It's not uncommon for the SCOTUS to come up with something I think is flatly wrong, so it is no surprise to see it done today. Today they held that raping a child can't be a capital crime.
I would suggest, given recidivism rates in child molestation, that molestation of children under 13 should always be a capital offense. Furthermore, given that prison has proven to be a failure at rehabilitation, I see no reason that forcible rape, even of adults, should not have death as a potential penalty at the discretion of judge and jury. Rape is every bit as awful as murder, and may be far crueler. More, unlike in murder cases, the victim has to continue to live with the crime.
There is no reason they should also have to live with the rapist.
The Eighth Amendment certain did not prevent the execution of rapists, even adults, "where the victim's life was not taken" at the time of its ratification. It was only in this century that the SCOTUS -- not the Congress or the several states -- decided that was unacceptable.
Now the SCOTUS says we must "not expand" the use of the death penalty to child rapists; but this is no expansion, it is a simple restoration of how things were actually done at the time of the passage of the Eighth. The court has been acting unreasonably on the point for decades, and is getting worse as time goes along.
Betraying Trusts
The Incas and Bad Philosophy
Since we were debating -- somewhat far afield of the original topic -- relative blame for the destruction of the Aztecs and the Incas, it is worth seeing what an earlier expert had to say about it. (h/t: Arts & Letters Daily.) Montesquieu was one of the Enlightenment thinkers, who developed the idea of "the separation of powers" into a doctrine that is now the basis for numerous free governments.
Also germane to the discussion: Montesquieu was educated at the Catholic College of Juilly, where Saint Genevieve stopped one day to pray -- and a spring burst from the ground. The miracle, and the sense that the waters were holy, caused it to become a place for pilgrims to visit; then an abbey formed there to serve the pilgrims; then an orphanage for the children of knights killed on Crusade. The abbey became a royal academy.
If the Church is to have the blame for what Cortez did in its name, then they must also have the praise for the saintliness of a lady; for the faith of the pilgrims; for the kindness to the orphans; for the teaching of the monks; and for the instruction of wise men whose ideas blossomed into the foundation of our modern age. Later thinkers, who have no interest in the Church or the glory of its God, nevertheless stand on their shoulders.
If you will blame them for a wrong of their ancestors, then you must also give them that due. If they are forever to blame for wrongs, then let them be forever praised for the right.
The other day, bthun said:
Funny thing that... I suspect that many of us who would be able to survive and even thrive in a more primitive culture or way of living, ala the 18th to 19th century, are not the same ones who are gloating over the rise in energy prices as a means to force some eco equality or perceived social comeuppance.I'd like to have a discussion about that subject.
For example, item one: the suggestion that meat prices will soon soar, as flooding destroys crops in great numbers.
Item two: deer populations are causing problems across the country, including disease, the destruction of forests, and crop damage.
So: here is an untapped source of meat, for the cost of a hunting license and a bullet; plus it restrains disease and saves crops at a time when crops are unusually troubled by flooding. The improvement to the environment and human health are only... ah, gravy.
We have occasionally sought extra venison from friends who like to hunt a great deal, but don't really want to eat very many deer, as a way of reducing meat costs. We'll also hunt. This year, I'm thinking of investing in a large freezer for this reason.
In addition to deer, you can save large amounts on meat by buying a half or whole beef. You can do this through local farmers as well as online -- I cite the website mostly to give an idea of the prices we're talking about. A single beef will feed your family for a year. In return for providing the money up front, you get hundreds of pounds of ground beef for about $2.60 a pound, plus numerous steaks, etc.
There is also gardening. Home grown vegetables not only taste better, they are richer in nutrients. It is not too late to start many kinds of summer vegetables, and even a small plot or a windowbox can produce tomatoes, squash, peppers, and other favorites.
Of course you can cut down on expenses by driving less, but you can also stay in campgrounds instead of hotels. Our trip to Savannah, when I returned from Iraq, was at Skidaway Island State Park; there are numerous campgrounds in state parks, national parks, state and national forestland, and so forth.
So: hunting, fishing, growing your own food, canning, all these things can be done. Even if you live in an urban or suburban area, there's a hunting ground not too far away from you in most states. You can grow food in a windowbox and can it on your stove. Some commitment is necessary to make this work in a big way, but it can work for you.
