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Ramblings From the Ragged Crumbling Edge Of The Reality-Based Community

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

The Sheep's Clothing Slips A Bit 

...you do have to wonder, now that the White House has snuck over in the middle of the night and dumped thousands of John Roberts-related documents on the steps of the Capitol Building, just exactly which kind of deal is going down here. Is it that nobody read any of this stuff in advance or is it possible that they actually want to make public the heretofor secret side of John Roberts in order to suck the right wing more firmly up against their haunches in support of this nominee. There certainly is plenty of material to chew on, and some of what the MSM is reporting this morning is the kind of stuff that would warm the black brittle little heart of the most fervent conservative while sending any true liberal straight out the door and down the street to the nearest bar for a good long session of straight shots of tequila. From Congessional limitations on the Supreme Court's jurisdiction and advocacy of "judicial restraint" in cases where such restraint would favor the state over the individual to opposition to affirmative action, Roberts is the whole package of a classic social conservative, albeit one with nicer teeth and a better vocabulary...

...as is usually the case, his apparent fervor over "judicial restraint" seems actually founded more in pragmatic social conservative viewpoints about specific issues rather than being based on any strong philosophical holdings strictly concerning the limits of judicial power. Abortion, bussing, and school prayer are the Big Three in some circles, and the desire to limit the Court's jurisdiction in these issues is, to say the least, goal driven. Having demonstrated support for that desire speaks volumes as to just exactly what kind of judicial activist the nominee might choose to be. It certainly opens up the potential for a particularly interesting line of questioning about just how firmly the candidates sense of respect for settled case law squares with his views about the conservative sense of "judicial restraint" that would have resulted in entirely different outcomes to that settled case law...

...the growing paper trail we've been exposed to so far is certainly interesting, not just in it's confirmation of Roberts' conservative credentials but also in it's revelation of how actively he has held and pursued the implementation of these views. This probably guarantees some sort of battle - or at least it should - over release of his writings as Deputy Solicitor General. Gee Dub's gang insists those documents are covered by attorney-client priveledge, which relies on a fairly archaic interpretation of the duties of the Solicitor General's office and is a readily debatable fact. At least we know that, whether or not he can remember whether he ever belonged to the Federalist Society, this nominee would certainly find himself at home in that surrounding...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:46 AM 0 comments

Monday, July 25, 2005

The Nominee Who Won't Go Away 

...the White House hints are starting to flap around like big ugly pandora moths. The word the mechanics want on the street is that Gee Dub is contemplating giving John Bolton a recess appointment to the UN Ambassadorship. The goal is apparently to pressure the Democrats in some way to ease up on their insistence of seeing some of his Administration work, get off their collective liberal asses, and confirm the President's man, at the risk of having Holy Republican Hell raining down on them. There's only one little problem with that: Gee Dub is losing his traction. Not just over John Bolton, but just generally in terms of how the country perceives him. Whether John Bolton would be considered popular is an issue that can be hashed out in about five minutes (Wikipedia is a handy enough thumbnail source), with most people agreeing at the end of that period that his best bet is to make a play for the Representative to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana's Islands, where the lifestyle is relaxed, the weather is spectacular, and there are far to few people for his remarkable ability to stir up hate and discontent could really matter. Gee Dub, on the other hand, is losing his mojo, particularly amongst registered Independents like...ahem...me. If his poll readings (which of course he ignores, as we have constantly been told) were happening on Wall Street, entire stock brokerages would be placed on suicide watches...

...in these difficult days, it doesn't seem that a threat by The President will really have much impact on Senate Democrats. They are dealing with a nominee who has problems that no Clinton nominee could have survived in a Republican Senate, and they are asking for information that can cut to the bone of his character and - just perhaps - drag the whole issue into the gravitational pull of the Plame affair. More to the point, John Bolton just has that fart in a church look about him, seeming to be eager, almost anxious to get to New York to start bashing heads, kicking butt, and showing people how a man does with these sissy fops with all their nonsense about concensus and mandates. The phrase "bull in a china shop" wasn't made for John Bolton, but it works nicely just the same. It would seem as though the Democrats really have nothing to loose in this case. Their case is righteous as far as their request for information goes, and there isn't any indication that Bolton will be able to keep himself under wraps for over a year in his apostle-like zeal to bring the neo-con gospel to the unsaved political Gentiles of the world. There is probably some political need for outrage at the fact of a John Bolton recess appointment to the U.N., but in the the main it suggests itself to be a 'bring it on' moment. Gee Dub should make a recess appointment, and then he can defend the outcome. It isn't likely to reflect poorly on the Democrats, and it could be a lot of fun...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:03 PM 0 comments

Re-creating The Unknown 

...I guest it' got to be something wrong with me. Try as I might, I just can't shake a certain unsettled feeling about the airing on Discovery Channel of a "re-creation" of United Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001. My discomfort isn't about the heroism of the passengers, who banded together in an attempt to take the plane back from the hijackers, nor does it have anything to do with the amazing collection of conspiracy theories that have cropped up about this event, as they inevitably seem to in so many cases when we can't lay a finger directly on the cause of a crash (just Google "Flight 93" and you'll find them, mixed in with the honorary sites). It resides mostly in the fact that there is so much of what actually happened on that flight that we don't know with any degree of certainty...

...I find it implausible that you can actually re-create (in any true sense of the word) the events in that airplane with any degree of reliability that can cause the retelling of the story to be much more than a docu-drama. When you have dialogue that is admittedly invented and the potential for action sequences that are not supported by the certainty of eye-witness accounts, what you have is embellishment rather that an actual recounting of the story. The story of the passengers of Flight 93 can stand on it's own, without "re-creation". It's enough to move back into one of those secret corners of your mind to ponder the circumstances they faced and the decisions they made and honor those things. It's easy enough to give that honor without a "re-creation"...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:34 AM 0 comments

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