principalities was often fluid - Catalonia, for example, was effectively independant in the tenth century but maintained a theoretical allegiance to the King of the Franks for centuries thereafter - and it was entirely consistent for the same figure to King in one principality, and have complete freedom of action there, while simultaneously being a duke in another principality, oweing allegience and fidelity to some other King. The history of medieval Poland is the history of trying to assert the independance of that State against the power of the Empire; the history of medieval France is the history of a struggle between the French Kings against various local potentates, often assisted either by the King of England or the Emperor; the history of medieval Germany is in large measure the history of a power struggle between the Pope and the Emperor.

The principle that one did not interfere in the internal affairs of neighboring states simply did not exist in medieval times. Nor, at least in western Europe, is it even clear that the principle of statehood existed in any way comparable to the way we think about it today.

State sovereignty requires (a) a secular orientation vis-a-vis the origin of power; (b) effective central governments which are more or less in control of their territories; (c) well-defined borders between states. None of these conditions obtained in practice in western europe in the medieval period, and to some extent they did not even exist in theory. The principle of state sovereignty is a creature of the baroque age, not of the medieval one, and it is one of the fundamental assumptions international relations in the modern age. That assumption may be fraying at the edges, and its time may be one which has passed, but it is not as ancient as "Joe Schmoe" would have it be.

One of the primary reasons I voted in favor of the recall of then-Governor Gray Davis was my belief that Governor Davis was simply incapable of handling the state's budget problem in a way that would bring together the opposing sides (neither of whom had any willingness to compromise) or introduce real structural reform. I wasn't convinced that any of the other candidates could do so, either, but any of the serious candidates would have had a greater chance of success than Davis, who was unwilling to take political risks and had alienated many of the people he would have needed to cajole.

Some of Governor Schwarzenegger's moves have caused me to believe he is a great improvement over his predecessor. Admittedly, he does seem to have adopted a view that the recall of the governor was a revolt against taxes, not a revolt against financial mismanagement; and that view may lead to a 'solution' which is very different than the one I would prefer, and which is actively harmful to the future of the state. But at least it's an attempt to find a solution, which Davis would never have given us.

It is therefore more than a bit disturbing to read that the Legislative Analyst has reported that the Governor's budget doesn't solve the problem, but postpones $6 billion in permanent cuts for a year. When that's added to the money Schwarzenegger expects to raise by renegotiating the compacts with the indian tribes - negotiations in which the state holds no cards and in which the tribes have no incentive to participate - the new budget starts to look frighteningly like an unstable pipe dream.

It's too early to tell for sure. But it's not inconceivable, at this point, that Schwarzenegger will prove no better at this than Davis was. The anti-tax people will be happy, in that case, but the fix-the-budget people will not.

Jared and I went to see The Triplets of Belleville over the weekend. It's an amazing film, but a disappointing one.

The animation is beautifully drawn, and the film is great at capturing mood; part of the arrival in belleville was almost as good at capturing the mood of lonely travel as the incredible train scene in Spirited Away. The surrealness of it all, the sense that this was a representation of the world as seen by someone on a permanent acid trip, was carried off beautifully.That almost the entire film could pass without anyone speaking (outside of the non-speech used by the adults in the old Peanuts cartoons), without impedence of understanding, was nothing short of incredible. Some of the scenes were incredibly cute, including an extended riff on action movie chase scenes, and the central plot device (the mafia kidnapping failed tour de france competitors to run them in illegal underground bike races) was amusing.

And yet ... for all that, the film is a perfect example of idea, and atmosphere, together failing to carry the story. Much of the atmosphere building was slow and ponderous, the caricatures failed to draw an emotional connection, and the end of the movie came and went leaving behind a feeling that nothing had happened. The film would have been much better at half its length; in the end it was a beautiful presentation of atmosphere-sans-story, occasionally riveting images tied together with duct tape and sealing wax and broken under a heavy weight.

A friend pointed out to me in email that Salam Pax is reporting on a strange form of inflation currently plaguing the beleagured people of Baghdad: the value of the dinar is appreciating against the dollar. Ordinarily that would constitute deflation, but since (a) most people store their savings in dollars, and (b) dinar-denominated prices aren't changing as a result of this movement, the effect is inflationary.