If you live further afield, you can do more. For example, we've heated our home in the winter at least partially with wood for several years, which keeps down heating oil or propane costs.
I'd like to suggest a discussion of other ways in which 'the cowboy way' can help us deal with a moment of relatively high prices. Anyone with good ideas, let's hear them.
Conversion
Spengler of the Asia Times has a piece that builds on what has been a long-time theme of his: a conflict between Islam and what he sees as (hopes to see as?) a resurgent Christendom.
After Pope Benedict XVI showed unprecedented courtesy to visiting American President George W Bush last week, much has been written about the Christian faith that binds the pope and the president.Conversion has become a secular sin in the West. It is easy to understand the reasons why. We had a bloody history over religious conversion, especially the time of the Thirty Years War, which informed early Enlightenment thinking. The Scots who devised most of the thinking on which America itself was based saw continuing wars, as the victors of the English Protestant split ignited a feud between Covenanter and Anglican Protestants. And so on.
It is not only faith, but the temerity to act upon faith, that the pope and the president have in common. In the past I have characterized Benedict's stance as, "I have a mustard seed, and I'm not afraid to use it."
...
As Father Dall'Oglio warns darkly, Muslims are in dialogue with a pope who evidently does not merely want to exchange pleasantries about coexistence, but to convert them. This no doubt will offend Muslim sensibilities, but Muslim leaders are well-advised to remain on good terms with Benedict XVI. Worse things await them. There are 100 million new Chinese Christians, and some of them speak of marching to Jerusalem - from the East. A website entitled Back to Jerusalem proclaims, "From the Great Wall of China through Central Asia along the silk roads, the Chinese house churches are called to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ all the way back to Jerusalem."
Islam is in danger for the first time since its founding. The evangelical Christianity to which George W Bush adheres and the emerging Asian church are competitors with whom it never had to reckon in the past. The European Church may be weak, but no weaker, perhaps, than in the 8th century after the depopulation of Europe and the fall of Rome. An evangelizing European Church might yet repopulate Europe with new Christians as it did more than a millennium ago.
Yet there is a basic command in Christianity to attempt conversion: not through force, but through persuasion and example. In guarding against forcible conversion, we have come so far as to have made it rude to attempt philosophical conversion.
Case in point: I've been running this blog for more than five years. I regularly quote Chesterton, speak approvingly of the Pope, and yet it is clear that I was raised Protestant and am not Catholic. Not one of my Catholic readers has ever tried to convert me. Not so much as a, "You know, given how moved you were by The Ballad of the White Horse, you might want to read..."
Neither have any of my Protestant readers, even those of you who would call yourselves Evangelical, ever attempted to convert me to your particular church. We just don't do that anymore.
Yet this is a period when people switch religions at the drop of a hat. Neither my sister nor I still follow the religion in which we were raised. I sought out a degree in comparative religions, studying now Buddhism and now Hinduism, now Chinese folk religions and now historical pagan ones. I spoke the other day of my wedding, in which one of my groomsmen was a converted Muslim, and the other a Quaker who had become a Jew. The third had passed from agnosticism to Methodism, on the strength of a loving woman's faith. One hundred percent of the men in my wedding party had changed religions within a decade of the ceremony. People are adrift, and seeking truths to which they can moor their lives.
It is worth reflection. What do you believe is true, beyond what you can prove is true? Is there a tradition left that is strong enough, and deep enough, that you can trust your weight to it? Or must we each wander alone?
Six percent
Six percent of Americans have a great deal of confidence in Congress. Can there be that many lobbyists?
Of course, only three percent express no confidence at all, which is better than I would have expected. Actually, the no-confidence numbers are mildly inspiring across the board: even in the case of the much (and often justly) maligned Bush administration, 93% of Americans express at least a little confidence in it.
That suggests that Americans still have faith in the system, just not in the current actors. As a whole, they believe that Congress is doing a terrible job, but that it can be fixed.
What is not obvious is how this harmonizes with the electoral trends for this year: the solution that Americans have intuited seems to be to give the ruling party in Congress even greater control; and at a time when none of the institutions of government are receiving popular support at any level, to vote for the party that wants to increase vastly government control over the economy (nationalize the oil industry! Universal health care!). Big business' numbers are not much better than Congress', but small business is #2 (after the military) in expressed confidence, with 28% of Americans having a great deal of confidence in it.
