Tastes Like Chicken

This Week’s News Round-Up:

Scientists recently performed genetic testing on a bit of protein retrieved from the thigh bone of a Tyrannosaurus Rex and have determined that the mighty predator is actually a distant cousin to the barnyard chicken. How the mighty have fallen. Inevitably one wonders what the darn thing tasted like and whether those little arms would have taken the place of Hot Wings on a Hooters menu had the chain been around 500 million years ago. I think you would almost be compelled to order them extra spicy.

Speaking of science, Dubya recently reiterated his opposition to easing restrictions on federally funded embryonic stem cell research saying that “In our day there is a temptation to manipulate life in ways that do not respect the humanity of the person," Bush said Friday. "When that happens, the most vulnerable among us can be valued for their utility to others instead of their own inherent worth." Clearly Bush reserves the bulk of his somewhat dubious conceptualization of compassion for cell clusters while excluding, say, the soldiers in Iraq from similar consideration.

As if it wasn’t bad enough that the US Government has pressed local law enforcement into service in the endless war against “terror”, now they’re going outside the species. For several years the Navy has been using marine mammals, mostly bottlenose dolphins, to locate mines and drop flashing beacons around targets. The Navy says animals like dolphins and sea lions are its best line of defense against attacks from the sea. "Biologically, they are better than anything we have ever made," said Mike Rothe, head of science for the Navy's marine mammal program. Is it just me or are you a little put off by the fact that the United States Navy thinks that our cousins from the water world are more effective than the ridiculously expensive Trident submarines? I suppose we can ex those out of the budget now.

In entertainment news, the managers of Lincoln theater in Nebraska say Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham's "diva-like behavior" doomed his concert there this week. Hey Lindsay, if my career was on such a downward spiral that I were playing the Lincoln theatre in Omaha I wouldn’t be too bitchy about the crudite selection in the dressing room. (Pssst, people really want to see Stevie Nicks more than you anyway).

And finally from the world of sports: Earlier this month a commercial fishing boat hauled in a giant rockfish estimated to be about a century old. The 44-inch, 60-pound female shortraker rockfish was caught last month by the catcher-processor Kodiak Enterprise as it trawled for pollock 2,100 feet below the surface, south of the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea. That poor bastard fish. 90 years swimming around in the Bering Sea only to be hauled ignomously out of the water by the guys from the Deadliest Catch and displayed like a museum piece. I suppose a joke about tartar sauce would be sadly inappropriate here.
Have a nice week-end everyone.

Freedom of Speech

The principle of freedom of speech promotes dialogues on public issues, but it is most relevant to speech which is unpopular at the time it is made. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees, in theory, that speech and expression will be protected from governmental censorship. In order for the protections of the First Amendment to apply there must be some state action or nexus between the government and the speech sought to be suppressed. Practically speaking this means that speech in the private arena is not subject to the same protections as where the government has an interest.

The problem with this scenario is the pernicious self-censorship practiced by the corporate oligarchs that run the mainstream media. I don’t know how many of you remember Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451. From Wikipedia: “Fahrenheit 451 takes place in an unspecified future time, possibly in the 21st or 22nd century, in a hedonistic and rabidly anti-intellectual America that has completely abandoned self-control and bans the possession of books. People are now only entertained by in-ear radio and an interactive form of television. The protagonist, Guy Montag, is a fireman, certain that his job—burning books, and the houses that hold them, and persecuting those who own them, is the right thing to do.” Sound familiar to anyone? Of course in Fahrenheit 451 it was society, not government, that burned books of its own volition, because special-interest groups and other “minorities” objected to books that offended them. Soon, books all began to look the same, as writers tried to avoid offending anybody. Kind of like modern day news broadcasts and television. The result? A self-limited range of acceptable opinion imposed by the very people who would be most upset if that same censorship was imposed from above by the United States government.

The foregoing is a long way of arguing that folks like Imus and Howard Stern are healthy for a society which purports to believe in a free exchange of ideas; I don’t think they should be censored, no matter what they say as long as it isn’t “fire” in a crowded theater. Personally I find the invective and hate speech spewed by O’Reilly and his ilk on a daily basius to be far more damaging to the country’s psyche that anything a senile Imus gould spit out on his worst day. Banning comments because they're offensive, which is the practical effect of running Imus out of town on a rail, is censorship whether coming from a public official or a private cabal. Unfortunately the government has gotten us to do it's dirty work. The following is from a letter posted on Salon in response to an article about Imus, the media, and censorship which says it better than I can:

“We have more important things to worry about than Don Imus doing his old routine. I'm more concerned about the CBC Institute agreeing to moderate debates on the Fox channel, whose commentators chronically belittle and ridicule people of color. I'm more concerned about the paucity of people of color on the airwaves and in the media who write columns and host news shows. I'm more concerned about the availability of opportunity for qualified people of color than I am about the feeble remarks of Don Imus.” –Tanmack. Well said.

Happy Easter/Passover

In my never ending quest to understand the world’s religions I hosted a Passover Seder in my home on Saturday night. I also though that since Jack will probably be attending the JCC daycare at some point it might be a good idea to acquaint myself with some of the customs and rituals so I don’t sound like a moron when he starts asking me questions. Granted, we held it on the wrong night and there was only one Jewish person there out of five, but we used an instruction book with the prescribed rituals and I think did a passable job of it. I didn’t realize how much work goes into cooking for one of these things; by the time we finished in the kitchen it was after 10:00pm and well after midnight by the time we finished breaking matzo and eating.

What struck me about the ritual is how deeply symbolic everything is, from the food to the “four questions” to the recitation of the haggadah, or Exodous story. Jack seemed to enjoy himself, although the lateness of the proceedings threw off his bedtime and he was up most of the night reciting his own chants. Lack of sleep seemed to be the rule this week-end for both of us. I hope you all had a nice holiday, whichever one you celebrated.

Pandora's Box

A friend of mine recently hipped me onto a web site/application called Pandora. If you’re like me you are always looking for new and interesting music, but often at not your exposure to new tunes comes randomly or by accident; i.e. you overhear a snippet of a song on the radio and try to find it on I-Tunes. Then an application like I-Tunes will offer you a listing of what other customers who purchased your particular song also purchased. It’s a neat way to expand your listening but it can be frustrating since the I-Tunes algorithm makes some bizarre picks sometimes.

This is where Pandora steps in. Pandora is the end application of something called the Music Genome Project. Somewhere in the vast world of the internet there are 50 people sitting in a room listening to every song that has ever been recorded. From the web-site: “The typical music analyst working on the Music Genome Project has a four-year degree in music theory, composition or performance, has passed through a selective screening process and has completed intensive training in the Music Genome's rigorous and precise methodology and procedures. To qualify for the work, analysts must have a firm grounding in music theory, including familiarity with a wide range of styles and sounds. All analysis is done on location.” While the analysts listen they are studying and collecting hundreds of musical details on every song including melody, harmony, instrumentation, rhythm, vocals, lyrics and some 395 other attributes. When you input your favorite songs or artists into Pandora, the Genome Project scans its data base of analyzed music to find songs with interesting musical similarities to your choice. These are then arrayed in a radio station type playlist. After each song is played you vote either thumbs up or down and Pandora refines its search and picks the next song based on your input on the previous one. If it's not quite right you can tell it more and it will get better for you. The algorithm fine tunes itself with each choice and what you end up with is invariably music that you didn’t know about before but is pretty much to your tastes.

If nothing else Pandora is a good way to expand your music collection. Each song that is played also has a link to Amazon or I-Tunes so you can go purchase the title after listening to it. Give it a shot, its pretty freaky.

Music III

I think I’m going to chuck my identity as a political gadfly and become a music critic. It is so much more interesting than following the minute machinations of the power elite. Commenting on politics is like discussing vanilla ice cream. No surprises. Oh well, I go through these phases…

Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver have to be one of the tightest bluegrass ensembles to grace the scene in recent years. Their current album, There’s More Behind The Picture Than The Wall is a tour de force of tight harmonies and amphetamine fast solos. If it doesn’t get you off the couch dancing then you have no soul (and may be a buddhist). There's an otherworldly dimension to "The Phone Call.” Lawson sings lead on that one, and according to Amazon, “ sounds close to the classic country of George Jones on the title track.” I wouldn’t go that far, but it is a nice vocal.