Some measure of inflation could have predicted; in fact, I would hope that US policy in the country was in some measure based on the assumption that it would be there. It's a standard result of the arrival of large numbers of comparatively wealthy foreigners; East Timor experienced an inflation of 140% during the time following the arrival of the UN, and Afghanistan experienced dire inflation in housing (Kabul's prices were for a while the most expensive in the world), food, and souvenirs (my brother reports that the price of some souvenirs was up several hundred percent over the eight months he was there). A similar effect in Baghdad would be perfectly normal.

What's odd about this instance, however, is that in both of the other cases, inflation was accompanied by a massive depreciation of the local currency relative to the dollar. Prices went up in dollar terms, but they went up far more in local terms. Most of the brunt of the inflation was borne by people functioning in the local currency, and only a small fraction of it by the people who'd moved in. In Iraq, if Salam Pax's report is to be believed, prices in the local currency are relatively stable, but the currency is rapidly appreciating, causing the brunt of the inflation to be borne by the foreigners and those locals who use the dollar as their currency of account.

I'm not sure what the cause for this is. It may be a side-effect of the widespread use of the dollar as a currency of account, although I would have expected that to happen in post-war afghanistan as well. But it is incontrovertibly good news; not only does it discourage capital flight away from the dinar, but it means that the economic effects of the inflation are not being borne by the poor iraqis who subsist on small dinar-denominated earnings. The nature of this inflation may be one of the unheralded success stories of the occupation.

The main page at the New York Times website has, this morning, a picture of Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark, and a caption informing me that he's changed his sweater color. This is "all the news that's fit to print?"

I am certain that General Clark has changed his sweater color as a result of recommendations by a focus group or political consultant who told him that people in New Hampshire were more likely to feel comfortable with someone dressed in his new outfit than someone dressed in his old outfit (and reminded him that people are more likely to vote for someone they feel comfortable with). It's disturbing in some measure that modern politics hinges on such things as the color of one's sweater, for superficial details of appearance should be irrelevant in choosing a president of the united states (however appropriate it may be in choosing a president of the high school class). And yet on another level it makes sense; appearance should not directly effect how one votes, but it will effect one's first impressions, and the reception one affords a candidate; and those impressions and that reception color one's reaction to everything the candidate says. A wise candidate will be aware of that and make use of it - even, perhaps, to the extent of tailoring his wardrobe to each individual audience.

What's far more disturbing than the use of fashion as an adjunct to political performance is the use of fashion in political reporting. It's a given, at this point, that all serious candidates use focus groups to tell them how to adjust their style to the whims of the voters; a report that a candidate is doing so isn't newsworthy. And it's part and parcel of the true tragedy of political reporting in this country: rather than reporting on the ideas a candidate has, and his proposals - rather than reporting what the candidates say and verifying the veracity of their remarks - the modern news media reports on the process of getting elected; what the candidates are doing to win key states, how they are adjusting their strategies, how they figure out what they're going to say, what color of sweater they're wearing this week. It's political reporting for those who want to predict who will win rather than reporting for those who want to figure out who should win.

The other stories in today's New York Times reflect this tendency. There's an article describing how Howard Dean is offending people by being too cocky, an article about how much money Richard Gephardt has raised, an article about how Howard Dean is watching his words. Even the more substantive articles get in on the game: consider this report on the debate on tax cuts within the Democratic party: it's focused less on what the candidates are saying about taxes than on how the Democrats are trying to sell their views and use their position on taxes to their political advantage.

It's all about the process of getting elected, not the substance of why we should elect them.

There's a morality tale in this situation, about the danger of the profit motive causing news agencies to cater to the lowest ambitions of its readership, and for a long time I thought that was an accurate summation of the cause. But now I think there's something different going on: news reporters are writing articles that tell them the things they want to know. Reporters who are caught up in the campaign game write articles intended for reporters who are caught up in the campaign game, focusing on the minutae of process rather than the substance of positions. Political campaigns have become their life, if they are reporters permanently assigned to cover politics, and so all of the elaborate protocols of that special world have taken on a life of their own, and acculturation to the system has blinded them to what those outside the world of the permanent campaign consider to be newsworthy or important. In a vicious cycle, an excessive focus on process causes voters to stop expecting real news about the political campaign, thereby removing any pressure there might have been to drop the focus and present useful information.

No wonder Showtime believes there's more money to be made in a reality show making fun of the presidential election than in news reports covering the election.

