Posts from — October 2005

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Bush nominates Alito to Supreme Court – to get the Reich off his back and change the subject from the exposure of classified information to reporters by members of his staff.

We don’t need another probable member of Opus Dei on the Supreme Court. We don’t need someone who has ruled that there are few if any limits on the actions of law enforcement. We don’t need someone who has ruled that discrimination is perfectly acceptable. We don’t need someone who can’t see the right to privacy in the Constitution.

If you read Planned Parenthood v. Casey you see Justice O’Connor specifically disagree that the number of people affected is a determinate, as argued by Alito, but it is the effect of a law on any individual that is determinate. Alito doesn’t seem to believe in minority rights.

Having used Dred Scott as a code for Roe v Wade, the Shrubbery has found a modern version of Roger Taney.

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Whether you celebrate Celtic New Year’s Eve [Samhain], the evening before All Saints Day [Halloween], or the posting of Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses in 1517 [Reformation Day], have a happy one.

Wikipedia does its normally thorough job of covering all of the bases on the holidays that share October 31^st.

It is tiresome that some groups are pushing to have the celebration banned at the schoolhouse door

…Buckling to wishes of a minority, says Eric Dietrich, a Binghamton University philosophy professor, is not necessarily what should happen in a democracy. “Halloween is a flare-up of huge social problems we’re facing,” he says. “If you show me a United States with no holiday where you can be creatively weird, I will show you a United States with no hope.”

Some people just don’t want anyone to have a good time. These “harvest festivals” aren’t fooling anyone.

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The former FBI agent who complained about counter-terrorism efforts before 9/11/05, Coleen Rowley, is running for Congress in Minnesota on the Democratic ticket.

She joins a growing list of veterans and law enforcement people who have given up on the Republican Party doing anything about national security.

The Republicans have been talking about national security for a long time, but they don’t do anything about it. They think that throwing money at corporations that build military equipment is providing security.

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Heard on the “catsup commercial” in The Prairie Home Companion:

Halloween is the great Republican holiday – you try to scare people to death while gobbling up as much as you can.

[from memory, not a transcript]

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Did you remember to reset your clocks?

[Where’s the stupid manual? Let the stupid thing blink.]

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Robert at Interstate 4 Jamming has a great Quote of the Day:

“If Katherine Harris is the nominee, we lose.”
Brian Nick, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee

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Reading the transcript of the Fitzgerald press conference in Steve’s post, The wheels of the bus go round, round, round, took me back to a class room at the police academy.

Now, something needs to be borne in mind about a criminal investigation.

I recognize that there’s been very little information about this criminal investigation, but for a very good reason.

It may be frustrating when investigations are conducted in secret. When investigations use grand juries, it’s important that the information be closely held.

So let me tell you a little bit about how an investigation works.

Investigators do not set out to investigate the statute, they set out to gather the facts.

It’s critical that when an investigation is conducted by prosecutors, agents and a grand jury they learn who, what, when, where and why. And then they decide, based upon accurate facts, whether a crime has been committed, who has committed the crime, whether you can prove the crime and whether the crime should be charged.

Agent Eckenrode doesn’t send people out when $1 million is missing from a bank and tell them, Just come back if you find wire fraud. If the agent finds embezzlement, they follow through on that.

That’s the way this investigation was conducted. It was known that a CIA officer’s identity was blown, it was known that there was a leak. We needed to figure out how that happened, who did it, why, whether a crime was committed, whether we could prove it, whether we should prove it.

And given that national security was at stake, it was especially important that we find out accurate facts.

This is how you are taught to investigate an incident at the academy: gather the facts and then act in accordance with the facts.

The O.J. Simpson case is a prime example of how not to conduct an investigation. Before the facts had been gathered the investigators decided what the crime was and who committed it. They then gathered evidence that supported those assumptions. Things were missed and mistakes were made that compromised the case.

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Billmon needs to take some criminal justice courses. He wonders: Why Did Fitzgerald Throw Judy in Prison?

