Sherry Chandler

If you are a Supreme Court watcher at all — and believe me, you should be — then I recommend this New York Times profile of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Oral Dissents Give Ginsberg a New Voice on Court

To read a dissent aloud is an act of theater that justices use to convey their view that the majority is not only mistaken, but profoundly wrong. It happens just a handful of times a year. Justice Antonin Scalia has used the technique to powerful effect, as has Justice Stevens, in a decidedly more low-key manner.

The oral dissent has not been, until now, Justice Ginsburg’s style. She has gone years without delivering one, and never before in her 15 years on the court has she delivered two in one term. In her past dissents, both oral and written, she has been reluctant to breach the court’s collegial norms. “What she is saying is that this is not law, it’s politics,” Pamela S. Karlan, a Stanford law professor, said of Justice Ginsburg’s comment linking the outcome in the abortion case to the fact of the court’s changed membership. “She is accusing the other side of making political claims, not legal claims.”

The justice’s acquaintances have watched with great interest what some depict as a late-career transformation. “Her style has always been very ameliorative, very conscious of etiquette,” said Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, the sociologist and a longtime friend. “She has always been regarded as sort of a white-glove person, and she’s achieved a lot that way. Now she is seeing that basic issues she’s fought so hard for are in jeopardy, and she is less bound by what have been the conventions of the court.”

It becomes obvious from the decisions of this session that the conservative old boys are going to stick together on this court and do exactly that which they were appointed to do. See also today’s NYTimes editorial Injustice 5, Justice 4:

The Supreme Court struck a blow for discrimination this week by stripping a key civil rights law of much of its potency. The majority opinion, by Justice Samuel Alito, forced an unreasonable reading on the law, and tossed aside longstanding precedents to rule in favor of an Alabama employer that had underpaid a female employee for years. The ruling is the latest indication that a court that once proudly stood up for the disadvantaged is increasingly protective of the powerful.

The white man’s solidarity (and yes I know about Clarence Thomas) will be a great blow to liberal causes, but they are there for life and there’s not a lot we can do about it.

We need to heed Ginsberg’s call to take these causes to Congress.

Get passionate and get active, people.

Former Kentucky Poet Laureate Lee Pennington will be the guest this week on Blogtalk Radio’s Oopa Loopa Café, hosted by Rick Osman (OZ). The program broadcasts tonight, May 31, at 9:00 p.m.

From their e-mail newsletter:

Lee and wife, Joy, have traveled tens of thousands of miles from their home in the Falls City to document various sites. He produced hundreds of hours of video documentation, visited with other researchers, and have always come away with new respect and admiration both for the sites and the people.

Lee’s work documenting Fort Mountain, his tribute to Marion Daum, and his other video presentations are works we can only discuss on the radio show, but they are each worth watching over and over.

Please tune in for this segment where Lee reminisces on some of the trips, people, and cultures he has encountered.

Lee doesn’t have a web site, so tune in to find out where to order copies of his videos.

Call in during show (646) 652-2720

IM to “oopaloopacafe” on Yahoo Messenger or Windows Live messenger, during show
.

If you can’t catch the show tonight, it will be there in the archives for your listening pleasure.

A day or two ago, a friend sent me a link to this Paul Prather column in the Lexington Herald-Leader.

My girlfriend, Liz, and I were shopping. As I paid for my merchandise, the woman behind the counter said, “Aren’t you the guy who writes that column for the Herald-Leader?”

I said I was.

“I enjoy your work,” she said. “I’m not religious. But I do consider myself spiritual.”

When we’d left the store, Liz said, “People say that to you a lot: ‘I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual.’ What does that mean, exactly?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’ve never really thought about it.

…

So I’m asking for your help. If you have experience with this — if you think of yourself as spiritual but are wary of organized religion, or if you think it’s hard to be genuinely spiritual without joining a church or temple — e-mail me at the address below.

In my next column, two weeks from now, I’ll print several of the more interesting comments I receive. I look forward to hearing your views.

Paul Prather has been writing on religion for the Herald-Leader for many years and in general I admire his work and his way of thinking. Besides, if I remember correctly, he studied with Guy Davenport and I don’t think Davenport suffered fools.