The university where I lived for many years fronts on to a redwood forest, known to contain a large tame deer population, and a number of mountain lions that (periodically) eat them. There are signs on the paths into the nature reserve warning you, and telling you that if you encounter them, you should not run, and you should try to make yourself appear bigger, and other sage advice. There are periodic stories of people seeing them, but there's never been any hostility - and it's extremely unusual in any event for mountain lions and humans to tangle.

All the more reason that this story is so shocking: a woman on a mountain bike was attacked and dragged off by a local mountain lion, who seems to have previously killed someone else.

The lion has been put down, and the woman appears to be fine. But it's still a scary warning for anyone who likes wandering alone in local forests: beware of lion, and don't run fast if you can avoid it.

I usually don't mind paying the ticketmaster convenience fee¹ - it is, after all, convenient, especially when i'm buying tickets to shows in San Francisco or (even worse) Los Angeles. But this is ridiculous: the convenienve fee for next thursday's Blackalicious show (at the Catalyst) is more than the differential between at-the-door prices and advance prices.

I'm not sure if that's a result of tickets.com having an outrageous fee, or the Catalyst not understanding the economics of web ticket sales, but the end result is the same either way: it's cheaper to buy at the door, on the night of the show, than it is to buy advance tickets over the web. I'm fairly certain that's not the intended result.

¹I'm using ticketmaster here in the same sense that one might use coke to refer to any soda, or xerox to refer to a canon photocopier.

People who don't live in earthquake zones might not fully appreciate just how amazing this is. It's incredible; this sort of thing is unheard of.

A 56-year-old man was rescued alive after spending 13 days beneath the rubble of the earthquake-razed Iranian city of Bam

Thirteen days without food, freezing, unable to move, pinned beneath a building which had collapsed on him, drinking water which happened to be there for reasons unknown. Sounds like some obscure form of torture, something that you'd expect depraved dictators to inflict on political prisoners in order to experience a fleeting moment of sadistic glee - it's a safe bet that the poor gentleman on more than one occasion during the ordeal hoped that he'd just die, alreeady. But he didn't.

I hope he comes out of the coma and can't remember any of it.

As a teenager, I never had any desire to get a drivers' license. My high school didn't offer a behind-the-wheel program, so it would have required that we pay for one, and my mother's financial resources were always tight (I made more my first year out of college than she did in any year of her life, a fact which brought me no end of pleasure at the time and which now strikes me as being a teardroplet reflection of all of the things about her life which I cannot fathom). A car would have been out of the question, and besides, in those days I was an angry teenage liberal snob, full of hatred for all things suburban. Learning to drive was out of the question; the tyranny of the automobile - its effects on public architecture and land use, and the way the existence of the automobile encourages development patterns which make surviving without an automobile nigh impossible - were one of the prime evils of the modern age, and I would not be a part of it.

After high school, I moved to Santa Cruz, where - if I confined myself to things in Santa Cruz and refrained from venturing north of the mountains into the urban abyss (something I was altogether happy to do) - an automobile was unnecessary (and, during the years when I lived on campus, where parking was rare and expensive, an active nuisance). Commuting by bus to Scotts Valley, where I worked for nine years, was a pain - but at first there was no choice, and then it was natural, habitual, something I did because I'd always done it; and why not? It was a minor inconvenience, but what is a minor inconvenience to the righteous? And since when has irritation at minor inconvenience surmounted the grim dictates of habit?

Several times during my 20s I obtained a learner's permit - more from a sense of duty than anything else. Often it was in conjunction with long trips I was planning with friends, whom I wished to inconvenience less than I might otherwise. Other times I did it out of a feeling that this is what someone my age should do, that it was frankly ridiculous to be a mid-twentysomething without a drivers' license, as if some essential element of personhood were missing. (That it is reasonable to think that emerges, perhaps, as the strongest indictment of the automobile culture; someone without a drivers' license is incomplete in the same way that an unmarried aristocratic woman in the early modern age was incomplete.) Yet it never took; a few spins around a parking lot, a long drive on I-5, was about all these efforts produced. Half-accepted duty is a meagre substitute for desire.

