[tap][tap] Is the NSA in the House? Good. Now listen up...

It should now be obvious to anyone paying attention that our President has promised to continue to violate his oath of office.

"I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

I refer, of course, to the 4th Amendment thereto, which stipulates that there are limits to the power of the state, and it makes no exceptions for time of (undeclared) war.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Congress should move immediately to require that this President cease and desist these questionable activities forthwith, or to bring them in compliance with the federal standards set forth in FISA. Given, also, the seriousness of the charges being assessed, Congressional oversight is now mandatory.

If the White House fails to comply, an article of impeachment should be drawn up and executed, and should include both the President and the Vice President as particulars.

I suppose that if this opinion makes me an enemy of "the state," then so be it.

If this state continues to support a renegade executive, and continues to support invasions of personal privacy in matters of life and death, and continues to wage a war based on admittedly faulty intelligence, then this state deserves to fall.

If the NSA is listening, I'm confident that they can establish my "true identity." My number is in the book.

(And given that my wife & I use the phone to coordinate grocery runs, for the most part, wotta riot that would be for you all.)

cc: Senator Bill Frist, Senator Lamar Alexander, Rep. Marsha Blackburn

Some good discussion today, with various online compatriots.

I'd like to refine what I said earlier, based on some of that discussion.

1) Tookie Williams is not an ideal case to discuss on the basis of redemption. To me, the question of redemption is irrelevant.

It is ineffective to argue that someone redeemed deserves life, for that implies that anyone unredeemed deserves death. Also, when you're talking about "redemption," you're really crossing over the line from the secular to the spiritual, and I don't believe that this Republic was constructed to support that. There is, however, rehabilitation. And there is reparation. Those things make more sense, especially when we are discussing universal human rights, irrespective of religious background.

2) I must conclude that the only viable option for our country to pursue, today, is to abolish the death penalty. Immediately.

Anything like a moratorium, or tinkering with the mechanisms, or fiddling with exceptions, and deciding who deserves what and when -- that's all just rationalizing a practice which is inherently flawed, as human perception is inherently flawed itself. I can no more assume that the government can decide rightly whether I live or die than I can assume that they will correctly settle my next income tax statement.

While I'm on that topic, what's up with mainstream, anti-big government, capital-R republican support for the death penalty? Here, you have the party which proclaims that big government can fuck up a two car parade, yet you can count on them to invest 100% fealty to a system which determines who lives and who dies. Maybe I didn't get the memo, but last time I checked, the courts were something that they didn't trust at all. Why suddenly do they get it right when it comes to disposing of criminals?

3) It was Damien Echols birthday on 12/11. This year marks his 11th in custody since his wrongful conviction (and death sentence) in 1994.

Here's hoping Arkansas can get it right...

Could You Pull That Switch Yourself, Sir?

Sometimes it takes a bit of doing to get me to post around here. For the regulars, no surprises.

Um... I'm in a thoughtful mood tonight. Heartsick, really.

Governor Schwarzenegger, in denying Stanley "Tookie" Williams' clemency petition, had this to say in justifying his action:

"Is Williams' redemption complete and sincere, or is it just a hollow promise? Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no redemption."

Frankly, I don't believe Williams was looking for absolution from the Governor. Perhaps "The Terminator" is feeling his oats. Or perhaps he's too damned stupid to know the difference between a life sentence and a life sacrificed.

Now, I'm no religious scholar or anything, but it seems to me that apology and atonement and "complete and sincere" redemption (whatever that means to Gov. Jingle All The Way) becomes impossible after the actions with which he refuses to interfere. And as a self-described Catholic, maybe Gov. Kindergarten Cop missed out on the Evangelium Vitae of 1995, delivered by Pope John Paul II:

"This is the context in which to place the problem of the death penalty. On this matter there is a growing tendency, both in the Church and in civil society, to demand that it be applied in a very limited way or even that it be abolished completely. The problem must be viewed in the context of a system of penal justice ever more in line with human dignity and thus, in the end, with God's plan for man and society. The primary purpose of the punishment which society inflicts is "to redress the disorder caused by the offence." Public authority must redress the violation of personal and social rights by imposing on the offender an adequate punishment for the crime, as a condition for the offender to regain the exercise of his or her freedom. In this way authority also fulfills the purpose of defending public order and ensuring people's safety, while at the same time offering the offender an incentive and help to change his or her behaviour and be rehabilitated.

"It is clear that, for these purposes to be achieved, the nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent.

"In any event, the principle set forth in the new Catechism of the Catholic Church remains valid: 'If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority must limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.'"

No, I'm not saying that Tookie Williams was an angel in his life. He is certainly not without his faults. He may deserve to spend the rest of his natural life in prison. He may be factually guilty, and if so, I'm good with that.

I'm not the one to say who lives and who dies. Even as a non-believer, I fully acknowledge that this is out of my control, and neither would I empower anyone to make those decisions for me, and if I could, it would certainly not be the co-star of Twins. No, not even Danny DeVito should be given that sort of authority.

