Extraordinary rendition, indeed

The President, Thursday night:

QUESTION: Mr. President, under the law, how would you justify the practice of renditioning, where U.S. agents who bust terror suspects abroad, taking them to a third country for interrogation? And would you stand for it if foreign agents did that to an American here?

BUSH: That's a hypothetical.

We operate within the law, and we send people to countries where they say they're not going to torture the people.

The New York Times, today:

Now there is growing evidence that the United States has sent terror suspects to Uzbekistan for detention and interrogation, even as Uzbekistan's treatment of its own prisoners continues to earn it admonishments from around the world, including from the State Department.

***

Uzbekistan's role as a surrogate jailer for the United States was confirmed by a half-dozen current and former intelligence officials working in Europe, the Middle East and the United States. The C.I.A. declined to comment on the prisoner transfer program, but an intelligence official estimated that the number of terrorism suspects sent by the United States to Tashkent was in the dozens.

Nice to know we don't send people to places where they torture people:

One detainee was severely beaten in front of me and then – in handcuffs and leg-irons – hung out of a third-floor window, head down, and told he was about to be dropped, at which point he lost consciousness. After he came round, he was tortured further with the gas-mask suffocation method and by having his feet placed in an iron bucket in which a fire had been started. He fainted again, and at this point he was taken away.

Two days after I arrived, a detainee from my cell, Shahruh, was taken up to the second floor for one of the regular interrogation sessions. When he came back – carried into the cell by a couple of policemen and dumped on one of the bunks – he was in a terrible state, covered in blood and with all his clothes torn. All his toenails had been ripped out. He was unable to stand, and said he thought his legs were broken from a beating with a metal hammer.

Shahruh explained that interrogators were trying to get him to confess that he murdered an 18-year-old-girl, but he had held out, insisting his innocence.

He screamed all night but was given no medical attention. In the morning, he was taken away on a stretcher and never returned to the cell.

I guess we really didn't mean it when we said this:

Amendment VIII - Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

or this:

Article 1
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 5
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Excuse me. I'm going to go throw up.

Bigot of the week - Meck. Commish Bill James

Pam's House Blend has the text of Mecklenburg County Commissioner Bill James's latest email to his supporters. Go check it out. Commissioner James sure does seem to obsess about sex a lot.


I remember when I lived in Charlotte, Mr. James made his name screaming about county money going to produce the play "Angels in America." Nice to see his obsession with the sexual activities of his neighbors continues unabated.

Now, when will every Republican in America be asked whether they denounce Mr. James?

I'm waiting...

"Soshascurady"

Josh Marshall explains how to understand the President's not-really-new proposal to slash Soshascuady benefits to the middle class. Go read it, I'm too busy to blog today.

Alternative title - "The Bush position on foreign oil."

And just then. It hit me. Somebody turned around and shouted...

Play that funky music, white boy...

Unless, of course, you work for the company represented by the esteemed counsel who sent me a letter with this classic line:

"Actually, __________, Ltd., is for all practical purposes defunked and I doubt if a judgment against them would ever lead to a collection."

Somewhere George Clinton is revising that job application.

Family Research Council Relativism

Then:

Family Research Council's senior writer, Steven Schwalm, speaking on National Public Radio in 1998 in defense of the Republican filibuster of James C. Hormel:

"The Senate," he said, "is not a majoritarian institution, like the House of Representatives is. It is a deliberative body, and it's got a number of checks and balances built into our government. The filibuster is one of those checks in which a majority cannot just sheerly force its will, even if they have a majority of votes in some cases. That's why there are things like filibusters, and other things that give minorities in the Senate some power to slow things up, to hold things up, and let things be aired properly."

Now:

The Family Research Council hailed today the launch of a new effort to ensure that the U.S. Senate fulfills its constitutional responsibilities and holds up-or-down votes on President Bush's judicial nominees. FRC President Tony Perkins said, "Today we join with millions of our fellow Americans in asking our senators to call the roll. The liberal Senate minority's cat-and-mouse game with judicial nominees must stop."

Welcome

Random John to the Blogroll.

Good stuff over there. His book reviews are outstanding, and he's local. Long live NC Blogging.

Liar.