In recent years, this has begun to change. My free time has become a more precious commodity, and the hours wasted due to public transportation (and the inflexibility thus imposed on my working life) have become an onorous price to pay for the remnants of teenage nihilism. This has become particularly true in the years since I entered into a commuter relationship with my wonderful boyfriend; neither former Governor Davis nor Governor Schwarzenegger have been able to replicate Benito Mussolini's reputed skill with the iron engine's timetables (and the busses seem to run on a schedule which is entirely unrelated to the publically declared ones). If we were ever to move in together, I realized, I would have to be able to drive to work; three-to-four hours of public transit commute a day was not a good long term prospect for happiness. Then too, after the stressful ship cycle for C#Builder earlier in the year, the thought began to enter into my head that perhaps I might be happier if I contemplated alternative employment - and, while Santa Cruz allows the possibility of an active modern life without a car, Silicon Valley most assuredly does not.

So, armed this time with desire rather than duty, I obtained a permit in July, and began taking behind-the-wheel instruction from an alleged professional. I'd intended to finish this off by the end of the summer, but scheduling restricted the lessons to at most an hour a week (a schedule I was unable to keep through August and September due to other scheduling conflicts), and the lessons dragged into early, and then late, fall. I scheduled a test for early December, using my instructor's car, but the mental haze induced by two months of 80-hour weeks caused me to misremember the time of my appointment with him, and so we failed to connect and I never reported for the appointment (an event which was devastating at the time but turns out to have been fortunate). So I rescheduled for the only appointment time available before the Capitola DMV office closed for remodeling: late in the morning on New Years' Eve.

To describe this timing as inconvenient would be understatement. My boyfriend's family's family holiday is New Years; we all caravaned to Los Angeles last weekend and will be caravaning back next weekend. (A good opportunity to practice driving skill, though - as was an otherwise disappointing trip to the Los Angeles Zoo, where the animals, upset at the cold and the incessant industrial noise caused by the construction of a new gorilla enclosure, were all hiding, leaving the humans with nothing to do but bicker.) So I made arrangements to fly to San Jose so I could take the test, and then to fly back to Los Angeles, in order to celebrate New Year's appropriately. Expensive and annoying, but what else could I do? Waiting until April wouldn't have made me happy when I was employed, and now it would be crazy.

Waiting, with nothing to read and nothing to do, for the DMV inspector to come give me my test, was one of the more tedious things i've had to do recently. Close to forty minutes passed before he arrived, inspected the car, and started off driving.

I was convinced i'd failed. After parallel parking, I forgot to take the car out of reverse before trying to un-park (an utterly unrealistic condition as, if i'd been parallel parking in real life, I would have put the car in park), and I took a series of dips at a legal but unreasonable (given the depth of the dips) speed. It felt like everything was going wrong. The examiner took a more relaxed view than I did: I passed, having been dinged eight points (mostly for turns in which I would stop inside the crosswalk before turning, usually because the view of traffic on the intersecting street was occluded at the limit line). Apparently fifteen points is the most you can have taken off and still pass (a terrifying fact that i probably would have been happier not to know).

So now, at the age of thirty, for the first time in my life, i'm a licensed driver. I still dislike many of the side effects that automobiles have on the way we live - in particular, the endless blight of suburban sprawl which takes perfectly beautiful countryside and converts it into a soulless expanse of mcdonalds, walmart, and ugly light industrial office parks. I'd prefer the tightly packed city (say, a San Francisco, or a Boston) over California's suburban valleys anyday. But self-righteousness has mellowed into amusement.

The me of thirteen years ago would be horrified.

I started working at Borland Interational on September 9, 1994. I started as an intern in the technical support division. I rose through the tech support ranks, then off to QA, and spent four and a half years in R&D. Last Thursday, December 18, after a nasty cycle in which my team was working 80 hour weeks in a desperate attempt to stave off disaster, I was downsized. I'm mostly happy about it; though the timing sucks, my time had come, and I was going to be looking in the spring anyway. Yet at the same time ... nine years. Gone. Over. This new world is going to take some getting used to.

Fayetteville, North carolina (where my brother, who is stationed at Ft. Bragg, lives) is unlike anywhere else i've ever been: It's the only city in the entire world in which one can head out of the city, in any direction, and find that the surrounding communities are simultaneously significantly poorer and significantly nicer. The city sprawls in every direction, taking up approximately half the size of Los Angeles (the city) with a fraction of the population, and buildings are dropped willy-nilly with nary a thought for aesthetics. There are no sidewalks, which doesn't matter because nobody in their right mind would walk anywhere. There are pawnshops and strip clubs everywhere, and the architecture reflects the bad side of the '50s nostalgia that was prevalent in the 1980s, with no sign that any of the architectural fads of subsequent times attracted any notice.