Lawson began his professional career in 1963, playing banjo with Jimmy Martin's Sunny Mountain Boys. In 1966, he began an association with J.D. Crowe, first playing guitar but soon moving to mandolin. He joined the Country Gentlemen in 1971 and remained a member until 1979. In 1979, Lawson left the Country Gentlemen and formed his own group, Quicksilver, which has become kind of a farm team for bluegrass, producing talent that has gone on to play with Kentucky Thunder and IIIrd Time Out, among others. His catalog is heavily gospel influenced but the recent record is more secular. Worth a couple of listens.

More Music

So I’ve been listening to the latest Neil Young release, Live at Massey Hall 1971. Considering the technology available at the time, the live solo acoustic recording is pristine, as is Neil’s guitar playing. Massey Hall in Toronto was a brief stop on a long tour where Neil debuted a number of new songs, including Old Man and Needle and the Damage Done. The concert was held prior to the release of either of those songs on the Harvelt album. In Neil’s own words, "...I've written so many new (songs) that I can't think of anything else to do with them other than sing 'em." And sing them he does; his vocals, guitar and piano playing are almost hypnotic in intensity. The medly of Man Needs a Maid and Heart of Gold is unearthly. The between songs patter is alone almost worth the price of the Album. The CD package I ordered also came with a DVD with live footage from the concert. I haven’t watched it yet, but putting a visual to the guitar work is something I am eagerly anticipating.

Reincarnation and Indra's Net

The notion of reincarnation first appeared in Hindu scriptures in the Upanishads, a series of moral and philosophical texts which came into existence about 800BC. (Hindu’s oldest religious texts, the Vedas, are curiously devoid of any mention of the concept.) This was some 300 years before the historical Buddha walked the earth and indeed the concept of reincarnation predates both Buddhism and Hinduism. The principal difference between the Hindu and Buddhist conceptualizations of reincarnation is that the Hindus believe in the immortality of the soul and the ability of this soul to move between physical bodies after death, while the Buddhists believe that there is no irreducible "self" tying these lives together; for the Buddhist all things are subject to dissolution, including all the components of the human person and personality. In Hinduism, the concept of reincaration is closely tied in with the idea that one’s karma determines the type of reincarnation. For Buddhists, since there is no permanent and unchanging (identify) there can be no transmigration of the self to a new life. Nevertheless, something must cross into a new life or else it would be pointless for a Buddhist to believe in reincarnation at all.

From Wikipedia: “Buddhism teaches that what is reborn is not the person but that one moment gives rise to another and that that momentum continues, even after death. It is a more subtle concept than the usual notion of reincarnation, reflecting the sophisticated Buddhist concept of personality existing (even within one's lifetime) without a "soul".

Both Buddhists and Hindus believe in the concept of samsara. Samsara is most easily understood in Hinduism as an ignorance of the self and a belief that happiness can be found in the pursuit of temporal pleasures. The pursuit of such pleasures creates desire for more existence in the individual thereby leading to the soul being trapped in the cycle of death and rebirth. Buddhists have a more nuanced view and see Samsara less as a place than a problem of perception. The worlds of Samsara and Nirvana are not two but are actually different sides of the same reality. It isn’t the world of temporal pleasures that locks us onto the karmic wheel, rather, it is our attachment to the self and the elaborate constructs we create to order our world which cause desire and subsequent rebirth.

Of course as interesting as this stuff is, all spiritual or philosophical systems are ultimately useless unless they lead the aspirant to some sort of self-realization. Westerners are fairly lazy in their approach to their spiritual traditions. After all, unlike some Buddhist sects, faith based systems do not require of their followers much in the way of exhaustive effort and grinding discipline. We may think we understand the teachings of our Christian religion but believing in the central teachings of Christ, going to church once a week and repeting rote prayers merely scratches the surface. To be sure there is a rich Christian mystical tradition, but it is veiled from the average churchgoer and rarely engaged by the faith’s adherents. I have always felt more comfortable within the ideological frameworks of the East because they simply make more sense to me. The universe is ordered and perfect as it is without me being required to believe in an engaged diety who has a master plan which we cannot hope to understand. Every time someone tells me that “God has his reasons” I want to scream. I’d rather embrace the metaphor of Indra’s Net; envision a vast net where at each juncture there lies a jewel which reflects all the other jewels in the cosmic matrix. Every jewel represents an individual life form, atom, cell or unit of consciousness. Each jewel, in turn, is intrinsically and intimately connected to all the others; thus, a change in one gem is reflected in all the others. The true meaning of Indra's net is that you cannot damage one strand of the universal web without damaging the others or setting off a cascade effect of destruction. By the same token the compassionate and the constructive interventions a person makes or does can also produce a ripple effect of beneficial action. Thus we are brought back to our karma and our actions. Ok, enough of this for today.

Subway

Since I’ve taken to “enjoying” a sandwich from the Subway franchise now and again, I’ve become curious about that Jared fellow and why he is still alive after eating nothing but chemically altered meat and vegetables for over a year while he was on the way to losing 245 pounds. I don’t know about you, but if I lost 245 pounds in a year from eating one company’s food product I’d wonder if I’d developed an aggressive tumor, certainly not consider the result a recipe for health and fitness. Nevertheless, Subway is cheap, relatively harmless and available every block or so in the downtown area so it is often a post-gym indulgence on days when I roll out of bed too late to make my own lunch. Plus, all that marketing hype tricks me into believing that I’m actually doing something good for my body by eating a portion controlled sandwich of off-color meat accompanied by baked Doritos and a diet coke. What I did not realize is that there a re a lot of people out there with very strong opinions about fast food. Some of them are quite funny. I encourage you to visit this site for a detailed discussion of the recent change the franchise made in the way it cuts its bread and the consternation this has caused among the brands numerous fans. There is also an article on the (thankfully) short-lived “Salmon Sub”. Bon appetite.

Instant Karma

Also known as The Law of Cause and Effect. The word Karma is translated from the Sanskrit as “action”. At its simplest, the concept of Karma stands for the proposition that actions have consequences, and the character of the action determines the type of consequence. Positive action produces positive effect, for example, negative action negative effect, and neutral action neutral effect. Whenever a human being acts, the actions have some sort of consequences, like a stone thrown into a pool of still water produces ripples which extend out in all directions until reaching the edge of the pool.

So when we act we produce something, let’s call it energy, which continues to exist and affect not only me as the actor but everyone around me. The effect of our actions, both positive and negative comes back to us in a myriad of ways. It is exceptionally difficult for the western mind to accept the fact that the bad things happening to us right now may have been born of the bad acts we ourselves performed in another life. As westerners reared in a monotheistic tradition we have been comforted by the concept of forgiveness and salvation and the potential to experience redemption through faith. The Hindu approach to Karma sort of gets around this dichotomy, but that is a discussion for another posting.

How we handle present conditions determines subsequent conditions. This is probably the most important aspect of the law of karma. What we are now determines what we will be. If something negative happens to us, the Buddhist approach is acceptance and equanimity. This is also difficult for the western mind. We are fixers and doers, not passive conduits for energy. But acceptance does not mean passivity. Bodhidharma, the great Master who brought Zen to China writes about living out this karmic life at its most difficult times, when adversity strikes:

"When those who search for the Path encounter adversity,they should think to themselves, In countless ages gone by, I've turned from the essential to the trivial and wandered through all manner of existence, often angry without cause and guilty of numberless transgressions. Now,though I do no wrong, I'm punished by my past. Neither gods nor men can foresee when an evil deed will bear its fruit. I accept it with an open heart and without complaint of injustice. The sutras say,When you meet with adversity don't be upset, because it makes sense. "

Acceptance should not be confused with passivity. Buddhist practice is has nothing to do with apathetic acceptance and withdrawal from society. We might need to accept the tough shit that comes our way but reacting to it by blaming others or getting angry or depressed we only compound the problem by creating even more negative karma. Accepting one’s circumstance does not mean liking it, nor does it foreclose the possibility of changing it.

If you were to imagine that Buddhism offers a way to step outside the wheel of cause and effect, you would be correct. That too will have to wait for another posting.

