Consuming the Fourth of July

Here are the opening grafs of Katie's column yesterday:

This was supposed to be Minnesota's summer that wasn't. Four-dollar gas and fear of economic free-fall were supposed to force us to skip our vacations and settle for the municipal pool and the back porch.

But as I surveyed the scene on westbound Interstate 94 last weekend, it was clear that half the state wasn't listening.

Some of the cars headed to Brainerd, Nisswa and points north were towing high-tech craft designed for stealth attacks on unsuspecting walleyes. Others towed testaments to testosterone -- bullet-shaped speedboats with motors that looked as if they could power a small aircraft carrier. Mostly, though, I saw ordinary cars crammed with young and old, and their North Country paraphernalia.

And Katie was right there with 'em, celebrating the burning of hydrocarbons! We'll keep right on doing it! Nobody can tell us how to live; we're Americans!

Spot detects, however, a plaintive note in Katie's words. Perhaps a small desperation? The cancer patient in denial?

James Kunstler, Spot's favorite Malthusian, undoubtedly thinks so:

Every time I saw a car towing a motorboat this holiday weekend, I wondered what was going through the head of the [tow-er]. Did they have a sense that darkness was falling on their careers in motor sports? Did they have an inkling that an oil-and-gas crisis is upon us and just not give a shit? Or were they just going through the motions, following some implacable rote programming induced by, say, forty-odd years of TV addiction and a diet based on corn-syrup byproducts?

The holiday to me was a creepy hiatus from an ever more desperate reality overtaking the nation like a miasma. Meanwhile, the mainstream media's ongoing narrative has gotten stuck in the moronic groove of "drill drill drill." The belief of people like Larry Kudlow of CNBC and uber-mega-idiot John Stossel of ABC-News is that we could go back to $1.50 gasoline if only congress would open the offshore exploration areas and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This view is just plain erroneous. Nothing we get out of these regions will come close to offsetting the ongoing depletion of worldwide oil resources, or even arresting our own losses.

Drill, drill, drill is the Republican mantra, of course. Hell, if we're willing to kill people over oil, why be so squeamish about a few caribou? Or fish, for crying out loud! It doesn't make any sense.

Katie's column was elegiac, even though she really didn't know it.

Nick Coleman actually tied it up pretty neatly this morning in the Strib:

To see how deeply we are addicted to oil, check out the election-year pandering of the politicians promising to restore our God-given right to cheap gas by making sure the Chinese don't buy Cuba's.

What a pathetic country we have become. It's like watching a drunk search through his pockets for enough nickels and dimes to buy one more quart of Ripple. Only, we're the drunk.

We think we could solve our troubles if we started drilling on the outer continental shelf. Then we might be able to lower the price of gas to $3.98 gallon. Twenty years from now.

That's because oil is priced in a global market, where the extra production would amount to a tiny drop in the world's bucket -- about 200,000 barrels a day. Whoopee. [Spot thinks that world consumption is around 86 million barrels a day, with the US consuming about a quarter of that total].

Spotty are we going to run out of oil?

Well, yes, grasshopper. But don't worry, we'll probably run out of money first.

Technorati Tags: Katherine Kersten,Nick Coleman,peak oil,James Kunstler,Fourth of July

DL tonite!

Don't forget, boys and girls, Drinking Liberally tonight from six to nine at the 331 Club in Minneapolis. State Senator Patricia Torres Ray is planning to stop by for a meet and greet.

Be there or be square.

Technorati Tags: Drinking Liberally,Patricia Torres Ray

A practical answer

To the question, "What would you ask of delegates to the Republican National Convention?"

Sigh. The gent in question is not the lovely purple color shown above, but Spot had some trouble with the white balance.

Technorati Tags: iapprovethismessage,iapprovethismessage2008,Drinking Liberally

Sen. Patricia Torres Ray visits Drinking Liberally!

Spot told you a couple of weeks ago to mark your calendars for this Thursday, July 10th when Senator Patricia Torres Ray pays a visit to Drinking Liberally.

Did you mark your calendars, boys and girls?

I did, Spotty!

Good for you grasshopper. But for those of you who didn't, here's your reminder.

Spot thinks that Sen. Torres Ray will be there at around seven. She may have a few remarks and then just mingle with the crowd for a while.

Regular meeting time for Drinking Liberally is six to nine at the 331 Club in Northeast Minneapolis.

Senator Torres Ray is a first-term senator from Senate District 62 in south Minneapolis. She is the Vice Chair of the Health, Housing and Family Security Committee, and a member of the Education Committee and of two divisions of the Finance Committee. She is a persistent critic of the governor's well, ideas, on immigration.

If there is time, we may also continue with the video project What would you ask of, or say to, a delegate to the Republican National Convention?