The surrounding countryside is equally sprawly, but in a different way: there are large gaps of nothing between the small sections of stuff, so it's less one continuous mass of ugly half-city and more a series of individual villages seperated by forest and swamp. The older villages have the cute feel of falling-apart small towns whose economic heyday passed more than a generation ago but whose citizens are still, inexplicably, proud; the newer villages are stamped out of the same stuff as the villages along I-5 in California. Not great, but an improvement over this town, where nobody in their right mind would live.

It's a strange thing, but in a week in which i've been laid off [full story coming later], discovered that a close family member is shortly going to be spending time in Iraq, and heard that a close friend had to put her cat down, the thing that made me cry was the news that my high school English teacher has died.

Frank Jansson was my teacher for two years; I had a total of three classes with him. Everyone I knew who was a grade or two above me loved him; most people I knew in my class came to love him over the course of our time with him. His energy, his love of the written word, of sharing it with people, of teaching them how to understand it and see its beauty, and how to shape it to allow themselves to take form, shone through in everything he did. He was one of a small number of teachers whose passion for what they did had the power to mesmerize you, and could force you to share their passion not because you particularly cared about what they were passionate about, but because you cared about *them* and wanted to share their passion so they wouldn't be disappointed in you.

I'm far away from home today, and will be for some time, and I find that all I really want to do is pull out my high school year book, and read what he wrote in it; I don't have my papers from that time, and we never stayed in contact (because the circumstances in which I left Monrovia made it necessary for me, on some level, to make a clean break - one of the few things i've done in my life that I really regret, and regret more with each passing year), so that, and his picture, and my memories, are all I have of him, and it isn't enough.

I'm completely unable to fathom a world without him. Unlike Prince, I wouldn't name him as one of my great inspirations - i'd be more likely to name Frau Campbell, or Paul Pagano - but he was one of my favorite people. I wish i'd been man enough to tell him that.

The Aassociated Press reports, via the New York Times, that Chiron and Aventis (the two manufacturers of flu vaccine) have run out.

The two makers of flu shots in the United States said Friday they have run out of vaccine and will not be able to meet a surge in demand resulting from fears of a particularly bad flu season.

Nevertheless, the companies said people who have put off getting their shots may still be able to find them, since distributors and doctors' offices may still have some left.

The companies, Chiron and Aventis Pasteur, together made about 80 million doses of the injected vaccine, which ordinarily would be enough to meet U.S. demand.

``Because of the recent outbreak, we've seen an unprecedented surge of vaccine orders late in the season,'' said Len Lavenda, an Aventis spokesman. ``As a result, we have now shipped all our available supplies.''

The companies say that it takes four months to make the vaccine, so there's no point in making more, as flu season will be well over by the time they're done.

I'm glad I got one before they ran out.

Today's San Francisco Chronicle reports on two initiatives that Ted Costa, original sponsor of the recall, is contemplating floating after the reapportionment petition qualifies for the ballot. One of them would institute a part-time legislature, similar to the system in Texas (where the legislature is allowed to meet for a total of 140 days out of every two years). The other would require that legislatures be entirely volunteers, and recieve no compensation for their services.

I'm unconvinced that the former would be a good idea. Responding to a legislature that isn't able to get things done in a timely fashion due to excessive partisanship by forcing them to get things done in even less time seems doomed to failure; and the concomitant shift in effective power away from the legislature towards the executive is going to reduce the power that people have over their government rather than increase it.

But the second idea - requiring legislators to be volunteers - is the most fundamentally undemocratic proposal i've heard seriously floated in state politics since I started paying attention. Such a measure would make it impossible for anyone who can't afford to go two (or four) years without any income to serve in the legislature; it would single-handedly make it impossible to draw legislators not just from the ranks of the poor, but also from most of the middle class. It would instantly establish in law a two-tier system in which the vast majority of people could vote to select legislators from a small pool of people; it would institutionalize oligarchy.

Is ensuring that the majority of the state's citizens can't possibly serve in the legislature really the best way to make the legislature more responsive to the citizens?

Tomorrow's New York Times reports that House Majority Leader Tom Delay has abandoned his proposal to use a luxury cruise liner as an entertainment and hotel center during the Republican National Convention next year. Good for him; it was a ridiculous idea, and would have been the focus of much ridicule during the convention season: the Republicans off on a luxury liner, afraid to mingle with the people of New York. It was a political disaster in the making, and it's a good thing he had the sense to call it off.

