Tough choices

So Senator Larry Craig is apparently going to make an announcement soon about whether he intends to resign from the Senate, retire but serve out his term, or run for re-election.

That's not the tough choice I'm thinking of. The Republican National Committee supposedly discussed whether or not to officially urge Craig to step down, but decided against doing so. This would be fairly unprecedented; other Senators may call for it (some have), but for the party apparatus to do so is pretty significant. Why did they decide against? Tough to say. Reports speculate that Craig has already hinted he'll step down--and also that if the RNC went forward the move "could backfire." Because back home in Idaho the folks wouldn't take kindly to their Senator being told what to do by a bunch of party hacks in Washington.
Perhaps. Or perhaps there's more to think about after the jump.


Perhaps Idaho Governor Butch Otter (really) is hoping Craig will decide to serve out his term. It's no secret Otter has considered running for Craig's seat himself, and the betting money has been on Craig retiring for some time now, since long before the scandal broke (since before the incident in question even occurred). If Craig serves out the last year of his term, Otter runs for an open seat and, more than likely, no serious candidate in Idaho challenges him. Certainly there's no chance of the seat going to the Democrats.

On the other hand, if Craig resigns, Otter has to name a replacement, who will serve until an election can be held; in this case, the interim Senator would almost certainly serve until the November 2008 election, which would follow historical precedent. So, if Craig resigns, and Otter wants the seat, who does he name?

Governors have appointed themselves to the Senate in the past, usually by striking a deal with the Lt. Governor, then resigning and having the Lite Guv appoint them. This usually ends badly; historically most Governors who get themselves appointed to the Senate lose the next election (a suspiciously large number of them die before facing voters, too).

The next option is for Otter to appoint a "caretaker," someone who by agreement accepts the appointment on the understanding that he or she will not contest the next election. Dean Barkley, appointed by good ol' Jesse Ventura some years ago, was one of these. If he does this, of course, the voters will see right through him and know he selected someone for the seat not because of competence but because of a back room agreement. These sorts of things also tend to backfire.

Finally, Otter can appoint someone to the seat who will run for the next term in 2008, and either A) give up his plan of running for the Senate and accept that his role in life is to be governor for a while and then retire, B)appoint somebody he suspects is weak and then run against him, or C) hope the other Senate seat comes open in 2010 (not likely).

The Craig issue is played out. I want to see what Butch Otter is going to do. That's the real human-interest story here.

Where's the high?

I responded to my discharge paperwork today. I don't plan to fight the discharge, although there were some issues that arose today while I was researching the matter that made me briefly consider it. I'll describe it all later. So... Tuesday I'll turn in my resignation. That'll get transmitted to someone high up the chain o' command, who'll approve it (presumably), and then it'll come back down to Earth and somebody at the personnel side of things will punch the necessary buttons and a few days later I'll be a free man.

Why does it feel like I'm being let out of prison? Where's the high? Where's the joy? If anything I feel even more depressed about upcoming season than I did when I thought I'd be stuck in the service. What's wrong? I don't get it. I feel like I'm being shoved unceremoniously out the door with one boot firmly planted on my behind. I'm getting no help, no transition support, no severance package, no assistance of any kind from an employer for whom I did everything they asked for six years. But they decided I wasn't right for them, and fine, I want out too... but I just feel like... I don't know. I'm getting absolutely no appreciation for what I did do. It's like they're telling me my service isn't worth the same as other people's. I don't deserve a hand on the way out the door because... why, exactly? I still don't understand the rationale. And yet people who've served less time than I have are taking huge separation packages to leave and they're still qualified pilots... and once I go, they'll realize their calculations were in error and now they'll be a short a pilot or two in my year group. Because they were too stupid to figure that out earlier.

Huh. I was prepared to walk away head held high, victorious. Instead I feel like I've been shamed.

It makes me hate them all the more.

"I Am Not Gay. I Never Have Been Gay."

That, folks, is a direct quote from United States Senator Larry Craig (R-ID). He gave a press conference yesterday after news broke that he'd been arrested in June for lewd conduct in a men's airport bathroom. During the news conference Craig's wife stood by his side but never said a word. She could have been a Tussaud during parts of the conference she was so still.