Attachment and Suffering

Naturally I have been thinking about the Buddhist idea of non-attachment and suffering lately. Buddhism teaches us the four noble truths: that life is suffering, that suffering is caused by attachment, that the cessation of suffering is possible, and that the cessation of suffering can be attained by the eightfold path. The eightfold path is also known as “the middle way” because it presents a path which lies between the extreme self-mortification of asceticism and the worldly pursuit of hedonism. A fine line indeed, if you’ve ever tried to walk it. The eight-fold path, in turn is divided into three parts. The first part consists of suggested behavior geared to manifest as “wisdom” including the concepts of right view and right intention. The second part sets up an ethical structure for the seeker by suggesting s/he engage in right speech, right action and right livelihood. The third part suggests paths to follow to increase mental development and includes right effort, mindfulness and concentration.

Clearly each aspect of the eightfold path and the four noble truths could be expounded upon at great length and indeed have been in the sutras and shastras (commentaries on the sutras) propounded since the historical Buddha walked the earth in present day India in 528 BC. Teachers in the Zen school have tried to simplify the teaching by emphasizing the concept of mindfulness and using it as a foundation upon which to build the superstructure of the rest of the teaching. Mindfulness happens to be a very pertinent teaching for stressed out westerners whose attention span can be measured in seconds. Many people originally attracted to Buddhism in the West often fail to keep up the practice because they enter the stream mistakenly thinking of mediation as a place where one can escape from one’s life, rather than the all out battle of universal mind versus ego which can be exhausting, if ultimately enlightening.

The Patriot comes from a strong Buddhist background, both academically speaking and by virtue of having practiced Zen meditation for a number of years. Due to my personal circumstances I have been looking closely at the idea that the cause of suffering is attachment. “Attachment” used to be translated in earlier works as “desire” specifically the desire to acquire and retain as well as the desire to exist. Attachment is another way of expressing desire, I suppose. If I were a good zen student I would seek out a recognized Roshi (Zen Master) who might give me a koan (question designed to lead to insight by pondering its essential meaning), and tell me to sit with it until the answer comes bubbling up from my subconscious. Koans deal with different historical events and factual situations but the questions presented therein are all along the lines of , “So what is it about this attachment that causes suffering” and, “who does the attaching and what is attached ?” These are not insignificant questions. If you are like me you have expectations about the way your life is unfolding. You make plans for the future based on certain seeming constants in your life. For example, you know that if you put $200 in your 401k every pay period you will have a certain amount of money when you retire. The assumption is that you will retain the same job, the company will be in existence for the next 30 years, you will be alive at retirement time, and the world will not be hit by an asteroid. Of course you have almost no control over any of it. But in order for us to exist without being in a constant state of panic about the things we cannot control, we erect elaborate mental structures and beliefs that allow us to function day to day. It is only when something drastic and unexpected happens that our structure is torn down and we realize how much of our self is wrapped up in our attachment to the world as we expect it to be. That, I suppose, is the place to begin investigating the concepts of attachment and suffering.

The facile approach to dealing with this unstable and impermanent world, to deny suffering, would be to limit our interactions with others, to forgo relationships and make no elaborate plans for the future lest our carefully constructed world be torn away from us. Of course that is bullshit. We are humans. We laugh, love, live and die with each other. Maybe it is our nature to suffer. Maybe the answer can be found in the eight-fold path. What do I know? But I’ll probably be posting about this topic a lot more in the near future since it is important to me lately.

Music

I’m bored with the imploding Justice Department and politics in general today. I’d rather write about music. Have any of you come across the singer Joss Stone? I generally shun pop stars and all the marketing hype that accompanies their releases, but somehow I-Tunes decided that this singer would appeal to me and who am I to question the holy algorithm? Anyway, Joss’s new album is a kaleidoscope of funk and pop and is very listenable without being too “American Idol”. Check it out.

I have a strange relationship with my I-Pod. I count myself among the millions of people who came into the computer age with the idea that music was something you obtained for free, from places like Napster and Limewire. There I was back in the go-go 90s, a luddite anarchist with a 56k connection downloading everything I could get my hands on at bit rate transfers that seem Precambrian when compared to cable modem speeds. It took a long time for me to go back to accepting the concept that one should pay for music, and in fact, I’m still deeply ambivalent about the concept. So what I do now is talk myself into believing that instead of paying for songs, I’m paying the highly inflated salaries of Apple’s brilliant software engineers. Somehow this makes me feel less like a sell-out. The genius of Apple is that the interface between customer and web-site is so seamless that you almost forget that every time you hit the “buy” button next to the song you’ve just sampled, a dollar flies out of your checking account and lands on Steve Job’s desk. In the two years I have owned an I-Pod (and I have owned several I-Pods) I have spent over $400 at the I-Tunes store. This is markedly less than I spend on other essentials like coffee, but much more than I would have spent on CD’s in a similar period.

So what the hell have I been spending all that money on, you might ask? The following three artists are in the Patriot’s heavy rotation:

1. Bradley Walker: If you hate country music you won’t like this guy, but if you do, you should know that “Bradley Walker is simply one of the greatest young country singers alive. He belongs to a tradition that includes such outstanding stylists as Vern Gosdin, Merle Haggard, Mel Street, Gene Watson, George Jones, Lefty Frizzell, and Keith Whitley, all of whom he cites as influences.” Walker is also a good example of an artist in the growing bluegrass-country genre. What makes his talent all the more impressive is that he was born with Muscular Dystrophy, and has been in a wheelchair his entire life. Trust me there isn’t a bad song on his debut album, Highway of Dreams.

2. Adrienne Young: Pretty good fusion of past and present in her somewhat pop-inflected old time music. Her band (Little Sadie) is incredibly tight and her vocals impeccable. I think her second album, The Art of Virtue is stronger than her first, but traditionalists will probably prefer Plough to the End of the Row, released in 2003.

3. Hem: Lots of good tunes on the 2006 album Funnel Cloud, which was featured on an NPR story back in the fall. They are another bluegrass/country/pop fusion band (in this case called “country-politan” ) but their songs are more, I don’t know, modern. My favorite on Funnel Cloud is “The Pills Stopped Working”. From their site: “This Brooklyn Americana outfit consolidates its strengths on Funnel Cloud, almost becoming a genre unto itself with aching, heartfelt laments supported by just-right orchestral backing. The band expertly employs dynamics, wth heart-quickening shifts between quiet and forceful passages, plus a memorable foray into (for them) all-out rock.”

If this is at all mildly interesting to any of you I could go on for hours, and probably will when I have some more time.

Staten Island Politics

While I am principally concerned with politics on the national level, occasionally a local race catches my eye. On Tuesday night Staten Island Democrat Matt Titone won a special election for state assembly which was held in order to fill John Lavelle’s seat after Lavell’s unexpected death in January. Staten Island is perhaps the most Republican place in the City; voters there were instrumental in ensuring the election of the last two Republican mayors, Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg. The Island is divided in its party affiliations with the liberal north shore usually siding with the Democrats against the south shore’s Republicans. It is an interesting place to practice both law and politics since despite the Island's soaring population, its institutions are run as if the place was still the same small fishing village it was before the Verranzano bridge was built. Personal relationships and connections are everything here and Staten Island natives are preferred in the candidate selection process over more recent interlopers. My friend always jokes that her obituary in the Staten Island Advance will probably identify her as a "long-time resident" rather than a native, despite the fact that she's lived there since she was two years old. That's small town life in the big city I guess.

A small race like this is always exciting because the results can be directly influenced by the turn-out effort. For example, with 100 percent of the votes counted, Mr. Titone received 2,888 votes, his Republican challenger Rose Margarella 1,846 and independent candidate Kelvin Alexander 1,122. That means the total number of voters pulling the lever in this election was 5,856. Granted Democrats in the north shore have a 3-to-1 registration advantage over Republicans, but the presence of Alexander in the race was a concern. Alexander, an African American, had the potential to split the Democratic vote thus allowing Margarella to become the first Republican to occupy the seat in recent history.

Titone is the boro’s first openly gay elected official. While acknowledging the historical significance of his election, Titone ran on education and hopes tofind ways to increase health care financing in the borough, reduce class sizes in the Assembly district’s schools and make prekindergarten programs available for all 4-year-olds.

The Patriot attended the victory celebration at the Staten Catering Hall and enjoyed rubbing shoulders with the local politicos. The Democratic clubs on the north shore of are full of engaged and interesting people. Hopefully an invasion of the south shore can be planned in time for the 2008 election. Congratulations Matt!

DOJ Follies

Spring has finally returned to New York after a most dreary winter. Hopefully I’ll be able to take JB out of the house this week since I think we’re both getting a little bit of cabin fever. Someone bought him a pair of wrap around shades which will look pretty cool when we saunter the boardwalk at South Beach. (That’s South Beach on Staten Island folks, not it's more well-heeled cousin in Miami.)

