April 19, 2006 – 12:29 pm
My friend Jess Kaplan has sent me a link to an essay by Carl Bernstein that, not unsurprisingly, calls for a Congressional investigation, possibly leading to impeachment proceedings, of George Bush. You can read it here. While Bernstein’s credentials on the subject of ousting Republican presidents are, of course, unimpeachable, one must be wary to some extent, because of his visceral, Krugmanesque loathing for Bush the man.
April 17, 2006 – 11:04 pm
Today, having been summoned for jury duty, I spent a few hours as a cog in the machinery of American justice. Admittedly, a case could be made that my contribution was actually quite minor: I showed up at 8:45 a.m. at the Supreme Court building at 360 Adams Street in downtown Brooklyn; sat in a large room, reading, until lunchtime; took a very enjoyable stroll (accompanied by an equally enjoyable sandwich) down to the lovely Brooklyn Promenade overlooking New York Harbor, where I dined al fresco in the delightful spring sunshine; returned to the Central Jury room at 2; sat there reading until the end of the day, at which point I was discharged. Still, despite the fact that my name was not called even once other than to send me packing, I exited the building with that special glow of inner satisfaction that only those who, like me, have sacrificed in the service of their country can really understand. Not pride, mind you, but just the knowledge that one has done one’s Duty, and done it well.
February 21, 2006 – 11:58 pm
I have been a bit cut off the past few days – I’ve been out of town, and have lost my Internet connection at home. I missed the papers for a couple of days. So I am rather poorly informed as regards a story that seems to be all over the place – the impending takeover of major port facilities by a corporation based in the United Arab Emirates.
February 17, 2006 – 11:34 pm
There has been quite a stew about how to deal with the fact that the terrorist organization Hamas is now the democratically elected leadership of Palestine. Many are suggesting that they should be starved out; Palestine’s economy is so utterly barren that a cessation of foreign aid would have a devastating effect. Indeed, why on earth should Israel and its allies feed a virulent enemy who is sworn to its annihilation?
Quite predictably the Left, who have tilted a long way toward outright antipathy toward Israel in recent years (as witness the late Rachel Corrie, who died defending a Palestinian arms-smuggling tunnel), have delighted in the discomfiture of the West at this unfortunate outcome of the nascent democratic process. If we are going to engage in something as arrogant as trying to increase the number of people in the world who can live in free and democratic societies instead of brutal tyrannies, then it serves us right when the whole thing backfires. How dare we?
Anyway, I had myself been leaning toward ostracization of the Hamas government, as the idea of offering any support to their poisonous ideology seemed completely wrong. But Thomas Friedman, writing in today’s Times, has led me to rethink my position.
December 22, 2005 – 12:41 am
This transit strike has the city clenched and writhing like a spider stuck by a pin. Businesses are withering, traffic is packed solid from river to river, municipal and union officials are locked in a snarling impasse, while Gotham’s hapless and frozen workforce staggers to and fro across the city’s bridges in their hundreds of thousands. And all of this four days before Christmas.
New York is rightly renowned for taking these things in stride, but this is going to get old in a hurry.
December 20, 2005 – 10:12 pm
The campaign by Biblical literalists to have their mythology masquerade as science in the public schools has been dealt another setback. In a welcome and much-needed decision, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones has struck down the Dover Township, PA school board’s attempt to smuggle “Intelligent Design” into the biology curriculum.
You can read the judge’s opinion here.
December 20, 2005 – 12:43 pm
Well, the bus-and-subway strike is on. New York depends on mass transit more than any other city in the country, and this is going to be very bad indeed, especially given the timing.
December 19, 2005 – 11:05 pm
I expect that most of you have read George Orwell’s Animal Farm, but you may not have seen the preface that he wrote for a Ukrainian edition. The preface was censored in England, and was not added to most English translations. I certainly hadn’t seen it before my friend Duncan Werner sent me a link to it today.
December 18, 2005 – 5:34 pm
President Bush yesterday owned up to having authorized the NSA to monitor the private communications of US citizens without first having to obtain a court order. I realize we are at war, but this is wrong, and I am angry about it. I am angry not only because it is exactly the sort of thing that goes on in the Orwellian police states we are supposedly setting ourselves in opposition to, but also because I have at considerable social cost defended the Bush administration’s foreign policy for years now, while he can’t manage to keep up his end of the bargain by not appearing at every opportunity to be exactly the conniving and hubristic autocrat his hysterical opponents claim him to be.
Obviously his political foes will seize hungrily upon this. I think it is going to be a very serious problem for him, and rightly so.
December 15, 2005 – 10:20 am
I ran across this, from Peggy Noonan, in this morning’s WSJ newsletter:
Howard Dean, that human helium balloon ever resistant to the gravity of mature judgment, said of the administration that they lied us into war. He left no doubt that he meant they did it deliberately and cynically. But there seems to me a thing that is blindingly obvious, and yet I’ve never seen it remarked upon. It is that an administration that would coldly lie us into Iraq is an administration that would lie about what was found there. And yet the soldiers, searchers and investigators who looked high and low throughout Iraq made it clear they had found nothing, an outcome the administration did not dispute and came to admit. But an administration that would lie about reasons would lie about results, wouldn’t it? Or try to? Yet they were candid.
Wouldn’t it be good if our serious journalists and historians looked into what happened to weapons that Saddam once used and once had? He abused weapons inspectors who came looking, acting like a man who had a great deal to hide. And wouldn’t it be good for our serious journalists and historians to look into exactly how it is that faulty intelligence, of such a crucial nature and at such a crucial moment, came to America and Britain? It is still amazing. Oh, for journalists and historians who would look only for truth and not merely for data that justify their politics and ideology.
December 13, 2005 – 11:41 pm
Norman Podhoretz, one of the msot articulate representatives of the “neoconservative” school of political thought, had an excellent article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. In it he likens the “panic” among the Left regarding our efforts in Iraq to the “sunshine patriots” of the Revolutionary War. The term refers to those who began to question and undermine the wisdom of the venture after it became apparent that it might actually be a long and arduous struggle.
December 13, 2005 – 11:12 pm
I live in one of the “bluest” neighborhoods of one of the bluest cities in the nation, the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. It is a lovely place, with splendid Victorian architecture, and it adjoins one of the world’s great city parks, Prospect Park, which is right at the end of my block. We have a fascinating, complex mix of educated and creative people here. The neighborhood prides itself on tolerance and inclusion.
December 7, 2005 – 10:47 am
Our Secretary of State is feeling the heat over in Europe, where many a garment is being rent over our use of “secret” places of detention. I certainly agree that we must not violate the very principles we stand for in order to defend them, but there is a moral calculus involved that is not as simple as our disingenuous “allies” would have us think they think.