Sorry for the low-tech rerouting, but: 

If you reached this page because of a link to a numbered item that is no longer on my main page, you can get to it by adding "#" and the number -- e.g. "#920" -- to the end of the URL above.

Catblogging:

4/30/05, 12:13 p.m. (Link here)

Further to yesterday's comment, has anyone given thought to the dangerous precedent being set by a high government official endorsing a private corps of armed freelance vigilantes? Especially one with a definite racial inflection? Is anyone recalling, for example, certain similarities to the slave patrols of the old South?

4/29/05, 11:59 a.m. (Link here)

We all know Arnie says foolish things. Yesterday he said these armed volunteers running around the Arizona border are a good way to stop illegal immigration and terrorism. (Memo to Arnie: is anyone checking up on these volunteers' motives and backgrounds? How do we know they themselves aren't committing border crimes? Not to mention your garden-variety offenses like conspiracy to commit false imprisonment? Do they have any training? What if they tangle with some actual bad guys and get hurt? Aggggghhhh. As I used to tell clients frequently in my welfare rights days, "The problem, madam, is that you are expecting logic.")

So where was I? Oh, yes, stupid things said by Arnie. Actually, this is a stupid thing said by his spin control guy, one Rob Stutzman:

Schwarzenegger does not support illegal activity, Stutzman said, and he was merely "praising acts with citizens that are working diligently to solve a problem that their government is not solving."

4/28/05, 2:08 p.m. (Link here)

Because my calendar book was stolen (see below re: laptop), I forgot to note the significance of April 17, 2005. That date was the hundredth anniversary of a Supreme Court decision that has to be one of the all-time worst ever, Lochner v. State of New York.

Lochner was a dreadful ruling against the whole notion of government regulation for the public good. It found that although bakers tended to die young from occupational diseases, a state law barring bakers from working more than 60 hours per week would interfere with the bakers' own right to freedom of contract. It's beyond me how the Justices squared their ruling with the Thirteenth Amendment, let alone the Fourteenth, but thus the law sat for a generation, right up until the Roosevelt era. That generation, for plenty of bakers and other non-tycoons, was beyond doubt nasty, brutish and short.

A hundred years later I'm surprised there has not been more public meditation on the tragedy of Lochner, especially since we're in danger of repeating it.

4/27/05, 6:44 p.m. (Link here)

A pretty good crowd this afternoon for the MoveOn-organized demonstration to save the courts and the filibuster. This was at the San Francisco federal appellate courthouse at Seventh and Mission. (Full disclosure: I joined the demonstration when not photographing it.) We had only a few hundreds, but we did have hundreds for a while. I had a disturbing conversation, however, with a man in a work coverall who stopped to ask about the demonstration. He said he did follow the news in print and on TV, and he was aware of the filibuster and its value, but he didn't realize the filibuster was under current threat. It was disturbing to both of us to realize that people who spend their time on the Internet are getting a steady drumbeat about the filibuster and the courts, but the general public -- even members of the general public who care about the news and try to stay informed -- may not be hearing much about it.

Anyway, here's my crowd photo.

4/27/05, 4:53 p.m. (Link here)

Awright, I guess this bill means they'll be banning Shakespeare in Alabama.

Idjits.

4/27/05, 1:52 p.m. (Link here)

As long as words are being put in Jesus' mouth, the Chron's Mark Morford wants to put songs on Jesus' iPod. Heck, it's no stranger, and it's a lot more cheerful, than pretending He's in favor of child abuse.

4/26/05, 4:05 p.m. (Link here)

There's probably something to this latest Schwarzenegger proposal to put teachers in tough schools on combat pay. Except it takes us a step away from asking why it happens in the first place that certain schools that are tougher than others, and it might keep us from asking whether "combat" is the only possibility for teachers in such places.

[UPDATE] This evening NPR featured a brilliant urban-LA teacher who likely does deserve extra pay, if not the combat kind. Seems he does special enrichment work with poor kids in a public school. It's funded by an ex-student's nonprofit foundation. Private charity, in other words, is what allows a public employee to keep on doing excellent work on the taxpayers' behalf, educating the taxpayers' children. Until the ex-student came to his rescue, this teacher was working several other jobs on the side to support extras for his public school students. Something's wrong here. A familiar kind of wrong, of course, but worth noting. Sadder, maybe, though also familiar, is a bit of the teacher's interview in the radio version -- a part that didn't make it into the written version of the story. He said he did so much extra work because he was angry; because privileged kids got everything and poor kids got so little. "I like a level playing field," he said. "Until there's a level playing field I have to keep working." Terrible. This man feels sentenced to work his heart out because he believes in justice; meanwhile some yuppie who isn't driven by any such belief in justice shuffles papers for two or three times the salary and goes home early. Welcome to America, where virtue is its own punishment.

