Later On

I have to lose 65 lbs.

The Younger Grandson weighs 65 lbs. He is quite large, it seems to me, and I can’t imagine how I’m in effect carrying him around with me everywhere.

This one is worth reading in its entirety. It begins:

On June 6, Kevin Poulsen and Kim Zetter of Wired reported that a 22-year-old U.S. Army Private in Iraq, Bradley Manning, had been detained after he "boasted" in an Internet chat — with convicted computer hacker Adrian Lamo — of leaking to WikiLeaks the now famous Apache Helicopter attack video, a yet-to-be-published video of a civilian-killing air attack in Afghanistan, and "hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records."  Lamo, who holds himself out as a "journalist" and told Manning he was one, acted instead as government informant, notifying federal authorities of what Manning allegedly told him, and then proceeded to question Manning for days as he met with federal agents, leading to Manning’s detention.

On June 10, former New York Times reporter Philip Shenon, writing in The Daily Beast, gave voice to anonymous "American officials" to announce that "Pentagon investigators" were trying "to determine the whereabouts of the Australian-born founder of the secretive website Wikileaks [Julian Assange] for fear that he may be about to publish a huge cache of classified State Department cables that, if made public, could do serious damage to national security."  Some news outlets used that report to declare that there was a "Pentagon manhunt" underway for Assange — as though he’s some sort of dangerous fugitive.

From the start, this whole story was quite strange for numerous reasons.  In an attempt to obtain greater clarity about what really happened here, I’ve spent the last week reviewing everything I could related to this case and speaking with several of the key participants (including Lamo, with whom I had a one-hour interview last night that can be heard on the recorder below, and Poulsen, with whom I had a lengthy email exchange, which is published in full here).  A definitive understanding of what really happened is virtually impossible to acquire, largely because almost everything that is known comes from a single, extremely untrustworthy source:  Lamo himself.  Compounding that is the fact that most of what came from Lamo has been filtered through a single journalist — Poulsen — who has a long and strange history with Lamo, who continues to possess but not disclose key evidence, and who has been only marginally transparent about what actually happened here (I say that as someone who admires Poulsen’s work as Editor of Wired‘s Threat Level blog). 

Reviewing everything that is known ultimately raises more questions than it answers.  Below is my perspective on what happened here.  But there is one fact to keep in mind at the outset.   In 2008, the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Center prepared a classified report (ironically leaked to and published by WikiLeaks) which — as the NYT put it — placed WikiLeaks on "the list of the enemies threatening the security of the United States."  That Report discussed ways to destroy WikiLeaks’ reputation and efficacy, and emphasized creating the impression that leaking to it is unsafe (click image to enlarge): …

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It’s a race: California is going for legalization this November, Colorado in 2012:

Angered by a pair of bills aiming at regulating the state’s burgeoning medical marijuana industry just signed into law by Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter (D), one group of medical marijuana advocates has announced plans to get a marijuana legalization initiative on the ballot in 2012. But there is already another legalization initiative filed with state officials and ready to go.

The competing efforts suggest a certain fractiousness in the state’s increasingly crowded and complex medical and recreational marijuana communities, but they also illustrate the growing momentum toward legalization on the ground in Colorado. Just last month, a Rasmussen poll showed marijuana legalization hovering on the cusp of majority support, with 49% of likely voters approving, 38% opposed, and 13% undecided. A 2006 legalization initiative got only 39% of the vote.

The initiative effort in the news this week is called Legalize 2012, and is being led by the Boulder-based education and advocacy group Cannabis Therapy Institute (CTI), which is deeply unhappy with the new regulations provoked by a massive boom in dispensaries in the past year or so. "The problem we have in Colorado is that the medical marijuana amendment didn’t set up a distribution system, and now, 10 years later, that flawed language is coming back to haunt us," said institute spokesperson Laura Kriho. "The only way to cure the problems patients are now having is across the board legalization for all adults. It will simplify things for law enforcement, patients, and people who aren’t patients."

