If only I thought it would matter…

WaPo is out with some tidbits on Woodward’s newest book about the Bush administration.  I have to say that it is ful of a string of non-surprises to me.  The most shocking revelation has come via an advert for his 60 Minutes appearance tomorrow, where Woodward reveals that Americans are coming under attack EVERY 15 MINUTES in Iraq.

All I can say is stay glued to the news.  The Senate should confirm President Bush’s favorite horse as proconsul any minute now.  Debbie Stabenow and the Democrats Nelsen are expected to vote with the majority to avoid looking "weak on animals" with tough elections just one month away. 

As Your Latest Triumph Draws the Final Straw

I haven’t written about the torture bill for a while.  In some ways, I cannot believe that it has passed.  On the one had, this seems doomed to be struck down by the Supreme Court.  On the other hand, that will seem to lead to new charges that the Court is obstructing popular will (duh, it’s supposed to).  One wonders how many times the Court can sustain such attacks before they cave in like, well… like Congress has. 

The absurdities of learning all of the details regarding the passage of this bill  is rivaled only by that day when the animals woke up on Animal Farm to their new "Napoleonic Code": "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others".  And once again, the average person assumes the role of Boxer.  Laboring and toiling, minding his own business and trusting his leaders all the way to the glue factory. 

But it is another Orwell story that should make us dread tomorrow.  For it is possible that historians will say that Americans woke up tomorrow in a new Oceania.  Battlefields and justifications change from one day to the next,  the government spies without oversight in the declared interest of rooting out traitors, arrests are made and people can be tried in courts where coerced confessions are admissible. 

The only question worth asking is whether or not we want it to be acceptable under the law for the Executive Branch to incarcerate, detain, torture, and then try in secret under non-conventional rules of judging that allow for evidence that would be considered tainted in normal trials and convict someone who lives in the United States and has in fact done absolutely nothing wrong.  As I understand it, the Congress is on the verge of making this very nightmarish scenario, while you might think it unlikely, legal.  We would not allow rape, for example, to be legal even if we thought it unlikely that there were to be anymore rapes in the future.  Without accountability, there is tyranny.

Finally, it is clear that Congress no longer functions at the point where it will sign away its own authority to another branch of the government for the sake of perceived electoral success.  Just as Martin Luther King said he was most disappointed with "White Moderates" in his famed "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", so to should we be outraged at the moderates who have allowed this happen. 

Senators Carper, Johnson, Landrieu, Lautenberg,
Lieberman, Menendez, Nelson (Fla.), Nelson (Neb.), Pryor, Rockefeller,
Salazar, Stabenow not to mention Republican moderates like McCain and Hagel… you have betrayed everything that goes into what makes the United States a functional government of free peoples.  So have all the others who voted for this legislation, but what is worse is that you on this list should have known better.  I propose we change the old insult referencing Lincoln’s doctor to, "Your name is Nelson, sir" (apologies to Lord Nelson). 

So here we are.  The Executive Branch asks and receives expanded powers despite the President having continuously miserable approval ratings.  The government has gained more power which can shockingly be aimed at its own people as easily as the enemy.  Congress has become a Downsian model gone utterly nightmarish.  The Courts are viewed as obstructionist and problematic because judges are "unelected".  Economic inequality continues to grow year after year. 

I cannot help but feel that the trends income distribution, changes in our balance of powers, and the change in politics over time from "Madison to Madison Avenue" all have the eerie feel of a history book that will be written 10 to 15 years after we die explaining the major currents of the time that lead to whatever is lying in wait around the corner.  I fear that something terrible is going to happen to our Republic.   I will pray for her health every night until I feel comfortable that the storm will pass.   

Picky Eating

Hi.  My name is Steven.  I am a picky eater.  Please do not be offended if, upon my visiting your place, or attending your function, I eat very little and explain that I am "not hungry".  If I could will myself to not be a picky eater, I would.  But it is very hard for me.  I do eat some vegetables and fruits, but not many, and mostly I only eat them uncooked.  Just so you know, it’s not your cooking, it’s me.  Thanks.

Revolution, Chest Pains Continue

My route today

(PS – don’t worry, chest pains are muscular)

Intelligence Estimate on Terrorists

According to WaPo,

The war in Iraq has become a primary recruitment vehicle for violent
Islamic extremists, motivating a new generation of potential terrorists
around the world whose numbers may be increasing faster than the United
States and its allies can reduce the threat, U.S. intelligence analysts
have concluded.

The report goes on further to say,

But "a really big hole" in the U.S. strategy, a second counterterrorism
official said, "is that we focus on the terrorists and very little on
how they are created. If you looked at all the resources of the U.S.
government, we spent 85, 90 percent on current terrorists, not on how
people are radicalized."

What’s the line about ineffectiveness being a greater threat to political regimes than having the wrong ideals?

Thanks for nothing, free press…

I don’t think that I quite understand how to make sense out of this paragraph from WaPo’s frontpage:

The compromise bill on rules for the trials, known as military
"commissions," outlines the kinds of detainee mistreatment by CIA
interrogators that would constitute crimes. It bars the administration
from reinterpreting the Geneva Conventions but gives the president a
dominant role in deciding which interrogation methods would be
permitted.

If the President gets major provisions to decide methods, and also cut off legal recourse for those aggreved by these "methods", than how exaclty is the President "barred" from reinterpreting the Geneva Conventions?

On a side note, Professor Levinson at UT Law has declared the Madisonian Republic dead.  I would call this premature, but there is certainly cause for concern.

