Tuesday, March 13, 2007

The Attorney General and American Idol

If you've been keeping up with the firing of the 8 U.S. attorneys, then you know it has recently centered on Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General of the U.S. (i.e. secretary of the Justice Department). I've found the whole affair to be rather disappointing due to the recently acknowledged increasing politicization of the U.S. attorneys' positions. A blog on the Washington Post has decided to lay out the case against Alberto Gonzales in a rather damning (though not criminal) fashion. It's a rather interesting, if not depressing, read.


On a completely separate note, American Idol was on tonight, for the first time with just the 12 finalists for this season. Everyone had to sing a song from Diana Ross's songbook. In terms of guests and guest songs, Diana Ross was a great choice. She's been around forever, singing songs the whole time, and her early work with the Supremes should be required musical knowledge for any modern pop musician. That said, why the heck did so many of the people choose such crappy songs from her past???!!!?? I mean, seriously, why in the world did they choose BORING songs? She's got so many great songs, and yet so many of them chose poor songs. In general, her songs from her time with the Supremes are better because they have more energy than her songs from her solo career, but she still had some good ones from when she was solo.

A better question might be: Why the heck did they give the guys all the good songs? Anyone who watches American Idol this season knows the guys suck. True to form tonight, they butchered Diana Ross's songs. The first singer of the night sang "Can't Hurry Love", a great song from the Supremes, and he turns it into one of the most boring renditions I've ever heard. Simon called him a backup singer, which is an insult to the backup singers who actually did a better job than him when they helped out with the song. Lakisha, who definitely has one of the best voices in the group, covered Diana covering Billie Holiday. While I think Lakisha is great, she should NEVER try covering a Billie Holiday song again. Her voice is more Whitney Houston (which she covered last week with "I Have Nothing" very well) than Billie.

I don't know remember his name, but one of the loser guys sang "Keep Me Hanging On", which should have been covered by the rocker chick. Why? Because the rocker chick would have sung it in a far better way. The guy completely changed the song into some sort of weird modern, slightly discotheque sounding version. It sucked. As the judges said, it's a classic and you should just sing it the way Diana sang it. Or, if you're going to change it, give it a rock edge. It's a bit of a hard-edged (for the Supremes) song and can be given a nice up-tempo but harder sound.

Anyway, I'm a Motown fan and I just couldn't stand listening to these loser guys butcher the great Supremes' classics. All the guys should be kicked off for screwing up all her songs, especially that guy Sanjaya who sounds like Michael Jackson with no energy (you know, high-pitched and boring).
Who knew?

Apparently, the word "vagina" is so offensive that three girls were suspended for using it in an excerpt from the play "The Vagina Monologues." Apparently, they had agreed not to use the word "vagina" when doing their excerpt from the play. Does anyone see anything absurd going on here? They were reciting from a play CALLED "The VAGINA Monologues" and they weren't allowed to use the word "vagina". I'm laughing out loud as I write this.

Whether the girls deserve a suspension for breaking the agreement to use the word is a separate issue (it seems a bit harsh to me for saying a word that's just the proper anatomical term for a part of the body). The question is why the principal ever saw a problem with the word "vagina" in the first place. I mean, if the subject matter from the play is the problem, then he should have simply not permitted the excerpt in the first place. But to ban the use of the word "vagina" suggests that he's just a puritanical idiot. To help him, I'm going to write some words for him to practice saying in a mirror:
Penis, penis, penis, penis.
Vagina, vagina, vagina, vagina.
Clitoris, vulva, breast.

Monday, March 12, 2007

Latest from the FDA

The FDA unveiled new rules for fruit and vegetable processors (presumably in response to the great E. coli spinach outbreak).

Oh, wait, let me correct that: The FDA unveiled new voluntary rules. Which . . . makes . . . no . . . sense whatsoever. What, exactly, is a "voluntary rule"? Some sort of paradoxical oxymoron that we're supposed to ponder to distract us from the multiple failings of the Bush administration? I've noticed the Bush administration likes these kinds of "rules". Of course, who wouldn't like rules that you don't have to follow? Well, I guess those people who end up suffering due to people not following the "rules" might dislike these kinds of rules, but they're just whiners anyway.

