Month: July 2008

Blind and Evil

Seth Anderson0 comment

The Dark Lord, Robert Novak, apparently didn’t notice he had run over a pedestrian, and kept going, even though the victim was on Novak’s car. Sounds like a hit and run to me.

Robert Novak says he has been issued a $50 citation after hitting a pedestrian while driving in downtown Washington.

Witnesses say the collision occurred about 10 a.m. Wednesday as the 77-year-old Novak was traveling near K Street in his black Chevrolet Corvette.

Novak tells WJLA-TV he was cited for failing to yield the right of way. He says he didn’t realize what happened and continued driving until a bicyclist stopped him.

David Bono, the bicyclist who witnessed the incident, told The Associated Press that the pedestrian was hit in a crosswalk and was splayed across Novak’s windshield.

[From The Raw Story | Video: Columnist Robert Novak issued citation after hitting pedestrian]

Novakula in a black Corvette sounds appropriate somehow. Novak shouldn’t be allowed to mingle with humans.

TalkLeft adds:

The bicyclist was David Bono, a partner at Harkins Cunningham, who was on his usual bike commute to work at 1700 K St. N.W.when he witnessed the accident.

As he traveled east on K Street, crossing 18th, Bono said a “black Corvette convertible with top closed plowed into the guy. The guy is sort of splayed onto the windshield.”

Bono said that the pedestrian, who was crossing the street on a “Walk” signal and was in the crosswalk, rolled off the windshield and that Novak then made a right into the service lane of K Street. “The car is speeding away. What’s going through my mind is, you just can’t hit a pedestrian and drive away,” Bono said.

Impeachment in Illinois

Seth Anderson3 Comments

There has been some calls for impeachment proceedings to remove Governor Blah-blah1 – we hadn’t decided if we supported that or not, even though we think Gov Blah Blah is doing a horrible job. However, the contrast between two news stories published today:

The confusing controversy over Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s decision to give $1 million in state assistance following the Pilgrim Baptist Church fire has a new twist—the founder of the private Chicago school that got the money is contradicting the governor’s statement about what happened.

Blagojevich has maintained that he wanted the money to help the historic church but bureaucratic mistakes sent it to the school.

In her first interview since the controversy over the money erupted this spring, Elmira Mayes, the founder of the family-run Loop Lab School, said Blagojevich personally promised her the money.

Mayes said the governor visited the fire site and talked with her as she was sifting through debris from her burned-out school, which had rented space from the church. She did not recall the governor’s exact words but “he told me he would help build the school and give $1 million.”

Mayes’ account raises fresh questions about the Blagojevich administration’s efforts to clean up their boss’ campaign promise gone awry. Blagojevich has since pledged a second million dollars to the church and ordered a review of whether the state should recover the money given to the school.

[From Governor contradicted on $1 million ‘mistake’ — chicagotribune.com]

and

The stumbling U.S. economy is forcing states to slash spending and cut jobs in order to close a projected $40 billion shortfall in the current fiscal year.

That gap — identified Wednesday in a survey by the National Conference of State Legislatures — is more than triple the size of the previous year’s. It is the result of broad economic weakness at the state and local levels that could cause pain throughout this year and into 2010. Sales-tax collections, for example, have been hurt by the housing slump and high gasoline prices, which are prompting cutbacks in consumer spending. Personal income-tax collections have been hit by rising unemployment, while corporate income-tax collections have been eroded by falling profits.

“We expect it to get worse before it gets better,” said Corina Eckl, fiscal-program director of the National Conference of State Legislatures. The conference’s new report describes the shortfalls states face in their budgeting process for the current fiscal year, which began in July.

[From States Slammed by Tax Shortfalls – WSJ.com] [non-WSJ subscribers use this link]

is just too great. Gov Blah Blah squanders cash, can’t explain how or why, and yet Illinois is deeply in the red, cutting various social programs, considering tax increases. I don’t think Gov Blah Blah is even having any fun being governor, he should just resign, move back to Lincoln Park, and become a lobbyist.

Footnotes:
  1. as we call Gov. Rod Blagojevich [↩]

Flesh and Blood in B-More

Seth Anderson0 comment

For some reason, David Simon didn’t manage to work this scenario into the plot of The Wire. A pity there won’t be another season, say, set in Chicago…

Willie “Bo” Mitchell and three co-defendants—Shelton “Little Rock” Harris, Shelly “Wayne” Martin, and Shawn Earl Gardner— appeared for a hearing in the modern federal courthouse in downtown Baltimore, Maryland. The four African American men were facing federal charges of racketeering, weapons possession, drug dealing, and five counts of first-degree murder. For nearly two years the prosecutors had been methodically building their case, with the aim of putting the defendants to death. In Baltimore, which has a murder rate eight times higher than that of New York City, such cases are depressingly commonplace.