Kriho had a litany of complaints about the recently approved medical marijuana regulation legislation…

Continue reading. Alcohol, BTW, is legal in Colorado, even with the number of deaths attributable to drinking alcohol, either directly (alcohol poisoning) or through drunk driving, barroom brawls, and the like. Marijuana, a notoriously peaceful drug that has never caused a death directly—never—is illegal. Weird state, huh?

We really need to reform our drug laws. Notice one incriminating thing found in his home: a (gasp!) digital scale. Anyone who’s ever tried seriously to lose weight has a digital scale, as well as most people seriously interested in cooking. I had no idea that this was an incriminating device. I have one (as does The Wife). I’m wondering whether I should be hiding that. From the Drug War Chronicles:

A 21-year-old father-to-be was killed last Friday night by a Las Vegas Police Department narcotics officer serving a search warrant for marijuana. Trevon Cole was shot once in the bathroom of his apartment after he made what police described as "a furtive movement."

Police have said Cole was not armed. Police said Monday they recovered an unspecified amount of marijuana and a set of digital scales. A person identifying herself as Cole’s fiance, Sequoia Pearce, in the comments section in the article linked to above said no drugs were found.

Pearce, who is nine months pregnant, shared the apartment with Cole and was present during the raid. "I was coming out, and they told me to get on the floor. I heard a gunshot and was trying to see what was happening and where they had shot him," Pearce told KTNV-TV.

According to police, they arrived at about 9:00pm Friday evening at the Mirabella Apartments on East Bonanza Road, and detectives knocked and announced their presence. Receiving no response, detectives knocked the door down and entered the apartment. They found Pearce hiding in a bedroom closet and took her into custody. They then tried to enter a bathroom where Cole was hiding. He made "a furtive movement" toward a detective, who fired a single shot, killing Cole.

"It was during the course of a warrant and as you all know, narcotics warrants are all high-risk warrants," Capt. Patrick Neville of Metro’s Robbery-Homicide Bureau said Friday night.

Actually, narcotics warrants are fairly low-risk for police, if the numbers are a guide. With 1.5 million drug arrests per year, an average of just four police officers per year lost their lives conducting them during the past decade. Last year, no police officers were killed during drug raids. [The police routinely lie, I assume that by now that's well known. Every statement they make requires fact-checking. – LG]

Read the rest of this entry »

It will not bring her back to life, but it’s the right thing to do. From StopTheDrugWar.org:

Atlanta Police Chief George Turner officially announced June 10 that he had fired two veteran police officers for the roles in the 2006 killing of 92-year-old Atlanta resident Kathryn Johnston during a botched drug raid. The firings came after a department internal affairs report on the incident and a Citizens’ Review Board report late last month that found Atlanta Police narcs were willing to break rules and lie in order to obtain search warrants.

That brings to 14 the number of Atlanta police officers disciplined in the wake of the killing, including five who pleaded guilty to federal charges after an FBI investigation, four of whom are still in prison. Another six officers have been disciplined, and one quit before facing departmental charges.

The two officers fired were Carey Bond and Holly Buchanan. Turner fired them for lying and falsifying incident reports and search warrant affidavits.

"We expect professionalism and integrity from all of our officers — at all times," Turner said. "Policing is a difficult job, no doubt, but we must be expected to comply with the very laws that we are sworn to uphold."

Johnston was killed in November 2006 when Atlanta narcs raided her home using a "no-knock" warrant based on a tip from a single informant that he bought drugs there. As officers attempted to break down her door, the elderly woman fired one shot from a pistol. Officers on the scene returned fire, shooting 39 times, and leaving Johnston dead. When the officers found no drugs, they planted marijuana on her and attempted to get another informant to lie for them. That informant instead went to the FBI, breaking the case wide open.

In addition to the prosecution, firing, or disciplining of officers involved, Turner said the internal investigation revealed a need for systemic changes in the department, including the way confidential informants are handled and how warrants are served. Now, Turner said, the department requires three buys from a location before issuing a warrant.