While the weather is improving here in New York, the Bush administration is facing an onslaught of political storms down in Washington which seem destined to last until the current White House occupants lurch across the finish line some 20 months hence. The consensus among the blogosphere is that Gonzalez is finished and that he’d be lucky to make it to Friday with his job, never mind his dignity, intact. I am less sanguine about the possibility of him jumping ship before “total victory is achieved”, however Bush presently envisions the term. Bush’s appointees are like New York City bedbugs; impossible to get rid of without the use of heavy industrial solvents. Since the only known alcoholic exterminator in Congress was recently run out of town himself, the task of fumigating the justice department falls to the democrats.
To that end, hearings are being held on the FBI’s recently discovered but ongoing abuse of the power to issue national security letters. “We're going to be re-examining the broad authorities we granted the FBI in the Patriot Act," Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, told Mueller. Mueller, in one of the odder arguments used to justify the evisceration of the Constitution urged the panel not to revise the law."The statute did not cause the errors," Mueller said. "The FBI's implementation did." "What I did not do and should have done is put in a compliance program to be sure those procedures were followed," the FBI chief added. If Mueller is accepting responsibility on behalf of the agency, shouldn’t his resignation be forthcoming? “Taking responsibility” for mistakes implies that the person taking said responsibility pay some sort of price for the error or omission. Not in this administration.

"I still have very serious qualms," Leahy replied. Yes, well, we all have serious qualms. What is being discussed at this hearing is a power granted by Congress in the Patriot Act for the FBI to snoop around in the underwear drawers of America extra-judicially based on an agent’s representation that the snooping is necessary for an ongoing investigation. In 2001, the Patriot Act eliminated any requirement that the records belong to someone under suspicion. Now an innocent person's records can be obtained if FBI field agents consider them relevant to an ongoing terrorism or spying investigation.

Anyone who has studied the law, heck, anyone who has ever watched an episode of Law and Order, knows that granting this kind of discretion to the FBI eviscerates the Constitutional protections granted by the Fourth Amendment. As snarlin’ Arlen Spector somewhat inartfully stated to Meuller in a rare moment of legal lucidity: “You asked for these powers; we gave you them. If these applications are wrong, you're subjecting people to an invasion of privacy that ought not to be issued."

Since the FBI is a DOJ agency, it can be argued that the ultimate responsibility for adhering to the Patriot Act lies with Gonzalez. He testifies on April 17th, if he’s still around.

A Recent Picture of Jack

He's getting bigger every day.

Would You Like A Hot Towel?

The following entry was written somewhere over the continental United States yesterday:

My 7:45am flight from LAX to Newark was canceled just before boarding due to “mechanical errors.”.As a fairly seasoned traveler, the minute I heard the gate agent make the announcement I hustled to get on line to be rebooked. (One especially annoying feature of the airline industry is the fact that it rewards the most pushy passengers in the face of adversity; by the time the little old lady at the back of the line gets to the front of the line to be re-booked every available seat on the remaining flights is usually long gone, meaning a wait in or around the airport of infinite duration.) My fellow travelers were milling around like a herd of frightened animals and, being for the most part New Yorkers, began to complain almost immediately. The four people ahead of me on line all harangued the gate agent which predictably resulted in their being rebooked on the Monday morning red-eye with a three hour layover in Des Moines. As I learned from my own travel meltdown over Thanksgiving, screaming at underpaid airline employees rarely results in a desirable outcome. When I got to the head of the line I smiled and said something like, “as inconvenient as this is for me it must be much harder on you because you’re the face of the airline and no matter how awful they treat you, you still have to run interference for them in the face of this angry mob.” The result of my small act of kindness? A rebooking on a flight leaving 45 minutes later from 2 gates away and an upgrade to first class. Granted I had to change planes in Dallas, but when you are flying 1st class, who the hell cares. I was content to fly all day.

Treatment of first class passengers is so far and away superior that it makes flying coach the 21st century equivalent of a trip through Alabama on a Greyhound. Being a good anarchist I had heretofore never enjoyed this particular pleasure of the blessed upper middle-class. I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy it. Since our government has gone out of its way to make moving around the country as onerous as possible in a post 911 world, first class may be the only salvation left to the weary traveler seeking respite from the nasty, brutish and not very short ordeal that air travel has become. While the coach passengers are offered the opportunity to purchase a sandwich of grey meat in a plastic sack for $5, 1st class passengers are plied with top-shelf wine and enjoy entrees like salmon in hoisin marinade with a wild rice timbale, brie and a salad of field greens served on actual china.

I suppose the lesson here is to always be nice to underpaid ticket agents staring down an angry mob. It certainly paid off for me. This whole trip was a real mind warp. Among other things I learned that rich people apparently need a steady supply of hot and cold towels always available should anxiety need to be wiped away. But it was fun. I was living way beyond my usual means, on someone else’s money. Can’t complain about that I suppose. From 33,000 feet over the heartland, this is the Patriot wishing you happy travels wherever your final destination may be.

Rodeo Drive

Hey kids. the Patriot was taken to task last night by one of his five readers about the relative dearth of new posts lately. Also noted was the presence of the occasional spelling error. Were I professional blogger I would perhaps be chagrined and chastened, but since I am a mere hack and gadfly, I offer apologies and move on. This very posting will no doubt be frought with mistakes, since I am typing this entry on a portable keyboard in a hotel in Los Angeles which has the annoying tendancy to suddenly and without warning start writing everything in Kanji characters. As you can imagine, this is really 案老いんgあs用完野ど.

I have been in LA since yesterday for work. Not just LA, mind you, but swanky Beverly Hills. People who think New York City is the poster child for American excess and consumerism should tool around in a big white SUV on Rodeo Drive like I did this morning. Wallowing in wealth and privilege can be seductive and ultimately intoxicating. I just ran a fwe miles on a treadmill at the Equinox Beverly Hills and was greeted at the completion of my work-out by a man bearing a chilled towel who also gave me a glass of iced lemon water and directed me to the whirlpool. The strangest thing? It wasn't at all uncomfortable once I started thinking that I deserved such treatment. And there's the problem. Everyone deserves such treatment, but everyone isn't going to get it. The maids who cleaned up my hotel this morning aren't going to get it. The stratification of the classes is so much more obvious here than in New York; brown people clean things and white people drive around in silly cars talking on fancy cell phones. There are many nice things about California; Jamba Juice, the climate, the ocean, but the division of wealth here is so stark that it makes me uncomfortable. There are a lot of homeless people here, many more than the last time I was here two years ago. I hate to sound like a big buzz-kill but I think this country is heading for a reckoning and it might be coming sooner rather than later. I could go on and on, but I'm late for my nori-cucumber facial. Peace.

Subpoena Power II

Well, as I predicted the other day the administration is planning a full on war against the House Judiciary committee’s use of subpoenas to extract testimony from the White House and the DOJ over the US Attorney fiasco. I would have hoped that a Constitutional showdown with the White House would have occurred over something more germane to the flagrant abuse of power exhibited by the Rove cabal, but you take your victories where you find them. As with all scandals, the cover-up is probably worse than the underlying event. Practically speaking the President can fire some, or all, of the US Attorneys for any reason, including replacing them with patronage appointments. What the administration cannot do, what is actually illegal, is to attempt to direct the course of criminal investigations by applying political pressure. Replacing a US Attorney with Karl Rove’s friend? Ok. Replacing the same US Attorney because he wasn’t investigating more Democrats? Not Ok.

Bush’s churlish press conference yesterday was clear evidence that the administration hasn’t really changed its position on the issue of executive power since the election. Perhaps they think that the traditional presidential prerogative on attorney appointments will be given deference by their conservative packed Courts. Here they may have miscalculated. True conservatives are nervous about the concept of unbridled power no matter where such power is concentrated within the body politic. The right-wing Bush coalition is not as uniform as it appears and all that executive power makes libertarians nervous.

The administration is still trying to hoodwink Congress with its lies. The White House’s official position is that "The president expects everybody who talks to Congress to tell the truth, and so does the law. And they know that it would be illegal not to tell them the truth," he said. Which would be ok….if the administration had a shred of credibility left after lying about every significant issue in the last seven years. The administration’s lack of credibility isn’t lost on John Conyer’s, the head of the judiciary committee who commented that just having Rove and Meir come in for a friendly chat would be a pointless exercise. "We could meet at the local pub to have that kind of conversation," he said. "But in my judgment it would not advance us toward uncovering the simple truth in this matter."

