TWB on Tom Friedman's latest, and earlier

The Capitol Energy Crisis - New York Times: By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

When you watch a baby being born, after a difficult pregnancy, it is so painful and bloody for the mother it is always hard to tell the truth and say, “Gosh, that baby is really ugly.” But that’s how I feel about the energy legislation passed (and not passed) by the Senate last week.

I have a long time love-hate relationship with Tom Friedman. I started reading him when he was reporting from Beirut, and then from Jerusalem, decades back, and found his reports stimulating and illuminating. They, along with my university studies and visits to Israel, helped to shape (and to reinforce) my views of the Middle East. I like him less as a columnist, particularly outside this initial area of his expertise. I particularly haven't liked his flogging of a particular (and in my view, limited and distorted) view of globalization. (I'm aware others would apply those adjectives to his work on the Middle East). And then, of course, there is the Iraq War.

Given Friedman's tendency to flog a topic of choice in the runup to and aftermath of his best-selling book on the given topic, I'm relatively pleased that he seems to be moving toward some combination of green/energy themes, and that he--so far at least--hasn't bought into an obvious pro-corporate smokescreen, so to speak, as he largely did on globalization. The energy/environmental nexus needs flogging, over multiple dimensions and a long time. His early columns, including this one, offer some promise.

In my deeply repressed pre-law, pre-bioethics past, I studied economics, with a particular focus on economic development in the third world and on the economics of oil and energy. It wasn't a good fit for me--I was too values-infused and opinionated for a purportedly "value-neutral" (or values hidden), efficiency uber alles academic discipline, or for adhering to the party lines of the time. No regrets--law and bioethics suit me better, and have treated me reasonably well. But the repressed past has made me a more critically informed reader and thinker on the issues I professionally left behind. That was even more so during the late 1970s, when Jimmy Carter was being ridiculed for proposing energy taxes and floor prices to create incentives to reduce gas consumption and facilitate major investments in innovation and alternative energy technologies, and when I was more hopeful that we could master and control the safety, environmental, and disposal challenges of nuclear power technologies.

That was thirty years ago. Glad to see we have solved all those problems and moved on so successfully. (I was somewhat less cynical about the government/corporate/ lobbying/campaign financing nexus in the days of my naive and innocent youth). I suppose most public issues have a cyclical dimension to them. We thought we cleaned up the augean stable of the imperial presidency with the post-Watergate reforms back in those years, too. (Little inside joke there.)

Where was this going? Does it matter? I'll follow Friedman's newest, uh, Crusade with interest.

Jupiter in the 5th House (The Sky Within)

Astrology Software - Comparing Natal Delineations:

In your chart, the 'King of the Gods' reigns in the Fifth House – traditionally the 'House of Children.' Your nature is playful and self-expressive, and the 'inner child' is vibrant inside you. Creativity comes naturally... but, spiritually, you are learning how to use it correctly. Sincerity and risk are the keys; without them, you'll produce a Technicolor personality and lots of applause, but little else. The archetype that's trying to break through you is not simply the Bard... it's the Wise Bard.

I suspect this will be my one and only astrology posting, a result of self-indulgent auto-googling--it must be my playful, self-expressive inner child.
Very sincerely, TWB.

Nora Ephron: Not About Imus

From The Huffington Post
So now people are blogging about not blogging about Imus, and blogging about that.

Secret yearnings of a new blogger

How Ze Frank became a Web video star. - By Michael Agger - Slate Magazine: "The growth of the Internet is fueled by yearning: What will happen when I put my thoughts online? Will people notice? ... How many hits did I get? Who looked at my profile today? Who read my post? Who linked to me? Will my blog make me famous? When can I quit my day job?"

Beginning the Gonzales Watch: "Or they're out to lunch..."

(Sam Donaldson on this morning's ABC This Week.)