Friday, March 09, 2007

The Second Amendment: D.C.'s Gun Law Struck Down

The city of Washington, D.C., has long had one of the nation's strictest (if not the strictest) gun laws in place. Specifically, unless someone in D.C. has a handgun that was registered prior to 1976, handguns are banned. However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit struck down that provision, declaring that it violated the Second Amendment. The court said that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms. The Second Amendment reads,
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

This has always been a thorny issue for this country, as people have disagreed as to the exact meaning of the amendment. Some have held that, as the amendment refers to a "militia", this does not mean an individual necessarily has the right to a gun. Others, including the court in this opinion, have interpreted it to mean just the opposite.

On balance, I find that the amendment appears to read more closely to those who believe that an individual does not have the right to own a gun. This does not mean, of course, that a state (or any part of the government) could not permit individuals to own guns. Therefore, I've always found the arguments of the NRA and similar groups to be a little exaggerated, as most states do little-to-nothing to prevent any kind of gun ownership (heck, even the federal government has allowed its assault weapons ban to lapse). Moreover, the majority of people appear to be opposed to strict bans on guns (except for the assault weapons ban, which was allowed to lapse anyway).

However, the strangest part of this, I find, is that the groups are reversed on their interpretation of the amendment. Liberals want a strict interpretation -- the word "militia" is taken literally for their understanding. Conservatives, on the other hand, want a looser interpretation, in which the original intent of the amendment is clearly tossed aside. I mean that last part rather seriously because the original intent of the amendment is laid out rather succinctly by the framers in the opening clause of the amendment (i.e. "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State"). This does not mean conservatives are wrong; I would just like it if they admitted that they are not actually strict constructionists. Now, perhaps, someone could engage in a little semantic sleight of hand to try to carry the strict constructionist argument, but the problem with that is that any such rhetorical tricks are precisely the opposite of strict constructionism.

Having read enough George Will and Charles Krauthammer to know how much they despise the supposed invention of the "right to privacy", I would like them to write columns hammering on the individual right to own a gun as an invented right. Of course, the right to privacy is not an elucidated right. Rather, it is an inferred right and, in fact, certain parts of the Constitution (e.g. a ban on unreasonable searches) would make little sense if people did not have the right to privacy. Similarly, one could argue that it is not clear who would belong in the militia, and thus could own guns, and who would not, as we no longer have "militia" in the sense that the original founders did.

It would, therefore, be tremendously valuable and helpful if people stopped pretending that they interpret the Constitution according to some high and mighty principle and, similarly, stopped accusing courts of engaging in judicial activism (wouldn't today's ruling fall under that category?). Such "principled appeals" and absurd accusations are almost always based on the desired outcome, rather than any serious principles, of the person claiming such principles or leveling such accusations.

Thursday, March 01, 2007

You mean it was all lies?

Well, at least dubious claims at best. As we all may recall, back in 2002, the Bush administration said that North Korea was enriching uranium in violation of a 1994 agreement that the Clinton administration reach with North Korea. As a result, Bush ended the accord, North Korea built up some plutonium, and North Korea set off a nuclear test this past fall. This, of course, has led to a giant stalemate and fears of what North Korea will do as it is becoming a nuclear power.

It turns out, however, that perhaps none of this ever should have happened. The original evidence that Bush based his accusations on now appears to be somewhat dubious. In fact, the administration is backing away from those initial claims, as a new agreement with North Korea (and the possibility of inspections revealing the truth about the country's uranium enrichment) is in the near future.

Of course, it still remains possible that the original claims were right, but David Kay, the administration's man in Iraq who looked for WMD's following the initial phase of the Iraq War, appears to believe that the original claims were based on rather flimsy evidence. Assuming I've got this all straight, what I hear is that:
a) All the criticism of the Clinton administration was wrong. As I recall, everyone was saying that the Clinton administration was a bunch of fools for trusting North Korea. Of course, aren't we also a bunch of fools for trusting the Bush administration? Over and over?

b) North Korea probably would not have gone on its plutonium/nuclear weapons spree if the U.S. hadn't suddenly broken the accord and gone all bellicose on them.

c) Our current problem with North Korea is, in fact, rather self-induced.

Frankly, I don't trust anything from this administration simply because what they say appears to bear no relationship with the truth. If they said the sky was blue, I would assume that there was no more evidence for the blue color of the sky than for the purple with pink polka-dot color of the sky.

Bush had better hope that these inspections show their original claims were, luckily, right. Of course, that means the Bush administration takes the shotgun approach to accusations -- make enough of them against enough countries and, well, you'll turn out to be right at least once.