Kathryn Johnston died a victim of over-zealous drug war policing. But her death may not have been in vain if the changes in the Atlanta Police Department mean there will be fewer "no-knock" raids and tighter controls on narcs and their snitches.

An interesting finding, reported by Bruce Bower for Science News:

Here’s a harsh piano lesson: Years of tickling the ivories go only so far for those who want to sight-read sheet music fluently, a new study suggests. Aside from those painstaking hours of practice, a memory skill that pianists have little control over may orchestrate their performance.

Sight-reading is the ability to play sheet music on an instrument with little or no preparation. Any piano player who practices sight-reading for thousands of hours will get pretty good at it, say study coauthors Elizabeth Meinz of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and David Hambrick of Michigan State University in East Lansing. But having a strong ability to keep different pieces of relevant information in mind while performing a task — known as working memory capacity — aids sight-reading regardless of how much someone has practiced, the psychologists report in a paper published online June 9 in Psychological Science.

In the researchers’ investigation, the best sight readers combined strong working memories with tens of thousands of hours of piano practice over several decades.

Working memory appears to be a capacity that gels early in life and can’t be improved much by learning, the study suggests. High scores on working memory tests did not cluster among volunteers who had practiced piano playing and sight-reading the most.

Previous research indicates that working memory capacity varies from one person to another and changes little from childhood to adulthood, the scientists say. 

“Deliberate practice, although necessary for acquiring expertise, will not always be sufficient to overcome limitations due to a person’s basic cognitive abilities,” Meinz says.

When sight-reading, a piano player’s …

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Pat Garofalo in ThinkProgress:

Today, in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court invalidated more than 500 cases decided by the National Labor Relations Board. For more than two years, the five person board only had two sitting members, due to Congressional obstruction of its nominees, and the Court decided that the two-person board did not have legal authority to issue rulings.

The Board, which is responsible for overseeing labor-management relations under the National Labor Relations Act, realized in late 2007 that it was not going to have a full complement of members for the upcoming year, so delegated its authority to three members, of which two constitute a quorum. Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens said this procedural move doesn’t grant a two-person board the ability to do anything:

If Congress wishes to allow the Board to decide cases with only two members, it can easily do so. But until it does, Congress’ decision to require that the Board’s full power be delegated to no fewer than three members,and to provide for a Board quorum of three, must be given practical effect rather than swept aside in the face of admittedly difficult circumstances. Section 3(b), as it currently exists, does not authorize the Board to create a tail that would not only wag the dog, but would continue to wag after the dog died.

In dissent, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that “the Court’s revisions leave the Board defunct for extended periods of time, a result that Congress surely did not intend.”

Legal questions aside, this whole episode clearly illustrates the problem with Congressional obstructionism. Now, thanks to the unwillingness of Congress to consider and vote on nominations, giving the board its full complement of members, literally years of decisions may have to be relitigated. As Kimberly Freeman Brown, Executive Director of American Rights at Work, said, “hundreds of decisions in cases already decided by the NLRB will have to be re-opened, needlessly delaying finality for workers who were led to believe they already had it.”

And this isn’t solely a Republican or Democratic problem. Both parties are duly guilty of blocking NLRB nominations, under Presidents Bush and Obama. But Republicans in the 111th Congress have taken obstruction to a new level. Earlier this month, the Las Vegas Sun blasted the GOP for blocking 120 of Obama’s nominees:

[T]here are crucial vacancies in the Homeland Security, Defense and Justice departments, the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, among others, because of the holds. As well, there are five ambassadors and 29 judges who have yet to be confirmed…The Republican holds and filibusters are doing more than hindering the Senate’s work. When the president can’t fill jobs, it blocks the administration from governing. That may score points for Republicans with their base, but it harms the country.

The Supreme Court’s decision shows that Obama was absolutely right to give two NLRB nominees recess appointments, rendering the Board functional once again. Remember, it was Chief Justice John Roberts who advocated that the administration get around Congressional inaction by using the recess appointment power.

John Nance Gardner famously said that the Vice-Presidency wasn’t worth a bucket of warm piss. He might as well have been talking about the Senate, whose sole function seems to be to screw up legislation and fail to do their job on confirmations.