Technorati Tags: Sen. Patricia Torres Ray,Drinking Liberally,immigration,Senate District 62

Channeling Rudyard Kipling

From Kipling's poem The Young British Soldier:

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut what remains,
Jes roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

Michael Scheuer, the CIA man formerly in charge of finding Osama bin Laden was in a Kipling frame of a mind recently:

Michael Scheuer, former CIA chief of the Bin Laden Issue Station, made this statement at a recent conference at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC: "Afghanistan is lost for the United States and its allies. To use Kipling's term, 'We are watching NATO bleed to death on the Afghan plains.' But what are we going to do. There are 20 million Pashtuns; are we going to invade? We don't have enough troops to even form a constabulary that would control the country. The disaster occurred at the beginning. The fools that run our country thought that a few hundreds CIA officers and a few hundred special forces officers could take a country the size of Texas and hold it, were quite literally fools. And now we are paying the price."

Scheuer added, "We are closer to defeat in Afghanistan than Iraq at the moment."

But Scheuer is hardly alone in his bleak assessment:

Scheuer's pessimism is widely shared among military and political elites. The situation on the ground is hopeless; there is no light in the tunnel. Author Anatol Lieven put it like this in an article in the Financial Times, "The Dream of Afghan Democracy is Dead": "The first step in rethinking Afghan strategy is to think seriously about the lessons of a recent opinion survey of ordinary Taliban fighters commissioned by the Toronto Globe and Mail. Two results are striking: the widespread lack of any strong expression of allegiance to Mullah Omar and the Taliban leadership; and the reasons given by most for joining the Taliban -- namely, the presence of western troops in Afghanistan. The deaths of relatives or neighbors at the hands of those forces was also stated by many as a motive. This raises the question of whether Afghanistan is not becoming a sort of surreal hunting estate, in which the US and Nato breed the very "terrorists" they then track down. "

Lieven is right. The occupation and the careless killing of civilians has only strengthened the Taliban and swollen their ranks. The US has lost the struggle for hearts and minds and they don't have the troops to establish security. The mission has failed; the Afghan people have grown tired of foreign occupation and support on the homefront is rapidly eroding. The US is just digging a deeper hole by staying.

And it's not like we've turned Afghanistan into paradise in the meantime, either:

By every objective standard, conditions are worse now than they were before the invasion in 2001. The economy is in shambles, unemployment is soaring, reconstruction is minimal, security is non-existent and malnutrition is at levels that rival sub-Saharan Africa. Afghanistan not safer, more prosperous, or freer. The vast majority of Afghans are still living in grinding poverty exacerbated by the constant threat of violence. The Karzai government has no popular mandate nor any power beyond the capital. The regime is a sham maintained by a small army of foreign mercenaries and a collaborative media which promotes it as a sign of budding democracy. But there is no democracy or sovereignty. Afghanistan is occupied by foreign troops. Occupation and sovereignty are mutually exclusive.

And you don't have to be the sharpest knife in the drawer to figure out that things generally don't go well for would-be occupiers in Afghanistan. Kipling was writing about the British experience there; the first Anglo-Afghan War was an especially gruesome example of how it is much easier to invade Afghanistan than it is to hold it. Philip Hensher wrote a fictionalized account of the this war between the Brits and the Afghans that preserves the essential historical details; it is titled The Mulberry Empire.

And who could forget, boys and girls, the Soviet experience in Afghanistan? They had a lot more troops than NATO does now; a fat lot of good it did them:

To better understand the reason for the Soviet invasion and failure, first one must understand the geography and culture in Afghanistan. The land is mountainous and arid. Jagged, impassable ranges divide the country and make travel difficult. Due to these physical divisions, the people are extremely provincial, with more loyalty to their specific clan or ethnic group than to a government or a country. The people are Muslims, and extremely religious and conservative. The majority ethnic group is the Pashtun, but there are over ten minority groups.

Spot remembers what his Pop always told him:

Spot, it's tough to beat a dog in his own back yard.

Or an Afghan in his.

Update: A thump of the tail to the incomparable Arthur Silber for the link to the article about Michael Scheuer; not that Silber need a link from the likes of Spot.

Technorati Tags: Afghanistan,Osama bin Laden,Soviet Union,Anglo-Afghan Wars,The Mulberry Empire

A Drinking Liberally flash bulletin

There WILL be a Drinking Liberally tonight.

Defending Chez Berg

On a recent sunny afternoon, a neatly-dressed middle-aged man walks along the sidewalk on a leafy residential street in St. Paul.  He has a clipboard in his hand, and he wears a baseball-type cap with "SAFETY & INSPECTIONS" embroidered on it. He has an ID on a lanyard around his neck that identifies him as an employee of the City of St Paul's Safety and Inspections Department.