4/24/05, 10:36 p.m. (Link here)

A small thought from the Book of Deuteronomy (15:7-11) for those allegedly faith-based members of Congress who voted for that nasty bankruptcy bill:

If there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren within any of thy gates in thy land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother:

But thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need, in that which he wanteth.

Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart,saying, The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand; and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother, and thou givest him nought; and he cry unto the LORD against thee, and it be sin unto thee.

Thou shalt surely give him, and thine heart shall not be grieved when thou givest unto him: because that for this thing the LORD thy God shall bless thee in all thy works, and in all that thou puttest thine hand unto.

For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land.

Judges and officers shalt thou make thee in all thy gates, which the LORD thy God giveth thee, throughout thy tribes: and they shall judge the people with just judgment.

Thou shalt not wrest judgment; thou shalt not respect persons, neither take a gift: for a gift doth blind the eyes of the wise, and pervert the words of the righteous.

That which is altogether just shalt thou follow, that thou mayest live, and inherit the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

Of course, the scripturally based life does have its complications, e.g. Deuteronomy 25:11-12:

When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets:

Then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall not pity her.

4/24/05, 10:58 a.m. (Link here)

A reminder here that, Mr. Frist's buddies to the contrary, not all American clergy have forgotten traditional moral teachings. In some corners of this country, charity and empathy are still understood as imperatives.

4/23/05, 12:57 p.m. (Link here)

Bishopblogging: we knew every sperm was sacred, but...

4/23/05, 11:19 a.m. (Link here)

I trust Laura Bush will be issuing a loud public protest about this injustice. Those who recall her advocacy of women's rights during the runup to the Afghan invasion can expect no less.

4/22/05, 4:46 p.m. (Link here)

The site of the Tule Lake camp, most contentious of the large Japanese American Internment camps, got a little closer this week to National Historic Landmark status -- a status the better-known Manzanar camp received 20 years ago. At present, Manzanar has a large and very professionally curated visitors' center; Tule Lake has a roadside plaque and a small volunteer-prepared exhibit in a local museum at the nearby fairgrounds.

[UPDATE 5-2-05: I was wrong about the origins of the Internment exhibit in Tule Lake. It has more funding and more formal support than I thought. Which figures, actually -- it's a pretty extensive exhibit. There's a summary at this site.]

The difference has a lot to do with the difficult nature of Tule Lake's politics: Tule Lake was the "segregation center" where internees were sent from other camps if they refused to sign loyalty oaths. People refused to sign those oaths for a lot of complicated reasons -- some having nothing to do with politics -- and there were immense political disagreements among internees within the camp, but at the time all were officially called "disloyal." Some of the people who were in Tule Lake sixty years ago still feel that label as an unfair burden.

Because I'm writing a book on the memory politics of the Tule Lake area, I'm interested to see how the next part of the historic status discussion will turn out. Stay tuned.

4/22/05, 10:58 a.m. (Link here)

Interesting report from right field by Ben Brumfield of Texas. He says Limbaugh-style talk radio is doing mostly judiciary this week, to the point where he'd personally rather be hearing more Pope.

4/21/05, 9:14 p.m. (Link here)

The book has flaws, heaven knows, but Robert Mailer Anderson's Boonville nails one sentence smack dab on the head in a way you can tell comes from an American born, like me, in 1968. His daughter-of-hippies character extracts it from a long self-indulgent reminiscence of childhood: "...Tucked into bed with the feeling that everything had been done before, better..." Yeah, that's it. All the battles had been won, all the oppressions defeated, there was nothing more to do. After which it became strange in the '80s, and the '90s, and the 'oughts, to see the tide of old evils washing back in. Turned out there was something left to do after all. But all over again, not for the first time. Funny about Gen-X. We're not the Me Generation. More like the Yes, But What About Me? generation.

4/21/05, 9:38 a.m. (Link here)

This Atrios commenter, contrasting his own decent Republican grandfather with Tom DeLay, is incidentally explaining why the present-day Republican Party lacks stability.

They've got too many cheesy advertising men at the top and too many honest decent hardworking people in the membership. Something's got to give.

4/20/05, 10:01 p.m. (Link here)

Just for the record,

I took a morning-after pill once, with the help of Planned Parenthood. A condom broke and it was simply the thing one needed to do next. It had no lasting effects except for a bad headache during an evening work shift and a resulting grudge against a local sandwich shop that I mistakenly blamed for the headache. It would be awful if other women were denied access to something so simple and necessary.