Convey plays the last ball in

You have to see this… All hail Reading!

A Personal Revolution

Two weeks ago, I started a personal revolution of sorts.  I have been by and large able to keep up with it.  I woke up two weeks ago with what I thought was terrible heartburn (it turned out to be a muscle pull from my backpack), and decided that this was it.  I was done letting myself slide.  I have worked hard to get to the life that I have and enjoy and I decided I don’t want to destroy it by unhealthy living.  I quit drinking Diet Coke, and also coffee (though the latter was unintentional), and started drinking grape juice, Gatorade and water instead.  I have made a conscious effort to cut down portions for each meal that I eat.  I have started eating breakfast, in general it is just a bowl of dry cheerios, but it’s a start.  I snack in between meals on bananas and carrots, and if I’ve been good, I allow myself a mini bag of popcorn when I’m watching TV at night.  I have revived my sumer attempts to substantially reduce the amount of red meat that I eat, which means, that I needed to stop eating at practically a daily clip.  I also pulled myself out of bed, walked to the local runner’s store, and bought 4 pairs of shirts and shorts to run in, and I have run every non-Tuesday since (Tuesday I teach on my feet for six consecutive hours from 3-9 pm, and so I figure my legs have suffered enough those days).

I signed up for the Nashville Breast Cancer Awareness 5k in November, and my goal is to run the thing in 24 minutes.  I just ran 5k from Magnolia and 18th over to Blakemore, across Blakemore to Natchez Trace, down to West End, and back in 27:04 (counting red lights on 21st ave. both ways).  I had a stiff left knee, a sore right ankle (I turned it slightly running at Centennial park Sunday night), and a nasty blister on the inside of my right foot from starting to play tennis again.  All in all, I was happy with my time because I was just trying to take it easy today.  Whether or not those 3 minutes will come off my time by November is very hard to say right now, but there’s nothing to do but to go for it. 

My goals to shave those three minutes include:

• Lose weight:  I’m stronger than when I ran in high school, but I’m carrying a LOT more weight.  I need to get it down.  Looking at myself, I’d say I lost about ten pounds in the last two weeks, but I would guess the weight will come off much harder and harder the more that I lose.
• Build strength:  People always think about running as being able to run without running out of air, but losing physical strength has always been a bigger challenge for me in tough races.  I was much better my senior year as a runner in high school because I focused on getting strong across my shoulders over the summer before.  I need to get stronger there and across my back as well (since it’s carrying a much larger torso).   
• Improve Respiratory/Cardiovascular Systems:  Since I haven’t taken care of myself in a few years, both my breathing and my cardio are not what they once were.  I’m not pushing myself too hard for speed for the first few weeks so that I can build these elements up before stressing them with speed runs. 
• Avoid Injury:  I have one injury due to clumsiness, but I have some trouble spots (left knee, right calf) that come up due to tightness or stiffness from all of this new exertion.  I don’t have a training room to go soak down, and I can’t afford injury time so, again, I need to build up slowly over the next couple of weeks to strengthen and loosen up these areas so that they are ready to be taken to the next level in early October.
• Build mental discipline:  I am already much better at keeping my form when I start to fatigue, I do not know if that is through increased mental discipline or because I’m physically stronger and thus it is just physically easier, but hitting my goal is going to take focus when I train and focus for the whole race on race day. 
• Keep perspective:  While the thought of gearing up for a race is fun and exciting, I want to remember that at this point in my life, running is about my health, well-being and happiness, not about running as fast as is possible.  While my competitive side will push me towards the latter more often than not, I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that the important thing is how great I feel when I am running and that I need to make sure the healthiness and the competitiveness are reinforcing one another and not undermining one another. 

Dr. Levine and the Civic Engagement Report

First of all,  Peter Levine made a headline Washington Post article for the new Civic Health Index that has been released.   

As for the index itself, I have only glanced through it, but the results are interesting.  I cannot help but think that the idea that the index is "a social capital lens onto America’s soul", as Robert Putnam claims, is an overstatement to say the least.  As I said, I have only glanced through the index, but a couple of preliminary strands of thoughts I had:

• The "Art of Association", the concept Tocqueville wrote in describing his observational study of American political life was considered to be incredibly vital to democracy.  But, perhaps, to borrow from Bob Dylan, "Things Have Changed".  It should be noted that the report is a report generated by scholars who all start with the presupposition that levels of civic engagement is essential to democracy.  Perhaps the decrease in civic engagement over 30 years is in fact an indication that it is less necessary rather than a crisis.
• Tocqueville also was pragmatic.  He thought that democracy was the future and being "for or against" it was, in his time, an irrelevant question.  It was coming and wasn’t going to be stopped.  Perhaps this is also the case with Civic Engagement. 
• It seems to me that the importance of civic engagement is not simply trust, but the diverity of people’s factional interests.  Some of the concerns of the index seem to be pushing focus towards collective reasoning and public information, I’m not sure that this deserves the priority that report appears to assign it.

These are only initial reactions, and I’m sure I can be made to back off of any of them if challenged, but overall it is an outstanding report with lots of useful information, and I highly recommend everyone check it out.    

More Ahmed Rashid

I just figured out that Ahmed Rashid has a space on the new PostGlobal section.  Permanent links to both are forthcoming.  Also, I finally got Rashid’s book Taliban from Amazon.com.  Some more book reviews should be forthcoming the next two weeks.