As the inspector turns to walk up the sidewalk to a front door of a house, his pace slows and he becomes watchful. He climbs the steps to the door, listens a moment, and then rings the bell.

Nothing.

He listens again for a moment, hears activity inside, and rings the bell again, this time twice.

Again, nothing.

A little exasperated, the inspector raps the door sharply and say, "I know you are home, Mr. Berg."

"No I'm not," comes a voice from within.

"Oh, come on now, Mr. Berg. If it is not you, who is it?"

"It's my - - I'm the cleaning lady."

"Mr. Berg, I recognize your voice from the radio."

"You do? Great. Who is it?"

"I'm from Safety and Inspections."

"Go away."

"I can't do that. We have to talk about your lawn and your garage."

"Send me a letter."

"We have. Several. You've never responded."

"Jesus. I have to share a city with these cretins."

"What did you say, Mr. Berg; you were sort of muttering."

"Oh, never mind. What's you bed wetters' problem now?"

"The same things we've been talking -  or at least trying to talk to you - about for quite a while: small children have become lost and disoriented in the tall grass in your yard; the scrap metal salvage business you are apparently running out of your garage is not permitted in a residential neighborhood."

"Damn DFL cabal that runs this town!"

"Be that as it may, these are still code violations."

"I'll take care of them as soon as I can."

"It's too late for that, I'm afraid. I've written you up and I am here to give you the citation. Please open the door."

"I won't. Now go away."

"I'm not going away, Mr. Berg."

There is silence for a few minutes.

"Are you still there?"

"Yes, Mr. Berg, I'm still here."

"Damn. Okay, wait just a minute."

The inspector hears some commotion from inside the house: doors being opened and closed and drawer and cupboard doors being slammed. After a few minutes, he can hear footsteps back to the door from the inside.

"Did you ever hear of the Heller decision by the Supreme Court last week?"

"I can't say that I have, Mr. Berg."

"The Supreme Court of the United States says that I can keep a loaded handgun in the house."

"You could always do that in Minnesota, Mr. Berg."

"Really? Whatever. Do you know what this sound is?" There is a chunk-kachunk sound. "Never mind. It's me racking my sweet new Colt .45 pistol, and I'm going to shoot your liberal elite ass right through the door."

Now the inspector, already being aware that Mr. Berg is the proprietor of a web site called "A Shot in the Dark," has been prepared to take evasive action from the time he first rang the bell. He hops off the steps and crouches between the steps and the foundation of the house.

There is a flash of light from within the house and the gun goes off with a tremendous roar. The bullet splinters the front door and strikes the pavement in front of the house. It ricochets with a whine and the passes through the front driver and passenger windows of the car parked in front of a house across the street, setting off the car's alarm. The bullet comes to rest with puff of stucco in the wall of the house.

With the blast ringing in his ears and above the din of the car alarm, the inspector can hear screaming from inside the house. "Aaaarruuugghhh! I'm wounded! Get help!"

Our shooter had wrapped his thumb around the gun's slide where it received a terrible whack as the slide rocketed back when the gun was fired.

The inspector replies helpfully, "I know that you didn't shoot yourself, Mr. Berg, I saw the bullet come out of the door."

"It's my thumb! It's gashed and limp! There's blood everywhere! Help me!"

"Well, your other hand is okay, right Mr. Berg?"

"Yes."

"Then you can dial 911 yourself, can't you? Although I suspect there will be emergency responders of one kind or another here shortly. You might want to explain the bullet hole when you call, though. They're just civil servants, you know."

The inspector walks in a crouch to the other side of the house next door and sits, listening for the sirens. He thinks, "Now I'll have to write him up for the door, too. Some guys just never learn."

Update: Boys and girls, you know this is satire, right? The entire incident is fictional. You would have read about it in the newspaper. Spot's just making a point about people who love their guns a little too much.

Technorati Tags: Shot in the Dark,Colt .45,Mitch Berg,Heller gun contol decision

Sigmund remembers Stanley

Liebschen, you remember ven Siggy told you about za experiments of Stanley Milgram, ja?

Doesn't ring a bell, Sigmund Spot.

Ach, grasshopper, it vas right hier.

Oh yes, More Juice I Say! Now I remember.

Gut!

So zat all the liebschen are up to speed, remember Milgram's experiments vere are how much juice a test zubject was give to another person on za instructions. Here's how Siggy described it before:

Zey told a bunch of people zey need ze help in conducting ze experiment. But ze people recruited to give ze help were really ze subjects! Ach, that's become kind of za no-no, but never mind for now. Anyvay, ze told za recruits ze wanted to study the effects of za electric shock on za (fake) subjects, and zat ze recruits were needed to administer za shocks so za scientist could record the effects.