Although we all like to say politicians are stupid, for the most part they aren't. But they are deeply self-interested and yearn for power, and when they face the prospect of losing that power because of something stupid they did--and even the best of us do stupid things--that's when they really pull out the stupid gun and fire randomly into the crowd. What, exactly, was the other option Craig was mulling saying at the press conference? "I am not gay. I was gay, once. It was a Thursday, I think. But I got over it by the afternoon." Give me a break. More after the jump.

Of course the arrest was basically for soliciting another man. Craig pleaded guilty, back in June, but now says that was a mistake and wished he'd plead not guilty; he says he only plead guilty because he thought that would make it go away. Okay, there's stupid point number two. Did he actually think pleading guilty to a lesser charge of lewd conduct would somehow make the charge "go away?" Really? So then he is an idiot.

Note please that Craig denies being gay, as if that is wrong, but makes an excuse for his restroom behavior, as if soliciting a blow job in the Minneapolis airport bathroom is okay. The only apology he made is that he regretted pleading guilty... "because I am not gay." So... wait. He regrets pleading guilty because he's not gay. If, on the other hand, he were gay, he would not regret pleading guilty because... uh... gay people are automatically guilty? This guy is so far out in left field he's eating the fans' hot dogs. Yes, that's what I said. To quote Wonkette's liveblog of the Larry Craig press conference (it's on YouTube, it's a thing of beauty), Craig believes "His mistake was actually taking responsibility, however briefly, for his loathsome bathroom behavior." Oh, and he also blames the entire thing on a newspaper in Boise.

Craig wants to stay in the Senate. There are "still goals [he wants] to accomplish" in the Senate... presumably not involving Senate pages, but who knows. He hopes the people of Idaho will allow him to continue to serve. But, it looks like it's already a little late for that. 55% of Idaho voters in a SurveyUSA poll said Craig should resign. Oops! Sorry.

Sadly, the real problem here is that Craig did very little that any of us would even recognize as wrong. Here's the arrest report. I'll defer to the cop who's been on this detail before and so presumably knows "the signals" people give when they want to get down and dirty in the stalls. But as I read this... well, Craig is certainly engaging in some weird behavior, but nothing I as a private citizen would have understood or cared about. So what we're really getting at here is that Craig, a noted "family values" guy who is anti-gay-marriage and anti-gay-adoption and just about everything else anti-gay there is to be, went and apparently solicited another man for sex of some sort. It would have been private and consensual and, though probably in the restroom, most of us everyday travelers probably wouldn't have been aware it was going on. Should people be arrested or prosecuted for that? No. It's Western Judeo-Christian sexual Puritanism at its worst. But Larry Craig is one of those people who helped create a climate and the legal framework to declare the very thing he was doing illegal. So it's only right he should be taken down by it--hoist on his own petard, as they say, though no one knows what a petard is anymore (a siege weapon used for destroying castle gates; the phrase was coined in Hamlet).

One last thing before I go. You must go see this fun short clip on YouTube of our hero Larry Craig discussing the impeachment scandal back in 1999. In text what he says is bad enough: "It's a, 'Bad boy, Bill Clinton. You're a naughty boy.' The American people already know that Bill Clinton is a bad boy, a naughty boy." But you have to go see this, check out the little wry smile of longing that starts to creep in the second time he says Bill Clinton is a Bad Boy. Oh the yearning... oh the closeted homophobic homosexual...

Okay, one more last thing. The quote about not being gay is being misreported everywhere as "I have never been gay." In fact he says "I never have been gay." Maybe it's code. Maybe he has arthritis but nothing to treat it with, and he was really saying "I never have Ben Gay." It wasn't a confession, it was a complaint. Somebody in the audience--maybe that guy who asks "What if you were gay" in the last seconds of the clip--should have given him some Aspercreme or something. Thus what he's really saying is that his hands hurt, and that while he was gay in the past (in the airport, for example), he isn't gay right now at the press conference. But maybe a little later in the bathroom of that building behind him...?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I really want to write a serious diatribe right now and tell you exactly how I feel about my employer. But I won't. I'm not going to do that yet. I can wait. Let me just say for the record that I am NOT HAPPY with the way I am being treated right now by them and I hope they rot in the deepest pit of festering hell.

Fuckers.

AGAG Flees!

About damn time. Incompetent U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez (AGAG) announced today that he's resigning effecting 17 September. His resignation statement said nothing at all about why he's leaving and did not attempt to address any of the concerns that have forced him out of office. This is almost certainly for the best. Bloomberg has a decent recap of Gonzalez' recent missteps and the controversy surrounding his "performance" of his job ("malfeasance" is a better word).