Shashank Bengali for McClatchy:

Despite President Barack Obama’s promises of better safeguards for offshore drilling, federal regulators continue to approve plans for oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico with minimal or no environmental analysis.

The Department of Interior’s Minerals Management Service has signed off on at least five new offshore drilling projects since June 2, when the agency’s acting director announced tougher safety regulations for drilling in the Gulf, a McClatchy review of public records has discovered.

Three of the projects were approved with waivers exempting them from detailed studies of their environmental impact — the same waiver the MMS granted to BP for the ill-fated well that’s been fouling the Gulf with crude for two months.

In a May 14 speech in the Rose Garden, Obama said he was "closing the loophole that has allowed some oil companies to bypass some critical environmental reviews."

Environmental groups, however, say the loophole is as wide as ever and that the administration is allowing oil companies to proceed with drilling plans that may be just as flawed as BP’s, which concluded that a major spill was "unlikely" and that the company was equipped to manage even the worst-case blowout.

"It’s just outrageous," said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation organization. "The whole world is screaming and . . . they’re just continuing to move this stuff through the system." …

Continue reading.

Hmm. Obama broke a promise. Why am I unsurprised?

I met with my trainer this morning. This time, as I said earlier, I did have a specific direction and goal to tell her: the long-term goal is to do 10 reps each side of the Turkish get-up with a 1-pood kettlebell.

My trainer was thrilled. Clearly she likes kettlebells, and she immediately started me on appropriate stretching and strengthening exercises, and also gave me a few kettlebell exercises:

a. The halo (moving the kettlebell around your head), only she explained it much more clearly than I grasped from book and video: there are 4 distinct positions (front beneath chin, at one ear, in back (elbows close in and vertical), other ear), though as you practice you move more and more smoothly along the path that includes those positions. Form very important for when a heavier kettlebell is used. You move your shoulders in this, not just your arms. It’s a flexibility exercise as well as strength.

b. Passing the kettle bell around your body (from hand to hand), keeping your body straight.

c. In a lunge position, do a row with the kettlebell. (Do each side, of course.)

d. Kettlebell deadlift, which is also practicing the squat.

e. The first part of the Turkish get-up—just rolling up onto elbow—without weights.

f. Press, using a light weight (i.e., from rack position, push kettlebell up until your arms locked straight, but don’t raise your shoulder). I couldn’t lock my arm straight: too stiff.

I can really see that kettlebells are going to require and result in much greater flexibility than I now have—more strength as well, of course, but the amount of flexibility required surprises me.

I am to continue doing stretches every day, walking every other day, and the kettlebells MWF (or TTS), but skip a session if I’m feeling sore—or at least skip the exercises that would focus on the sore parts.

She’s quite pleased and excited that I’m going with kettlebells as the focus, and she wants to get a photo of me in my gym shorts (no shirt) quickly. I’ve already lost 6 lbs, and she could see the difference. The before and after photo should be impressive, provided I reach goal.

I’m to go away for a couple of weeks, work steadily on this stuff, and then call her for another session to check progress, evaluate technique and correct as needed, and get new exercises.

My 1-pood kettlebell should be here next week, I hope.

The tub of Lenthéric shaving soap is of unknown age, but I would guess pre-WWII. With the men-ü synthetic bristle shaving brush it immediately produced a creamy lather with a wonderful fragrance—much stronger than the Paislay fragrance. Indeed, it was so good, and the lather so nice, that I think I need to be using this soap much more often.

The Gillette Executive with a previously used Gillette 7 O’Clock SharpEdge blade, did a very nice three-pass shave, close to perfection. A splash of the wonderful New York aftershave, and I dressed (more or less) and left for my session with my trainer.

Now, back to shaving with creams for now.

I like a boiled egg that is still liquid at the center of the yolk. That is, I’m perfectly certain I will like them that way. I’m getting there: 10′ eggs are standard, following the recipe of putting eggs, a tiny hole pierced in the large end, into a pan of water and that over high heat until a boil begins, then reduce heat (but keep a gentle boil—don’t let the eggs cool the water to the extent boiling stops) and start timing. When time is up, drain, cover with cold water, drain again, cold water again, and fill the water with ice cubes. The eggs must be chilled immediately.