Za (real) subjects were zeated by za maschine with za dial to zhow za strenth of za shock. It went from za mild to medium, all za way up to zowee! dead as za doornail. But don't worry liebschen, za shocks were not real! Zen, zey hooked up ze fake subject to ze fake maschine, drew a curtain, and instructed ze real subject to start administering za shocks.

Za fake subjects went along with za ruse, and started out by zaying za shocks weren't too bad, zey tickeled, et zetera. Zen as the subject twisted the za dial for higher shocks, za fake subjects started to complain and tell za scientist to stop! Siggy says za ze fake subjects must have had za fun playing their part! But za scientist called for more juice.

Zomtimes, za real subject would say No way, I'm outta here! But zometimes not. Zome subjects woud administer more and higher shocks, even as za fake subjects screamed in za agony and pleaded for zere lives. More subjects quit along za way. But zome of zem were willing to follow za orders of za scientist to twist za dial all za way to zowee! dead as za doornail.

Boy! Siggy's buddy Stanley was critiized for za experiments, but ze gave za chilling insight into za authoritarian personality and how many people could be persuaded to do za bad zings. People still talk about za experiments, liebschen.

Zere was za article in za New York Times just za other tag, Siggy means day:

Consider the psychologist Stanley Milgram’s obedience studies of the early 1960s that together form one of the darkest mirrors the field has held up to the human face. In a series of about 20 experiments, hundreds of decent, well-intentioned people agreed to deliver what appeared to be increasingly painful electric shocks to another person, as part of what they thought was a learning experiment. The “learner” was in fact an actor, usually seated out of sight in an adjacent room, pretending to be zapped.

Here is ze part zat caught Siggy's eye, especially za last quoted paragraph:

In one, a statistical analysis to appear in the July issue of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, a postdoctoral student at Ohio State University verifies a crucial turning point in Milgram’s experiments, the voltage level at which participants were most likely to disobey the experimenter and quit delivering shocks.

The participants usually began with what they thought were 15-volt shocks, and worked upward in 15-volt increments, as the experimenter instructed. At 75 volts, the “learner” in the next room began grunting in apparent pain. At 150 volts he cried out: “Stop, let me out! I don’t want to do this anymore.”

At that point about a third of the participants refused to continue, found Dominic Packer, author of the new paper. “The previous expressions of pain were insufficient,” Dr. Packer said. But at 150 volts, he continued, those who disobeyed decided that the learner’s right to stop trumped the experimenter’s right to continue. Before the end of the experiments, at 450 volts, an additional 10 to 15 percent had dropped out. [za means zat over half were willing to go all the za way to the end]

This appreciation of another’s right is crucial in interrogation, Dr. Packer suggests. When prisoners’ rights are ambiguous, inhumane treatment can follow. Milgram’s work, in short, makes a statement about the importance of human rights, as well as obedience.

Zis is vhy, Siggy zes, it is so stupid to try come up with new categories of prisoners or detainees, and new definitions for za torture. It makes for za moral ambiguity and the zhameful conduct in our names. Bah! Enough!

Ve have acted like za big Stanley Milgram and now zink it is only people like za Lynndie England who are guilty. But zat is not true.

Technorati Tags: Lynndie England,Stanley Milgram,obedience experiments,Abu Ghurayb prison

The real story behind (tm)

The real story behind [fill in the blank] is trademark Katherine Kersten. Whether it's a bridge falling down, Muslims thrown off of airplanes, or Muslim cab drivers balking at carrying passengers with alcohol, Katie is there to follow up actual news reports with what really happened. She provides the kind of analysis that's well, hard to find anywhere else.

Spot always knows that if he misses an important story, especially if it is about gays, Muslims, blots on Christianity's escutcheon, or public schools, he can read Katie a few days later for, er, context. She did it again today.

The real story behind the gay pride issue at St. Joan is Katie's effort to contextualize Archbishop John Nienstedt's forbidding St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church from holding a gay pride prayer service as part of the Twin Cities Gay Pride Festival, as the church has for many years. Katie tells us what happened next:

In response, organizers moved the celebration outside the church. One gay activist attended in what must have struck him as a clown's outfit, given the occasion -- the robes of an archbishop, miter and all. David McCaffrey of the Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities (CPCSM) condemned what he called Nienstedt's "reign of homophobic hatred." In an e-mail to the group's members, he characterized the archbishop's decision as "yet another volley of dehumanizing spiritual violence directed at GLBT persons and their families."

Clearly, there is hatred here. But it is not coming from the Catholic Church. Rather, it's a tool of those who are trying to compel the church to conform to their personal demands with caricatures and public mockery.

Caricatures and public mockery? Gee, Spot is going to have to try that sometime!

Katie continues, revealing the theological advocacy that she undoubtedly picked up during Catholic school recess arguments in Fort Dodge lo these many years ago:

But the truth is different: The church welcomes everyone. Far from rejecting gays as sinners, Christianity teaches that all human beings are sinners. In fact, it maintains, it is precisely because we are sinners that we need the Christian message.