This is unquestionably a good thing for the country. Perhaps the Justice Department can get back to, you know, justice, instead of playing politics and blocking.

Absurdistan

I actually finished Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan two weeks ago, but I've had to cogitate over whether or not I really liked it in order to write an actual review.
Let me start out by saying, I liked it well enough. But I didn't always find it easy.

I won't claim the book has any great flaws. From a literary perspective I'm not qualified to claim that and, anyway, I don't have any nits to pick. Instead there were just so many little things that occasionally put me off. For example, the country for which the book is named, Absurdistan, doesn't appear in the book until almost halfway through. The author shows up and makes fun of himself for writing this book. The protagonist is... shall we say, he's not terribly easy to accomodate.

To wit, Absurdistan introduces us to Misha Vainberg, a Russian Jew, the son of a mid-level Russian gangster, a man of large appetites and the wherewithal to feed them. He is not easy for any of us to recognize. He is tremendously overweight, suffers from anxiety and depression, and does not work. He is in love with New York but cannot go there because of things his father the gangster did to Americans in the past. He is in love with a poor girl from the Bronx he met at a Coyote Ugly-type bar. What she sees in him, apart from money, I can never really understand, because to be honest, Misha is not, for the first half of the book, all that likable.

In fairness, as Misha himself explains, he is a Russian, not an American, so if Americans think some of the things he does are unusual... bah! In Russia it is acceptable to throw your shoes at your servants. (That he has servants sets him several levels above most of us who'll be reading about him.)

Misha also idolizes his father in ways that don't always seem healthy. To be honest at times I found myself wondering whether Misha was dancing around the fact that his father sexually abused him. It seems like it would fit. He never comes clean. He doesn't, to be honest, say much about his father, apart from occasional sermons on how much he misses and loved his father. That's all. There's a very weird vibe there, and I don't usually look for those sorts of things.

The first half of the book keeps Misha in Russia, a place he seems to want to leave but only for America--the one place he cannot go. He is miserable and does dreadful things. He is not, in short, easy to like, easy to care about, easy to really stay interested in.

This is not to say that protagonists have to be likable or good people or any of that rot. I would not wish to argue that. But, likable or not, I need a reason to care about what the protagonist is up to and why I'm bothering to read a story about him. This can work with unlikable people just fine, and is more fun with flawed people--and Misha is these things. But he's not... I don't know, I just couldn't get around to where I really cared about him. He's a difficult character. Shteyngart has won a lot of praise for this book, though, so perhaps I'm missing something.

Once we move from St. Petersburg to Absurdistan, however, things pick up. Yes, the action picks up, which is helpful, but what matters is that Misha picks up as a character, too. For half the book he talks about how he's really a decent person and wants to help, but he doesn't do much of it. Then, as he's on his way to Absurdistan, he finally takes action to demonstrate what he's been claiming--and, once in Absurdistan and when things start to go awry, he demonstrates at least some mettle, and finally I could really identify with him. He wasn't just all talk, he was actually going to try to do something. Nice. Took too long to get there.

Thus the book does reward your patience. Shteyngart does a good job of describing one of these post-Soviet countries where you live and die by the favor of the government and half the budget is made up of U.S. grants. Sort of like Kyrgyzstan, really. Absurdistan has been colonized by KBR--Kellogg, Brown & Root, a former division of Halliburton--and Shteyngart's description of how KBR works is... well, it's dead on accurate, which is pretty scary.

In any event the latter half of the book is well worth the first half, and since I still can't put my finger on exactly why I didn't care for the first half so much... well, maybe you'll like it better than I did. I don't know. But there was one character who so consistently irritated me I can't leave without a mention.

Professor Jerry Shteynfarb. Note the shocking resemblance to the author's own name. Indeed, this is... well, clearly Shteynfarb takes a great deal of his character from the author. Shteynfarb/gart both left Russia at the age of 7 and are American citizens, both teach in New York, both have written books that won them praise. Indeed, Shteyngart seems to have anticipated some of the reviews he'd get--one dust-jacket blurb notes that "No one is more capable of dealing with [the subject] than Shteyngart..." which Misha pointedly argues (persuasively, I might add) is hardly the case. Shteynfarb lets Shteyngart make fun of Shteyngart... but, really, do we need that? The criticism there, of the way a man who left Russia at 7 is treated as the great relater of Russian-ness to the West, that's valid. But is this the tool to use to make the criticism? Makes his reviewers, if not all of his readers, seem a bit daft to me. I don't buy it. Shteyngart's next book supposedly has Shteynfarb as the protagonist. I've been guilty of writing a book where the protagonist is based on me, and I think now I understand better why I never really warmed up to it as much as I thought I would. That book still needs a lot of work, and I probably won't be buying Shteyngart's next one. Take it for what you will.