So I tried 9′ eggs: better; 8′ eggs: better yet; 7′ eggs: within striking distance. So next time I’ll go for 6  minutes.

This is at sea level and the eggs are extra-large and go into the water directly from the refrigerator.

I had to think about it for a while, but I think I have it nailed:

What does it mean that polls regularly show that most people think you are a nutcase?

This is very nice indeed: I just received in the mail a copy of Barry Eisler’s new thriller Inside Out from Barry Eisler himself. I’m chuffed. Eisler is one of the authors whom I discovered by chance at his very first novel and have never missed a novel since. (Lee Child is another, but Eisler’s story arc is more complex and deeper.) This one opens with a character clearly based on David Addington, in the novel named “Joshua Plussington”—just joking—meeting in Arlington cemetery with top CIA operations officials to discuss what to do about the discovery that 92 interrogation tapes (“We think 92. We’re still checking the inventory.”) have gone missing. Obviously, the rest of the afternoon is now taken. Sorry.

UPDATE: From a couple of chapters in: My God! this is good. I thought I knew the direction it was going, but it went a totally other (and infinitely better) direction, and one starts to think, “Jesus, I wonder whether this really . . .” I had to take a little break and let some of it swirl around in my mind and settle down a bit. Fast moving, too.  – and I’m not a shill, here, saying this for the sake of the freebie. Just wanted to make that clear. In fact, a few pages in my spirits sank as I thought, “Oh, I know where this is going,” and didn’t like the direction, but then it jerked around and totally surprised me—roughly the same order of surprise I got in From Dusk till Dawn, when I started watching it without a clue as to what it was about—I rented it solely on the basis of cast and hadn’t even heard of it. (I don’t hear of quite a few things—though of course I’ve heard that Levi and Bristol may be getting back together even if Dragon Lady doesn’t approve.)

UPDATE 2: The Wife reminds me that we saw From Dusk till Dawn in the theater. It had just come out, we knew nothing of it other than the cast and that it was directed by Robert Rodriguez and that the cast included George Clooney, Harvey Keitel, Juliet Lewis, and Quentin Tarrantino. Sounds plenty good, so there we were, being surprised.

Benen:

We talked earlier about the lengths Republicans are going to side with BP, despite the oil giant’s role in the worst environmental disaster in American history. I argued that the GOP is approaching the point at which Dems will reasonably be able to argue that Republicans are siding with BP over the country.

A few hours later, Republicans not only reached that point, they blew past it.

A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee convened a hearing this morning, ostensibly to read BP CEO Tony Hayward the riot act. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), who has a well-deserved reputation for being the most pro-pollution member of Congress, used his opening statement to apologize to BP. As Barton explained it, he was outraged that the White House pressed BP to put aside $20 billion in escrow to bring relief to those hardest hit by the disaster.

"I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday," Barton said. "I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown, in this case a $20 billion shakedown." Talking directly to Hayward, Barton added, "I apologize. I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong, is subject to some sort of political pressure that is, again, in my words, amounts to a shakedown. So I apologize."

Democrats have been desperate to paint Republicans as siding with BP during this crisis. Barton just made that task much easier, with remarks that may prove to be the most politically important apology in recent memory.

Incessant Republican criticism of the White House is one thing; a leading Republican lawmaker issuing a public apology to BP is another.

I just never thought I’d see the day when a leading Republican publicly groveled to a foreign CEO, who just happens to be leading a company responsible for a devastating oil spill disaster. It was just a stunning display. That the right-wing Texan has taken in over $1.4 million in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry over his career makes his apology that much more unseemly.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs felt compelled to issue a statement: "What is shameful is that Joe Barton seems to have more concern for big corporations that caused this disaster than the fishermen, small business owners and communities whose lives have been devastated by the destruction. Congressman Barton may think that a fund to compensate these Americans is a ‘tragedy’, but most Americans know that the real tragedy is what the men and women of the Gulf Coast are going through right now. Members from both parties should repudiate his comments."