A few minutes after 10 a.m., United States District Court Judge Andre M. Davis took his seat and began his introductory remarks. Suddenly, the leader of the defendants, Willie Mitchell, a short, unremarkable looking twenty-eight-yearold with close-cropped hair, leapt from his chair, grabbed a microphone, and launched into a bizarre soliloquy.

“I am not a defendant,” Mitchell declared. “I do not have attorneys.” The court “lacks territorial jurisdiction over me,” he argued, to the amazement of his lawyers. To support these contentions, he cited decades-old acts of Congress involving the abandonment of the gold standard and the creation of the Federal Reserve. Judge Davis, a Baltimore-born African American in his late fifties, tried to interrupt. “I object,” Mitchell repeated robotically. Shelly Martin and Shelton Harris followed Mitchell to the microphone, giving the same speech verbatim. Their attorneys tried to intervene, but when Harris’s lawyer leaned over to speak to him, Harris shoved him away.

Judge Davis ordered the three defendants to be removed from the court, and turned to Gardner, who had, until then, remained quiet. But Gardner, too, intoned the same strange speech. “I am Shawn Earl Gardner, live man, flesh and blood,” he proclaimed. Every time the judge referred to him as “the defendant” or “Mr. Gardner,” Gardner automatically interrupted: “My name is Shawn Earl Gardner, sir.” Davis tried to explain to Gardner that his behavior was putting his chances of acquittal or leniency at risk. “Don’t throw your life away,” Davis pleaded. But Gardner wouldn’t stop. Judge Davis concluded the hearing, determined to find out what was going on.

[Click to read more about what Judge Davis found out Too Weird for The Wire – Kevin Carey]

Via Kottke, of course.

In case your constitutional memory is weak, here’s the text of the 14 Amendment which the Flesh-and-Blooders think is illegitimate:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Section 3. No one shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

and the controversy:

Bruce Ackerman claims that the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment violated Article V of the Constitution, because:

  • The Fourteenth Amendment was proposed by a rump Congress that did not include representatives and senators from most of the former Confederate states, and, had those congressmen been present, the Amendment would never have passed.
  • Former Confederate states were counted for Article V purposes of ratification, but were not counted for Article I purposes of representation in the Congress.
  • The ratifications of the former Confederate states were not truly free, but were coerced. For instance, many former Confederate states had their readmittance to the Union conditioned on ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment.[26]

In 1968, the Utah Supreme Court diverged from the habeas corpus issue in a case to express its resentment against recent decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court under the Fourteenth Amendment, and to attack the Amendment itself:

In order to have 27 states ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, it was necessary to count those states which had first rejected and then under the duress of military occupation had ratified, and then also to count those states which initially ratified but subsequently rejected the proposal. To leave such dishonest counting to a fractional part of Congress is dangerous in the extreme. What is to prevent any political party having control of both houses of the Congress from refusing to seat the opposition and then without more passing a joint resolution to the effect that the Constitution is amended and that it is the duty of the Administrator of the General Services Administration to proclaim the adoption? Would the Supreme Court of the United States still say the problem was political and refuse to determine whether constitutional standards had been met? How can it be conceived in the minds of anyone that a combination of powerful states can by force of arms deny another state a right to have representation in the Congress until it has ratified an amendment which its people oppose? The Fourteenth Amendment was adopted by means almost as bad as that suggested above

Exposing Bush’s historic abuse of power

swanksalot0 comment

Tim Shorrock writes in Salon:

The last several years have brought a parade of dark revelations about the George W. Bush administration, from the manipulation of intelligence to torture to extrajudicial spying inside the United States. But there are growing indications that these known abuses of power may only be the tip of the iceberg. Now, in the twilight of the Bush presidency, a movement is stirring in Washington for a sweeping new inquiry into White House malfeasance that would be modeled after the famous Church Committee congressional investigation of the 1970s.

While reporting on domestic surveillance under Bush, Salon obtained a detailed memo proposing such an inquiry, and spoke with several sources involved in recent discussions around it on Capitol Hill. The memo was written by a former senior member of the original Church Committee; the discussions have included aides to top House Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers, and until now have not been disclosed publicly.