Sometimes the talking heads surprise you by making principled statements contrary to the political interests they typically serve.
Consider George Will's performance on this morning's This Week, particularly in the segment on Alberto Gonzales (yes, I'm going to kick Gonzales again, and will probably continue to do so until he leaves the scene of his many crimes. I would prefer in handcuffs with full perp walk regalia, but that is negotiable--maybe with mug shot and fingerprints, but out the back door of the Justice Dept. Kind of like testimony without oaths or transcripts. All the Rove...er, rage, these days.)

Among Will's comments, on the varying current scandals (my transcriptions, off air):

>[on the US Attorney firings:]"...or he's not lying, which is worse, in a way..."

>[on the national security letters:]..."no one did this deliberately, and that's really scary..."

and my favorite, summing things up:

"He serves a President who has made very broad...I would say extravagant, claims of executive power...He [the President] needs a very nimble and intellectually powerful, not to say inventive (chuckle) Attorney General who can defend these claims, and that is not Mr. Gonzales."

Right. Or, better, an A.G. who pays attention to the Constitution, and to his, or her, duties to that document. And who does not go all weak-kneed in the Oval Office.

If I remember correctly, Mr. Will was a big fan of Edward Levi, brought in by President Ford to serve as A.G. in the aftermath of the Watergate scandals and the Nixon resignation, to restore honor, competence and a measure of independence to the Department of Justice. There is a novel thought.

To repeat the oft-made principle, as it applies to the particular circumstance: The President (and the Attorney General) may have the legal "right" to replace U.S. Attorneys; that does not necessarily make particular firings (say, for investigating and prosecuting members of the President's political party, or failing to bring dubious charges against political opponents during the height of election season), "right" in a moral or governmental sense. Our only defense of "right" in those deeper senses is political accountability. Mr. Will is making a worthy contribution toward that end.

While I don't agree with Mr. Will on most matters (including his cavalier, if purportedly Constitutonally-based) dismissal of meaningful voting rights and representation for citizens of the District of Columbia (where I once lived and where our children were born), it's nice to see that not all members of the punditocracy (to contrast a particularly notorious example, consider Robert Novak, although there are certainly parallels on the Democratic Party side as well) are not pure water-carriers for their political patrons.

(Gee, I must say, as someone new to blogging, that this is fun. Much better than writing unpublished letters to the Times, and I don't even have to find an article to serve as the "hook"!...Maybe that was one of my problems getting published more often.)

Re: Hiding posting on Iraq under comments to law school lounges:

Think of it as a scavenger hunt, where you don't know what you're looking for, or even, necessarily, that you're in the game.

Yes, dear reader(s), I guess I do like playing with myself. Have since adolescence.(Sorry if that embarrassed my kids.)

As I.F. "Izzy" Stone (where is he when we need him?--which is always!) once famously said about the Times (more or less; maybe a reader can fine tune the precise quote): the interesting thing is, you never know where you will find that day's front page story...

Stone is a personal hero; I did get to encounter him once when I was in school. His range extended well beyond the Vietnam War reporting that first brought him to my attention, from a book on his travels with Jewish D.P.s from war torn Europe to Palestine, to his reconsideration of the trial of Socrates (after teaching himself Greek in his later years, if I remember the story correctly).

See comments for a suggestion that Stone was a proto-blogger, and his Weekly the first blog by a citizen-journalist.

Some Early Encouragement

From a colleague preferring to remain unnamed:
Alan--Looks good! Congratulations on giving birth. I enjoyed the [non-]founding statement.

From Nina Camic, a colleague willing to be named:
Oh, wonderful! I must link to you. I am at the Detroit airport for a couple of hours and I see I have my reading cut out for me. I am thrilled that you have taken this on!


From Lisa Salkovitz Kohn, a college classmate:
Alan -- congrats on the new soapbox - pulpit - lectern (bimah?) ...
Whatever you may make of it!


From Bruce E.H. Johnson, both a law school and college classmate:

I added it to my bloglist for my aggregator, at bloglines.com. At
this point, bloglines says there are zero subscribers, Alan, so you've
got a long way to go, even with me joining the bandwagon.