We’ll see if Barton is forced to walk back his apology, but at this point, his remarks may be one of the year’s game-changing moments.

This is the sort of thing that has turned me off on politics. There’s so much of teh crazy: for example, Orrin Hatch (R-UT) is calling a measure unconstitutional—when he himself was a co-sponsor of the measure. Shame is gone, honesty is gone, democracy is going…

And besides Barton, look at the other GOP stalwarts:

GOP officials: Barton’s apology will likely be the most memorable moment of the dispute, but let’s not forget that Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) slammed the escrow fund to help victims of the spill as "a redistribution-of-wealth fund" that could serve as a "gateway" for "more money to government." Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) blasted the White House for securing the funds for Gulf Coast businesses and families, condemning the success as a "Chicago-style political shakedown." Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) disapproves of the escrow fund, and has said he’s worried it will undermine BP profits too much. At one point, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) went so far as to suggest American taxpayers should help pay for the relief effort, though he later backpedaled.

GOP candidates: In Nevada, Senate candidate Sharron Angle has said the appropriate response to the disaster is further deregulation of the oil industry. In Kentucky, Senate candidate Rand Paul said it’s "un-American" for the president to criticize BP.

GOP allies: A variety of Republican media personalities — Limbaugh, Hannity, and Oliver North — all read from identical talking points, calling the independently-operated escrow account "a slush fund." Dick Armey has blasted the fund, as has the Heritage Foundation.

What on earth is going on here?

I suspect there are two factors playing out.

The first is that Republicans probably feel like they don’t have a choice, at least in a partisan sense. President Obama and Dems are going after BP — demanding the $20 billion, lifting the liability cap, proposing tax hikes and new safeguards — which means Republicans are necessarily inclined to move in the other direction. After all, whatever Democrats are for, Republicans are against, regardless or merit or circumstances.

As Kevin Drum noted, "Keep up the BP-bashing a little bit longer and eventually, just out of reflex, Fox News and the Republican Party will be calling for Obama to make payments to them."

The second is that BP is a giant, private oil company, and when it’s under fire, the Republicans’ knee-jerk response is to launch a defense. Even if BP is to blame — even if BP is criminally responsible — Republicans want to blame government, bureaucrats, and environmentalists. Holding a giant corporation accountable just makes the GOP uncomfortable.

In an election context, this has the potential to be incredibly toxic. Barton’s public apology to BP will be part of about a zillion campaign ads over the next several months, and Republicans have made a huge strategic error positioning themselves as the Party of BP.

A wonderful column in the WSJ by Tunku Varadarajan:

When a friend of mine — let’s call him Manhattan Man — told me that he was going to Yankee Stadium for a game, I couldn’t help but think that an outing such as his would drive some English friends of mine to suicide.

This is not a comment on baseball, which is not a bad game, really. It is an observation on the way two societies — America and England — watch their respective national sports. All Manhattan Man had to look forward to was a prolonged exposure to Bud Light and soggy wieners. I, on the other hand, just back from London, where I’d spent two days at Lord’s cricket ground — which is not merely cricket’s Mecca, but also its Vatican, Jerusalem and Benares rolled into one hallowed stretch of turf — had watched sport in such delicious circumstances as to make Manhattan Man swoon with envy.

Here, for the record, is what happened at Lord’s.

My host at the Test match — cricket’s name for the five-day games that are the acme of international competition — was an Old Etonian, my son’s godfather, whose way of making up for his scandalous neglect of his godchild is to invite me every year to Lord’s. We were to watch England play South Africa for the Basil d’Oliveira Trophy. This is named, archly, after an accomplished Cape Coloured cricketer of the 1960s, who, because of apartheid, was never picked for South Africa.

