Sherry Chandler

What the Bard and Lear Can Tell a Leader About Yes Men by Shankar Vedanta in the Washington Post:

In Shakespeare’s “King Lear,” a powerful man comes to a tragic end because he surrounds himself with flatterers and banishes the friends who will not varnish the truth to please him.

Several controversies in the past six years of the Bush administration — including two in the news last week — bring Lear to mind. From discrediting a covert CIA officer whose husband had criticized the invasion of Iraq to having the Justice Department find out which U.S. attorneys were “loyal Bushies,” from sidelining a general who said more troops would be needed in Iraq to silencing government scientists who advocated action against global warming, from sniping at an actuary whose numbers didn’t square with the administration’s health-care cost projections to belittling those who warned against using inhumane techniques against detainees, the Bush administration has regularly evinced a with-me-or-against-me attitude to criticism.

Who’s Watching the President by Ron Brownstein in the LA Times via War and Piece:

The Republican majority so completely abdicated its responsibilities to conduct oversight on the executive branch that its governing motto might have been “don’t ask, don’t tell.”…

This deference reflected the widespread tendency among congressional Republicans “to think that your political welfare is tied up with the president, and you don’t want to make him look bad,” as Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), one of the few GOP leaders who maintained some independence from the White House, told The Times.

But the abandonment of oversight had the opposite effect. By refusing to challenge the administration’s performance, the Republican majority allowed problems to fester and dysfunction to deepen. One senior House Republican said this week that nothing hurt the GOP more in 2006 than the collapse of its reputation for competent governance.

Many of the decisions now causing Bush grief could have been made only by a politician who did not believe anyone was looking over his shoulder. It’s inconceivable that the administration would have been so cavalier about planning the postwar occupation of Iraq — or so dismissive of the Army warnings that it had not deployed enough troops to ensure order — if it knew that Congress would closely examine its plans.

A Proper Distinction by David Brooks via War and Piece:

And the White House, instead of trying to restore some proportion, has picked a fight over a transcript. The president says he will allow White House staff to appear before Congress, but not in public, not under oath and not with a transcript. The president apparently expects his supporters to rally behind the sacred cause of No Transcript. In time of war, he’s decided to expend political capital so that his staffers can lie to Congress without legal consequences. …

Little Big President from TBogg (via Atrios):

One thing that is fascinating about George Bush is how little he has grown in office. No, that’s not right. It’s not that he hasn’t grown, he has gotten smaller; less Presidential, more sad little man watching his paper boat circle the drain. After six years of playing The Decider he should at least have a thin candy shell of gravitas as opposed to coming across like one of those guys on Peoples Court who not only has an unshakable belief that people won’t see through his bullshit, but that no one will notice his artful comb-over either.

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo:

And we’re now having a big public debate about the politics for each side if the president tries to obstruct the investigation and keep the truth from coming out. The contours and scope of executive privilege is one issue, and certainly an important one. But in this case it is being used as no more than a shield to keep the full extent of the president’s perversion of the rule of law from becoming known.

It’s yet another example of how far this White House has gone in normalizing behavior that we’ve been raised to associate with third-world countries where democracy has never successfully taken root and the rule of law is unknown. At most points in our history the idea that an Attorney General could stay in office after having overseen such an effort would be unthinkable. The most telling part of this episode is that they’re not even really denying the wrongdoing. They’re ignoring the point or at least pleading ‘no contest’ and saying it’s okay.

Dear Poetry Reader,

Copper Canyon Press is pleased to announce that Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali will appear on the Lehrer NewsHour feature “Voices of Conflict: Poetry of the Middle East,” which is scheduled to air on PBS this Thursday, March 22, 2007. (Check local listings for airtime and channel.)

Senior NewsHour correspondent Jeffrey Brown recently traveled to the Middle East to interview Palestinian and Israeli poets; a blog of his travels is currently posted at the PBS website. (Click here for story on Taha Muhammad Ali.)

Taha Muhammad Ali was an international headliner at the 2006 Dodge Poetry Festival, and his debut American publication, So What: New and Selected Poems, was the first Arabic translation ever published by Copper Canyon Press.

To order So What, or read poem samples and review excerpts, visit: So What, by Taha Muhammad Ali.

As always, we wish you good reading.

Sincerely,

Copper Canyon Press

www.coppercanyonpress.org

FRANKFORT, KY — Dean Muir came out on top after competing against 15 other students from across the Commonwealth at the Kentucky State Finals Poetry Out Loud poetry recitation contest sponsored by the Kentucky Arts Council at Kentucky State University on March 13, 2007. The Kentucky Poetry Out Loud initiative is part of the national competition presented by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the Poetry Foundation.

Muir’s innovative recitations of “The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes and “Preludes” by T. S. Elliot won him an all expenses paid trip to Washington, D.C. to compete in the national finals on April 30th and May 1st in the Lisner Auditorium at George Washington University, a $200 cash prize, a trip for his chaperone and $500 to his school library, Trimble County High School, for the purchase of poetry. The national winner will receive $20,000 of the $50,000 in scholarship funds being awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts at the Poetry Out Loud National Recitation Contest.

Erica Martin from Ohio County High School was the state runner-up with her moving recitations of “Revenge” by Leticia Elizabeth Landon and “Broken Promises” by David Kirby. She won a cash prize of $100 and Ohio County High School received $200 for the purchase of poetry for their library.

Muir and Martin have also been invited back to Frankfort to recite their poems and be honored at the Kentucky Writers’ Day Celebration presented by the Kentucky Arts Council on April 24, 2007 in the Capitol Rotunda. Also, Kentucky’s newly appointed Poet Laureate for 2007-2008 will be officially inducted during the celebration.

Judges for the Kentucky State Finals of the National Poetry Out Loud Recitation Contest were Kentucky Poet Laureate Emeritus Richard Taylor; Crystal Wilkinson, writer and Affrilachian Poet and Sarah Gorham, poet and publisher.