Of course, Katie! That puts an entirely different spin on it. Thank you for that. Katie would not want you to know, however, boys and girls, that even expressing support for gays and lesbians, much less being one, could get you denied the sacrament of communion in the Catholic church. (Thanks to MNO for the link.)

But the absolute best point that Katie makes is to say that the problem is not the "gay," it's the "pride."

The theologian C.S. Lewis called pride "the great sin" -- the root of almost every other transgression. Pride, he wrote, "has been the chief cause of misery ... since the world began."

So "gay pride" is out of place in church. But so is straight pride, black pride, white pride -- or any kind of pride.

So the gays are claiming superiority over everybody else? Um, Spot doesn't think Katie quite has it, do you think boys and girls?

This has gone on quite long enough, but there is one more thing that Spot has to say. Katie laments that gays at first just wanted a little tolerance, but now they want more. They want acceptance:

The controversy at St. Joan of Arc is part of a larger picture. When the gay rights movement emerged several decades ago, its leaders asked only for tolerance -- a live-and-let-live attitude on the part of the larger society. Today, the movement increasingly demands both approval of and conformity to its creed. More and more, it labels all dissent -- even that based on religious conviction -- as "hateful."

Secular institutions have largely acquiesced. The church alone perseveres in the conviction that human sexuality has a larger purpose. That is why it is now a central battlefront in this crusade.

No matter what you wrap bigotry in, Katie, it is still bigotry. And live and let live? Maybe you could talk to Matthew Shepard's parents about that.

But Katie is right; it's just like the blacks. First they just wanted to own themselves. Then they wanted jobs and an education. And then they wanted to vote. Can you believe that?

Update: For an interesting read about C.S. Lewis, see what Phoenix Woman has to say.

Technorati Tags: Katherine Kersten,St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church,gay rights,Twin Cities Gay Pride Festival,John Nienstedt

This decision will cost American lives

Is that what you think about the Heller decision, Spot?

Well yes, grasshopper, but it's not a quote from Spot.

Who then?

It's Justice Scalia, quoted in his dissent in the Boumediene decision of a week or so ago.

That's the case that decided that the system set up by the Military Commissions Act for detainees was not an adequate substitute for the writ of habeas corpus. Right?

That is so grasshopper. Just so all the boys and girls are up to speed, grasshopper, Spot will say that Heller is the decision from the U.S. Supreme Court this week holding that individuals have, well, let's let Linda Greenhouse tell us:

The Supreme Court on Thursday embraced the long-disputed view that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a gun for personal use, ruling 5 to 4 that there is a constitutional right to keep a loaded handgun at home for self-defense.

Spot predicts that history will judge Tony Scalia the same way it has judged Roger Taney and Henry Brown.

Who are they, Spotty?

They are the authors of Dred Scott v. Sanford and Plessy v. Ferguson, respectively.

They aren't held in much esteem, are they Spotty?

No grasshopper, they are not. The cases involve different issues and "rights" under consideration, but they all share a disingenuousness and intellectual cowardice.

There are better places to go than here for an in-depth discussion of the Heller opinion, but here's where you are, so you'll have to indulge Spot a little.

Some of you boys and girls will remember that the Bill of Rights, when first written, was only applicable to the the federal government. That's right, the states could establish a religion even if it wasn't yours, search your house without probable cause, didn't need to give you a jury trial, et cetera and et cetera.

It was only after the Civil War, and the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, that the Supreme Court began to "incorporate" the rights of the Bill of Rights into that Amendment and apply them as prohibitions against the states. After a time, really all of the individual rights of the Bills of Rights had been held to apply to the action of states.

But the so-called individual right to bear arms never was.

Spotty! That's not fair!

Grasshopper, it's onions and petunias, or apples and oranges. Unlike the other rights that had been incorporated into the Fourteenth Amendment and were intended as protection of individuals against the government, the Second Amendment was intended to protect the right of the states themselves to organize militias to suppress their own insurrections, and given the sentiment of the times, to protect themselves from the federal government.

The very language of the Second Amendment makes that clear:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Now, to get from this to saying that the individual has the right to keep a loaded .357 under his (it is almost always his, as Sigmund Spot will likely reflect on later) pillow to keep the bad guys away (to paraphrase Linda Greenhouse) is difficult.

Unless you are Nino Scalia.

If you're Nino, you just ignore the opening phrase.

Which is especially annoying when coming from the original originalist. Nino always makes a big show of conducting a seance with the Founders before making a pronouncement about the meaning of the Constitution. Nino likes to say that the words in the Constitution mean something. Apparently except when they don't!

