Moment, Linger On

Teeth

The Washington DC area is the current front-runner to be the new home for the Montreal Expos. There are two competing proposals for where the team should play: one group wants to build a stadium in DC proper and the other wants one in Northern Virgina, out in Loudoun county beyond Dulles.

On Friday the head of the DC city council finance committee, Jack Evans, showed his teeth by threatening to pass legislation barring a Northern Virginia team from playing in RFK stadium while the Loudoun stadium was built. This is no mean threat, since a new stadium in either location couldn't be built until 2007 or (probably) 2008 at the earliest so the Expos will be playing in RFK for two or three years regardless.

I say good on him. If I am going to have to drive 40 or so miles to see a baseball game I may as well go to Camden Yards. I'd much rather be able to walk to the metro and take public transportation to the game.

Why try to justify?

To a person, journalists (and psuedo-journalists like bloggers), including people I respect like Josh Marshall and Amy Sullivan, have consistently defended Robert Novak's right not to divulge his sources in the Valerie Plame outing.

This event, in case you have had your head under a rock for the past year, was where someone in the Bush administration, in retaliation for her husband embarrassing them by exposing them as liars during the rush to war with Iraq, leaked her identity as a covert CIA operative to Robert Novak. Divulging classified information is a felony and Novak, in concealing their identity, is aiding and abetting this felony.

There is a good reason why journalists should be allowed to protect their sources, in that it allows people to expose government or corporate wrongdoing and not suffer from retaliation. But this is entirely the opposite. Here the concealing of the sources allows government wrongdoing to occur, not be exposed. To be allowed to conceal such sources is an abuse of the intent of the first amendment.

If such things are allowed to occur there might come a time when we decided that a free press wasn't worth protecting at all. I doubt that Marshall and Sullivan and the rest would like to see that come to pass.

This is why I'm a Democrat

Click through to hear Ben Barnes apologize for helping George Bush and other undeserving wealthy constituents evade their obligation to serve in Vietnam.

I'm a Democrat because we are the party of common decency.

Not missing it at all

This fall will be the third straight year that the academic year has started without me. I thought I would miss academia terribly when I left, but the fact is that I don't miss it at all. In fact, I feel like someone who escaped from East Germany in the 1980s, looking back at that big wall I climbed over and wondering how I ever was satisfied on the other side and thinking about my family and friends who are still trapped there and don't know that there is a better life on the other side.

None of the things that I once worried about (missing the teaching, not having enough intellectual stimulation, not being able to find compatible people to interact with) came about. If I had known it was going to be this easy I would have left long before I did but one should never underestimate the power of fear and intertia.

What movie was that?

On Sunday evening a three year old boy choked to death on popcorn while watching a movie. I can't express in words that I am capable of writing what a sad thing this is. A parent outliving their child has to be the worst thing that one can experience.

And yet I was not sufficently cowed by the horror of it all not to wonder what movie his family was watching at the time. Rereading the story, it was "Alien vs. Predator."

Alien vs. Predator? Were those parents completely insane? What kind of person takes their three year old kid to a showing (evening showing, no less) of AvP? I saw the original "Alien" when I was 10 and still think it was an inappropriately terrifying film for me to be allowed to watch at that advanced age. But three years old? The mind reels.

Can they stop complaining now?

Yesterday the California Supreme court voided 4000 gay marriages performed in San Francisco earlier this year. I'm a supporter of marriage equality (as I've said before here), but this is still good.

Good because this is how the courts are supposed to work. They are supposed to review federal, state, and (in this case) local statutes and rule on their constitutionality and legality. That's what courts do.
If this had gone the other way you would have conservatives howling about "legislating from the bench," but that's not what ever happens. Sometimes judicial review goes your way and sometimes it doesn't and sometimes the courts are correct in their rullings and sometimes they aren't, but judicial review in itself isn't the same as "making up new laws" and it is pure ignorance to say that it is.

Stick with what you know

Laura Bush on stem cell research:

I know that embryonic stem cell research is very preliminary right now and the implication that cures for Alzheimer's are around the corner is just not right.

Yes, Laura, we all realize that. That's why it is so important to fund basic research. The kind that sets the stage for the research that yields these miraculous cures and, also, the type of research that is most helped by government funding.

I'd advise her to stick to topics she knows something about in the future. I'd suggest "how to raise crass spoiled children" or "soothing the damaged ego of a simple-minded spouse."

I see that the incomparable Tbogg agrees.

What country are they from?

Shorter Mark Steyn: Nobody wants to hear about John Kerry's Vietnam war experience. That's old news. And why would anyone want to vote for him otherwise?

Sure Mark. You're welcome to your opinion on this. And of course you will be voting for the other guy. What? You won't? Oh, that's right, you aren't eligible to vote for anybody because you're Canadian. Sure, Mark, you have a right to an opinion just like every other carbon based life form in the universe, but when it comes to political commentary I'd just as soon listen to someone who has the same interests that I do.

What is it with the right, anyway? Do they love outsourcing so much that they farm out their opinion and policy writing to other countries as well? Mark Steyn, David Frum, Andrew Sullivan, John Derbyshire, and so on. The next time you hear one of those people blathering on, remember that they don't have the same obligations or interests as you do.

And yes, I realize that Derbyshire has US citizenship and that Sullivan might as well. But I seriously doubt that they surrendered their UK passports (as they were required to do since the US doesn't allow dual citizenship for adults) when they took the oath. I'd bet a lot on that one.

She's back

Laura's moved in, sort of, and she has a new home on the web as well. Welcome back, Laura.

Given that I live here...

You're Maryland!
You enjoy contemplating your navel so much that you want to build a whole school devoted to said purpose. You like Chevy Chase a ton as well, maybe even more than Cal Ripken since he started doing those Century 21 commercials. Mostly, though, you want to kick back, watch the ballgame, and eat crabcakes. Brick is by far your favorite building material. You might even call yourself a brick house.
Take the State Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

I suppose it is good that I live where I am. While I like where I live well enough, I couldn't help wishing that I had been Oregon or Maine instead.

(I also wish that the quiz people had formatted their HTML code so that the image fit on my page. Try again, guys...)