Salon has also uncovered further indications of far-reaching and possibly illegal surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency inside the United States under President Bush. That includes the alleged use of a top-secret, sophisticated database system for monitoring people considered to be a threat to national security. It also includes signs of the NSA’s working closely with other U.S. government agencies to track financial transactions domestically as well as globally.

The proposal for a Church Committee-style investigation emerged from talks between civil liberties advocates and aides to Democratic leaders in Congress, according to sources involved. (Pelosi’s and Conyers’ offices both declined to comment.) Looking forward to 2009, when both Congress and the White House may well be controlled by Democrats, the idea is to have Congress appoint an investigative body to discover the full extent of what the Bush White House did in the war on terror to undermine the Constitution and U.S. and international laws. The goal would be to implement government reforms aimed at preventing future abuses — and perhaps to bring accountability for wrongdoing by Bush officials.

“If we know this much about torture, rendition, secret prisons and warrantless wiretapping despite the administration’s attempts to stonewall, then imagine what we don’t know,” says a senior Democratic congressional aide who is familiar with the proposal and has been involved in several high-profile congressional investigations.

“You have to go back to the McCarthy era to find this level of abuse,” says Barry Steinhardt, the director of the Program on Technology and Liberty for the American Civil Liberties Union. “Because the Bush administration has been so opaque, we don’t know [the extent of] what laws have been violated.”

[Click to read more of Salon.com News | Exposing Bush’s historic abuse of power]

Troubling, frightening, disturbing, pick your adjective. There is apparently a database called Main Core which contains the names of over 8,000,000 American citizens who are considered to be persons of interest to the state, and who would be imprisoned, or worse, if a national emergency occurred.

A prime area of inquiry for a sweeping new investigation would be the Bush administration’s alleged use of a top-secret database to guide its domestic surveillance. Dating back to the 1980s and known to government insiders as “Main Core,” the database reportedly collects and stores — without warrants or court orders — the names and detailed data of Americans considered to be threats to national security.

According to several former U.S. government officials with extensive knowledge of intelligence operations, Main Core in its current incarnation apparently contains a vast amount of personal data on Americans, including NSA intercepts of bank and credit card transactions and the results of surveillance efforts by the FBI, the CIA and other agencies. One former intelligence official described Main Core as “an emergency internal security database system” designed for use by the military in the event of a national catastrophe, a suspension of the Constitution or the imposition of martial law. Its name, he says, is derived from the fact that it contains “copies of the ‘main core’ or essence of each item of intelligence information on Americans produced by the FBI and the other agencies of the U.S. intelligence community.”

[snip]

An article in Radar magazine in May, citing three unnamed former government officials, reported that “8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect” and, in the event of a national emergency, “could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and even detention.”

Scary stuff.

Workplace Toxin Rules

Seth Anderson0 comment

Bush cronies trying their best to get in a couple more body blows to the public before 2009.

Political appointees at the Department of Labor are moving with unusual speed to push through in the final months of the Bush administration a rule making it tougher to regulate workers’ on-the-job exposure to chemicals and toxins.

The agency did not disclose the proposal, as required, in public notices of regulatory plans that it filed in December and May. Instead, Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao ‘s intention to push for the rule first surfaced on July 7, when the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) posted on its Web site that it was reviewing the proposal, identified only by its nine-word title.

The text of the proposed rule has not been made public, but according to sources briefed on the change and to an early draft obtained by The Washington Post, it would call for reexamining the methods used to measure risks posed by workplace exposure to toxins. The change would address long-standing complaints from businesses that the government overestimates the risk posed by job exposure to chemicals.

The rule would also require the agency to take an extra step before setting new limits on chemicals in the workplace by allowing an additional round of challenges to agency risk assessments.

The department’s speed in trying to make the regulatory change contrasts with its reluctance to alter workplace safety rules over the past 7 1/2 years. In that time, the department adopted only one major health rule for a chemical in the workplace, and it did so under a court order.

[From U.S. Rushes to Change Workplace Toxin Rules – washingtonpost.com]

Remember the old days, when government agencies tried to protect the public from the cruel indifference of Big Business? The Bush-ites want to return to the years before the government was involved in anything other than military endeavors.

links for 2008-07-23

swanksalot0 comment

Medical Marijuana transforming California

swanksalot0 comment

Well, duh.