4/20/05, 6:18 p.m. (Link here)

So is it just me (and my family) or have we had a bit too much of this All Pope All The Time stuff? I mean, we were in motels for two weeks and it got to be pointless to turn on CNN or Fox -- they were both The Pope Channel. Newspaper on the table s'morning was nothing but Pope in five of the six columns above the fold. Hasn't anything else happened lately in the world?

Apart from the newsworthiness of this particular story, I'm afraid we're seeing a general shift in the mainstream media towards covering Just One Story At A Time As Loudly As Possible. No matter what it is. Tsunami, Schiavo, Pope Fu, whatever. Meanwhile, frexample, the hard-right Republicans in the Senate are trying to destroy the filibuster, the mere prospect of which sends a shudder through our whole system of checks and balances. Couldn't the filibuster get a peep someplace above the fold, pretty please? Or have news executives now decided -- perhaps since the retirement of all these grand old late-20th-century anchormen -- that Americans can only digest one new piece of information per week? Say it ain't so, guys.

4/19/05, 1:23 p.m. (Link here)

The election of Cardinal Ratzinger as Pope sent me back to Dostoyevsky's "Grand Inquisitor" for the first time in many years. It's a stranger, more problematic work than I'd remembered. Bigoted in many parts, and really pretty closely woven into the plot or at least the setting of the Karamazov novel, and hence an awkward chunk of text to pull out of context although many people have done so. And yet it's a template for so much subsequent literature, and... well, it was worth coming back to. With skepticism and care, and some distate not to mention a raising of small hairs on the neck. But nevertheless.

4/18/05, 4:42 p.m. (Link here)

Limping back to normal.... Here's a sign of the times from a colleague of Joel's.

4/16/05, 5:24 p.m. (Link here)

OK, we're home and able to receive email, or anyhow I am. For those of my correspondents who read here, I've gotten anything sent since April 8, but if you wrote to me between April 4 and April 8 I'd appreciate it if you would resend your message in the normal way. Meanwhile, emails arriving from me may carry 1969 dates for a while. No, I haven't been dumped into a time warp, nor am I wearing bell-bottoms. I've just had to fire up an old computer whose internal clock had run down due to long-term unplugging.

Things should be back to normal around here pretty soon. Please stay tuned.

4/10/05, 9:54 p.m. (Link here)

Laptop stolen in Palm Springs (goddammit), so there will be a hiatus. Sorry about this. If you are ever in downtown Palm Springs, watch yourself. It's meaner than it looks. And DO NOT STAY AT THE MOTEL 6.

4/8/05, 1:53 p.m. (Link here)

Still on vacation but I'd like to recommend Jonathan Schell's essay, "Faking Civil Society," soon to appear in The Nation. It pulls together a number of worries, some more original than others, into an interestingly disturbing coherence.

4/7/05, 9:57 a.m. (Link here)

Parts Is Parts, Cont'd --

We've had lots of coverage in the SF Chron, and not just on April Fool's Day, of the human finger found in a cup of Wendy's chili. There's a weird lack of discussion, however, of what struck me as the obvious moral lesson in the story -- that it's strangely sick to have a food supply chain so extended and impersonal, and staffed by such unrespected workers, that the investigating authorities have very little idea where to start asking whose finger it might happen to be.

4/7/05, 9:51 a.m. (Link here)

We're on a desert driving vacation (hence the recent silence in this space) and yesterday we visited a very lovely National Park. The flag at the gatehouse was at half-mast and they said it was for the Pope. Isn't that a slightly odd thing for our federal government to do? Full respect to individual Americans' grief in their private capacities as religious believers, or simply as respecters of the Pope's character and political leadership -- but I thought that in our public capacity we did not defer to foreign princes, whether of the Church or otherwise. I at least expect George Washington would raise an eyebrow.

4/3/05, 12:40 p.m. (Link here)

This was a story waiting to be written, and a Berkeley journalism student did it. She visited all of -- well, anyway, a whole lot of -- the Martin Luther King, Jr. streets in the United States, and found most of them are full of impoverished black people. Which does suggest we have more work to do toward the Dream, doesn't it.

4/1/05, 1:40 p.m. (Link here)

Friday catblogging: Hermajeskitty

4/1/05, 8:49 a.m. (Link here)

Unscientific Americans:

For April Fool's Day, Scientific American accepts that facts are stupid things after all.

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