The story that Libby was spinning for the investigators and grand jury had multiple elements, but it was essentially an attempt to distort how and when he learned of Plame’s identity. Fitzgerald was answering the classic Watergate questions: “What did he know and when did he know it?”

Judy Miller was crucial because she was the first journalist that Libby talked to about Plame and the conversation took place in June, well before the Novak column. Miller’s testimony showed that Libby lied about when.

Tim Russert was important because Libby had identified him as the source of Plame’s name, and Russert denied that the discussion took place. Russert’s testimony directly contradicts Libby’s.

Matthew Cooper’s testimony is related to Libby’s motive for lying: he was smearing an opponent by leaking to journalists.

Fitzgerald systematically pulled Libby’s story apart. The interviews with Plame’s neighbors were just a final clean up and cover for any defenses that Libby’s team might attempt. It was a small peripheral detail, but Fitzgerald’s team covered it.

Fitzgerald’s decision not to go with an espionage charge was a reality-based decision. Everyone knows what lying is, but you have to do a lot of explaining to a jury when you try an espionage case. It isn’t certain that a jury would understand that Valerie Plame was an undercover CIA operative, because she lived in Virginia, not some foreign country. Trying an espionage case would involve getting some of the information needed for trial declassified by the current administration, not a sure thing. There are a lot of openings for “reasonable doubt” in an espionage case and not much return for a prosecutor.

In the “criminal justice system” it isn’t what you know, it isn’t what would be just, it’s what you can make a jury believe beyond a reasonable doubt that counts.

If more information comes out at another time, Libby can still be indicted on espionage charges.

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There was time, the forecast was accurate, so what happened in South Florida?

The first problem was that Wilma gathered strength before it hit the west coast and, because of the terrain, didn’t weaken a great deal before hitting the east coast from the rear.

I have an old friend, a former Navy Air Boss, who lives in Palm Beach Gardens. He watched the storm pass over his house. He said that the storm was much more powerful than anticipated and the backside of the storm, with gusty winds, caused more damage than the front side.

Interstate 95, the main North-South artery was undercut by the storm, which created problems for deliveries coming in from the North.

Another major problem was the number of retired people who live in the area and have medical needs and limited mobility. The loss of power is trapping them in high-rise apartment buildings.

The quick recovery from previous storms in the area caused people to assume that things would be back to normal in a couple of days, so there was no need to sweat it. There were an amazing number of people who had generators, but hadn’t bothered to buy more gas for them, assuming that what was in the tank from the last storm would be sufficient.

Given the number of people who are living from day to day in the area, it’s not surprising that people panicked. When your day is structured around showing up at the labor pool in the morning to get enough to make it until the next day, you are in trouble when there’s a hurricane.

The reality is that given the current level of poverty concentrated in urban areas, any time a major city is hit there are going to be these problems. Poor people do not have the resources to prepare or evacuate, all they can do is endure.

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Wilma hits, Miers withdraws, Libby is indicted, the 2000^th American military death in Iraq, and as Bob Geiger at Yellow Dog Blog notes Osama spent his 1,500^th day at liberty.

Interesting times, indeed.

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Well, we now know that Tim Russert’s only involvement in the case is being fingered by Libby as his original source of Ms. Plame’s identity. His testimony before the grand jury was essentially: I know nothing.

Ms. Miller’s importance was that she was the first reporter that Libby contacted with Ms. Plame’s identity, and therefore, her testimony establishes the time line.

Libby has resigned and is looking at 30 years in prison, and up to $1.25 million in fines if convicted.

Update: By not going for the Espionage charges, Fitzpatrick has avoided having to introduce classified information at trial while still going for significant prison time.

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In the Celtic/Anglo-Saxon tradition there was a ritual placation on the evening before All Saints Day. People made offerings to evil spirits to quiet them before the celebration of the Holy Day. It was a kind of insurance. The priests said there were no spirits, but it couldn’t hurt to make a little offering just in case the priests were wrong and the folklore was right. This changed into an excuse for games. If some expected mischief, others were more than willing to provide it, often exacting small revenges for perceived injuries.