It is also noteworthy that "the police" enjoy such great confidence, while "the criminal justice system" does so badly. Americans like that they can call someone to have a criminal arrested, but are not satisfied with what happens to the criminal afterwards.
Gallup interprets the numbers as expressing a desire for "change," which is fine; but I think we can go further. Americans will take any change on offer, versus continuing the current system. But the change they would prefer is:
1) Keeping the military strong,
2) Helping the population start small businesses, moving out of public or big-business sectors of employment,
3) Law-and-order reform to strengthen the criminal justice system's ability to deal with criminality; I would think that a vastly increased use of capital punishment for violent crimes would be very popular.
Democratic candidates are running strong this year because Americans think of Republicans as being "in charge," even though Congress is in Democratic control. But the changes that people actually seem to want have little to do with what the Democratic party platform is proposing. Almost no one wants government to grow in importance; almost no one has "great" or "quite a lot" of trust in any of its branches.
A platform based on the three points above would likely win this year. There is still time for a strong expression of that platform: a pact, like the "Contract with America." It wouldn't matter whether it was the Democratic or Republican party that proposed the platform: they would gain wide support by it.
Furthermore, it's a platform I could support, regardless of the party that offered it.
Diplomacy = Magic
Consider the IAEA comments on Iranian nuclear negotiations. The concept here is that the IAEA feels it could not maintain negotiations on Iran's nuclear program in the event of a military strike by Israel on Iran. That may well be true; but it comes alongside Iran's absolute refusal to negotiate on the issue:
ElBaradei's comments come as Iran stressed on Saturday it will not negotiate with world powers over its nuclear programme if it is required to suspend its enrichment activities.That is the only thing that we really want out of the negotiations: Iran not to have the capacity to build nuclear weapons. Iran says it won't negotiate on ending enrichment, which is the thing that would give it the capacity to build nuclear weapons.
"Suspending uranium enrichment has no logic behind it and it is not acceptable and the continuation of negotiation will not be based on suspension," Iranian government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham told reporters.
So, what do we get out of continuing negotiations? The right to maintain 24-hour camera surveillence of their enrichment activity. They won't stop doing what we'd like them not to do, but they will let us watch them do it, 24 hours a day.
I would very much like for there to be a diplomatic solution to this issue, but the IAEA tactic doesn't strike me as a step in the right direction. It amounts to stating, 'You must take the military option off the table, so we can continue watching them do what we were supposed to stop them from doing.'
The UN, through the IAEA, is doing just what people so often complain that it does: pursuing the continuation of negotiations as if it were the chief good to be achieved; sacrificing the actual good that was desired in favor of that continuation.
Again, I would love to see a diplomatic solution to this matter. But this mechanism is not producing it. We need a better way of approaching these matters than the UN system, which is once again engaged in a spectacular failure.
Gracious
Given the attire of certain teenagers I've seen this Georgia summer, I had thought this law might have already passed. Apparently there is still some debate.
Isn't it, really, bigoted to insist that clothes are the normative standard for society, and that people who prefer nakedness ought to cover up in public? Plenty of ancient cultures didn't have the same attitude toward clothing that we do now, and wore very little. If we insist that clothes must be worn in public places, aren't we just imposing our morality on people who disagree?There is a nudist colony here in Dawson County, which goes to show just how diverse even rural America actually is. I've thankfully never encountered any of them wandering naked. Still, I suppose nakedness in the deep woods is just fine, as long as you're enough of a woodsman to recognize the poison oak.
It doesn't harm any dressed people for naked people to be walking down the streets, going to work, going shopping, or doing anything else the rest of us do. There's really no reason at all aside from personal, religious beliefs to insist that everyone wear clothes in public--and it's unconstitutional to impose our religious or moral beliefs on the rest of the public.
That said, if some hunter should mistake you for a black bear or a sasquatch, don't come crying to me.
H/t: Dad29.
Fast Eddie Obama
David Brooks proposes to resolve the question that we were discussing the other day: is Obama a Chicago Way politician, or a New Class liberal? Brooks says, both -- but the Chicago Way will win out in any conflict.