But to tell the truth, I was a little aggravated at my friend for sending the link. I thought there was a metamessage. I get a little oversensitive sometimes. In fact, s/he was probably more interested in Prather’s take on Falwell:
Read the rest of this entry…

From Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish for Tuesday (link via TPM):

The phrase “Verschärfte Vernehmung” is German for “enhanced interrogation”. Other translations include “intensified interrogation” or “sharpened interrogation”. It’s a phrase that appears to have been concocted in 1937, to describe a form of torture that would leave no marks, and hence save the embarrassment pre-war Nazi officials were experiencing as their wounded torture victims ended up in court. The methods…are indistinguishable from those described as “enhanced interrogation techniques” by the president. As you can see from the Gestapo memo [reproduced in the article], moreover, the Nazis were adamant that their “enhanced interrogation techniques” would be carefully restricted and controlled, monitored by an elite professional staff, of the kind recommended by Charles Krauthammer, and strictly reserved for certain categories of prisoner. At least, that was the original plan.

Torture is the most outrageous of the outrages foisted upon this nation in the last five years.

Torture is wrong.

Sanctioned use of torture violates the Geneva Conventions and rushes the entire world back to the days when there were no protections for any prisoner of war, combatant or non-combatant, against inhumane treatment. (See the excerpt from The Enormous Room that I posted here Monday.)

Sanctioned use of torture puts us in the wrong in the eyes of the world.

AND torture does not work. (24 is a fantasy!!!)

See this morning’s NYTimes:

WASHINGTON, May 29 — As the Bush administration completes secret new rules governing interrogations, a group of experts advising the intelligence agencies are arguing that the harsh techniques used since the 2001 terrorist attacks are outmoded, amateurish and unreliable.

The psychologists and other specialists, commissioned by the Intelligence Science Board, make the case that more than five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has yet to create an elite corps of interrogators trained to glean secrets from terrorism suspects.

While billions are spent each year to upgrade satellites and other high-tech spy machinery, the experts say, interrogation methods — possibly the most important source of information on groups like Al Qaeda — are a hodgepodge that date from the 1950s, or are modeled on old Soviet practices.

Some of the study participants argue that interrogation should be restructured using lessons from many fields, including the tricks of veteran homicide detectives, the persuasive techniques of sophisticated marketing and models from American history.

Outmoded, amateurish, and unreliable.

So really enhanced interrogation might be at least as smart as the American marketers.

So here we are, a nation that likes to think of itself as the most clever and innovative in the history of man, and we can’t do any better than the Spanish Inquisition or, shudder at the word, the Nazis, when it comes to getting information out of people??

Give. me. a. break.

Update: NYTimes:

WASHINGTON, May 31 — The Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday questioned the continuing value of the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret interrogation program for terrorism suspects, suggesting that international condemnation and the obstacles it has created to criminal prosecution may outweigh its worth in gathering information.

The committee rejected by one vote a Democratic proposal that would essentially have cut money for the program by banning harsh interrogation techniques except in dire emergencies, a committee report revealed.

On this Memorial Day, when the Creation Museum opens, it seems appropriate to share with you this “sort of found poem” from Charlie Hughes.

Update: For reasons I cannot fully comprehend, I’ve had all kinds of software problems with this post. Well, actually, I think I can comprehend them — our klunky old modem connection has been particularly unstable this holiday weekend and commands I thought I’d sent don’t get sent and commands I didn’t think I’d send seem to happen spontaneously. For one thing, WordPress keeps thinking I want this to be a “private” posting and hiding it in the back end.

SO — if you thought you’d read this poem, read it again. Parts of it have been lost and are now I hope found.

My apologies to Charlie.

The Fertile Crescent – May 2007

by Charlie G. Hughes

And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. . . . And God said, Let the earth bring forth every living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

The soil is generally fertile and easily convertible to agricultural activity. Two major soil types predominate – heavy alluvial deposits of the Tigris-Euphrates Plain containing a significant amount of humus and clay, and lighter soils which lack humus and clay but contain wind-deposited nutrients. . . . By Middle-Eastern standards, the land is fairly well-endowed with agricultural resources that include fertile soils and access to two major river systems, the Tigris and the Euphrates, which provide extensive irrigation potential. Among the most abundant crops are wheat, barley, and dates.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.

Camel jockey, Sand nigger, Sand nigglet, Towel head, Raghead, Dune coon, Terrorist, Osama, A-rab, Dot-head, Sand rat, Paki, Sand monkey, Rock-spider, Camel-toe, Muhammad, Sand people.