Across the street from the newly arriving terrifying adventures in suburban fashion store, in the Cooper House, a sign went up in May. "Opening this summer: Gelato Mania". The sign was a lie, and it was replaced in September with another one: "Coming this fall ..." No work has gone on in the putative ice cream parlor (while, four blocks away, crews are feverishly constructing the innards of an immigrating Cold Stone Creamery), leaving me forced to conclude that another sign will come up shortly after the start of the year. It's a shame, too; a gelateria with a wide selection would do well in this town.

An Urban Outfitters opens in Santa Cruz tomorrow, in the space left empty a year ago when Wherehouse Music abruptly closed the week after Christmas. They remodeled the place, adding windows, so that basically the entire store is visible from the street. It's gaudy. The building exterior is ugly, and the interior features bright colors and an artistic sensibility which is entirely out of place in Santa Cruz. The last major fashion revolution in this town was the adoption of grunge, in the early 1990s, and people still dress that way. The store appears to be fully steeped in the fashion sensibility of the late 1990s, when brightly colored office buildings with no drop ceiling were all the rage. In context, around the other stores on the mall, it's just about the funniest looking thing i've ever seen.

I turned 30 on Friday; it was an excuse for Jared to tease me about being old and for his mom to baby me. (Cognitive dissonance! Why, who's asking?) It's an odd feeling; in the best case, barring some massive technological development that will allow ancient vegetables to lead full and enriching lives, my life is a third over, quite possibly significantly more. I don't know that I have done, or am doing, what I want to with it; the passing of the date makes all I have accomplished seem insignificant. Forging what is out of what could be is disappointing, somehow. And the worst of it is that I don't know what I want to forge on the morrow, or how to weigh the opportunity cost of actions in what time remains.

Yet i'm not as pensive as i'd expected I would be. Curious.

Let me add my flute to the orchestra praising the extended version of the Two Towers, which I finally got to watch with Jared on Friday. Watching it was like watching an entirely new, and different, movie. The theatrical release was a heavy, dark, foreboding film, which weighed down on me and left me feeling as if anyone with a drop of empathy for the characters had been tortured (it was much like the book in that regard; the three weekes i spent reading the second half of the German version of the book were among the most depressing weeks of my life, much of it because of the emotional state induced by reading the book slowly). The extended edition, while still dark, was lighter; it was easier to see both the beauty and the horror of the story, and to hold on to the sense of adventure and the majesty of the world which dominated the first film.

As an added bonus, they fixed two of the three major plot flaws in the theatrical release. By filling in the backstory of Faramir's relationship with Denethor and Boromir, the changes to his character were made comprehensible, and the nature of his temptation, and choice, became more clear. And the added scenes with the Ents made them less petty and more serious; Treebeard gained enough depth to be a person instead of an animatronic tree.

Unfortunately, the signs are that Return of the King will be similarly butchered in the theatrical release and restored in an extended version. It's a shame. Maybe a four-hour movie can't bring in $310 million in domestic release - but I wish the studio would have the courage to find out.

One of the less pleasant aspects of working in the corporate software world is that there are, from time to time, projects which my employer expect to consume all of my time. Personal life must be put on hold so that the last bugs in the software can be ironed out and the shiny new programming widget can be rolled out on schedule to the oohs and aahs of an amazed and grateful consuming public. It's the time when all of the assumptions made during the development cycle are tested, and proven to have been right or wrong; it's when we discover whether things were as hard or as easy as we had speculated, and how correct our time estimates were. If it was a good product cycle, the final rush consists of nothing more than a few late nights, a week or maybe two of weekend work. A small push to finish everything up and put the paint on, as it were.

If, on the other hand, something went badly wrong ... members of my team have been working seven day weeks, with an expected 12+ hours a day, since the middle of October, a grueling slog through mountains of code and bugs that would have terrified the medicine men at the panama canal. A programming nightmare from which there has been no escape; sleep has come furtively, late at night, plagued with dreams of lost and confused people discovering that everything they trusted has turned on them.