But as recent weeks have made clear, Barack Obama is the most split-personality politician in the country today. On the one hand, there is Dr. Barack, the high-minded, Niebuhr-quoting speechifier who spent this past winter thrilling the Scarlett Johansson set and feeling the fierce urgency of now. But then on the other side, there’s Fast Eddie Obama, the promise-breaking, tough-minded Chicago pol who’d throw you under the truck for votes.It's interesting, in terms of how disconnected this election is from reality. If you want campaign finance reform, McCain is your candidate: he's really done things for you, hard things. Yet Obama has been running as the campaign finance reform candidate -- though he has no actual commitment to the issue, has done nothing but talk about it in terms of advancing it, and undercut the project at the first sign of advantage.
...
Dr. Barack could have been a workhorse senator. But primary candidates don’t do tough votes, so Fast Eddie Obama threw the workhorse duties under the truck.
Dr. Barack could have changed the way presidential campaigning works. John McCain offered to have a series of extended town-hall meetings around the country. But favored candidates don’t go in for unscripted free-range conversations. Fast Eddie Obama threw the new-politics mantra under the truck.
And then on Thursday, Fast Eddie Obama had his finest hour. Barack Obama has worked on political reform more than any other issue. He aspires to be to political reform what Bono is to fighting disease in Africa. He’s spent much of his career talking about how much he believes in public financing. In January 2007, he told Larry King that the public-financing system works. In February 2007, he challenged Republicans to limit their spending and vowed to do so along with them if he were the nominee. In February 2008, he said he would aggressively pursue spending limits. He answered a Midwest Democracy Network questionnaire by reminding everyone that he has been a longtime advocate of the public-financing system.
But Thursday, at the first breath of political inconvenience, Fast Eddie Obama threw public financing under the truck. In so doing, he probably dealt a death-blow to the cause of campaign-finance reform. And the only thing that changed between Thursday and when he lauded the system is that Obama’s got more money now.
And Fast Eddie Obama didn’t just sell out the primary cause of his life. He did it with style. He did it with a video so risibly insincere that somewhere down in the shadow world, Lee Atwater is gaping and applauding.
Similarly, if you are concerned about "change" in Iraq, McCain is your candidate. He stood up to the Bush administration and forced them to undertake the Surge, which Rumsfeld and others did not wish to do. The current successes are in many ways his progeny. He can honestly claim to be the candidate of a very positive change: the chance to wind up the Iraq war on a positive note, with relative stability and upcoming provincial elections, and a status of forces agreement of some sort rather than a withdrawal and collapse of the state of Iraq.
Obama has done nothing but talk, and hasn't updated his concepts on Iraq since 2006. He only updated them then because he pivoted to a self-described 'just like Bush' position in 2005, when Tony Rezko had some business interests over there. Once again, nothing but talk versus a guy who has really effected serious change: but Obama has talked the public into giving him the credit.
On a similar topic, Obama has just sold out the progressives on FISA. I guess he didn't mean any of that talk, either.
Meanwhile, the man who has proposed an explicity race-based "Southern Strategy" to put the South in play is charging Republicans with telling voters that he's black.
Fast Eddie, indeed.
Joe Writes
The holidays are upon us here at Grim's Hall, so I won't have much to say today. However, our friend and co-author Joe -- currently resident in Iraq -- writes to notice The Wall Street Journal channeling Johnny Cash. (Scroll to "Sioux.")
In honor of which:
Also, for anyone who liked the Big Moccasin Gap picture below:
I got the wife a scroll saw for her anniversary gift. She danced like Snoopy. Good woman.
UPDATE: Bthun writes to tell me that this is also Chet Atkins' birthday. Here's Chet doing a number with a fine country musician from the Great State of Georgia, Mr. Jerry Reed:
If you liked that, you'll probably like this too. It's a bit more jazzy, with less bluegrass:
Dangerous
So there's this video:
Link: sevenload.com
(H/t: Cassidy).And also this article:
Americans drove 1.4 billion fewer highway miles in April than they did in April 2007, the Department of Transportation said Wednesday.So: the lady says that "when Congress can set prices, Congress can set prices."
Americans have driven 20 billion fewer miles overall this year, the Transportation Department says.
That marks the sixth consecutive monthly drop and coincides with record gas prices and an increase in transit ridership, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said.