Absurdistan

I actually finished Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan two weeks ago, but I've had to cogitate over whether or not I really liked it in order to write an actual review.
Let me start out by saying, I liked it well enough. But I didn't always find it easy.

I won't claim the book has any great flaws. From a literary perspective I'm not qualified to claim that and, anyway, I don't have any nits to pick. Instead there were just so many little things that occasionally put me off. For example, the country for which the book is named, Absurdistan, doesn't appear in the book until almost halfway through. The author shows up and makes fun of himself for writing this book. The protagonist is... shall we say, he's not terribly easy to accomodate.

To wit, Absurdistan introduces us to Misha Vainberg, a Russian Jew, the son of a mid-level Russian gangster, a man of large appetites and the wherewithal to feed them. He is not easy for any of us to recognize. He is tremendously overweight, suffers from anxiety and depression, and does not work. He is in love with New York but cannot go there because of things his father the gangster did to Americans in the past. He is in love with a poor girl from the Bronx he met at a Coyote Ugly-type bar. What she sees in him, apart from money, I can never really understand, because to be honest, Misha is not, for the first half of the book, all that likable.

In fairness, as Misha himself explains, he is a Russian, not an American, so if Americans think some of the things he does are unusual... bah! In Russia it is acceptable to throw your shoes at your servants. (That he has servants sets him several levels above most of us who'll be reading about him.)

Misha also idolizes his father in ways that don't always seem healthy. To be honest at times I found myself wondering whether Misha was dancing around the fact that his father sexually abused him. It seems like it would fit. He never comes clean. He doesn't, to be honest, say much about his father, apart from occasional sermons on how much he misses and loved his father. That's all. There's a very weird vibe there, and I don't usually look for those sorts of things.

The first half of the book keeps Misha in Russia, a place he seems to want to leave but only for America--the one place he cannot go. He is miserable and does dreadful things. He is not, in short, easy to like, easy to care about, easy to really stay interested in.

This is not to say that protagonists have to be likable or good people or any of that rot. I would not wish to argue that. But, likable or not, I need a reason to care about what the protagonist is up to and why I'm bothering to read a story about him. This can work with unlikable people just fine, and is more fun with flawed people--and Misha is these things. But he's not... I don't know, I just couldn't get around to where I really cared about him. He's a difficult character. Shteyngart has won a lot of praise for this book, though, so perhaps I'm missing something.

Once we move from St. Petersburg to Absurdistan, however, things pick up. Yes, the action picks up, which is helpful, but what matters is that Misha picks up as a character, too. For half the book he talks about how he's really a decent person and wants to help, but he doesn't do much of it. Then, as he's on his way to Absurdistan, he finally takes action to demonstrate what he's been claiming--and, once in Absurdistan and when things start to go awry, he demonstrates at least some mettle, and finally I could really identify with him. He wasn't just all talk, he was actually going to try to do something. Nice. Took too long to get there.

Thus the book does reward your patience. Shteyngart does a good job of describing one of these post-Soviet countries where you live and die by the favor of the government and half the budget is made up of U.S. grants. Sort of like Kyrgyzstan, really. Absurdistan has been colonized by KBR--Kellogg, Brown & Root, a former division of Halliburton--and Shteyngart's description of how KBR works is... well, it's dead on accurate, which is pretty scary.

In any event the latter half of the book is well worth the first half, and since I still can't put my finger on exactly why I didn't care for the first half so much... well, maybe you'll like it better than I did. I don't know. But there was one character who so consistently irritated me I can't leave without a mention.

