Publish the Memo!

There is now a full-scale campaign in favor of publishing the oddly classified Blair-Bush memo regarding the threat/joke/Tourette's symptom about bombing Qatar-based al-Jazeera.

I'm not a big one for blog campaigns, having been burned by MoveOn (they were supposed to disappear when their job was done. In case you haven't noticed, they're still here!) but I'm in. I'll post my number in the list of member bloggers, which is currently almost 200, plus scores more in comments and trackbacks, when they update the list. Go here to sign up, or view the list of member bloggers.

This is a gross misuse of the Official Secrets Act, and of classification schemes in general. Unless the President and Prime Minister were discussing the secret weapons in development that might have made the bombing somehow less of an atrocity.... no, there's no good reason. It's pure bureaucratic ass-covering.

Release the Memo!

Quotes Galore on Planet Claire

Planet Claire has a really nice collection of quotations, sorted by source. I'm particularly fond of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Homicide: Life on the Street stuff.

Also, I discovered in comments below, Ravings of a Madman's mostly conservative quotations. Some solid historical stuff, so far.

Blogging will be perfunctory for the foreseeable (I can't see very far) future.

Octopush Champions!

Yes, it's just what it looks like: They are playing hockey underwater. I have to agree with the description of octopush as "a supreme aerobic game - other sports at least allow you to breathe as you play" and note that it is now as venerable as some of our better-known sports, being over fifty years old. It is clearly going to take off now, as extreme sports enthusiasts tire of individual, style-oriented pursuits and look for team sports with real scoring.

I can understand inventing the game. Eventually, everything will be tried once, particularly variations on existing themes (and octopush clearly draws on hockey, water polo and diving). I don't understand doing it twice.

Put not your faith in secrets

One of the very common liberal criticisms of the war in Iraq is that the Bush-Cheney administration ignored the intelligence analysis coming from the experts at the CIA and went ahead with their own analysis. As eb points out though, the CIA has been part of the problem of politicized and distorted intelligence and analysis as much as it has been part of the solution.

And Congress?

I have long marveled at the inability of most oversight legislators and staffers to ask clear questions; their failure to frame pertinent follow-up questions borders on the absurd.

And he's not alone.

Espionage and covert action are essential tools of foreign policy and national defense, but they do not lend themselves to near-perfect oversight.

Which is why it's important to have people of integrity and skill doing the work. Very, very important.

Hunger Strike Ends!

Ryan Commerson, the ASL teacher who refused to eat until serious problems in Michigan Deaf education were addressed, met with state education leaders and is satisfied that they will follow through to seriously consider and address the issues, to the extent of their authority. The hunger strike is over, but a vigil will continue at MSD until actual action has been taken.

Quotations #078

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." -- Edmund Burke

"If I were an antiquarian, I would have eyes only for the old stuff, but I am a historian. Therefore, I love life." -- Henri Pirenne to Marc Bloch

"The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of the truth -- that error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it has been cured of one error, is usually another error, and maybe one worse than the first one." -- H.L. Mencken

"Omnia mutantur; nihil interit." [All things are changed; nothing dies] -- Ovid, Metamorphoses 15,165.

"Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." -- Northcote Parkinson

Coherent Absurdity

Ralph Luker (thanks for the link, Ralph!) is responsible for sending me to the best quote I've seen in days:

"What kind of liberation would that be to forsake an absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which is illogical and incoherent?" -- James Joyce, Portrait of the artist as a young man

Actually, it's the punch line (of sorts) of an Umberto Eco column in which he cites lots of very smart people on the inherent difficulty of having faith without feeling like an idiot. To be fair, not having faith doesn't actually solve the problem of feeling like an idiot; actually, you have a much broader field of idiocy to work in, and you can be much more creative.

But... Joyce is wrong, and Eco is wrong, to prefer coherent absurdity to illogical incoherence. Don't get me wrong, I'm no anti-rationalist, not much of a post-modernist, and I like things to make sense. But the world doesn't. And there has yet to be a religious system that didn't have a huge dose of tribalism and revelatory supremacy. Agnosticism makes sense; understanding the world requires flexibility about rules and systems. God has a sense of humor, as well as a sense of justice.

How is honor possible in a war like the one in Iraq?

That was reportedly the suicide note left by military ethicist Col. Ted Westhusing, Ph.D.

What did the army and his co-workers have to say?

"Despite his intelligence, his ability to grasp the idea that profit is an important goal for people working in the private sector was surprisingly limited," wrote Lt. Col. Lisa Breitenbach. "He could not shift his mind-set from the military notion of completing a mission irrespective of cost, nor could he change his belief that doing the right thing because it was the right thing to do should be the sole motivator for businesses."

One military officer said he felt Westhusing had trouble reconciling his ideals with Iraq's reality. Iraq "isn't a black-and-white place," the officer said. "There's a lot of gray."

In other words, it's as bad as you think.

Is "Stars and Stripes" part of the liberal media?

Chris Bray, god bless him, is still blogging. When he's not exposing illegal government secrecy (not military secrets!), he's reading between the lines of the Department of Defense (our own DoD, yes) flagship daily, Stars and Stripes.

So far he's offered us a little-noted sign that we may not be the ones determining our exit timetable or strategy from Iraq and evidence that the contradictions of imperialism are alive and well.

Maybe I ought to start reading it myself? Nah, Sgt. Bray is doing a fine job already.

Sagittarius, with a Cancer Moon....

.:Venus:.
"You thrive on balance in all aspects of your life. You have a great deal of passion and when it comes to love, you like to play games. You have a tendency to search for something better, a search which always seems to come up short. You have difficulty finding satisfaction in life, but you have a great ability to get along with almost anyone."

. : : Which Astrological Planet are You? : : . [10 Gorgeous Pics!]
brought to you by Quizilla [via]

Of the possible results, Jupiter and Pluto might fit just a bit better. But not much.

On a second read-through, I find the description disturbingly close to that of a codependent enabler.... oh, well.