Senator Frist: "Never in 214 years, never in the history of the United States Senate had a judicial nominee with majority support been denied an up-or-down vote -- until two years ago."

Liar. (link fixed)

And that's just the most direct example of a Republican filibuster. You could also take the case of Judge Rich Leonard, US Bankruptcy Judge for the Eastern District of NC, who was nominated to become a District Court Judge by President Clinton. Under the Blue slip hold rule, one senator, Jesse Helms, denied Judge Leonard evena hearing by the Judicial Committee, let alone a floor vote where the majority of Democrats would have approved him. So let's not mince words. The Senate Majority Leader lied.

In church.

Cynical manipulation of gullible people

Continuing in their jihad to make every issue subordinate to the apparently life or death struggle over homersekshuls, a "national conservative group" has decided to stick its nose into North Carolina and harrass decent, law abiding radio listeners. And their strategy is as brilliant as it is representative of cutting-edge 1974 politics:

They're going to go after Marc Basnight as a liberal.

Excuse me. (Snicker). Hold on. (Hee hee). Wait a min.... BuwahahahahahahAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!

Ok, there. That's better. Now where was I?

Oh yeah. The American Conservative Union is about to air radio ads all across the state which say:

"The liberal politicians in Raleigh are refusing to give the Defense of Marriage Act a fair hearing," the ad says. "Help state Senator Fred Smith fight for our North Carolina values. Call Senate Pro Tem Marc Basnight at (919) 733-6854 and urge him to allow a vote on the Defense of Marriage Act."

The ACU's chairman is David Keene. Tell you what, Mr. Keene, before horning your big national nose into North Carolina politics and requiring me to explain gay marriage to my kid every ten minutes, why don;t you run on over to a law library, where you can look up North Carolina General Statute section 51-1.2, which reads:

§ 51-1.2. Marriages between persons of the same gender not valid.
Marriages, whether created by common law, contracted, or performed outside of North Carolina, between individuals of the same gender are not valid in North Carolina. (1995 (Reg. Sess., 1996), c. 588, s. 1.)

So, your ad campaign and your constitutional amendment are not needed, Mr. Keene. If there comes a grassroots push to repeal section 51-1.2, something I can pretty much guarantee will never happen in North Carolina, then, by all means, come on back to North Carolina. We'll be glad to debate you. But until then, keep your bile off my radio.

Mark my words, in 2005 Wake County is going to be a spark that kicks off a brushfire of resentment against these hateful ideologues. I'm tired, and a lot of others are tired, of people like Mr. Keene and his Raleigh lap poodle Mike Regan using our religion for political purposes. And in 2006, you'll see that brushfire take down Tom Delay and his ilk nationwide. We're coming for you, gentlemen. And it's not going to be pretty.

Someone should get to the bottom of this...

So, a gay escort - Jim Guckert a.k.a Jeff Gannon - managed to penetrate White House security on a daily pass for media events. That scandal blew over pretty quickly, as the reporters on the story couldn't quite reach around the story to get to the truth of the matter without exposing some pretty uncomfortable facts about the worn spots on the knees of their own suits.

Well, the alternative media strikes again, and now we're getting somewhere, as Secret Service Records show that JimmyJeffGuckertGannon came to the White House on days when there was no press event, or at the wrong time on press days, and stayed as long as six hours. He even showed up when the Press Office and the rest of the Press Corps were having the gaggle on Air Force One. i.e. WHEN THE PRESIDENT WAS NOT IN THE WHITE HOUSE!!! Now why do you think a former gay escort would have been appearing at the White House on days when the press corps wasn't there and the boss was out of the building? I wonder....

Now, I know the press has a reluctance to pursue stories about the sex lives of people in the White House, but is it too much to ask someone to ask a few questions tomorrow?

Like - what was a daypass reporter doing staying in the White House?

Why did he check out on some days when there is no record of him checking in?

Why was he there on days when the Press Corps was on Air Force One?

Who was Gannon visiting on those days, and what was his purpose in doing so?

Was Gannon getting "extra special access" or was he giving it?

And, just for laughs, I want to hear a reporter ask how the Bush Administration would have liked this story to have been covered if it had occurred while Bill Clinton was President.