Professor Jerry Shteynfarb. Note the shocking resemblance to the author's own name. Indeed, this is... well, clearly Shteynfarb takes a great deal of his character from the author. Shteynfarb/gart both left Russia at the age of 7 and are American citizens, both teach in New York, both have written books that won them praise. Indeed, Shteyngart seems to have anticipated some of the reviews he'd get--one dust-jacket blurb notes that "No one is more capable of dealing with [the subject] than Shteyngart..." which Misha pointedly argues (persuasively, I might add) is hardly the case. Shteynfarb lets Shteyngart make fun of Shteyngart... but, really, do we need that? The criticism there, of the way a man who left Russia at 7 is treated as the great relater of Russian-ness to the West, that's valid. But is this the tool to use to make the criticism? Makes his reviewers, if not all of his readers, seem a bit daft to me. I don't buy it. Shteyngart's next book supposedly has Shteynfarb as the protagonist. I've been guilty of writing a book where the protagonist is based on me, and I think now I understand better why I never really warmed up to it as much as I thought I would. That book still needs a lot of work, and I probably won't be buying Shteyngart's next one. Take it for what you will.

Harry Potter Withdrawal

And this afternoon I've been a little melancholy. I couldn't quite place why, until I thought about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows again. And I decided, I was feeling a little sad. Not because of the way the book ended, but because it ended at all. As Ms. Rowling alluded to while she was writing, we had to say goodbye to all these characters who've been really more than just characters. After seven books--four of them quite long--they're friends now. And at the end of this book, we know we have to say goodbye to them. There will be no more Harry Potter books.

For this I'm fairly sure Ms. Rowling is glad, as after a while I think you get tired of your characters. But once they've been that much a part of your life, even if just your literary life, for so long, you know you're going to miss them.
That's one of the nice things about a book. You can always go back and read it again.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

I finished it, at last. This is about the longest it's taken me to read a Harry Potter book. But I'm busy.

Obviously I can't give anything away because you might not have read it. But... well, okay, I know Rambling has finished it. And I know Scanime and Mrs. Scanime were reading it, but I don't know if they've both finished it. And I don't know whether the fabulous Mrs. G has had time to read it what with raising the little ones and all. Anybody else? Who else has finished it? I want to talk!

Okay. By way of a review: I liked it. It was certainly gripping. It had the slow patch I've come to expect from Mrs. Rowling but that was less noticeable this time and more broken up. The ending was... it was good. The last three chapters, say, or four, four chapters, very very good. The Epilogue quite nicely put things together without giving unnecessary details, so we are free to fill in the gaps as we wish ourselves. I will note here that my assertion in my review of the previous book that "I now believe nearly the entire story arc of book 7 can be found in the six existing books" was perhaps innaccurate. I'll have to reread the others again with an eye to the Deathly Hallows themselves.

Also, I'd like to note that Severus Snape met my expectations.

There, I don't think I've given anything away.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

I finished it, at last. This is about the longest it's taken me to read a Harry Potter book. But I'm busy.

Obviously I can't give anything away because you might not have read it. But... well, okay, I know Rambling has finished it. And I know Scanime and Mrs. Scanime were reading it, but I don't know if they've both finished it. And I don't know whether the fabulous Mrs. G has had time to read it what with raising the little ones and all. Anybody else? Who else has finished it? I want to talk!

Okay. By way of a review: I liked it. It was certainly gripping. It had the slow patch I've come to expect from Mrs. Rowling but that was less noticeable this time and more broken up. The ending was... it was good. The last three chapters, say, or four, four chapters, very very good. The Epilogue quite nicely put things together without giving unnecessary details, so we are free to fill in the gaps as we wish ourselves. I will note here that my assertion in my review of the previous book that "I now believe nearly the entire story arc of book 7 can be found in the six existing books" was perhaps innaccurate. I'll have to reread the others again with an eye to the Deathly Hallows themselves.

Also, I'd like to note that Severus Snape met my expectations.

There, I don't think I've given anything away.

Ding, Dong, the Air... Wait, that Doesn't Rhyme

It's honestly hard to believe. It hasn't sunk in yet, or, maybe, it's just that I've been waiting so long that it's a bit anticlimactic. In any event, it's happened. The big one.

Smitty's paperwork got signed! Finally! I may actually be out of the Air Force by the end of the month! Huzzah! I'm going to throw a party! I just don't know when exactly. But soon, I promise!

A Name Selected

Thank you all! Based on suggestions--Attenborough was particularly good--I have decided on Overbury. Probably Ted Overbury, not sure. The Life of Sir Thomas Overbury may give you some inclination of the direction this character is headed...

