Well, here I was thinking I had gotten scoped by the New York Times: my discovery (care of wikipedia) that Al Franken was an Odd Fellow was now in the (putative) paper of record before i could dissemnate it on my little blog.But though the article had the irresistible title, "Al Franken and the Odd Politics of Minnesota," there was no mention of the fact that he was (at least according to my source) literally an Odd Fellow.
Hence, this blog entry.
And while we're at it, maybe we could share something concerning our recollections of Odd Fellows. All I remember is that sometime back in prehistory, the Odd Fellows had a hall near my town's post office, and I remember thinking that it was an odd name for an Order.
Does anyone know more about this group, and its history? Notably, Schuyler Colfax, who considered he 14th Amendment the "gem of the Constitution," was a member. (And he was right about the Amendment.)

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Those poor saps who were gulled by Obama's campaign promises of transparency are now outraged by his recent actions.
But here's something that is, in a way, worse than anything Bush ever dreamed of: Remember Obama's promises to have 'dot.gov' websites where you could see where your tax dollars were going? He has kept that promise- with one catch-You may have your civil liberties violated while you learn about your government!

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I can only imagine how President Obama and both Houses of Congress would have reacted:
They would have denounced it as fervently as they denounced MoveOn for making nursery rhymers out of Gen. Petraeus' name. 
Of course, aforementioned a*hole is a member of the Republican Reptile Party of Mitch McConnell and co., so that makes it part of acceptable public discourse.
So, calling for a "major attack" to vaporize one of our cities is the act of a true patriot, while MoveOn criticizing one of our generals is cause for an Act of Congress.
What does this say about us as a society?

why would he undermine this struggle for "hearts and minds" by shedding ANY light on his predecessor's numerous crimes against the Afghans (among many, many others)?
It would endanger the troops and undermine the mission. 

Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA station dedicated to capturing bin Laden, wants his erstwhile quarry to nuke us.
 On NPR a while ago, he restricted his madness to opining that Obama had done a terrible thing by releasing the OLC memos on torture and that he personally had seen evidence that torture worked. He sounded like he was not quite himself then- I was puzzled, because he had seemed resonably sane till that moment (I have one of his books, "Imperial Hubris," [2004] that I thought had been written by a sane man- I would only read it now as an exercise in tracing the signs of incipient psychopathology).
 I wrote off his disquieting NPR appearance as an aberration- until I saw this.

As the U.S. Occupation comes to a close- nominally, at least- I wasn't surprised to read this:

Detainee Crucified

Among the more startling revelations during the press conference today was an article describing how a detainee in Iraq had been "essentially crucified" during CIA interrogation.

According to a June 22 article in The New Yorker magazine, cited during the press conference today, an Iraqi prisoner in US custody was crucified - dying from asphyxiation while hanging from his arms during a CIA interrogation.

"An Iraqi prisoner named Manadel al-Jamadi died on November 4, 2003, while being interrogated by the C.I.A. at Abu Ghraib prison, outside Baghdad," the New Yorker's Jane Meyer wrote. "A forensic examiner found that he had essentially been crucified; he died from asphyxiation after having been hung by his arms, in a hood, and suffering broken ribs. Military pathologists classified the case a homicide."

No charges have been sought against the interrogators from the CIA who participated in the death of al-Jamadi or CIA officers involved in other cases.

Anyone who claims to be shocked, or even surprised, by this, is lying.

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The Republicans (and sad to say, many Dems) in Congress oppose Obama's plans to close Gitmo because of the "dangerous" nature of its inmates (too dangerous for our maximum-security prisons). At the same time, these Republicans are urging Obama to support the Iranian demonstrators without reservation, ignoring the dangers of counterproductive U.S. support and its potential for igniting a new set of conflagrations in which Americans will die.
Then there's Mousavi himself. Is he more dangerous than your average Gitmo detainee? Perhaps:

As Iranian prime minister during the 1980s, Mousavi was linked by intelligence services to the 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 U.S. servicemen and prompted the Reagan administration to remove U.S. troops from Lebanon.

It seems the Congressional Democrats are going to force the CIA and White House to broaden the scope of oversight over 'secret' programs. 

I had all but forgotten about this incident in a remote province of Iran, lost in the noise of daily violence in Pakistan and Iraq. In light of the election itself and the chaos that has followed, though, it might be worth revisiting.

OBAMA:

After such knowledge, what forgiveness?

 

ACLU:

Virtues

Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.

in terms of press reception.

 

Press conferences with Presidents, for almost as long as I can remember, were nonsensical affairs, in which non-questions got non-answers.

 

Obama was confronted, and he did his best to respond (with a modicum of sense), though I hardly agreed with all his answers.

 

Will future Republican Presidents be grilled in this way? I hope so...

 

By the way, in case anyone noticed my glaring absence, it is because I have had extremely limited access to the Internet lately. Losing my job has not helped matters. It has been frustrating not being able to vent my spleen here (though possibly I am the only one who misses this, of course).

.

It looks like things in Afghanistan are more dire than we have been led to believe.

 

It was neglect of Afghanistan that allowed General Petraeus to turn Iraq into a strong ally of Iran in the War on Terror. We may have to be content with that costly achievement. The poppy fields and the Taliban are resurgent, but our own supply lines are threatened.

And when one thinks about it, there are other problems in the region brewing....

 

 

Well, no great surprise really that the Times Op-Ed page is full of idiots.

 

For example, have a look at this piece in which a Times contributor defends pardons in general, and Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich in particular, while including the following historical note:

 

One of the most astonishing things about the record left by the founders is how passionately they wrestled with the pardon question. Gilbert Livingston, at the New York ratifying convention, demanded a requirement that the Congress approve a pardon for treason. George Mason, one of Virginia's delegates to the constitutional convention, warned that a president could use the pardon to protect his own guilt. Yet, save for cases of impeachment, all calls for restrictions were rejected. It is clear that the founders understood the pardon as one of the most basic checks and balances of the constitutional system.[emphasis added]

 

It was also Mason who induced Madison to write the Bill of Rights.

Another of Mason's ideas was that it should be possible to impeach a president for incompetence. For this hack to so blithely skate past Mason's prescient objection to the use of the pardon, in the course of a article in which Marc Rich is passionately defended, is rich. 

Jerry Nadler, or someone on his staff, has a sense of humor.

 

The Amendment he proposes would limit the pardon power of the Executive to acts not commissioned by the Executive him- or herself. And since what are pardoned are by definition crimes, that means the President cannot make him- or herself out to be a criminal (an interesting variation on the theme of the Fifth Amendment).

 

 

 

 

 

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One of my favorite sites is Balkinization. So, in a thread that features an ongoing dispute between a conservative commenter and his liberal interlocutors, this conservative commenter included a link to the Federalist Society reading list, which was a suitable entry point, for me, into the world of the Federalist Society..

 

Start with this somewhat paranoid assertion as a way into this bizarro world:

 

We strongly suspect that college courses on legal issues tend to overemphasize the idea of law as a tool for social engineering, and downplay (or ignore) more conservative views of law as furthering private property rights and limiting government. (This is particularly true with respect to constitutional law; indeed, it would not be surprising to find many college students who think that constitutional law is the foundation for all other areas of law -- thus confusing public and private law, as well as the public and private sectors.) Even business students often have no systematic introduction to the comparison of markets and politics. [Emphasis added.]

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