And it isn’t as if the DOJ has been any more forthcoming than the White House on the motivations behind the firings. Pat Leahy complained about 3,000 documents the Justice Department handed over to the committees late Monday, saying redactions in the documents make them unworkable. "Instead of freely and fully providing relevant documents to the investigating committees, they have only selectively sent documents, after erasing large portions that they do not want to see the light of day."

Of course the administration’s promise to fight the subpoenas in Court has the potential to drag the whole matter into the presidential election, as it is unlikely that the Supreme Court would get the case within the 21 months left in the Bush administration. How typical of this president, who never finished anything he started in life, to dump this issue squarely in the lap of the Republican party as they try to figure out how to undo 8 years of damage in time for the next Presidential election. Good luck boys!

Bold Divers

The picture to the left is of me diving on the Spiegel Grove last May. Note that I am outide of the ship. Yesterday three experienced divers from New Jersey died while diving the same wreck, insude the vessel. Four men, friends from New Jersey who held advanced open water certifications (which was my certification at the time of my dive), hired a boat captained by Mark Cianciu of Scuba-Do Charters to take them to the wreck. During the fatal dive, one man was stationed at the entrance to the ship while the other three went inside. The man stationed outside the wreck began to run out of air and surfaced safely. The other three must have gotten lost inside; one made an emergency ascent and died before reaching a recompression chamber, the other two were found dead deep inside the wreck. All the divers had wreck reels that apparently weren't used. A wreck reel is a piece of equipment which allows a diver to set a guideline while swimming in that the diver then follows on the way out of a wreck. Think of it like like leaving a trail of breadcrumbs. Rescue divers who entered the wreck found a great deal of silt had been kiclked up, seriously decreasing visibility. This may have led to the divers becomming disoriented and running out of air. The death toll onthe Spiegel Grove now stands at six.

It is always sad to hear that a member of the diving community has died. It is especially sad when it happens on a wreck that you have also been diving on. The Grove is not a dive for beginners, although I certainly was a beginner when I dove it. The currents around the wreck are brutal and it takes a concerted amount of energy just to get down the anchor line to the wreck. The full story of my own near fatal mishap on the Grove can be found here. Even with the advance certification I hold I would never consider entering the wreck without additional ship penetration training. Even wrecks like the Grove, which was deliberately sunk to create an artificial reef and had all the doors cut off making fairly wide penetration openings are deathtraps for the uninitiated. As a diver it is your responsibility to “plan your dive and dive your plan” and not to dive outside the limitations of your abilities and experience. All divers know this. What concerns me, and concerned me at the time I dove the wreck is the somewhat cavalier attitude of many of the dive operators in Key Largo who don’t carefully scrutinize divers experience levels before agreeing to take them out to the wreck. The Spiegel Grove is an attractive wreck because it seems deceptively benign; a 500 foot boat upright on the bottom at only about 100 feet. The dive outfits I chartered often made both morning and afternoon trips to the wreck and put as many as 20 divers at a time down the line. It seems like a miracle to me that more divers haven’t bought it, considering the disguised hazards of a strong current and low visibility inside the wreck. Of course, ultimately the responsibility for safety on a dive rests with the diver. Those poor souls who didn’t make it back reflect the adage that there are old divers and there are bold divers, but there are no old bold divers. RIP gentlemen.

The Plame Game

Does anyone else think that Valerie Plame-Wilson is kind of hot? I guess the CIA goes for that sort of fresh faced all American look in an under-cover operative. Probably not such a great look for the middle-east, but what the hell. And what did Plame actually do for the CIA anyway? Funny you should ask, Mr. Patriot: According to a September 6, 2006 article in The Nation by David Corn she was no mere paper pusher, but an operations officer working on a top priority of the Bush Administration in a unit of the agency focused on Iraq. Plame was recruited in 1985 after graduating from Penn State. After two years of training to be a covert case officer, she worked at headquarters at Langly on the Greek desk; she subsequently was posted to Athens where she posed as a State Department employee while engaging in her true mission; spotting and recruiting agents for the agency. In the early 1990s, she became a “nonofficial cover officer” (NOC). NOCs are CIA's frontline officers. According to Corn, “They do not pretend to work for the US government; they do not have the protection of diplomatic immunity. They might claim to be a businessperson. She told people she was with an energy firm. Her main mission remained the same: to gather agents for the CIA.”

In 1997 Wilson returned to CIA headquarters and joined the Counterproliferation Division and assigned to the Iraq branch. Now get this: in the summer of 2001, *--before 9/11--*word came down from the top office that they were “ramping up on Iraq.” Her unit was expanded and renamed the Joint Task Force on Iraq (JTFI). The JTFI was charged with interviewing top Iraqi scientists and defectors to determine the status of Saadam’s WMD program. In that sense JTFI’s mission was a complete failure; the few scientists it managed to reach insisted Saddam had no WMD programs. Remember this is all either well before the 911 attacks or shortly thereafter.

The logical conclusion to be drawn from the fact that the Bush administration was seeking covert intelligence on Sadaam Hussein’s weapons programs long before 911 is that the invasion was already a fait accompli and that 911 was used as an excuse to invade. This observation will of course surprise no one who lives in a state without a NASCAR track. Despite the fact that the JTFI couldn’t find a shred of evidence that Iraq even had an unconventional weapons program, never mind an impending “mushroom cloud”, the administration overtly lied to Congress (and the United Nations) about its pre-war WMD intelligence and manipulated the emotions of a fearful country so it could invade Iraq for its own twisted ideological reasons. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; lying to Congress is an impeachable offense. Unless the illicit reasons for going to war are given a full airing in the Court of public opinion the Democrats and Republicans will never reach a consensus on how to get out of the quagmire in Baghdad.

As for Plame, “as a CIA employee still sworn to secrecy, she wasn't able to explain publicly that she had spent nearly two years searching for evidence to support the Administration's justification for war and had come up empty.” Instead her cover was blown by the White House and she was left to twist in the wind; all because her husband tried to stop a corrupt and criminal administration from throwing American boys into the desert to die in Iraq for nothing but corporate profits.

Subpoena Power

It seems that the Bush administration is going to have its date with destiny after all. The Democratic leadership in the Senate, joined by John Sununu and other Republican defectors are calling for Alberto Gonzalez’s head for his deliberate lying to Congress when he testified last week about the politically motivated firing of Federal attorneys. Of course Gonzalez’s head isn’t really the best one for the chopping block, the best head which could be severed here is attached to the corpulent body of Bush’s wonder boy Karl Rove, who orchestrated the firings as part of his slash and burn political strategy. I think Gonzalez is a toast; a very positive development for the Constitution, but as usual the real criminals in the administration have thus far eluded punishment for their sins.

The difference this time is that Congress has begun to remember that they have the authority to issue subpoenas to force a recaltricent administration to explain its actions. The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee pat Leahy said that he wants answers. To that end the committee today authorized issuing subpoenas to five Justice Department officials in the investigation into the dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys. Unfortunately Leahy postponed a vote on the authorization to use subpoenas to compel White House officials to testify, including President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, and former White House counsel Harriet Miers.

Please, oh please get Rove under oath in Congress; that would be high political theatre. The Country can finally see in the flesh the deranged puppet master who has been pulling Bush’s strings for the last seven years. The million dollar question is whether the administration would fight the subpoenas. I suspect that they would. At this point they have nothing to gain by testifying under oath before a hostile Congress and contempt for Congress’s subpoena power fits rather nicely into their view of the limitless boundaries of executive power. This may yet blow up into a full-on Constitutional crisis. We’ll all have to stay tuned…

Specter of Incompetence

All the major news outlets have jumped on the FBI story, but predictably they are downplaying the seriousness of the civil rights violations and dutifully reporting the FBI’s lame excuses as factual. CNN was apparently so concerned about the disappearance of the Fourth Amendment that it left the story up in a prime location on its web site for almost a whole hour before it was replaced by some ground-breaking journalism on how the new daylight savings time is bound to confuse masses of McDonalds addled Americans this week-end. Here are some fun facts about the National Security letters and the DOJ’s audit:

· The audit said there were no indications that the FBI's use of the letters "constituted criminal misconduct." (Now there’s a surprise)
· The FBI has made as many as 56,000 requests a year for information using the letters since the Patriot Act was passed in October, 2001, the audit found. (And how many pertained to terrorism? We’ll never know since its classified)
· A single letter can contain multiple information requests, and multiple letters may target one individual.
· The audit found that in 2004 and 2005, more than half of the targets of the national security letters were U.S. citizens.
· The audit also found problems with "exigent letters," which are supposed to be used only in emergencies when time may not permit the NSL procedure to be followed.
· The audit found exigent letters were not used in emergencies and gave the agency access to telephone records it should not have had.