Actually, Nino has shed his street cred on originalism before, most recently last week with his dissent in the habeas corpus decision linked above. Nino is clearly ready to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in situations far beyond those contemplated in the Constitution.

Spot expresses no opinion, as a policy matter, whether we should allow people to put loaded guns under their pillow. Most places, including Minnesota, you could before the Heller decision. In a few places, like DC, you could not. But to raise that policy discussion to the level of a constitutional argument? Shame on you, Nino.

One last point. Some people, and you know who you are, have expelled great volumes of hot and noxious gas about MNO's remark about the Heller decision perhaps being limited to muzzle-loading flintlock pistols.

Spot regrets to say that these people are far too thick to understand an originalist joke.

Pity.

Technorati Tags: Second Amendment,Heller,Justice Scalia originalism,right to bear arms

Heffelfinger departure from DOJ figures in subpoena

On Friday, John Conyers, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, issued a broad-ranging subpoena to the Department of Justice for documents related to the Valerie Plame Wilson identity disclosure. But that's not all:

In addition, Conyers subpoenaed documents related to the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, a Democrat, documents regarding the replacement of the U.S. attorney for Minnesota Tom Heffelfinger, memorandums from the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel, including an Oct. 23, 2001, memo about the use of American military forces to combat terrorism within the United States, and documents related to the 2002 election in which Republican operatives jammed the telephone lines of a Democratic initiative to encourage New Hampshire residents to vote.

Additionally, Conyers wants documents from the DOJ's Civil Rights Division related to redistricting in the state of Mississippi, and a photo identification law implemented in Georgia to combat claims of voter fraud.

We have probably not heard the last of l'affaire Paulose.

A thump of the tail to Ken Avidor.

Technorati Tags: Tom Heffelfinger,Rachel Paulose,Department of Justice,John Conyers

Boom!

You can watch it fall down here.

Update: When words fail most of us, we can always count on our leaders to express the thoughts we all wrestle with. Mayor Chris Coleman on the demolition: "Wow! That was the coolest thing ever!" MrMNO and the offspring joined me at the end of Emma Street on the bluff, and we were in the direction the stack fell. I was under the impression that it was going to be going straight down, so when it began to fall directly toward us, the only thing going through my mind was whether this was supposed to be happening. It was, of course, but the stack did appear to miss the earthen berms it was supposed to hit.

And don't let the door hit you on the butt!

Spot has been asking people at Drinking Liberally what they would ask of, or say to, delegates to the Republican National Convention. They'll be collected and edited at some point around the time of the convention, but Spot may run a few of the responses here from time to time, as a warm up.

Here then is one of the pithier ones:

And if you think that's tough, you should see the outtake.

Technorati Tags: Republican National Convention,Drinking Liberally

Originalism finds a home

So in District of Columbia v. Heller the Supreme Court has found that the Washington D.C. gun control statute is invalid because it is at odds with what the writers of the Constitution had in mind when they drafted the Second Amendment. No word yet on whether the citizens of the District will be limited to the single-shot, front loaded muskets that the drafters also had in mind when they wrote the Amendment.

Local columnist threatens lawyers!

That would be Katie, of course, in a veiled threat to local lawyers who have sued to get better access for protesters at the Republican National Convention:

In 2008, it's sadly inevitable that crazies will try to turn St. Paul streets into a war zone.

But we don't have to facilitate such intimidation. After the crazies move on, the establishment types who gave them comfort and cover -- and sued to win a march route that apparently facilitates their plans -- had better be prepared to take responsibility for what happens if they get their way.

Lucca Brassi sleeps with the fishes!

You gotta nice little law practice here. It would be a shame if something happened to it.

What are you going to do, Katie? Publish the names of the lawyers like they were abortion doctors? Or do like the right wing bloggers do and publish the addresses of people who expressed an opinion contrary to their own views?

Well, Spot, she did that, actually.

Yes, grasshopper, Spot knows. Katie is a thug. She has a newspaper gig, and therefore thinks her conduct is some how different, but it's not. She's still a thug.

The column was about the efforts of some Minnesota lawyers to secure better access to the Excel Center area for protest parades during the Republican National Convention. Katie is worried about the effect on decent people, meaning delegates to the convention, of having to put up with protesters.

Minnesota should have learned a long time ago that we take a dim view of attempts at prior restraint of the exercise of First Amendment rights. The seminal case in the prior restraint area is Near v.Minnesota, a 1931 United States Supreme Court case. Here's the briefest summary of the facts:

In 1927, Jay M. Near, who has been described as "anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, anti-black and anti-labor"^[2] began publishing The Saturday Press in Minneapolis with Howard A. Guilford, a former mayoral candidate who had been convicted of criminal libel.