So much for digressive history. The thing to understand about a day at Lord’s is that it is as much about the cricket as it is about the sybaritic senses. No one would go to watch a Test match there without calculating in advance precisely what to eat and drink. Old Etonian (OE), a sublime host, had undertaken to fulfill the role of victualer. And here, I must digress again, to note that nowhere is England’s class structure more visible than in the rules governing spectators at sporting events.

Contrast cricket with soccer. No one can bring into soccer stadiums, or purchase there, a drop of alcohol. The soccer-watching classes are not trusted to handle the stuff in a civilized way. Cricket grounds — visited by a more genteel demographic — have few such restrictions. At Lord’s, for example, although spectators are permitted to bring in only one bottle of wine per head, there are bars dotted conveniently around the ground, and tents that sell wine and champagne. (In any case, the rules aren’t strictly enforced: OE brought in three bottles, saying one was for his wife, the other for his "friend already inside," and was waved through by the steward.)

On day one — with each day’s play lasting from 11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. — we started at about 11:15 with a snack of stuffed Greek vine leaves. Shortly before noon, when we were joined by his wife, OE uncorked a chilled bottle of Pouilly-Fumé, which we sipped with smoked trout sandwiches.

At lunch, at about 1:15, we had kipper pâté and chicory sandwiches along with a sadistic-sounding but actually rather delicious and very Etonian creation: soft rolls stuffed with salami, chopped radish and English mustard. These we ate with a lovely, firm Pauillac.

With a pause between the lunch and tea breaks, we allowed ourselves time for gastric recovery. At tea, we turned our attention to scones, clotted cream and strawberry jam, and I discovered that there are two ways of eating these luscious bombs of cholesterol: jam-then-cream (in which you spread jam on the scone first), and cream-then-jam (inverting the order, in order to attain a fruitier finish on the palate). We debated which was better over cold pints of beer, and jam-then-cream won, in our small party, by two votes to one.

On day two, …

Continue reading.

I think probably. They must recruit people especially for their imperviousness to reason and insight. They have to because the job is a total, dead-end failure: for two generations, the US has pour billions of dollars into the War on Drugs and put millions of its citizens into prison. Result: drugs are more available than ever, while governments in Central and South America are brought to their knees by the enormous profits available from selling illegal drugs. The entire WoD is a farce and failure—and an expensive one to boot.

One of the most boneheaded actions by the DEA, an organization to fight illegal drugs, is its prohibition of hemp as a crop. Note:

1. Hemp is not a drug.

2. Hemp is not illegal. (It is regularly imported into the US, where it is used for food, building materials, textiles, and rope. Indeed, during WWII the US required farmers to grow hemp: note the educational film Hemp for Victory below—performance starting whenever you want.)

3. Farmers want to grow hemp because it grows well in marginal land, is profitable, and easy to harvest. They apply to the DEA and get refused. No reason offered.

Here’s an editorial from the Portland OR Willamette Week:

Rick Rutherford is struggling to make ends meet.

The 43-year-old lives in Northeast Portland but makes most of his income—up to $10,000 in a good year—from his share of farming wheat on 150 acres his family owns near The Dalles.

“You get by,” says Rutherford, who has a coonhound named Rooster and a shepherd-Doberman mix named Ava, but no kids.

He’s convinced he could work his way out of this recession if it weren’t for the federal government. Specifically, the Drug Enforcement Administration.

How come? Rutherford wants to raise hemp, a plant with a PR problem.

Rutherford and other Oregon farmers are blocked by one enduring, illogical and infuriating complication: The plant’s unshakable connection with marijuana, a cousin in the cannabis family that—unlike hemp—contains enough THC to get you high.

Hemp has no effect as a drug. But it does have exceptional properties as a food, fuel, building material and textile. It’s also ultra-sustainable, growing quickly in almost any climate, with little water and no pesticides.

The state of Oregon wants to let Rutherford grow it. So do Montana, Kentucky, Texas and 13 other states. Even Kevin Mannix, the law-and-order ballot-measure behemoth behind Oregon’s Measure 11, says the feds should reconsider.

“I’ve seen enough to know there are serious questions to be answered,” Mannix says.