Director Meuller has been designated as fall guy by the administration and seems prepared to commit public seppuku within the next few days. Republican Senator Arlen Spector, who’s having a really bad week what with finding out that he was the one responsible for the provision in the Patriot Act authorizing Bush to appoint attorneys general into the Patriot Act declared, "There will be oversight hearings," Not prosecutions. Not indictments. Oversight hearings. He also said the Patriot Act may have to be changed and power given the FBI curtailed because "they appear not to be able to know how to use it."

My question is, "Who really doesn’t know how to use his power Senator?" You were the one that granted the FBI this power to begin with. Despite warnings from civil libertarians and, well, regular libertarians, you abdicated your responsibility to the American people and helped ram the Patriot Act down America’s throat. Now you are all over the media whining about how the FBI is out of control? Who do you think you’re fooling? Lest we forget, Specter has been fooling Americans for quite a long time. His dicey relationship with the truth started way back when he was a member of the Warren Commission and the principal architect of the single-bullet theory. But that’s a story for another day.

Uncivil Liberties II

Ever have one of those days when you read the paper and all the stories you read seem to be connected to each other in some way? Today’s Times has a front page article on how Gonzalez’s DOJ is about to issue a “scathing” report criticizing how the FBI has been abusing its power to issue administrative subpoenas. These subpoenas have allowed the feds to obtain thousands of telephone, business and financial records without any prior judicial approval. The DOJ issuing a report criticizing the FBI is sort of like Hitler writing Stalin a letter criticizing his treatment of political prisoners. Nevertheless, the embattled Justice Department has apparently decided to do something to burnish its image which has been seriously tarnished by the attorney general firing scandal. Of course, I would argue that DOJ’s image took a nose-dive shortly after Ashcroft started shilling for the Patriot Act in 2002; after all it was the Patriot Act which granted the FBI the discretion to issue these extra-judicial subpoenas in the first place.

DOJ’s report apparently concludes that the procedures put in place by the FBI to govern the program are being ignored by the agency. Sound familiar? Read yesterday’s post pertaining to the NYPD. The report also alleges that the program lacks effective management, monitoring and reporting procedures. It seems that big brother has trouble behaving itself when granted unfettered and unsupervised power to violate the rights of the people. This is true at the local level (see, NYPD) as well as the national level. So what are these National Security Letters? Unlike search warrants, they are issued without prior judicial approval and require only the approval of the agent in charge of a local F.B.I. office. From the Times:

“The use of national security letters since the September 2001 attacks has been a hotly debated domestic intelligence issue. They were once used only in espionage and terrorism cases, and then only against people suspected as agents of a foreign power.

With the passage of the Patriot Act, their use was greatly expanded and was allowed against Americans who were subjects of any investigation. The law also allowed other agencies like the Homeland Security Department to issue the letters.”

I fail to see how the Fourth Amendment even exists at the Federal level where the FBI has been granted the authority to conduct extensive searches of records merely by asserting that an individual is subject to an investigation. The Democrat’s need to make repealing this sort of nonsense the centerpiece of the Democrat’s need to make their legislative agenda. The Patriot is encouraged by the fact that the Democrats appear to be finding the ground beneath their feet and exercising the position of their majority to push for hearings on a variety of issues, but it isn’t enough. The liberal caucus in the party must become more aggressive and continue its efforts to pry the lid off the DOJ, no matter what nastiness comes crawling out.

Another story in the Times reported that violent crime rose by double-digit percentages in cities across the country over the last two years. The Times failed to note that the increase occurred despite the overwhelming increase in law enforcement power (see above, and below)and a huge influx of money. According to the Times, “Local police departments blame several factors: the spread of methamphetamine use in some Midwestern and Western cities, gangs, high poverty and a record number of people being released from prison. But the biggest theme, they say, is easy access to guns and a willingness, even an eagerness, to settle disputes with them, particularly among young people.” Bullshit. The real culprit here is the government’s approval of violence as a means to solve social problems. From the “pacification” of Baghdad to the extra-judicial torture of unindicted suspects, to the unfettered power granted the police, the message has gone out across the land that the government approves of violence. Until we stop our insane slide into brutality and totalitarianism, the crime rate will continue to rise. One can only hope that the people will at some point realize that there is a better target for their ire than their neighbors.

Uncivil Liberties

Those of you who live in New York are no doubt familiar with the right-wing drift of the police department since the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Some of you may be familiar with the Handschu litigation. A consent decree, negotiated in 1985, ostensibly ended the 1971 lawsuit which had accused the NYPD with harassment of political organizations by the NYPD’s “Red Squad.” From ACLU’s web site, “The case began as a challenge to various police practices that involved the maintenance of dossiers on political activists and the use of various undercover and surveillance techniques to monitor the activities of political organizations and individuals. The case was settled with a consent decree entered in 1985, in which the Police Department was prohibited from investigating political and religious organizations and groups unless there was "specific information" that the group was linked to a crime that had been committed or was about to be committed. The decree also established a system of record-keeping and procedures for approval of investigations by a three-member body, called the Handschu Authority. The system was designed to create a "paper trail" in order to ensure against abuse.”

In 2002 the NYPD sought modification of the consent degree asserting that the changed global circumstances in a post 911 world warranted a loosening of the terms of the decree and favored granting the police more latitude to conduct surveillance to thwart the evil terrorists who were at that very instant plotting to destroy various New York landmarks. On February 11, 2003, the same Federal District Court court that crafted the original decree approved modifications to the agreement conditioned upon the Police Department developing new guidelines consistent with those developed by the U.S. Department of Justice for investigations conducted by the F.B.I. The Police Department’s modified guidelines were accepted by the District Court on April 8, 2003. (Doesn’t that make you feel safer? The NYPD had merely to meet the FBI’s standards for protecting American’s civil liberties. Makes you wonder about their prior standards).

Rather than the NYPD going out and rounding up actual terrorists, they used their newly expanded power almost immediately to begin spying on political protests and Critical Mass bike rides. During anti-Iraq war demonstrations in February and March 2003, the NYPD employed certain "debriefing" practices in which arrested protesters were subjected to inappropriate interrogation into their past political associations. The NYPD’s conduct prompted the judge to make the NYPD’s own guidelines a part of the decree, thereby rendering the NYPD bound to follow its own internal regulations; something that under developed municipal law the department is ordinarily not required to do.

Despite these restrictions, the NYPD continued its unlawful activities by engaging in photographic and video surveillance of protestors during the Republican National Convention and during the monthly critical mass bike rides. The NYPD’s clear violations of its own rules necessitated a trip back to Court which brings me (finally) to the subject of today’s post.

Several weeks ago Judge Charles S. Haight Jr. issued a blistering 47 page decision threatening the city with contempt if it again violated its own guidelines by videotaping or photographing political protestors without some evidence that a crime was to be committed. He noted that he originally made the guidelines part of his 2003 Order modifying the decree, “after senior N.Y.P.D. officers misbehaved themselves by ordering that arrested protesters held in precinct station houses be interrogated in inappropriate ways before being released.” As for the guidelines themselves, they require that before the police would be allowed to record people at public gatherings they would have to show that some unlawful activity might occur and they would still be required to apply for permission to the deputy police commissioner in charge of the Intelligence Division.

The Corporation Counsel’s office has taken a page from the Bush administration by advancing the argument that the Federal Court has no authority to limit the NYPD's surveillance activities. In it's brief the City argued that although Judge Haight was apparently within his rights to modify the decree (after all they requested the modification), he was wrong in asserting that the new rules could be enforced by the Court. The logical inconsistency makes my head spin. They further averred that “the N.Y.P.D. never had any intention of agreeing to the incorporation of detailed operational guidelines into the consent decree subjecting itself to contempt for a plethora of potential violations.” The hubris! The City can't have it both ways. Let's review: The NYPD pushed for a loosening of the original consent decree’s restrictions, which was granted. They then came up with their own internal guidelines as required by the Court. These guidelines were incorporated into the consent decree by the Judge. The City consistently violated its own guidelines, and now advances the argument that the Judge has no right to enforce the decree because it never had any intention of following the guidelines it drafted for the purpose of amending the decree! Simply shocking. If Haight has any balls he’ll cite the City for contempt and sock Corporation Counsel with sanctions for advancing such a frivolous argument and wasting the Court's time.