April's drop is more than three times larger than the drop from March 2007 to March of this year, which was 400 million fewer highway miles.
Let's say they set the price at $2.00 a gallon.
Americans don't drive 1.4 billion fewer miles in a given month.
What happens to the gasoline?
Answer: Americans consume more of it. What does that do to fuel prices worldwide? It drives them way, way up.
Who does that hurt? The poorest people in the world, whose governments aren't wealthy enough to deficit spend to buy them gas and sell it below market rates. These are the people -- in places like Africa and the Southern Philippines -- for whom extra fuel prices isn't an inconvenience, but associated with things like famine and death.
Why is that the "progressive" answer? This is the kind of thing people die over: not here, but in the poorest parts of the world.
If you can't swing the gas as a relatively rich American, try riding livestock. I can grab a horse; but some of you progressives might want to try riding a camel. Through the eye of a needle.
Memeage
I had thought we'd escaped this when Cassidy didn't pass it to us, but Jeff has issued a challenge to do the "seven random things" meme. I'll be a good sport, just for the excuse to post 'images of martial discord,' celebrating that great American artist, N. C. Wyeth. The challenge only calls for one, but Wyeth's art is too good for only one.
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
5. Present an image of martial discord from whatever period or situation you’d like.
So here we go:
1. As is surprisingly common, I was born choked to death by my umbilical cord. Fast action by an alert medical staff meant that I was restored to life without loss of health, as is not always as common -- I have known people who had lifelong difficulties because of just that thing, and I have heard of children who did not survive. I was greatly blessed to come through that fire in one piece: early luck.
2. In spite of a fairly active life, I never broke a bone until a certain misbegotten gelding freaked out and reared over backwards while I was riding him, two years ago. That broke some ribs (@$#%! horse).
3. Those same ribs didn't heal correctly, and rebroke during a mixed martial arts match with an Army Ranger bird-colonel in Iraq this fall. I finished both falls with him in a headlock, but paid for it for two full weeks afterwards. Because of the endorphins (and the joy of having acquitted myself honorably against a genuinely powerful fighting man), I felt no pain at all until I laid down for bed that night. I could barely breathe the next day.
This has caused me to decide to take up gentler sports, like maybe kendo.
4. This week is my anniversary, so you'll have to endure a few marriage-related facts. On my wedding day, it was also Father's Day, and the summer solstice. A few years later, my son was born on the same day. Thus, 20 June is like a second Christmas around here: everyone has at least one good reason to celebrate.
5. I was married in a kilt -- I believe I mentioned that recently. It was a remarkable wedding. My best man was a US Marine sergeant, in dress blues and NCO sword, a devout Methodist. He was less devout when used to run together, but he met a fine woman. They came to our wedding as a couple; he caught the garter (right on the skull) and she caught the bouquet. They were married the next year.
6. At that same wedding, my other two groomsmen were a sergeant from one of the Highland regiments, in his military kilt and dirk, who was a Muslim as well as a Scot; and a former Quaker friend of mine, converted to Judaism, who was carrying my sword. This, plus the kilt, got us a lot of attention. At the end of the ceremony, when I kissed the bride and then scooped her up to carry out of the place, a huge crowd of strangers I didn't know were there suddenly burst into applause.
7. I really enjoy a beer, but have no real interest in any other form of alcohol. In fact, I learned in Iraq that I like even nonalcoholic beer. I do take a sip of Scotch at the Highland Games, and sometimes I've carried a small flask of bourbon for camping/hiking trips when I'll be sleeping several nights on the ground. The one use is ceremonial, and the other medicinal; the only thing I ever drink for pleasure is beer.
Pabst Blue Ribbon is my favorite large-production American beer. My favorite beer of all is Sierra Nevada's Celebration Ale, produced only for the Yuletide.
Now: I'm to tag seven people. My usual system for these memes is simply to allow readers who want to do so to jump in, in the comments; or coauthors, to consider themselves challenged if they wish to be.
AP
I imagine you've all heard that the AP wants bloggers to pay by the word if we link to their stories and quote any of the text. All of this reminds me of a story.
I believe I've mentioned that -- in addition to being a captain of the volunteer fire department -- my father has spent many years as a telephone man. In the early part of that career, he served AT&T (the old giant megacorporation) in rural Tennessee.