Healthcare Wrap Up

Angry Bear wraps up their telling and informative series on the US health care system. Their conclusions:

"We spend a lot more money on health care, both in absolute terms and as a percent of GDP. Where does the money go?

• We don’t purchase noticeably more health inputs such as doctors and hospital stays.
• We don’t have better health outcomes. In fact, we have the worst infant mortality and life expectancy numbers of all the industrial nations I examined.
• And we’re neither more nor less intrinsically healthy than other countries.

While this is by no means a careful controlled study, nor even a regression analysis, application of Occam’s Razor and the process of elimination points to the two most likely explanations: high prices for healthcare inputs and significant inefficiencies in the transformation of those inputs into health outputs."

This chart sums it all up:



Krugman makes the same case in the NY Times today.

Santorum

Latin for a**hole, according to former Senator Bob Kerrey.

Well, he's living up to it. Now he wants to prohibit the National Weather Service from providing free forecasts on the Web if it would "compete" with private weahter outfits like AccuWeather. AccuWeather just happens to be in Pennsylvania and run by a big contributor.

Repeat after me: "__[insert name of Republican you are running against]____, Tom Delay, and the Republicans continue their abuse of power."

Coming up fast on one year old

This is my beautiful daughter Ella. Eleven months, 352 days. Check out that hair!




(I'm not sure how I captured the same expression on her face and the frog's at the same time)

Lovely

If you're a rightwing nutjob, and you kill people, and blow up legal businesses, send fake anthrax to women's health clinics and get tied to actual terrorist attacks? Homeland Security will give you a pass.

If you're a radical enviromentalist nutjob, and you vandalize some cars in Virginia and do something really stupid like free research animals? You're on the terrorist watch list, you freaking commie.

Anyone else find that dichotomy the least bit worrying?

Sam Mills, RIP

Sam Mills has succumbed to intestinal cancer, ending a battle which was expected to take only 6 months, but saw him continue to coach and fight through 18 long months of survival. One of the greatest players in franchise history, he should be a sure Hall of Famer, and was an inspiration to anyone who has ever been told he was too short, too small, too slow, or too anything to do anything. He was a great player and, from all I can tell, a better man.

Thanks for the memories, Sam.

Stewardship

Mathew Gross points to a stunning and beautifully written opinion piece in the Independent by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who calls on us to evaluate our connection to the environment through the lens of faith. The Archbishop contends that ideologies which reduce the environment to a store of resources for human consumption devalue not the environment, but humanity. A few of the gems are reprinted here, but go read the whole thing.

[E]conomy and ecology cannot be separated. Ecological fallout from economic development is in no way an "externality" as the economic jargon has it; it is a positive depletion of real wealth, of human and natural capital. To seek to have economy without ecology is to try to manage an environment with no knowledge or concern about how it works in itself - to try to formulate human laws in abstraction from or ignorance of the laws of nature.

***

One of the reasons sometimes given for not being too alarmed by predictions of ecological disaster is that we are underrating the possibilities that will be offered by new technologies. But to appeal to a technical future is to say that our most fundamental right as humans is unrestricted consumer choice. In order to defend that, we must mobilise all our resources of skill and ingenuity, diverting resources from other areas so that we can solve problems created by our own addictive behaviours. The question is whether, even if this were clearly possible, it would be a sane or desirable way of envisaging the human future.

All the great religious traditions, in their several ways, insist that personal wealth is not to be seen in terms of reducing the world to what the individual can control and manipulate for whatever exclusively human purposes may be most pressing. Religious belief claims, in the first place, that I am most fully myself only in relation with my creator; what I am in virtue of this relationship cannot be diminished or modified by any earthly power. In the environment there is a dimension that resists and escapes us: to reduce the world to a storehouse of materials for limited human purposes is thus to put in question any serious belief in an indestructible human value.

"Thanks, Daddy."

After a meeting on Saturday morning which stretched into the afternoon, I drove 85 miles an hour to Hickory for my niece's birthday party, which I missed, but I did get to have dinner with my family. Jan and the kids had gone on ahead of me.

Then, Duncan and I went to South Mountains State Park and went camping. I left my tent poles in the garage, making my tent useless, so we borrowed my brother-in-law's backpacking tent. Two of us in a bivy. The forecast low? 29 degrees. This was going to be fun.