This week, though, is different. There is, at last, the outline of an end, looming; the list of bugs is getting shorter, the code more stable, and it is finally possible to step out from time to time and not be consumed by anger and worry. To think clearly about things other than work. Blogging has been nonexistent of late, as I cannot, when keeping this schedule, spare the time and energy for ought but my bugs and my troubles (and, because excessive discussion of work-related matters would probably violate my NDA); but that should be changing as the demands of the product cycle wane and I have a life again.

The United Press has reported that injured National Guardsmen are waiting for weeks to see a doctor at Ft. Stewart and Ft. Knox. This is reportedly bad for morale.

Here's a hope that every politician everywhere who spends today giving hypocritical speeches about remembering the sacrifices made by our veterans, and honoring our soldiers, is questioned by reporters on this. It's absolutely outrageous that I could get faster treatment for a broken wrist when I had no health insurance than soldiers fighting in Iraq can get for injuries incurred in the line of duty. As a country we have a duty to treat our soldiers better than this.

(For what it's worth, Ft. Stewart is attempting to address the problem. But Ft. Knox doesn't appear to be, and the fact that it took several months for Ft. Stewart to take a step towards dealing with it reflects poorly on both the Pentagon's planning process and its priorities.

As always, Teresa Nielsen Hayden has a beautiful memorial to the Great War. It's mostly forgotten now, as years have passed and the children of those who fought in it have died, but the Great War was the most terrible disaster in modern European history. The US emerged mostly unscathed (although not unaltered); but it was alone in that, and the rest of the industrialized world was shattered and never recovered.

We should never have changed the name of the holiday.

A friend and I went to San Jose last night to watch the second game in a 2-game MLS division championship semifinal match. The San Jose Earthquakes, one of the best teams in the league, were playing the Los Angeles Galaxy for the fourth consecutive game; the Galaxy had won the first game of the semifinal last week, with a score of 2-0. The stadium was full (unusual for an Earthquakes home game), and the storm which dumped on the bay area on Saturday had passed, leaving a cold clear sky and a parking lot that had become a marsh. As had the field.

The first couple of minutes were abysmal. Early attempts on goal were blocked by the Los Angeles goalkeeper, and by 13 minutes into the game, LA was up 2-0 (4-0 for the series). The Quakes scored on a free kick, though, and then immediately scored again, tieing the game at 2-2. (Four points in 35 minutes? That's not Soccer!). The momentum was on their side, but they weren't able to take it any further.

Halftime came and went. The guys on the field had some lame entertainment involving running money across the field in a shovel. The temperature dropped as the teams came back out. For the first couple of minutes it looked like it would be LA's turn, but then the Earthquakes scored in the 50th minute. 3-2 San Jose, with the series total 4-3 Los Angeles. LA pushed back, nearly storing a goal here, nearly staring a goal there, but unable to get passed the Quakes goalie. As the clock ran past 70, a tension began building in the crowd; the momentum shifted back to the Earthquakes, who kept possession of the ball and tried shot after shot. If only one of them would go in, the series would be tied, and we'd have overtime ... and yet they kept failing, and the clock kept ticking, and the players kept getting more and more tired. The Earthquakes used all three of their substitutions, and kept trying and failing, and the crowd was on the edge of its seats.

The Earthquakes scored in the 89th minute. 4-2 San Jose, with the series tied at 4. The crowd erupted. The keeper of the clock missed the 90 minute mark and froze it at 90:07 (normally at US soccer games the clock that's visible in the stands doesn't reflect penalty time; it freezes at 45:00 and 90:00 even if there are 4 minutes of penalty time added to each period). The crowd remained on its feet, cheering, loud, with all of the energy of a kindergarten classroom full of students on a sugar high, through the entirety of penalty time. (In an interview after the game, forward Landon Donovan, one of the stars of the 2002 US World Cup team, remarked "The crowd was phenomenal tonight. It was louder than I have ever heard, even louder than the World Cup games. I have never been a part of a game that exciting. I almost wish that I had bought a ticket for it and could watch it from the stands.")

After a break to plan strategy, the teams came back out for a golden-goal overtime period. LA started off with the ball but lost it; the teams were noticeably tired, particularly Jeff Agoos. LA lost control of the ball after making several shots; San Jose dropped the ball down the field and scored. Game over; San Jose won the game (5-2) and the series (5-4) after making up a four-point deficit. The crowd went wild. And then, on cue, the clouds which had crept over the stadium and were beginning to obscure the moon began to dump, and a cold rain sputtered onto the departing crowd.