In 2003, the California State Legislature passed Senate Bill 420. The law was intended to clear up some of the confusion caused by Proposition 215, which had failed to specify how patients who could not grow their own pot were expected to obtain the drug, and how much pot could be cultivated for medical purposes. The law permitted any Californian with a doctor’s note to own up to six mature marijuana plants, or to possess up to half a pound of processed weed, which could be obtained from a patients’ collective or coöperative—terms that were not precisely defined in the statute. It also permitted a primary caregiver to be paid “reasonable compensation” for services provided to a qualified patient “to enable that person to use marijuana.”

The counties of California were allowed to amend the state guidelines, and the result was a patchwork of rules and regulations. Upstate in Humboldt County, the heartland of high-grade marijuana farming in California, the district attorney, Paul Gallegos, decided that a resident could grow up to ninety-nine plants at a time, in a space of a hundred square feet or less, on behalf of a qualified patient. The limited legal protections afforded to pot growers and dispensary owners have turned marijuana cultivation and distribution in California into a classic “gray area” business, like gambling or strip clubs, which are tolerated or not, to varying degrees, depending on where you live and on how aggressive your local sheriff is feeling that afternoon. This summer, Jerry Brown, the state’s attorney general, plans to release a more consistent set of regulations on medical marijuana, but it is not clear that California’s judges will uphold his effort. In May, the state Court of Appeal, in Los Angeles, ruled that Senate Bill 420’s cap on the amount of marijuana a patient could possess was unconstitutional, because voters had not approved the limits.

[From A Reporter at Large: Dr. Kush: How medical marijuana is transforming the pot industry: The New Yorker]

I had some pithy commentary here, but in the light of day, didn’t make sense. Whatever.

 

Oversized Volcano

Oversized Volcano

Netflixed: The Big Clock

Seth Anderson0 comment


“The Big Clock (Universal Noir Collection)” (John Farrow)

Watched the Big Clock recently

1948.

Crime magazine publisher Earl Janoth (Charles Laughton) tries to pin the murder of his own mistress on the magazine’s editor, George Stroud (Ray Milland), when he discovers George coming out of the woman’s apartment. Things fall into place as all the signs increasingly point to George as the killer, making it that much easier for Earl to set up the editor to take the fall. Based on the novel by Kenneth Fearing.

[Netflix: The Big Clock]

An enjoyable little noir film. Nothing too groundbreaking, and clunky occasionally, but still fun. Seems like I wrote a longer review somewhere, but don’t remember where. Probably on twitter, which means it was only 140 characters long anyway.

This has been another edition of “Reviews That Should Have Been Longer, But…”

Beer and Pork

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Donnie Madia in front of Avec

Paul Kahan and Donnie Madia’s new beer and pork place is finally given a name: the Publican. Not sure of the location exactly, but it looks like it is on West Randolph Street somewhere.

After years of speculation and anticipation, it looks as though the beer-, pork- and fish-focused restaurant by chef Paul Kahan finally has a name: The Publican.

[snip]

The Publican (the name takes a little getting used to) will serve up beer-friendly foods (see the braised pork potee in the photo above), along with more than 100 brews from England, the U.S., Belgium and Brazil and more far-flung locales. The chef de cuisine is Brian Huston (pronounced like the Texas town), who worked at Blackbird years ago, went off to cook in Colorado and returned to town about a year ago to work on this project. While developing The Publican’s menu, Huston has been working at Avec and can be seen there almost nightly.

[From The Stew – A taste of Chicago’s food, wine and dining scene | Chicago Tribune | Blog]

I know D won’t want to ever set foot in the place, pork and beer are not favorites. Maybe if my brother comes in town…

update: location is 845 Fulton for this nitrate central.

Blackbird Project Named and Dated
The Blackbird/Avec team has finally announced that their third sib, a culinary homage to beer, pork and fish in the West Loop, will be named the Publican (British term for pub owner). The tentative opening date has been set for Monday, August 18th. Exec chef Paul Kahan and chef de cuisine Brian Huston have developed a network of purveyors to supply the restaurant with hand-selected, sustainably harvested seafood and sustainably raised heirloom pork to anchor a rustic menu of simple, eclectic fare. And beer enthusiasts are thirsty for the more than 100 ales, lagers, stouts and ciders to be served by the bottle, with another dozen available on tap (845 W. Fulton Market).