So I made a fire, set up the smores and dogs, set up the sleeping bags, changed my son into his warm sleeping clothes, made smores and hot chocolate, put away all the food in plastic containers, locked in the van to avoid raccoons, explained why raccoons would eat our food if we left it out, got ready for bed, assured my son that raccoons had no interest in eating his mittens, brushed our teeth and taught him how to spray the toothpaste far out away from camp (again because of raccoons - I didn't mention bears like toothpaste too), told the latest incarnation of the repeatedly demanded Winnie the Pooh stories I make up (always involving a boy named Duncan who is resourceful and brave and gets Tigger and Pooh out of all sorts of trouble), assured my Duncan that raccons would not want to eat his shoes either, fell asleep, woke up and assured Duncan that raccoons wouldn't get cold and want to sleep in his sleeping bag, fell asleep again, woke up to condensation drenching the outside of my new down bag (which slept WARM anyway), got cramps in my back, got up at 6 to the car alarm at the next campsite repeatedly going off, assured Duncan that it wasn't the raccoons getting into the van, walked around with tent breath and bed head, ate only granola bars and cold water for breakfast because the fire had gone out and my lighter died, opined that yes, a raccoon probably would like granola bars, went for a walk up the Jacob's Fork of the Catawba, all the way to the lower portion of High Shoals Falls, hung out with my sister and her family, and drove all the way back singing "Alice the Camel has Five Humps" and other children's favorites, and just arrived home a couple of hours ago.

The best part? When I got my boy out of the van after our whirlwind day, he gave me a hug and said "Thanks, Daddy. I love camping with you. Can we go again next week?"

And that, my friends, is a perfect weekend.

Dangerous personified.

Tom Delay, being interviewed by the Washington Times:

Mr. Hurt: Have you ever crossed the line of ethical behavior in terms of dealing with lobbyists, your use of government authority or with fundraising?

Mr. DeLay: Ever is a very strong word.

* * *

Mr. Hallow: Is there anything you want to change in perception about what you're asking on judges?

Mr. DeLay: Look, I'm for an independent judiciary. I don't know where they get this. When you attack the left's legislative body, they get really upset. But I'm for an independent judiciary. I'm for an independent Congress. I'm for an independent executive. But the Constitution of the United States gives us responsibility for oversight and checks and balances over the executive as well as the judiciary. And we all know that this judiciary is extremely active. I have asked the Judiciary Committee to look at it and give recommendations as to what we ought to do. Read the book Men in Black.

Mr. Dinan: You've been talking about going after activist judges since at least 1997. The [Terri] Schiavo case gives you a chance to do that, but you've recently said you blame Congress for not being zealous in oversight.

Mr. DeLay: Not zealous. I blame Congress over the last 50 to 100 years for not standing up and taking its responsibility given to it by the Constitution. The reason the judiciary has been able to impose a separation of church and state that's nowhere in the Constitution is that Congress didn't stop them. The reason we had judicial review is because Congress didn't stop them. The reason we had a right to privacy is because Congress didn't stop them.

Mr. Dinan: How can Congress stop them?

Mr. DeLay: There's all kinds of ways available to them.

This is clearly a man not playing with a full deck of cards. For the Leader of the Majority of the House of Representatives to rely on "Men in Black," a book by Rush Limbaugh sycophant Mark Levin, as an authority on the judiciary is beyond laughable. The book was described thusly by Dahlia Lithwick in a biting review:

no serious scholar of the court or the Constitution, on the ideological left or right, is going to waste their time engaging Levin's arguments once they've read this book.

I use the word "book" with some hesitation: Certainly it possesses chapters and words and other book-like accoutrements. But Men in Black is 208 large-print pages of mostly block quotes (from court decisions or other legal thinkers) padded with a foreword by the eminent legal scholar Rush Limbaugh, and a blurry 10-page "Appendix" of internal memos to and from congressional Democrats—stolen during Memogate. The reason it may take you only slightly longer to read Men in Black than it took Levin to write it is that you'll experience an overwhelming urge to shower between chapters.