A Name Selected

Thank you all! Based on suggestions--Attenborough was particularly good--I have decided on Overbury. Probably Ted Overbury, not sure. The Life of Sir Thomas Overbury may give you some inclination of the direction this character is headed...

Smittypup!

The Smitty household has grown!


Look, I have pictures! I can be just like people with kids now! Except mine will never say his first word. But I might claim that he did. He's already eight years old, after all, plenty of time to learn to speak.


His name is Action Jackson! Or Carl Weathers if you prefer. I don't prefer. You could call him AJ if you wanted. Or Smittypup, that works too. He came from the Humane Society shelter this very afternoon. Apparently my face lit up when they said they had a Jack Russell. Smittygirl says it was very cute. She also says she knew we'd be coming home with a dog before we even got to the place to meet Action Jackson. What can you say, she knows me. Or her. Or... anyway. So say hello to Action Jackson!

Name Suggestions Needed

I'm looking for a 4-syllable surname that sounds English. Or, if not English, at least not blatantly ethno-specific: no Takahashis, no DiSalvatores, no Hackensteiners. The only thing I've come up with is Neverwinter, which I like, but is not a surname anywhere I can find. All suggestions welcome and appreciated.

Name Suggestions Needed

I'm looking for a 4-syllable surname that sounds English. Or, if not English, at least not blatantly ethno-specific: no Takahashis, no DiSalvatores, no Hackensteiners. The only thing I've come up with is Neverwinter, which I like, but is not a surname anywhere I can find. All suggestions welcome and appreciated.

Smitty, This Is Your Life!

I like this headline because it can go either way. And, here's the way it went.

For the fourth time in six weeks, I had been given a date on which my separation paperwork would be signed. The date was 14 August. I was in Texas that day, and at orientation for Stetson Law yesterday. So today was the day: I would find out that my paperwork was signed and I would be getting out of the AF within ten days.

Last week I decided that if in fact the paperwork was not signed on the 14th, I would withdraw from law school. I was not prepared to start classes, mentally or emotionally. I did not want the extra stress of juggling law school with wondering when or whether I'd be out of the service by a certain date or time. And frankly, with classes starting next Monday, matters had been stretched just about as far as they could be to the last minute. I didn't want to start classes not knowing when I might hear about my separation. Plus, the law school offered to defer my admission and my scholarship (for the second time).

I was satisfied with either option. If the paperwork was signed, I could start school next week, no problem. I felt I'd be a bit behind at the start, but I'm sure I could catch up quickly enough. If the paperwork wasn't signed, I was satisfied that I'd be able to defer for a semester or a year as needed and not have any trouble.

Of course the paperwork had not been signed. Again--for the fourth time in six weeks--a date I'd been given with all certainty proved to be erroneous. I don't want to call this lying, because I believe lying is a conscious activity. I wasn't lied to. I was presented with a fact that could be neither proven nor disproven and told it was a foregone conclusion.

Nonetheless, when, after telling me the paperwork had not been signed, my boss insisted that it would be signed next week... well, I had no reason at all to believe him. Not that he would be consciously lying. Rather, he's passing along information from people who are criminally incompetent at estimating. I've been misled four times in six weeks (nine times in 22 months) and I have no reason to believe anything anyone tells me anymore. I'll get out when I get out. Until then, I won't be out. That's that.

I second-guessed my decision to withdraw from school, of course. But knowing the deferment was on the table and knowing that in a semester or two not only would I not have to worry about when I'd be separating from my job but I'd also be more prepared to start school eventually convinced me I'd made the right choice after all.

So, no, I won't be starting school on Monday. And no, I still don't know when I'll be getting out. But I assume eventually I will get out (I mean, this can only go on so long), and when that happens... well, when that happens I'll be throwing a nice little party I suppose. You're all invited. Watch this space...

Watch This Space

For an important update sometime late Thursday afternoon. I do not yet know the content of the update...

Another Trip

Okay, time for another vacation. It's always time for a vacation, isn't it? Anyway, Smittygirl and I will be visiting Texas for a few days. And when we get back, I go to orientation for law school. And then the day after that (next Thursday if you're curious) I'll find out whether in fact I get to attend law school or not (which is to say, whether my separation package got the final signature or not). Interesting, no? You don't want to know how much my books cost me today. At least I can return the for full price if I end up stuck in my job and unable to start school.