Visit Kevin's New Blog Before He Kills Me

My dear friend and erstwhile law school buddy portinexile a/k/a/ Kevin has a new blog that you should all go and check out. http://portinexile.blogspot.com/ Kevin is “Just trying to hold it together for now and get back in the game.” Whatever game he wants to get back into, I suggest you all help him along by visiting his site and commenting on his posts. I promise that he is a more prolific poster than the Patriot has been lately.

Domestic Disturbances

It looks like the story about the Bush Administration’s purge of local federal Attorney General offices has some legs after all. The House and Senate have both scheduled hearings for this week just as evidence surfaces that the removals were politically motivated after all. I also doubt its coincidence that the DOJ apparatchik responsible for the firings has just announced his resignation. As odious as the replacement of otherwise qualified AGs with Karl Rove’s golf buddies appears there is a more disturbing issue. Namely, from where is the President deriving his authority to stage his mini night of the long knives? Can you guess? Yes, it’s our old friend the Patriot Act. An article on Slate.com today asks the pertinent questions, “[w]ho changed the Patriot Act to make it easier to replace U.S. attorneys without oversight, and how did it happen with nobody looking?” As usual, the provision in the Act which granted the President power to replace U.S. Attorneys was designed to consolidate executive power and diminish the power of the other branches by removing both judicial and congressional oversight of interim U.S. attorney appointments and letting DOJ anoint them indefinitely. According to the Slate article, “[t]his served three important goals: consolidating presidential power, diminishing oversight, and ensuring that "interim" prosecutors had permanent jobs.” The President’s power to appoint these indefinite lackeys was written into the law when Congress reauthorized the Patriot Act last year. Senators on both sides of the isle have come up with increasingly lame excuses for why they rubber-stamped the President’s power grab. From Arlen Spector: “"The first I found out about the change in the Patriot Act occurred a few weeks ago when Sen. [Dianne] Feinstein approached me on the floor." From Chuck Schumer: [The Republicans] "slipped the new provision into the Patriot Act in the dead of night." So, the best our elected officials could come up with to explain their abdication of responsibility as a co-equal branch of the government is something along the lines of “I don’t know how it got there” and “I didn’t read it but voted for it anyway.” Well done ladies and gentlemen, well done.

The provision was actually introduced by the DOJ through a Rove operative named Michael O’Neill who joined Republican senator Arlen Spector’s staff right about the time he was being pilloried by the White House for being soft on supporting the President. (O’Neill also formerly clerked for Clarence Thomas) So Spector’s excuse is really that O'Neill had merely been following orders from the Department of Justice when he snuck new language into the Patriot Act that would consolidate executive branch authority without informing Spector about what he was doing. Or, as Slate put it, “either the DOJ snookered O'Neill, O'Neill snookered Specter, or Specter snookered his colleagues. But any way you slice it, the executive seems to have encroached on congressional turf in order to expand executive turf.”

The most disturbing but perhaps least surprising thing about this is that this administration is willing to subvert not just the Democrats but even Hill Republicans to push its agenda. I wonder what else was slipped into the Patriot act while Congress was sleeping?

An Open Letter to the Legal Aid Society

My Dear Friends,

I wanted to express my deep appreciation for all of your support over the past month. Not a day has gone by that I haven’t received a card, a heartfelt note or a phone call from someone at Legal Aid asking how Jack and I are getting along and offering whatever help it is within their power to give. It is clear by the overwhelming response to Becky’s passing that she touched all of our hearts, and by extending yourself in this difficult time you have touched mine.

What is especially comforting to me is how the Legal Aid community’s overwhelming response to her passing validates her core belief in the essential goodness of humanity. It takes a special sort of person to do the kind of work that you all do on a daily basis. The case load is unmanageable, the stress level is often intolerable and the clients aren’t exactly falling all over themselves to shower you with their undying appreciation. As you can imagine (and as some of you have overheard) I had endless conversations with Becky about her cases and about working as a public defender in general. The one thing that stands out in my mind is that no matter how objectively awful her client appeared on paper, and no matter how overworked and burnt out she was, at some point in our conversation she would comment that her client was essentially a good person who did a bad thing and how it isn’t fair to take measure of a man by looking at his worst acts.

That is the sort of view of humanity that Becky had and it’s a view that is in short supply in today’s world. It has been my experience that it is a view of the world that can be more readily found at organizatoins like Legal Aid than in most other areas of the legal profession. Your generous financial contributions and offers of support to Jack and I are a reflection of that world-view and they are appreciated from the bottom of our hearts.

Mark & Jack

Happy One Month Birthday Jack

A really crappy month, but we made it. Hugs to you too.

Afghani Brown is Bringing Me Down

While the Administrations imperialist war in Iraq grinds on with nary an end in sight, the former bright star in our militaristic firmament, Afghanistan, is sliding into chaos. A newly resurgent Taliban, assisted by fresh Al Qaeda operatives from Pakistan, have been slowly retaking large parts of the countryside. Where has the mainstream media been while this has been going on? Focused on the disposition of the mortal remains of Anna Nicole Smith, naturally.

Salon has an article today which examines exactly how screwed up things are in the Hindu Kush. I quote, “Last November, a CIA analysis of the Karzai government found it was losing control, and American ambassador to Afghanistan Ronald Neumann warned then that the U.S. would "fail" if the plan for action didn't include "multiple years and multiple billions." Our gains, once held firmly, have been lost and the coming year may portend Afghanistan's future, with ominous rumors about a spring offensive by insurgents floating down from the mountains.” Yet the administration continues to pour resources, military and civilian, into Iraq and the acceptable range of opinion expressed in the mainstream media has been again limited to the against the war/against the troops bullshit that has been force-fed to the country by the fascist Republicans since day one.

What explains the administrations reluctance to engage in battle some actual terrorists in the never-ending “war on terror”? While Al Qaeda had no presence in Iraq prior to the United States invasion in 2003, Afghanistan is a thicket of nasty types who have been utilizing America’s folly in Baghdad to increase their strength and numbers. It seems our priorities are completely reversed from where they should be. I suppose a never ending war on terror supports all sort of economies and businesses. Actually winning it would eliminate the justification for surveillance of American citizens and the abolition of the rule of law and cost Cheney and his cronies a few billion in lost wealth.

On the left, the netroots profess to be shocked, (shocked!) that the Democrats who were elected in November have spent most of their time arguing about who gets to stand where in the circular firing squad they’ve been forming since the day after the ballots were counted. Regular readers of this blog know full well my opinion of the Democrats ability to take their heads out of the corporate trough long enough to resist anything this administration has cooked up in its extrajudicial pajama parties.

Things over there are bad but they could get much, much worse. If Congress has even a shred of decency left in its corrupt and decaying body it should cut of the money to Iraq and hold impeachment hearings.

Risk

Being in the insurance business I have occasion to meditate on the essence of risk. Insurance companies after all are little more than glorified bookies and actuaries are akin to Vegas odds makers. These companies take a look at statistics of say, scuba diving accidents and run them through an algorithm to see exactly how risky it is and how much to charge to insure the risk. This helps explain why scuba diving insurance costs less than $100 per year; it simply isn't that dangerous. Many things we do every day are far riskier than scuba diving. Driving a car, crossing the street, all pose a risk of serious injury or death far exceeding the risk posed by strapping on a tank and regulator and heading for the briny deep. When people die diving, their deaths are often sensational in some odd way, i.e. they're eaten by a shark or left to flounder in the sea when the boat takes off, that sort of thing. This attracts the media like a bull shark to a floundering swimmer and everyone gets the wrong idea.

I’ve decided I’m going to keep diving. This is no small decision now that I am a single parent and thereby have sole responsibility for my son. Nevertheless, the arguable risks inherent in the sport are manageable if one possesses the right training and the right equipment and I believe that I have both. I will admit that there is a part of me that is afraid to leave the house lest something unfortunate happen to me and my son be rendered an orphan, but clearly I can’t live my life hiding from my own mortality. Who knows what the future holds? I retired my crystal ball at the end of last month. Perhaps, as a concession to the odds, I’ll steer clear of cave diving and 240 foot technical wreck diving, but regular trips to deep destinations remain on the agenda.