***

And [Levin's]attempts to draw telling distinctions between similar cases—any legal scholar's primary task—are almost laughably off-mark. Take this example: Discussing last summer's Rasul v. Bush case, Levin dismisses Justice Stevens' analysis distinguishing enemy combatants in a 1950 opinion from the enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay because "the principle is the same" and "the two cases are identical in two significant respects." If judges in fact got to decide cases based solely on the fact that "the principle is the same"—that is, that each case is kinda analogous—we really would have a runaway judiciary.

But what is even more disturbing about Delay's interview is his cavalier dismissal of the right to privacy, the principle of judicial review and the separation of church and state as non-constitutional fallacies, examples of Congress failing to rein in the judiciary.

This is, clearly, insane. Marbury v. Madison was indeed a bit of creative opinion writing by Chief Justice John Marshall. But it firmly and unequivocally established judicial review, and has remained unchallenged for over 200 years. It is the first case learned in Constitutional Law for a reason.

Now, a former bug killer believes his highly tuned legal acumen is sufficient to overturn that precedent. Do you think Delay even comprehends the contradictions in his own political philosophy? Does he realize that it was the principle of judicial review which allowed the 1930's Supreme Court to frustrate FDR's enactment of the New Deal? Does he realize that the judiciary is the brake on the system? The slow-moving, solid, deliberative and collaborative body which holds back the passions of the public and its representatives? The problem here is that Delay, who calls himself conservative, is in reality a radical. And the Courts, over 65% stacked with Reagan, Bush and Bush II appointees, are in his way.

An inclination to tyranny has seldom been so readily exposed by a public figure. We should be happy he sat down for the interview.

Chris Paul declares for NBA draft

"Hey Chris, you've just embarrassed yourself and your team with a classless and graceless act on the court, cost your team an ACC championship and then melted down on national television with two stupid fouls in overtime in the second round of the NCAA tournament. What are you going to do next?"

"Why, think of myself of course..."

Priorities

Rob has a great series of justifiably angry posts pointing out the misplaced priorities in Congress. VA Hospitals? Cut 'em back. Washington Nationals? Build 'em a stadium, as part of an emergency military appropriations package. Over your head due to medical expenses incurred in the military? No bankruptcy for you. Looking to pass on a few hundred million to your slutty daughters? Mr. Hilton, step right this way, we've got a tax cut for you, sir. What's that? You want continued funding of community police initiatives? Sorry, not enough money available. But here, please help yourself to $25 million for a fish hatchery in Montana.

I'm beginning to think a freshman high school civics class knows more about good government than the government we have now.

Missing words

Missing from this story on MSNBC.com concerning David Eric Rudolph's guilty plea?

The word "terrorist."

Nope, it doesn't appear on CNN.com either.

Why not? Good-looking white dudes aren't terrorists? What if his name was Muhammad instead of David Eric? How many people do your politically-motivated bombs have to kill and maim before you become a terrorist, anyway?


(Apologies to David Rudolf, one of the best lawyers in NC.)

The Paris Hilton Tax Cut

Trust fund babies --- Two peas in a pod



With his latest column, E.J. Dionne makes up for every time he's ever done the wimpy liberal pundit thing on The News Hour with Jim Lehrahhhhhh. (Thanks to Ezra for the link.)

It seems Republicans are gearing up to make the Estate Tax cut permanent after 2011, when their goofy budget deal had originally scheduled it to be phased back in. Dionne looks at the numbers and discovers, lo and behold, that phasing the tax back in at a rate of only 1/2 of what it was when George Bush took office would cover one quarter of the forecast shortfall in Social Security revenues.

That's right. In Bushworld, cutting a tax that only 1% of American's ever have to worry about will be given priority over saving a program that 90% of Americans will someday rely upon. Dionne takes that knowledge and makes the quantum leap in framing that I wish more Democrats could do more consistently. He brings in Paris Hilton, the perfect symbol of the beneficiaries of large estates.

I suggest a new slogan for the GOP:

"The Republicans: we'll take care of Paris Hilton. Grandma can fend for herself."

Keyboard Hangover Award II

While I still think nobody will ever top Don Wheatley of Greenville, North Carolina, today's News & Observer brings a new qualifier for the Stinging Nettle Keyboard Hangover Award. This award, and the ridicule that comes with it, is given to the letter to the editor in a major North Carolina newspaper which best epitomizes ignorance, stupidity, hatred, thoughtlessness or a combination of any of the four.