If you're interested in praying or crossing your fingers or anything like that for me, rather than waste the effort asking for my paperwork to get signed, let's start praying that I get a severance package. Regardless of the actual date of separation, that's going to be a lot more important in the near- and medium-term.

See you next week! I'll have a review of Absurdistan (I liked it, more or less) and probably Harry Potter by then, and possibly pictures of Texas.

Nothing to say

It's raining.

I wanted to go to the pool and read, but even I'm not silly enough to do so in a downpour. A light drizzle, maybe. Consequently I need to occupy myself. I'd like to do that with chores, since there's plenty to do here in the next three months, but I don't know where to start. I'm waiting on an email and using the waiting as an excuse not to do anything productive. Is that bad? It might be, I guess.

I don't have anything else to say, really. Went on a terrific vacation this weekend and got to see Lucky Bob, and Scanime, and several other folks who don't have blogs, and I had today off from work because it's a minimum-manning day. I could explain what that means but it would take a while and you don't need to care. I really ought to be doing something worthwhile today, don't you think? I mean, I went to the gym. But... that's about it. Hmm. Maybe it's time to start going through the filing cabinet. If you don't hear from me in about a week, send someone over to make sure I haven't been crushed by a paperwork tsunami.

Quick Thoughts

Three quick thoughts:

1) I'm going out of town for the weekend, but since I haven't posted all week you'll barely notice that I'm gone. I'll be better about it soon, I promise, but it's just very busy.

2) Some of you may have heard about a disastrous episode with a dishwasher. Let me assure you the whole story has not yet been told. It's funny though, and it's not as if it isn't my fault. But, suffice to say, the Smitty household has three new members: new washer (it's oh-so-quiet), new dryer (it dries things like a pro), and a new dishwasher! Yaay, new dishwasher! Unfortunately, I didn't have any dishes to wash this afternoon so I haven't actually used it yet.

3) Congressman Bill Jefferson, D-Louisiana, has apparently won a nice victory at his appeal this morning. This is the fellow who had $90k in his office freezer, allegedly bribe money from Nigerian businessmen. Now, apart from the sheer humor value of this being just another Nigerian scam, the issue here was not that Jefferson was a corrupt scumbag; this is assumed, since he's from New Orleans. But his office--his Congressional office, not his home or his insurance office (or whatever it is he does, I just made up the insurance part), but his Congressional office, which is an extension of Congress--was raided by FBI agents. The FBI is an executive agency, under the President. Jefferson sued the FBI: he claimed the executive branch (in the guise of the FBI) had no oversight over legislative branch activities. Ergo, constitutionally, the FBI had no right to raid his Congressional office. (Dummies; they should have just gone to his home.) He didn't claim he was innocent (although he did claim the money came from the FBI... which doesn't help his case, since he was still taking a bribe whether it was a sting or not), he claimed the FBI had no jurisdiction.
Well, today, an appeals court ruled Jefferson was right. The FBI had no business raiding his congressional office. Now, let's not lose sight of this fact: Jefferson is a filthy corrupt scumpile who is trying to get off on a technicality but should be thrown out of Congress. However, at first glance I have to say this was a good ruling. Basically, the FBI came in and took files out of Jefferson's office. They were looking for examples of dirty deeds; the case in fact had nothing to do with the 90 large. Because the FBI, an executive agency, took stuff from Congressman Jefferson, a legislative actor, they violated the constitutional separation of the powers. I like the notion that the legislative branch should not be able to be "intimidated" by the executive branch. As far as I'm concerned this is a victory. The current White House likes to think it's running a dictatorship with a rubber-stamp parliament, but in fact the legislative is co-equal with the executive. The two must police themselves, not each other. This is why Congress can hold all the hearings it wants to regarding executive doings, but unless an impeachment is warranted Congress' hearings are little more than the airing of dirty laundry until the executive branch designates a special prosecutor to bring charges within itself. Congress can't charge the executive with wrongdoing (apart from contempt and perjury in Congress' action as an investigative body). Congress can't raid the Vice President's office and take the documents they want, they have to ask nicely. Or subpoena. Either way.
In any event, a good show I think, but Congress would do well to censure Mr. Jefferson or, at least, designate its own investigative committee to look at the very papers the FBI tried to take. Democrats can't claim to be the party of clean government as long as Mr. Jefferson is hanging around the Capitol with his Nigerian buddies.

So.
See you next week.