[From Blackbird Project Named and Dated – Best of Buzz – Zagat Survey ]

The Nipple That Didn’t Destroy America

Seth Anderson2 Comments
Janet Jackson Justin Timberlake and the infamous Nipple That Destroyed America

Janet Jackson, Justin Timberlake and the infamous Nipple That Destroyed America

[click to embiggen, iffen ya dare]

Thank the pasta lords, now I can sleep at night without worrying that a giant nipple is going to destroy America. I have no sympathy for the dingleberries who own/run CBS, but the FCC is even less sympathetic a beast,

In a decision that clears CBS of any wrongdoing for airing the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show that featured Janet Jackson’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction,” a federal appeals court overturned the $550,000 fine that the Federal Communications Commission levied against the station, calling the fine arbitrary and capricious.

Text of the Opinion (pdf)

The decision was handed down early Monday by a three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which found that the fine was unfair because the commission, in imposing it, deliberately strayed from its practice of exempting fleeting indecency in broadcast programming from punishment. The commission also erred, the judges ruled, by holding CBS responsible for the actions of Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake, who were characterized by the judges as “independent contractors hired for the limited purposed of the Halftime Show.”

[Click to read more detail regarding Court Throws Out Super Bowl Indecency Fine – NYTimes.com]

and because the FCC acted in poor faith, deciding which incidents were worth going after.

The court, in its ruling, said the FCC would have had a stronger case against CBS had the performance been pre-recorded. But because it was aired live, and there was no solid evidence that CBS had advance knowledge that Timberlake was going to tear at Jackson’s bustier, the station did not appear to have acted recklessly by broadcasting the show.

In fact, the court said, CBS had implemented an audio delay and other measures to help censor any unexpected profanity, and numerous “script reviews” and “wardrobe checks” before the show did not reveal any problems.

“CBS rejected other potentially-controversial performers who had previously engaged in offensive on-air conduct in favor of Jackson and Timberlake, with the NFL ultimately approving the selections,” the court wrote. “Timberlake in particular, CBS asserts, had on several prior occasions performed ‘Rock Your Body’ live on national television without incident.”

As Steve Earle sang: Fuck the FCC

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUYWGo4Fl2s

and another version, after performing F the CC a couple of years:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Af5SahC1DE

Herzog and the forms of madness

Seth Anderson0 comment

I agree with Roger Ebert: there can never be enough discussion of Werner Herzog. As I’ve burbled before, not every Herzog film is great, but they are all interesting, worth watching, and worth thinking about.

I received an intriguing communication from a reader, the art critic Daniel Quiles, about Werner Herzog. Yes, there has been a lot about Herzog on the site recently, but in my mind there can never be too much. He and a few other directors keep the movies vibrating for me. Not every movie needs to vibrate, but unless a few do, the thrill is gone.

Herzog seems to react strongly to subjects he wants to make a film about. You never hear him saying someone “brought me a project,” or his agent sent him a screenplay. Every one of his films is in some sense autobiographical: It is about what consumed him at that moment. The form of the film might be fiction, might be fact, might be a hybrid. The material dictates the form, and often his presence in the film dictates the material: It would not exist if he were not there. In a way, that’s what Quiles is writing about in connection with “Encounters at the End of the World.”

[Click to read the rest of the discussion of Herzog and the forms of madness – Roger Ebert’s Journal]

I still haven’t seen either Rescue Dawn nor Wild Blue Yonder. Soon, soon. Looks like Herzog is filming a movie about New Orleans currently called Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

There’s also Encounters at the End of the World, which sounds intriguing:

Read the title of “Encounters at the End of the World” carefully, for it has two meanings. As he journeys to the South Pole, which is as far as you can get from everywhere, Werner Herzog also journeys to the prospect of man’s oblivion. Far under the eternal ice, he visits a curious tunnel whose walls have been decorated by various mementos, including a frozen fish that is far away from its home waters. What might travelers from another planet think of these souvenirs, he wonders, if they visit long after all other signs of our civilization have vanished?

Herzog has come to live for a while at the McMurdo Research Station, the largest habitation on Antarctica. He was attracted by underwater films taken by his friend Henry Kaiser, which show scientists exploring the ocean floor. They open a hole in the ice with a blasting device, then plunge in, collecting specimens, taking films, nosing around. They investigate an undersea world of horrifying carnage, inhabited by creatures so ferocious, we are relieved they are too small to be seen. And also by enormous seals who sing to one another. In order not to limit their range, Herzog observes, the divers do not use a tether line, so they must trust themselves to find the hole in the ice again. I am afraid to even think about that.

Herzog is a romantic wanderer, drawn to the extremes. He makes as many documentaries as fiction films, is prolific in the chronicles of his curiosity and here moseys about McMurdo, chatting with people who have chosen to live here in eternal day or night.

Looking forward to a visit from the Netflix fairy soon