Oregon faces a $577 million budget hole. We’ve already given away $1.3 billion in tax credits trying to save our economy with conservation and renewable-energy projects.

Advocates say the simple act of letting Oregon farmers grow hemp could eventually bring millions of dollars into the state. Canadian farmers made more than $8 million on hemp last year, according to the Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance. Advocates in Oregon say once a homegrown U.S. hemp industry gets started, the potential profits here are far greater.

But the DEA refuses, making this the only industrialized nation in the world where farmers can’t grow hemp.

“It’s frustrating because we have the capability to do it,” Rutherford says. “We could start growing it tomorrow, and we could harvest it in six months, and we would have instant jobs.” …

Continue reading.

Of course we cannot expect Obama to do anything about this. But we can damn sure write our Representative and US Senators and ask them to force the DEA to stop trying to regular plain old crops and stick to its knitting—and question the reasons for its existence.

Via Open Culture:

The entire post by the Wednesday Chef is worth reading, and here’s the payoff:

Potato Salad with Yogurt and Horseradish
Serves 4

1 kilo (2.2 pounds) new potatoes
300 grams (10 ounces, plus more to taste) plain yogurt
3 to 4 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon, or more, of prepared ground horseradish
4 scallions, thinly sliced (white and pale green parts)
Coarse sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
A small box of garden cress

1. Wash the potatoes, but don’t peel them. Put them in a pan with salted water to cover, cover, bring to a boil and simmer for 25 to 30 minutes, until tender. Drain well, transfer to a large serving bowl and, while they are still hot, crush them roughly with a fork.

2. In a small bowl, mix the yogurt, olive oil, horseradish, scallions, salt and pepper to taste. Pour this dressing over the hot potatoes and mix well. Adjust the seasoning, adding more horseradish or more salt. You want the dressing to be assertive – the potatoes will mellow it out. Just before serving, snip in the garden cress and mix once more.

It’s worth noting that she did not include the crushed garlic that the original recipe called for. I would put it back—not a lot, but a single big clove of crushed garlic would, I think, enliven the dish.

Read this story about the circumstances. It seems clear that she did murder her brother:

… Authorities had originally ruled that the shooting of Amy Bishop’s brother was an accident, but they reopened the case after Bishop was charged in February with gunning down six of her colleagues at the University of Alabama-Huntsville, killing three.

Bishop, 45, is charged with first-degree murder in the death of her 18-year-old brother, Seth, Norfolk District Attorney William Keating said.

Keating said he did not understand why charges were never brought against Bishop.

"I can’t give you any explanations, I can’t give you excuses, because there are none," he said. "Jobs weren’t done, responsibilities weren’t met and justice wasn’t served."

Bishop had told police who investigated her brother’s death that she accidentally shot him while trying to unload her father’s 12-gauge shotgun in the family’s Braintree home. Her mother, Judith, the only witness to the shooting, confirmed her daughter’s account to police.

But after Bishop was charged in the Alabama shootings, authorities began reinvestigating Seth Bishop’s death.

U.S. Rep. William Delahunt, who was then the Norfolk County district attorney, said that Braintree police never told anyone in his office that after Bishop shot her brother, she tried to commandeer a getaway car at gunpoint at a local car dealership, then refused to drop her gun until officers ordered her to do so repeatedly. Those events were described in Braintree police reports but not in a report written by a state police detective assigned to the district attorney’s office…

More incriminating details at the link.

My question: Are they going to the pull all the old cases that particular state police detective (who unfortunately is not named in the story) closed without charges filed to see how many more s/he covered up?

For me, it’s a no-brainer: given a choice of the electric chair, the gas chamber, lethal injection, hanging, and a firing squad, I’d go with a firing squad in a heartbeat. The other options offer too much pain. And the gas chamber: imagine trying desperately not to take a breath, then…  With the firing squad, it’s quickly over, and based on the testimony of those who have suffered gunshot wounds, initially there is no pain: the impact seems to stop any sense of pain, which comes later. Though, of course, in an execution, there is no later.

I was reminded of this by a story in Salon.