Sherry Chandler

from the editorial page of the NYTimes online:

Congress has not hesitated to play politics with the Smithsonian budget in the past, but there is no room for that in the future. Private donors cannot and, in most cases, will not pay for the kind of repairs the institution needs. Charging an entrance fee is no solution either. These are national collections, national treasures. The way they are housed and preserved must not become a national shame.

National shame seems to be thick on the ground right now.

This administration made no provision in its invasion plans to protect the cultural and historical treasures in Iraq, treasures that were part of the world heritage, that are still being decimated by an occupying army and a hot war. Small hope, I suppose, that it will make provision for our own cultural and historical treasures.

Tax cuts have consequences.

Update: Remember how we guarded the oil ministry in Baghdad while the National Library burned and the National Museum of Antiquities was looted? This article in the Hattiesburg American reports the following:

Shortly after Hurricane Katrina roared through South Mississippi knocking out electricity and communication systems, the White House ordered power restored to a pipeline that sends fuel to the Northeast.

That order - to restart two power substations in Collins that serve Colonial Pipeline Co. - delayed efforts by at least 24 hours to restore power to two rural hospitals and a number of water systems in the Pine Belt.

The call came from Dick Cheney’s office. And it is possible that there were legitimate reasons for getting the pipeline going. I picked up the link from Talking Points Memo where some readers point out that the pipeline carries significant amounts of jet fuel.

from a review by A. J. Sherman of: Oskar Schindler: The Untold Account of His Life, Wartime Activities, and the True Story Behind the List by David M. Crowe

When the Wehrmacht overran Poland, it was decreed that the Generalgouvernement should have a shadowy “independent” status that permitted Poland to be exploited, without quaint legal scruples, as the staging area for further conquests to the East, and a theatre for unfettered experiments in the creation of the master race. Compelled to defray the costs of its own Occupation, Poland was also the source of needed raw materials and manufactures for the German war effort. …Imprecise, sometimes contradictory, German policy in Poland was further muddied by Governor General Frank’s ambition to run an autonomous regime. His bloated administration was chaotic, riven by ferocious feuding, its senior officers often unaware of events outside the capital. It was, moreover, notorious that the most fanatic Nazis, some florid alcoholics or otherwise impaired, were deliberately sent East; they included incompetent Party functionaries, wounded officers, retired civil servants, placemen and hacks of every variety. Many of these were attracted to the Generalgouvernement by opportunities for plunder; corruption was rampant at every level of the administration, and Germans of all ranks were easily bribed.