It's reasonably well understood among local residents that our school system leaves more than a fair amount to be desired; and when Jared was looking for a job, the Santa Cruz City Schools ranked low on his list in part because of their reputation for poor administration (administrative support being essential for a successful first-year teacher). I've blogged before about their lack of financial acumen.

But this takes the cake: while a law passed in 2001 mandates that high school students in the class of 2004 or subsequent classes pass algebra in order to graduate, the district administration failed to inform the high school administration of that fact until this fall.

"It was lost in the shuffle," said Carl Del Grande, assistant superintendent of education services.

How does a state-mandated graduation requirement get lost in the shuffle?

I expect that the State Board of Education, or the Education Department, transmits a list of these requirements annually. With a little note included that says something like NOTE: SOME REQUIREMENTS HAVE CHANGED in flashy print that attracts attention to itself so the content of the note doesn't get lost. I expect that this transmission is received by someone who passes the document off to someone else. I expect that the ultimate recipient of that document wasn't paying attention. I hope whoever it is has been yelled at; I also hope they get the job of apologizing to the parents of the children who haven't a hope of passing algebra this year and therefore (unless an exemption is granted) have no hope of graduating. "Oops, I'm sorry, I didn't notice that the rules had changed and your child can't graduate."

And i'm glad I didn't go to school here.

We interrupt coverage of the fires - much more up to date information can be found here at the weblog of a Rim of the World High School teacher - with an image of the world's largest environmental disaster.

Ten years ago this was one sea, and all of the white-ish areas that are now saltflats were under water.

My stepfather's house is just off of the road that branches off to the west of 138 where it meats 18 - along the edge of where the dark red turns into pink on that map. As far as I can tell from the map, it's gone. My sister-in-law's house isn't in the fire zone yet - it's over between Lake Gregory and Lake Arrowhead - but it's close.

The Old Fire, which started in Waterman Canyon, has evidently merged with the Grand Prix fire, which started in Etiwanda Canyon, to create a tremendous wave of fire stretching from La Verne to Running Springs. Most of the communities in the San Bernardino Mountains are either under mandatory evacuation or are being strongly urged to evacuate - to Hesperia, on the north side of the mountains, as SB 330, 18, and 15/215 are all closed.

I hope my brother and sister-in-laws friends' are ok (her family made it off before the roads closed). And it will be wierd if my stepfather's house, the last place my mother lived, burns down, taking all of his stuff, and the remaining mementos of my brother's childhood, and mine; the fact that it's just across the street from the ridge, where we used to be able to go watch the city lights from the ruins of a house, is not promising.

von, filling in for tacitus, observes that Glenn Reynolds wants to know why the people who were jumping up and down about the Valerie Plame leak aren't equally upset about the leak of Don Rumsfeld's memo.

The answer is simple: Because this leak didn't out a CIA operative and directly endanger the lives of everyone she's ever worked with overseas. I would have thought that was obvious.

(As for the memo itself: somehow i'm supposed to be upset that the Secretary of Defense is asking if things are going well and what else we should be doing? This memo is the best piece of news regarding Iraq since midsummer, if you ask me).

The local press are aflutter with the story of how San Francisco County Supervisor Chris Daly, while the mayor was away, appointed two people to the Public Utilities Commission. Much of the coverage has talked about whether it was a good idea, and discussed the possibilities for potential recriminations (the mayor was opposed to the appointment) and how a general aura of distrust and anger might settle over the Board of Supervisors (as if this would be something new).

Supervisor Daly had the power to do this, of course, because he was named 'Acting Mayor' to execute the job of mayor while the mayor was away. Similarly, when the Governor is away, the Lt. Governor gets to act as 'Acting Governor', a neat trick which kept Pete Wilson here during the 1996 Republican national convention and has complicated state politics whenever the Governor and the Lt. Governor have been from different parties.

Why is this antique protocol still in the state constitution and the San Francisco city charter? The rules that require someone else to take over for the executive made sense when travelling away from the state required that the governor, or the mayor, be incommunicado and unable to get back to the state for weeks at a time; but in the age of the airplane and the satellite phone, appointing active executives seems to cause massive political headaches in exchange for little real value.

The voters of the city and county of San Francisco ought to consider adding abolishing the post of 'acting mayor' to the immense list of ballot measures they'll be voting on in March, and the state ought to do the same for the post of 'acting governor'.