The paper claimed that Jewish gangs were "practically ruling" the city along with the police chief, Frank W. Brunskill, who was accused of participation in graft. Among the paper's other targets were mayor George E. Leach, Hennepin County attorney and future three-term governor Floyd B. Olson, and the members of the grand jury of Hennepin County, who the paper claimed were either incompetent or willfully failing to investigate and prosecute known criminal activity.

Floyd Olson took a dim view of all of this, and tried to shut the paper down as a nuisance under what was know as the Minnesota Gag Law. The Supreme Court of the United States reversed a Minnesota Supreme Court decision upholding a conviction under the law. The U.S. Supreme Court held that prior restraint, or censorship, except in very limited circumstances, was unconstitutional.

Without spending a lot more of your time, boys and girls, Spot will just say that any prior restraint of press, speech, assembly and petition rights must be strictly limited to public safety concerns, and it is no justification to say that some people might create a ruckus. That is essentially what one of the lawyers trying to secure better access for protest said:

Todd Noteboom of Leonard, Street and Deinard says St. Paul has provided no evidence that radical groups' threats are serious or involve significant numbers. "The possibility that a small number of people might try to block a roadway or impede access to a bridge does not justify stripping 100,000 people of their First Amendment rights," he said on Tuesday.

If anybody gets out of line, disturbs the peace or destroys property at the convention, there will be police there to arrest them and charges of law violations to be brought. And that's as it should be.

To somehow believe it is appropriate to restrain the speech in the name of order or convenience to the delegates, ahead of time, however, is a serious misreading or misunderstanding of the First Amendment.

Technorati Tags: Katherine Kersten,Near v. Minnesota,Republican National Convention,First Amendment,Floyd B. Olson

Kersten commits journalism

Word on the street is that for the first time in actual memory, Katherine Kersten actually spoke to a source (Todd Noteboom) she quoted in her column today, a source not associated with those Powerline fellows.

Todd Noteboom of Leonard, Street and Deinard says St. Paul has provided no evidence that radical groups’ threats are serious or involve significant numbers. “The possibility that a small number of people might try to block a roadway or impede access to a bridge does not justify stripping 100,000 people of their First Amendment rights,” he said on Tuesday.

Actually speaking directly with sources? Calling people who disagree with you up for comment? Relying on actual first-hand information rather than the websites of those most extreme organizations to jump to unfounded conclusions? No good can come of this, I tell you.

Archbishop bans prayer

Here:

A Roman Catholic Church decision to prohibit a Minneapolis gay pride prayer service has many in the gay community up in arms, leading activists to call the action a troubling and telling sign from the Twin Cities' new archbishop.

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis recently told staff members at St. Joan of Arc Church they could not hold their annual gay pride prayer service planned for Wednesday — an event held for several years in conjunction with the annual Twin Cities Pride Celebration, parishioners said.

Next up, Archbishop Nienstedt's plans to ban rainbows.

Upcoming DL events!

This Thursday - The conversation veered wildly off course last week, and Spot would still like to have a conversation about the National Conference for Media reform that was held in Minneapolis earlier this month.

Spot also wants to video some attendees answering the question: What would you say to, or ask of, a delegate to the Republican National Convention? Because frankly, it's a close as you are likely to ever get. Your response can be serious, silly, or within limits, filled with invective. Start planning what you want to say now.

Thursday, July 3rd - We'll continue with the video responses, and Spot has a special treat for you. Spot will lay in a supply of bottle rockets from Wisconsin, and we'll shoot them at the motorcycles roaring by without mufflers on University Avenue! There will be a prize, and perhaps an arrest, for the best score.

Really? Can we do that Spot?

No, don't be silly grasshopper. Spot is just kidding.

Aw, it sounds like a lot of fun.

Thursday, July 10th - Here's one you really don't want to miss. Senator Patricia Torres Ray from Minneapolis will be at DL for a meet and greet. Senator Torres Ray, in her first term, has been one of the more persistent critics of the Governor on immigration.

All of these events will be at the regular time and place: six to nine, or so, at the 331 Club in northeast Minneapolis.

And now, boys and girls, Spot will be gone for a couple of days. Perhaps he'll see you at DL on Thursday. Stop by, though, because MNO may have some thing for you while Spot is gone.

Technorati Tags: Drinking Liberally,Republican National Convention,bottle rockets,Patricia Torres Ray,331 Club,National Conference for Media Reform

Progressive Pestilence!

As a general rule, Spot avoids reading Craig Westover. Or maybe not so much avoids as it doesn't occur to Spot to go to the sites where Captain Fishsticks hangs out. However, one of his recent columns was mentioned over at Across the Great Divide, so Spot did go to read The Problem with Progressives. Charlie already did a nice job on Sticks, summing up the context of the column, but Spot has a couple of more thoughts. Go read Charlie, though.