Today's winner is Knox Schroeder of Apex, who filled the N&O this morning with a perfect example of homophobia, and how not to have a reasonable debate over gay marriage. The only thing missing was "I have gay friends, and I'm fine with that as long as they don't try to impose it on me..." Just take a gander at this one:

Regarding the Rev. Jack McKinney's March 28 Point of View article "Rights take a beating in two Senate Bill 8s":

McKinney decries our denial of rights to homosexuals "simply because of who they are." The black people to whom he compares them are indeed black because of who they are. They can't change, unless they have Michael Jackson's money. Homosexuals, however, are in their chosen category not because of who they are, but because of what they do.

Marriage is not a right. It is a custom. As a custom, it became regulated by laws that confer rights and impose duties on those who practice it. If someone wants to redefine a custom that is universal to all societies through all known history, are we "immoral" if we decide our customs are a little more important than their physical and psychological gratification?

When my friends' 4-year-old wants to play house, I cheerfully pretend to drink tea from her little cup. I enter into her pretend world because it's cute. When McKinney and the homosexuals demand the "right" of marriage, I choose not to enter their pretend world for just about the exact opposite reason than cute.

Knox Schroeder

Apex

Now, revel in the sheer intentional ignorance of Mr. Schroeder, who leaves unspoken his nevertheless obvious belief that black people would gladly change into white people if they could. (Let's put aside the fact that Michael Jackson suffers from a skin disease in addition to his many psychological issues.)

Then, when you are done wallowing in old Knox's barely concealed racism, travel with me if you will to the next sentence, where Knox reveals the deep seated fear of every gaybasher - the homosexual sex act. Yes, indeed, homosexuals are only homosexuals because they like to put THAT in there or, heaven forfend, THERE, instead of THERE where it BELONGS! Horrors!

Anyone care to point out to Mr. Schroeder that an enjoyment of those particular activities doesn't necessarily make you gay, since America's heterosexual teenagers, pledged as they are to virginity, are digging those two activities more than ever?.

No, Mr. Schroeder moves right on over that and just says you are gay because of what you do, not because of who you are or who you are in love with. Then he goes on to defend marriage as a "custom" which has been "universal to all cultures through all known history." Yes, sounds great, doesn't it? Particularly those cultures where you could marry as many women as you want!

Perhaps, in his zeal to overturn Loving v. Virginia, which did indeed define marriage as a right, Mr. Schroeder just forgot about another "custom" which was until rather recently universal to all cultures. Maybe he needs a reminder that just because something is a custom doesn't make it either timeless or unchangeable. How about this? Or maybe this?

Let's look at some other "customs" we've jettisoned in favor of progress and universal human dignity. Women should be subject to the will of their fathers and or husbands, right? What? We changed that? Dang. Well, certainly a 10 year old should begin working to pay his way in the world. Don't want to bring up soft kids, do we?!!!?? So glad we can still punish heretics and corrupt officials by flaying them. Huh? We don't do that anymore? But it was a universal punishment!!! How low we have fallen.

Mr. Schroeder, evidently not content with justifying his bigotry with the weakest of arguments, then does himself one better. Gays, you see, are like children who should be pleasantly tolerated from time to time, but not allowed to enter into fantasy worlds we don't find "cute." Fantasy worlds like worlds in which they are treated like everyone else. Fantasy worlds in which stuff like this doesn't happen to them when they get out of line.

I have yet to figure out why my marriage to my wife, entered into in front of our friends and family, solemnly sworn before God, is going to be threatened and demeaned by two other people doing the same thing before their friends and family and their God, and being allowed to share certain tax, inheritance and legal benefits. Maybe Mr. Schroeder can explain that one to me, because all he has done with his letter today is entrench me more deeply in my creeping suspicion that those who oppose any semblance of gay marriage or civil unions do so out of some combination of fear, hatred and ignorance.

There are days

...when you just feel like linking. Today is one of those days.

My new favorite site: DisturbingAuctions.com, including the perfect item for that UNC fan in your life, a clown particularly fond of his butt, a macabre peanut butter maker, and Ronald McDonald on a bad make up day.

