Spring Flowers

Lance's Birthday at Jump N Jungle

Lance, across the culdesac, turned three. So we get to his party at Jump N Jungle, and all Jameson wants to do is fool around with the air hockey table. I am not sure, but I think it was broken. He didn't want to go on the trampoline, or slide, or play with other kids. It was all about the air hockey table. This went on for a while. Maybe was burnt out on slides from Easter. Anyhow, he finally got interested.



I went down this slide with him about twenty times, and worked up a pretty good sweat.

War Criminal

Dez's Garden

The pomegranate is blooming in the the foreground.

There has been a bit of an issue with catepillars, but there's still a ton of salad. Dez found some organic stuff that seems to be doing the trick.

Onions and carrots, and collards in the far bed.

Sugar snap peas.

A Nation Run by War Criminals

ABC breaks the story.

The high-level discussions about these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.

The advisers were members of the National Security Council's Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy.

At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

. . .

According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."

They should all be careful with their travel plans, because one day it could me more than history judging them. More discussion.

New Al Gore Slideshow

Hanging out at Grandaddy's

Jameson spends Tuesday mornings with his Granddaddy while I go to campus.

The past couple of weeks, Granddaddy has taken Jameson to the Heights Library for storytime and arts and crafts. Here's a picture Jameson made today, with a little help from Granddaddy.

Here's Jameson chilling in Granddaddy's wheelbarrel.

Lawsuit Claim: Students' Lecture Notes Infringe on Professor's Copyright

Interesting. I used these types of notes a few times when I went to UT Austin. I felt mildly unethical about it, but it sure opened up my schedule. The notes were cheap and much better than if I had taken them myself. I am a lousy note-taker, and usually rely more on memory. I do annotate a fair amount when I read something closely.

As a teacher, I understand the desire to have students in class. My classes are small: 32 students or less at the beginning of semester, and smaller after the first few weeks. There is no market for notes for small classes. But even in a large class, discussion can be dynamic, and a teacher has a right to expect a student's attendance.

The related problem the article brings up is summaries. Instead of reading an assigned novel or story, the student goes online to Sparknotes, Cliffsnotes, enotes, or some other site that breaks the work down systematically. Or, they go to one of a million essay sites and download an essay. The summaries seem to be under the gun in this lawsuit, which I am happy to hear. It would be a good thing if more students read a novel or two before they graduated from college.

Conyers, Judiciary Members Demand Answers from Attorney General on 9/11 Surveillance

The letter Conyers sent Mukasey.

It's a response to Mukasey's recent tearful statement that we need to grant telecoms retroactive immunity for the sake of the 9/11 victims. Mukasey claims the laws back then prevented eavesdropping on a call from Afghanistan about the attack. That's a lie: the law specifically permitted eavesdropping on that type of call. It is a lie that attempts to exploit--with tears, no less--the tragedy of 3,000 deaths. It is a lie that is being used in an attempt to subvert our fundamental freedoms. The current FISA law provides all the authority needed to gather intelligence.

Further, the 9/11 Commission discovered no evidence of such a phone call. Mukasey is no better than Gonzalez. He disgraces our nation. Conyers' letter also asks about the latest declassified it's-not-really-a-war-crime memo that has a footnote claiming the President in not bound by the 4th amendment when waging war inside the U.S. Mukasey, Yoo, Addington, and all the rest of them, are bad people who deserve bad endings.

In A Man Without a Country, Vonnegut calls them psychopathic personalities(PPs):

I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka “Christians,” and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or “PPs.”

To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable medical diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete’s foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. Read it! PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!

And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country, and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And so many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick.

What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass! (pp. 98-101)

High profile Congressional hearings will probably be on CSPAN soon. Don't expect much to come of them. These folks might not want to visit any countries interested in prosecuting war criminals though.

Why al-Maliki attacked Basra

Juan Cole discusses motives, upcoming provincial elections, and possible scenerios about our ability to stay there and soft partitioning vs. a central gov't. As a sidenote, Iran brokered the ceasefire after Maliki aides solicited intervention.