And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground the LORD God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life is also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

TIME Magazine, 1956 – After 700 years in the dark ages, the ancient land where agriculture dawned and civilization first lit the planet is stirring again. Sudden wealth has been thrust upon the Kingdom of Iraq, carved just 35 years ago out of the Ottoman Empire’s holdings in the valley of the Tigris and the Euphrates–the land once known as Mesopotamia. The oil that calked the walls of Babylon and may have fired the furnace through which Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego walked unscathed now bubbles through huge pipelines to the Mediterranean. Its flow is so fabulous that it makes Iraq (pop. 5,000,000) the world’s sixth largest petroleum-producing country. Last February Iraq became the first of the new Arab nations to break away from Middle East isolationism and to cast its lot openly with the West in the Baghdad pact.

And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and He brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field. And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

The “Clear Skies Initiative” rolls back reforms in the 1970 Clean Air Act so that power plants can emit more noxious gases. The “Healthy Forests Initiative” allows loggers to cut certain old-growth trees under the guise of fire prevention. The “Patriot Act” encroaches on rights guaranteed by the constitution. The “Homeland Securities Act” offers little security, as demonstrated by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The “Coalition of the Willing” consists of 45 nations (in 2003) according to the Whitehouse. Many offered “political support” without material support.

but for Adam there was not found any help-mate for him. So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh thereof; And from the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made He a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

USA Today – Pleasure marriages were outlawed under Saddam Hussein but have begun to flourish again.The 1,400-year-old practice of muta’a – “ecstasy” in Arabic – is as old as Islam itself. It was permitted by the prophet Mohammed as a way to ensure a respectable means of income for widowed women. Rahim Al-Zaidi, who is married with five children, is awaiting permission for his third “pleasure marriage.” In the days when it could land him in jail, Rahim Al-Zaidi would whisper details of his muta’a only to his closest confidants and the occasional cousin, but never his wife. Al-Zaidi hopes to soon finalize his third “pleasure marriage,” with a green-eyed neighbor. This time, he talks about it openly and with obvious relish. But, he says, he probably still won’t tell his wife.

And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

BarnesAndNoble.com — In her book, Delights from the Garden of Eden, author Nawal Nasrallah explains that Iraqi cuisine has a distinctive character due to the influences of many different cultures in the region’s history. She traces its roots to the ancient Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians in the land that was home to Noah and to Abraham. Her reference to the Garden of Eden in the title is no mere evocativeness: She traces it to the Sumerian land “Edin” – She reminds us that “the first documented ‘cookbook’ in human history was written in Akkadian on clay tablets, in the land of Babylon about 3700 years ago.” Centuries later, in the medieval period, Baghdad under the Caliphs became a renowned center of gastronomy, and again under the Ottomans the Iraqis participated in yet another outstanding cuisine.

And walking in the garden in the cool of the day the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And Adam said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. And He said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

Written just weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, an open letter from Project for a New American Century (PNAC) to President Bush urging Saddam Hussein’s ouster marked the beginning of a concerted effort by neoconservatives to persuade President Bush to take action against Iraq. The letter stated, in part: “. . .even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the [9/11] attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.” The relentless campaign worked.

And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise her heel. Unto the woman He said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children . . .

BlackPressUSA.com – According to U.S. military records, 33 female soldiers – three in Afghanistan and 30 in Iraq – have been killed since operations started in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. In addition, 240 women have sustained combat-related wounds in Iraq and Afghanistan. Left with permanent injuries that have sometimes required amputation, most of these women – like those killed – were struck by bombs that hit transport units or camps with no warning. Iraq has been labeled among the top five “failed states” and “the most dangerous place on earth” by the United Nations. The United States has paid a high price (though not nearly as high as the Iraqis) for the catastrophic policy decisions of the Bush administration. Well over three thousand American soldiers have been killed, ten times that many wounded . . . President Bush contends that the American people have indeed sacrificed. He has said that all of us sacrifice ‘‘peace of mind” from the daily images of carnage on TV.

And unto Adam He said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

22 May 2007 (AP) – The U.S. military reported Sunday that six U.S. soldiers on patrol in Baghdad were killed in a roadside bombing along with their interpreter on Saturday. A seventh soldier died in a blast Saturday in Diwaniya, a mostly Shiite city 80 miles south of the capital, where radical Shiite militias operate. Those deaths brought the number of American troops killed in Iraq since Friday to at least 15 – eight of them in Baghdad. So far, at least 71 U.S. troops have died in Iraq this month.