Be sure to check out the salt and pepper shakers. And remember, someone actually bought all this stuff.

Aieeeeeee!

Never wash your face in a fresh-water stream while hiking in Southeast Asia.

One word. Leech.

Note to self - work on cold fusion

Ezra links to a terrifying Rolling Stone article on the impact of passing Hubbert's Peak in oil production. Short answer:



The economics behind Hubbert's Peak are not hard to understand in the abstract, although the details of oil extraction and distribution are. In short, oil supply is on a Bell Curve. Once you go over the top of the curve, that is, once you've used up half the supply of oil, the rest of the story of oil production and use is a study in diminishing and progressively harder to get resources.

Thus, whereas the history of the late 19th and 20th Centuries was the unbelievably rapid ascent from horse and buggy, barter exchanges, and early medicine to the moon landings, international markets and plastic limbs, the remainder of the 21st century could be the story of the equally rapid descent to pre-existing conditions.

Some predict a complete collapse, others a more gradual decline. Resource wars. Water shortages. Think for a minute how much of our life is controlled or made possible by petroleum. What is striking is that nobody is predicting a continuation of the go-go growth of the 20th Century.

And before I hear from certain correspondents that this is exactly why we need to drill in ANWR, dream on. By the time ANWR came into production, most of the experts predict we will be over the Peak, and additional supply therafter means little, because rapacious and ever-more-panicked demand will so far outstrip available supply.

If someone with some credentials can tell me why this is crap, please do. Otherwise, I'm going to go chip in to preserve my grandparents' farm and then I'm going to read this book.

I can't wait to tell Bruno, the guy who will control the fuel supply in Raleigh in 2025, that I can't pay for my gas, but I'd be happy to litigate a case for him in the burned out shell of a courthouse. That will go over real well.

Incredible

An abject lesson in why proprietary technology is an anachronism. Now, just imagine what Apple could enable if they opened up the IPod to such work.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

Man, I'm away for a week or two and look what happens, passed pontiffs, Delay crashing and burning, National Champions crowned (way to go, Baylor Bears!).

I don't like blog posts about blogging, but I did want to remark upon how easy it is to fall out of the habit of posting. As you can see, it's gotten kind of slow around here lately. That's a function of having way too much work to do and having kids who have managed to bring home every illness the daycare has to offer.

So, with the beginning of Spring, as a young man's thoughts turn to love, and as Coach Roy Williams turns his thoughts to life with four freshmen starters, we return to blogging.

A few links to get us started:

In the spectacularly ill-timed death of a famous guy department: Prince Ranier III of Monaco. Maybe the world will stop by on the way home from the Pope's funeral and on the way to Prince Charles's wedding.

Porn directors, take note: making objects look bigger by using women with little hands is now illegal in Britain.

Can't find your cell phone? Pull a gun and order surrounding women to disrobe.

And oh yeah, TOM DELAY IS TOAST.

Now, if it had been a donut shop...

This outraged citizen is deprived of her right to have the cops enforce customer service at Burger King. (Click on the audio file and have tissue handy.) Don't you just love life in Southern California?

Via Ezra .

Fiscal year OVER

Hallelujah! Now I'm just busier than heck, but at least I can come up for air.

By the way, RIP, Mitch Hedberg. Wish it was an April Fool's joke, but it's not. The Dot dot dot has the details, and a humongous list of great Hedberg lines, like:

I don't have a girlfriend. But I do know a woman who'd be mad at me for saying that.

I had a stick of Carefree gum, but it didn't work. I felt pretty good while I was blowing that bubble, but as soon as the gum lost its flavor, I was back to pondering my mortality.

I think Bigfoot is blurry, that's the problem. It's not the photographer's fault. Bigfoot is blurry. And that's extra scary to me, because there's a large, out-of-focus monster roaming the countryside. Run. He's fuzzy. Get outta here.

I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.

At my hotel room, my friend came over and asked to use the phone. I said "Certainly." He said "Do I need to dial 9?" I say "Yeah. Especially if it's in the number. You can try four and five back to back real quick."

A severed foot is the ultimate stocking stuffer.

I used to do drugs. I still do drugs. But I used to, too.

Man, that was one funny dude. Gone too soon.