One day they had an inexplicable service outage, so they sent him to see if he could figure out the cause. He was driving along the cable route when he saw a farmer standing by the side of the road, in a hole, swinging an axe into the ground.
He stopped and looked, and sure enough the farmer was chopping up the copper cable. "Excuse me," my father asked him, "What are you doing?"
"Hey there," the farmer replied. "You know, I was plowing this morning and I hit the damndest root I ever saw."
Well, my father explained the situation and summoned a team to repair the damage. The farmer, realizing his mistake, was highly apologetic and got his tractor-backhoe out to dig around the cable so that the repairmen could fix it.
A few days later, the farmer got the bill for the cable repair -- a very expensive bill. He called in to the phone company, and happened to get my father on the phone.
They talked it over for a while, and finally the farmer had to admit that he probably did owe the money. "But," he says, "I haven't sent you my bill for the backhoe service."
Laughing, my father asked him how much he was thinking he'd charge. The farmer named a figure that was precisely the same as the cable repair service charge.
"Send the bill," my father said.
The AP is in the position of deriving traffic, attention and credibility from blogger links. They can, in theory, bill people for using their stuff; but if I were a blogger who received such a bill, I'd think they might also get a bill for the heretofore-free advertising they've been receiving.
I notice Ms. Malkin has had a similar thought.
Cassidy picked up on the Indiana Jones post, and confessed a desire to be: Valeria, from the Conan story "Red Nails."
What's interesting about Valeria is that she is a male fantasy: a beautiful, strong woman, skilled in arms, who has to be won through a combination of competence and respect. Yet it turns out she's also a female fantasy: by being that kind of woman, she is able to enjoy the opportunity to do a number of things (like fight among a band of mercenaries and pirates) that are normally the outpost of men.
So: Maybe we can resolve the postfeminist debate after all. Here's a model that is not only acceptable, but highly desirable, to both men and women. Certainly Valeria meets the qualifications I was looking for in a wife and partner.
Robbin' banks
What could possibly go wrong?
Another teller saw the situation unfolding and alerted Nabil Fawzi, 39, a long-time customer."A .9mm handgun"???
Fawzi, who spent six years in the Lebanese army, took matters into his own hands.
He tells WXYZ.com he pulled out a .9 mm handgun (for which he had a CCW permit), racked a bullet in the chamber, pointed it at Webster and announced, "You are not robbing this bank!"
The startled Webster countered with, "but, I have a bomb" -- but Fawzi wasn't impressed. "I don't care. You are not robbing this bank!" was the reply from the other side of the gun. He then forced the Webster into a chair and held him at gunpoint until police arrived.
And hey -- thanks, Lebanon.
Some items I'd like to suggest you read.
An extraordinary piece on classical education, by VDH.
"There is Much to be Won in Iraq", by myself.
A short article on the debate between McCain and Obama today. "Democrat Barack Obama says he'll take no lectures from Republicans on who will keep America safer."
Another article on that topic, involving a discussion with one of Obama's chief advisors on security:
Mr Danzig told the Centre for New American Security: “Winnie the Pooh seems to me to be a fundamental text on national security.”Duly noted.
Against Terrorists as Criminals
Bob Owens reminds us of the story of the first World Trade Center bombing:
Somebody get a history book for the clueless freshman Senator from Illinois (my bold):Also, I imagine, by the CJSOTF.And, you know, let's take the example of Guantanamo. What we know is that, in previous terrorist attacks -- for example, the first attack against the World Trade Center, we were able to arrest those responsible, put them on trial. They are currently in U.S. prisons, incapacitated....
It's quite simple: where is the 1993 World Trade Center bomb-builder? Is he in a U.S prison, as Obama claims? Not even close.
Though grossly neglected in the media, Abdul Rahman Yasin conducted the first attempted chemical weapons attack on U.S. soil by terrorists with the 1993 World Trade Center bomb. The bomb that detonated in the WTC garage in 1993 was built by Yasin to create smoke filled with sodium cyanide, which he hoped would rise through elevator shafts, ventilation ducts, and stairwells to suffocate 50,000 people.
Fortunately for those in the Trade Center that day, the bomb burned hotter than Yasin expected, and incinerated up the cyanide as it detonated instead of spreading it in toxic smoke.