And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever, I will send him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

International Herald-Tribune — Everyone knows, of course, that after death martyrs go straight to the Garden of Eden, where they recline on couches, savor meats and fruits and enjoy the company of dark-eyed “houris” while listening to the sound of flowing rivers. But what happens to the vast majority of Muslims, those who do not die as martyrs? According to Islamic doctrine, between the moment of death and the burial ceremony, the spirit of a deceased Muslim takes a quick journey to Heaven and Hell, where it beholds visions of the bliss and torture awaiting humanity at the end of days. By the time corpse handlers are ready to wash the body, the spirit returns to Earth to observe the preparations for burial and to accompany the procession toward the cemetery. But then, before earth is piled upon the freshly dug grave, an unusual reunion takes place: The spirit returns to dwell within the body. In the grave, the deceased Muslim – this composite of spirit and corpse – encounters two terrifying angels, Munkar and Nakir, recognized by their bluish faces, their huge teeth and their wild hair. These angels carry out a trial to probe the soundness of a Muslim’s faith. If the dead Muslim answers their questions convincingly, and if he has no sin on record, then the grave is transformed into a luxurious space that makes bearable the long wait until the final judgment. But if a Muslim’s faith is imperfect or if he has sinned during life by, for example, failing repeatedly to undertake purity rituals before prayer, then the grave is transformed into an oppressive, constricting space. The earth begins to weigh down heavily upon the sentient corpse, until the rib cage collapses; worms begin to nibble away at the flesh, causing horrible pain.

And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD. And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering:

Navy Times, May 2007 – American soldiers with the Bravo Company, Second Battalion, 10th Mountain Division, and their Iraqi counterparts have spent days trudging through rough terrain – muddy canal banks lined with tall reeds, parched farmland and fields of sweet-smelling wildflowers, searching for their missing comrades. The Iraqis took the lead in single-file lines Saturday, often halting to inspect piles of rubble and the ruins of houses strewn with children’s clothes and sandals, the remnants of Shiite Muslim homes bombed by Sunni extremists in the largely Sunni area west of Latifiyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad. Capt. Aaron Bright’s troops were debating how long they should rest in the two-story farm house, where they took refuge after three hours of searching, when they got the call that a soldier had been shot through the forehead by a sniper.

But unto Cain and to his offering He had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him. And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.

22 May 2007 (Reuters) – One British soldier was killed when gunmen attacked a military fuel truck on Monday in Basra, 550 km (340 miles) south of Baghdad, the British military said. Following are the latest figures for military deaths in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003:

US-LED COALITION FORCES:
United States – 3,419
Britain – 149
Other nations – 127

IRAQIS:
Military – Between 4,900 and 6,375
Civilians – Between 64,061 and 70,169

Johns Hopkins — As many as 654,965 more Iraqis may have died since hostilities began in Iraq in March 2003 than would have been expected under pre-war conditions, according to a survey conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad.

And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper? And He said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.

To me the front is a mysterious whirlpool. Though I am in still water far away from its centre, I feel the whirl of the vortex sucking me slowly, irresistibly, inescapably into itself.

At the sound of the first droning of the shells we rush back, in one part of our being, a thousand years.

—Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, trans. A. W. Wheen (Fawcett Crest paperback 1975)

Well, okay, the creation museum will open tomorrow, up the road here in Northern Kentucky, and I’ll admit that I find that somewhat embarassing.

Still, I’m not inclined to get real indignant about it, given everything else there is to be indignant about. Kerfluffle and demonstrations just seem to give the place more publicity.

Tiresome as the place is, all the chatter about it is just as tiresome. As far as I know, the place doesn’t violate any laws or constitutional rights. If we jailed people for willful ignorance, our jails would be full.

Oh wait, our jails are already full of drug offenders. No room.

Anyway, I’m all for ignoring this place as much as possible.

If you’re coming to Northern Kentucky and want to tour something, I suggest Big Bone Lick State Park. Not as many bells and whistles, but the science is good, and you’ll find hiking trails and fresh air.

In 1917, like many other writers, E. E. Cummings was serving as an ambulance driver in France. In August of that year, he was mistakenly arrested and imprisoned as a spy because of some letters written by his friend William Slater Brown. The letters supposedly expressed “antiwar sentiments.” As for Cummings, I think his sentiments were more anti-military than anti-war. Harvard educated and well-connected, Cummings doesn’t seem to have adjusted well to the vagaries, prejudices, incompetences of military discipline.