Habeas Corpus, Round Two

Well this week has kept the Patriot very busy, what with Anna Nicole’s will, Britney’s hair shaving escapades and the idea of tire-sized calamari rings from a giant squid found off the coast of Australia, not to mention the second round of American Idol. While America distracts itself with this meaningless blather, the Bush administration won a major victory in Federal Court when a U.S. appeals court Tuesday threw out the legal claims brought on behalf of the hundreds of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay and ruled that they do not have a right to plead their innocence in an American court. In a particularly disingenuous 2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal District held that the Constitution does not extend the right of habeas corpus to noncitizens who are held outside the sovereign territory of this country. "Cuba -- not the United States -- has sovereignty over Guantanamo Bay," wrote Judge Raymond Randolph. I’m sure this will be news to the Cuban government; I wonder if they’re measuring for drapes and picking out furniture? Shayana Kadidal, an attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York noted quite accurately that, "This decision empowers the president to do whatever he wishes to prisoners without any legal limitation, so long as he does it offshore. (It) encourages such notorious practices as extraordinary rendition and contempt for international human rights law." Not that the Bush administration was ever troubled by contempt for international law. However, now that the elections are behind them, several Democratic senators have said they will amend the Military Commissions Act to restore the traditional right to habeas corpus for all. Their efforts would face an almost certain veto by the President Bush and it is doubtful that 2/3rds of the senate can be marshaled to override it.

Control, or Lack Thereof

One interesting side-effect, if you will, about going through the grieving process and interacting with others who have been through something similar is how absolutely tragic most people’s lives are. I mean, there are thousands of people who have experienced such fucked up bad luck that its amazing that they haven’t jumped off a bridge. I mean, if anyone is a candidate for that it’s me, but I don’t hold a candle to some of these people; entire families killed in car accidents except for one parent, that sort of thing. What is even more amazing is how everyone else thinks they’re somehow immune from it. We run around thinking how we control our lives and really any sense of control we have is completely illusory. We can perhaps control the little things, what sort of toothpaste we buy or what flavor of muffin we choose in the morning, but the big shit, the really big shit, is so beyond our ability to influence that to cede the point is almost incomprehensible. We expect to be able to mange our world; it’s our legacy as Americans for heaven's sake. It’s our birthright as New Yorkers. Despite my apparent laid back hippie persona (ahem), I actually have a bit of the control freak in me and the fact that this was something I couldn’t predict, manage or fix is making me a little crazy. The last time I felt this way was on 9/11 when I was running away from Tower 2. Remember my friends, life is not something we can put into little boxes and the Gods laugh at our plans.

Jack

Here's a recent photo of the best looking young fellow I know:

Perversion of Justice

If you had any doubt that prosecutors in this country have too much power and use it indiscriminately, you should check out this article in today’s Times. Briefly, a substitute teacher in Norwich Connecticut is facing 40, (yes 40) years in prison after she was convicted of inadvertently exposing her students to pornographic pop-ups when she couldn’t figure out how to turn off the classroom computer which was apparently infested with spyware. Is Connecticut truly such a backward place that a jury of 12 citizens is willing to send this teacher to prison for the rest of her natural life for being a Luddite? And what of the district attorney’s office who took this case to trial? They offered her a plea which carried no jail time, which she rightly refused. A clearer abuse of prosecutorial discretion is hard to find. Unfortunately her lawyer seemed not too bright either insofar as he failed to disclose his expert witness’s testimony prior to trial; an oversight which led to the judge suppressing most of his testimony. I sincerely hope that this poor woman’s appeal is successful. The violence emanating from Iraq every night, viewed on network television, is in my opinion far more damaging to “the children” than any porno pop-up.

Again, Anew

It is difficult for me to focus on the affairs of the world when the affairs of my personal life have been completely upended. Nevertheless, when I ask myself the eternal question, “What would Becky do?” the answer comes quickly. Fight on. Battling the power of the corrupt state was her raison d’etre, although at times we both were ready to toss in the towel and go live in the woods. Jack and I might get there yet, who knows. It is difficult to raise a child with values in a society that elevates the importance of money and power over people and community. The journey will be long and hard. Thankfully there are still good people who haven’t been swallowed up by our consumerist culture and burdened under the yoke of the corporate oligarchy. They are few in number but strong in spirit. Many of them have come to our aid in recent weeks and we appreciate everything they have done for us. I speak specifically of Becky’s colleagues at Legal Aid but in a larger sense the entire activist legal community in New York who’s outpouring of support, both financial and moral has made this time a little easier. Jack and I thank you all from the bottom of our hearts. So, onward.

Sadness

Many, if not most of you are aware that my beautiful wife made the crossing to a better place on January 29, 2007 due to the presence of a previously undiscovered malformed blood vessel in her brain stem which ruptured after she went into labor. There was no warning and her pregnancy was by all accounts completely normal. Our son, Jack Becket Rutkowski was born by c-section and is a healthy and vibrant fellow. My intense grief at losing my life-partner is tempered by the realization that I have this beautiful gift that Becky left me and he is truly the center of my life now. The following is the printed version of the eulogy delivered by Kristin Bremmer at her funeral mass. I personal tribute by me will follow when I think I can write it. Thank you all for your support during this trying time.

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I can’t possibly put into words the searing pain that I feel now. Becky was my best friend for the last 20 years and the loss that we all feel is a measure of the depth of the impact her life had on all of our lives. It is truly a tremendous honor that Becky’s family has asked me to speak here today.

Out of everyone we knew, Becky always had it together. She was the smartest, the prettiest and the kindest; but, she was also the most unassuming. She was the most beautiful person on the inside and the out. She was the quiet rock in the midst of a bunch of loud mouths. We would laugh that she was our front man because she made us all look better.

Becky was a true friend.

Her kind gentle soul was always there for us. She was there for the highest highs and the lowest lows. She took care of us. Becky understood friendship and we were fortunate that she was in our lives. To me – Becky was a true friend, a confidante, and a sister. With Becky as a friend, I never felt alone – she was a comfort, an ear to listen, and a soft voice of compassion. Becky’s friendship changed me – I learned to trust in my friends and I learned how deeply friends care.

Becky loved her family.

In my years with Becky, I learned of her deep love for her family despite long distances. Mr. and Mrs. Z. recently traveled to my hometown to investigate moving closer to Mark and Becky. The love they have for their daughter and the excitement of a new grandchild was evident. I selfishly hoped they would move to Pennsylvania so I could see Mark and Beck more frequently. Becky spoke often of her sibling’s expanding families – to her – family was an essential part of who she was. Her relationship with her sisters, Chris and Ann, and her brother, Adam, always seemed so much more -- they were her friends. And, she delighted in their children.

Becky was a great lawyer.

What characterized Becky were her principles. She put her beliefs into practice. She was an activist. She protested against those things that conflicted with her principles. During conversations with her she always directed you toward the most ethical view without being judgmental. Her gentle presence made her arguments all the more convincing because you knew they were coming from the right place.

Becky viewed her career as a public defender as a calling. She represented the poor, the troubled, those that society had thrown away. She was all about compassion, mercy, and justice. She believed that all people had dignity – that all people, no matter what they had done – had worth and deserved a voice, an advocate. She went into law, and, specifically, into criminal defense, to serve the poor, to serve the outcasts, to insure fairness and dignity and justice. She saw the good in all people and her gentle kindness, keen intelligence touch the lives of the hundreds of people she represented.

Becky was a great wife.

Mark and Becky have always been one word – one person. Their marriage was truly the merging of two people. They set the example of commitment. They made it through good times and bad and their love always came out on top. She viewed marriage as a union greater than herself. Everyone would agree that Mark is truly the luckiest man alive to have had Becky by his side.

In the last nine months Becky has literally been beaming with joy. I’ve never seen Becky happier than she was last Saturday. She was laughing with her friends, talking about her family, and discussing baby names. It was clear how much she loved her baby. I know she is smiling down upon Jack from Heaven. She is not to worry because he is the most loved child ever. Jack is truly a miracle and is blessed to have Becky for a mother because her beauty, intelligence and loving presence is passed down to him.

Mark, I know your loss is profound. You are not alone. Everyone here shares that loss with you. We love Becky and we love you. You are surrounded by a large circle of family and friends.