Sticks' argument can be summed up as, You can't trust those progressives; there is no limit to their rapacity. For example:

Progressivism is politics as religion. Left-leaning progressivism strives to impose values on society every bit as aggressively as the Christian right pushing a moral agenda of "family values." Whether the supreme authority over individual liberty is a secular state or a religious one, the operative word is "supreme." Progressivism is ultimately about total control.

Progressivism is immune to restraint; it respects no constitutional limits on government. The progressive may prefer the near-sacramental word "holistic" to describe the effort to create a better world, but, as National Review's Jonah Goldberg reminds us, Mussolini coined the word "totalitarian" for the progressive vision — a society where everyone belongs, where everyone is taken care of, where everything is inside the state and nothing is outside the state, where there are no hard trade-offs.

By quoting Jonah Goldberg as a source, of course, the esteem in which Sticks is held plummets dramatically. But when he quotes Jonah Goldberg who is in turn quoting with approval Benito Mussolini, Spot has to wonder if Sticks has finally slipped the surely bonds of earth and, well, just floated off, a shiny mylar balloon advertising Mrs. Paul's products.

Yes, when the definitive history of twentieth-century Italy is finally written, no doubt it will contain chapters dedicated to the study of how the Black Shirts valiantly fought off the Progressives.

It is so nice when one doesn't have to make the fascist analogies because they make themselves.

Sticks wants you, boys and girls, to think that all progressives are just a bunch of utopian dreamers. But they aren't, any more than all conservatives are like Sticks!

In fact, Sticks, and Davey Strom, and King Banaian all come from a completely different branch of the evolutionary tree from Harold Stassen, Elmer Anderson, Arne Carlson, and Dave Durenberger.

Technorati Tags: progressivism,conservatism,Benito Mussolini,Jonah Goldberg,Growth and Justice,David Strom,King Banaian

A measure of a person

Spot says that one good measure of a person is to watch whom they ridicule. If a person makes fun of the comfortable, the pompous, or the sanctimonious, chances are that he or she is a good egg, somebody you'd like to know.

On the other hand, if they ridicule the do gooders, the sick or dispossessed, or the poor, you've probably identified, well, an asshole.

It is a rule that is virtually foolproof.

Do you have some examples, Spot?

Why yes, grasshopper, Spot has a couple of recent examples of the latter category from our very own hometown newspaper! Let's look at them.

First up is Jim (he hates that) Lileks, who writes on Friday that people with toxic bosses are just wussies:

It would be like Mary Tyler Moore skipping work because she had menstrual cramps. Mary did not let that stop her. Ever.

But no, not us! Now we call the office and complain of Existential Fatigue or Twitchy Kidney Syndrome because the boss has halitosis that could melt cloth socks and insists on telling you limericks that have the word "Nantucket" in them. Weaklings! Slackers!

It may be helpful to Jim or his readers to point out that he undoubtedly meant Mary Richards, the character that Mary Tyler Moore played in a sitcom. Mary Richards is, of course, an imaginary person, who did, Spot will admit, show up every week for her television show. No word on whether the real Mary, who is afflicted with juvenile diabetes, had a perfect record, too. Jim concludes his column with this:

At the risk of doubting a Study [finding that bosses can make people sick], one might suspect that some people are not actually sick, but feigning sickness to avoid dealing with the psycho-in-chief. If that's the case, it puts a different light on the study, and might mean that Minnesotans are quite deft at convincing their employers that they're a sweaty gurgling heap on death's stoop.

As anyone who's ever faked a sick day knows, it takes a certain amount of thespian ability to sound sick without sounding like you're trying to sound sick. So if we have more people calling in sick, it means we're doing a pretty good job of pretending we're ill.

We also have one of the highest concentrations of theaters in the United States. Related? Don't know. I'll wait for the study.

Sweaty gurgling heap, indeed.

Second on the list is Katie's column this morning, which Spot has already mentioned. Katie finds that mothers - in her own community, no less - who are trying to do something to improve the environment of the planet where everybody, including Katie, lives are worthy of her contempt.

Spot? He'll go with the EcoMoms of the earth every time.

Boys and girls, Spot has kind of a corollary to his rule. It's especially good for single people who are looking for someone they might like to spend more time with. When you're out with someone for the first time, pay attention to how they treat the waiter or waitress, or the persons standing in line with them at the theater, or the pedestrian a little slow to clear the crosswalk.

You would be surprised at the insight you will get.

One final thing. Spot's Dad, may he rest in peace, was a great sports fan. He always said, "Spot. You root for two teams. The home team, and if they're not playing, you root for the underdog."

Those are not only words to live by, but words to choose your friends by, too.

A thump of the tail to the Mississippifarian.

Technorati Tags: James Lileks,Katherine Kersten,Mary Tyler Moore,Mary Richards,underdogs,words to live by