Image of La Ferté Macé from GVSU

Through a bureaucratic snafu, he was held for nearly four months in La Ferté Macé, a military detention camp. The Enormous Room (1922) describes his experience. It was his first published work. Here is a short passage from his introduction to the enormous room:

The darkness was rapidly going out of the sluggish stinking air. I was sitting on my mattress at one end of a sort of room, filled with pillars; ecclesiastical in feeling. I already perceived it to be of enormous length. My mattress resembled an island…

At this moment, at the far end of the room, I seemed to see an extraordinary vulture-like silhouette leap up from nowhere. It rushed a little way in my direction crying hoarsely Corvée d’eau!“–stopped, bent down at what I perceived to be a paillasse like mine, jerked what was presumably the occupant by the feet, shook him, turned to the next, and so on up to six. As there seemed to be innumerable paillasses, laid side by side at intervals of perhaps a foot with their heads to the wall on three sides of me, I was wondering why the vulture had stopped at six. On each mattress a crude imitation of humanity, wrapped ear-high in its blanket, lay and drank from a cup like mine and spat long and high into the room. The ponderous reek of sleepy bodies undulated toward me from three directions. I had lost sight of the vulture in a kind of insane confusion which arose from the further end of the room. It was as if he had touched off six high explosives. Occasional pauses in the minutely crazy din were accurately punctuated by exploding bowels; to the great amusement of innumerable somebodies, whose precise whereabouts the gloom carefully guarded.

I felt that I was the focus of a group of indistinct recumbents who were talking about me to one another in many incomprehensible tongues. I noticed beside every pillar (including the one beside which I had innocently thrown down my mattress the night before) a good sized pail, overflowing with urine, and surrounded by a large irregular puddle. My mattress was within an inch of the nearest puddle. What I took to be a man, an amazing distance off, got out of bed and succeeded in locating the pail nearest to him after several attempts. Ten invisible recumbents yelled at him in six languages.

— The Enormous Room (Modern Library, 1922)

Some recommended reads:

Kevin Drum on The End of a Dream (which might be subtitled How the Robber Barons Won). He has graphs:

Everyone knows that income inequality has been widening dramatically in the past three decades, as the rich get (lots) richer and the working class mostly stagnates. But hey — this is America! At least we still have lots of social mobility, right? People here go from rags to riches all the time, unlike those stagnant European hellholes where…..um….what?

Washington Post: In Kentucky, Toyota Faces Union Rumbling, subtitled “Downtrodden UAW Makes New Push”

GEORGETOWN, Ky. — Dissident workers at the Toyota plant here gather at the Best Western Georgetown on Wednesdays between shifts to shape a battle plan. The workers are angry at conditions at this flagship Toyota site, where the best-selling Camry is built.

The United Auto Workers has launched a big new push to organize the plant, trying to capitalize on fears of lower pay, outsourcing of jobs and on Toyota’s treatment of injured workers. The stakes for the UAW intensified this month as a private-equity firm agreed to buy Chrysler, raising fears that the union will be unable to block cuts in jobs and benefits at a privately owned automaker.

Spencer Ackerman’s The Bitter End. This article at The Washington Monthly argues that we should not judge the success of the war by the enthusiasm of troops on the ground but I was struck by these points:

To put all this in context: Defense Secretary Robert Gates admitted candidly in mid-March that without sectarian reconciliation among Iraqis the “strategy won’t work.” Indeed, the entire point of the surge is to bring such reconciliation about by, in Gates’s words, “buy[ing] the Iraqis time.” But that’s the problem. The United States is ever more dearly buying time, and Iraq is ever more freely spending it. As this article goes to press, the parliament is set to embark on a two-month vacation, during which, if current trends hold, 200 more American troops will be killed.

…The uncomfortable reality is this: nothing in Iraq worth fighting for remains achievable, and nothing achievable in Iraq remains worth fighting for.

This isn’t a lovely little wildflower, such as Charlie sends, but a flowering bush that grows on the north side of our house. I cut it back severely every year but that just seems to encourage it to grow. It’s really quite ugly but it has a very delicate and sweet flower, as you can see:

All these years, I’ve not known what it is. But one of you all do, I’m sure.