In its continuing evolution in the United States we ended up with Halloween, which I personally preferred to Christmas as a child. There were too many adult things involved with Christmas, and while the toys were nice, the food was better, from a child’s point of view, at Halloween.

My earliest remembered Halloweens were in Hamilton, New York. A village surrounded by farms that is the location of Colgate University. The University is a collection of 19th Century ivy-covered stone buildings dominating the hill in the village. The administration building was constructed like a castle with round turrets scattered about the multiple rectangles of stone. There was a lake with swans and ducks in permanent residence, who had their own “gingerbread house” when ice claimed the waters in the dead of winter.

There were trees everywhere: maples, oaks, elms, birches, and a few refugee pines. While the “greening” of the village in Spring was nice, it was the time around Halloween that I liked the best. As if in protest of the coming gray scale of Winter, the trees threw all of their energies into an explosion of color before they shed their leaves to await the return of the Sun. From the brightest of yellow down to the deepest red, no member of that slice of the spectrum was left without representation. The trees were ablaze as if enacting a ritual self-immolation to remind the animals that the warmth of the Sun would return.

Christmas was about secrets and weather reports: boxes you weren’t allowed to go near, and would the snow ease up enough for this or that relative to visit. Halloween was open to all, even children.

The apples, McIntoshes, were ripe, but as good as they were, they were made even better by being dipped in caramel or red cinnamon sugar syrup that hardened. Popcorn was formed into balls, held together with a molasses and sugar “glue”. Fudge was not a single confection, but a class that varied from kitchen to kitchen, with each mother adding her own secret ingredients. The total range of cookies could never be remembered by a child, only the impression of butter, sugar, and flour enhanced by fruit, chocolate, and nuts.

The best part was not simply collecting, but the open permission to eat as much as you wanted. No guilt, no plate cleaning, just enjoy.

For the mind of a child raised on the Saturday serials it was obvious that a disguise was necessary as you were pulling a “heist”, stealing “goodies” from every house in the neighborhood. By sundown you had collected enough that you were sure that your “horde” would last for years.

Almost as important as the single day, Halloween marked the beginning of the season when the heat of oven was a welcome addition to the kitchen. Once again the cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and nutmeg would be released to permeate the house. Local apples and cherries would rest in their rightful place inside pastry. This was the beginning of months of cookies, brownies, kuchen [like a pound cake with apples or cherries], pies, and cakes – all of the essentials that had been missing during the warmer months.

These days, where it is celebrated at all, it is commercial candy in childproof wrappers that is grudgingly meted out and must be x-rayed before consumption.

The disguises are “store bought” and tacky, nothing that could match the imagination of mothers under pressure who owned and could use sewing machines. Of course there was always the carefully preserved sheet in the back of the linen closet with the two strategic patches that could be removed if a mother ran out of time and/or energy.

My older brother had a rather elaborate panther suit that was made from black velvet curtains. Our house in Hamilton had once been a funeral home and there were trunks filled with that kind of thing left in the attic.

It was some time before my Mother figured out that what she had taken for, and used as a breakfast nook, had been the table used for moving coffins to and from the hearse. There was a large square window at the end of the built-in table that was hinged on the side and looked out to the driveway. Our house was very popular for adult Halloween parties because of its former status.

Children today will never know what a real Halloween was like, and they are poorer for it.

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™ ^{[Kevin Drum]}

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Ringo Discovers Electricity

Oh, yes, this is wonderful.

[Editor: Ringo discovers the joys of an electric blanket when the temperature dips to the 40s. The big plus is that she doesn’t have to behave to get warm.]

Friday Ark

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This is just wrong, and should not be allowed: White, The New Orange For Pumpkins.

This “Ghost Pumpkin” needs to be stopped. I don’t care how easy they are to draw on; they are an abomination. This is how we ended up with purple “grass” on Easter and it needs to be nipped in the bud.

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