Yasin fled the United States after the bombing to Iraq, and lived as Saddam Hussein's guest in Baghdad until the invasion. He is still free, and wanted by the FBI.
Undistinguished Obama
Protein Wisdom fills in the story. It's hard to call Senator Obama a failure, having reached at a young age the Senate and a reasonable shot at becoming President of the United States. How many people are asked to write memoirs as college students? (Or paid forty grand advances on the memoir, as a reward for missing their deadline?) In that one regard -- self promotion -- he has been a remarkable success.
In every other regard, however, his undertakings have not been impressive. Nothing he has attempted has really ever come off: yet he has run for higher office every three years, and often succeeded using the machine politics of the Chicago system.
We are starting to learn a bit more about Obama's work in Chicago -- thanks, by the way, to the Chicago area commenters who've written here. It's not an impressive story in any good way.
Meanwhile, speaking of The Chicago Way, the trial of Tony Rezko, fundraiser and land-deal maker for the Senator from Chicago, continues:
Rezko and Odinga are important persons in their own right, but it is their connection to Barack Obama that has the press interested.He's right -- they are, and especially Rezko is, interesting quite on their own. We do owe the Senator that much: I would never have been aware of the fascinating story of Middle Eastern money in Chicago politics if Sen. Obama hadn't been so tied to Rezko over the years. That's garnered a lot of press attention, and has shone light where it otherwise might not have shone.
Rezko's apple pie had strange and persistent Middle Eastern spices. The Sun-Times wrote: "Rezko was indicted in October 2006 while on a trip to Syria, and he had returned to face the case. He remained free on bail until Jan. 28, after prosecutors raised an alarm with the judge that Rezko had received a $3.5 million wire transfer from Lebanon. [Judge] St. Eve jailed him until April, when family and friends put up $8.5 million to secure his release."That's remarkable. Rezko insists, of course, that he never intended to use that money to skip the country for Syria.
The $3.5 million was sent by Nahdmi Auchi of all people. The Sun-Times continues.Rezko opened his letter by apologizing to St. Eve for not informing her of the $3.5 million, which had come to Rezko through Beirut from General Mediterranean Holding SA, a company led by Auchi. He said he took the money in because he was under "tremendous pressure" to pay his legal bills.Even the $8.5 million bond raised by his Chicago friends had a connection with Iraq. It included $1.9 million put up by Rezko's old classmate and onetime fugitive Aiham Alsammarae. Alsammarae was a former "Iraqi Electricity Minister ... who in 2006 fled from Iraqi prison. Alsammarae's $1.9 million equity in his Oak Brook home and two other properties made up more than one-third of the $8 million in properties postes to ensure Rezko's bond. Rezko was ... arrested Jan. 28 after failing to disclose an overseas wire transfer."
Bond
If you could be a character from literature, why not this one? (H/t: Arts & Letters Daily)
What, after all, is a man's deepest wish? Freud talked about "honor, power, riches, fame, and the love of women" — and Bond certainly encompasses all those. Still, that libidinal litany can be boiled down to a single desire, half hidden in the shadowy reaches of the male psyche and more clearly delineated in world mythology: As Joseph Campbell would say, men long to be heroes. No doubt about it. And yet I think the masculine ego also hungers for something a bit more noirish, if you will. At least some of the time, guys want to be thought of as … dangerous. While it's gratifying to be called a hard-working professional or a good provider, those admirable traits don't make our hearts beat quicker. By contrast, to overhear oneself described as "a man not to be trifled with" — that's quite another matter.There is nothing quite like it, to be sure.
Though, I might choose Indiana Jones, given all options. I do envy his capacity to speak every ancient language he encounters. I can pretty much do the rest of the stuff, but I mostly "get along" with languages. I can handle written Modern and Middle English, French, Spanish, and can work in German, Dutch and Italian (Latin, Old Norse, and Old English), but I can't really speak any of them except Modern English.
That's an annoyance. I never seem to get any better. Indiana Jones doesn't have this trouble: wherever he goes, he can speak and read whatever it is. Hieroglyphs? Spoken Hindi dialects? Ancient Mayan? No problem.
I've got a good hat, a .45 and a few knives. I could learn the bullwhip. It's really the languages I wish I had. Bond can keep his toys.