I know that Governor The Kid & I has seen a lot of death in his movies, I hope he realizes that those were stuntmen.

Steve Earle speaks often of his opposition to the death penalty, and in his song "Billy Austin," he wrote a pertinent question about our society's demand for revenge. As a man who has been condemned to die, his character asks his executioner...

Could you pull that switch yourself, sir? With a slow, steady hand?
Could you still tell yourself, sir, that you're better than I am?

I know I don't speak for everyone, and that this is highly personal for many, but this ongoing American travesty has got to end.

Contemplating The Lock

Blue heron, perched atop the lock on Barkley Lake Dam.

"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all."

Thank you, Senators. This is the leadership many have been awaiting.

A Fitzmas Address

Eleven score and nine years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a frivolous foreign war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met in a press conference, made necessary by that war. We have come to indict a portion of the cabal in whose tortured efforts in order that this war might proceed, they would divert, distract, and obfuscate the course of Justice. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot indict... we cannot convict... we cannot incarcerate this cabal.

The gutless men and women, living and dead, who struggled to fabricate this war, have indicted their own cause far above our poor power to add or detract.

The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what was done here.

It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated to the unfinished work which the diligent US Attorney's Office has thus so far nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us... that from these dishonorable cretins, we recapture our devotion to that cause to which they paid the fullest amount of lip service; that we here highly resolve that these hucksters efforts to corrupt America shall have been in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the PEOPLE, by the PEOPLE, for the PEOPLE, shall not perish from the earth.

Private Pyle, College Republican



What's your name fat-body?

Sir, Daniel Schuberth, sir.

Schuberth? Schuberth what? That name sounds like royalty! Are you royalty?

Sir, No, sir!

Do you suck dicks?

Sir, No, sir!

Bullshit. I bet you could suck a golfball through a garden hose.

Sir, No, sir!

I don't like the name Daniel, only faggots and sailors are called Daniel. From now on you're Gomer Pyle.

Student's deployment brings home Iraq war to Bowdoin College campus

BRUNSWICK — On Dec. 1, Alex Cornell du Houx, a 21-year-old Bowdoin College senior from Solon will head to Iraq for approximately 10 months as part of the Alpha 1st Company Battalion of the Marines.

Instead of staying up late to finish off college papers and cram for finals, Cornell du Houx will use his training and experience as a 0351 Assault Man to shoot rockets, deal with demolitions and work the Javelin Missile System.

"I am not nervous whatsoever. We are well trained and we're ready to go," Cornell du Houx said about the news of his unit's impending deployment to Iraq.

......................

While Cornell du Houx has actively rallied against many of President Bush's policies, he feels that his involvement in the Marines is not a conflict of interest.

"Regardless of my opinions regarding the war in Iraq, it is my duty as a U.S. Marine to serve and I am ready and willing to do my job to its fullest extent," he said.

Others on campus, particularly his political opponents in the Bowdoin College Republicans, feel differently about his service. Daniel Schuberth, a leader of the Bowdoin College Republicans and College Republican national secretary, said, "I applaud Mr. Houx for his service, just as I applaud any other soldier who is brave enough to take up arms in defense of his country. I find it troubling, however, that one of the most vocal opponents of our president, our country and our mission in Iraq has chosen to fight for a cause he claims is wrong. Mr. Houx's rhetoric against the war on terror places him in agreement with the most radical fringes of the Democratic Party, and I am left to question his logic and motivation."

Were you born a fat, slimy, scumbag, puke piece a' shit, Private Pyle, or did you have to work on it?

On the Passing of Rosa Parks

One of the silliest comments I heard today regarding Ms. Parks' demise came from Randi Rhodes:

"[After the Montgomery Bus Boycott] Northerners saw what was going on, and said, 'This isn't good!'"

Then she went on to insist that it was because of Northern intervention that segregation ended.

A pleasing fable, perhaps, but inaccurate.

I observe that it was Martin Luther King, a Southern minister and black man who took a leadership role in a movement which sought to demonstrate that it was near-universal apathy to the plight of the African-Americans in the South which allowed Jim Crow to go unchallenged.

(And it was Associate Supreme Court Justice Henry Billings Brown who wrote the majority opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson, the case which held that "separate but equal" was not only OK, but natural...

A statute which implies merely a legal distinction between the white and colored races -- a distinction which is founded in the color of the two races, and which must always exist so long as white men are distinguished from the other race by color -- has no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races...The object of the [Fourteenth A]mendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either.

...and this 'enlightened' soul was from Massachusetts. Let it never be said that idiocy adheres to boundaries demarcated on a current electoral map.)

It was also Dr. King who wrote to an amalgamation of clergy (and, I suspect, to fence-straddling liberals) when he penned his missive from the Birmingham jail:

My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant 'Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God- given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six- year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you no forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

Had Southern men and women not taken matters into their own hands (and those people include Rosa Parks, Dr. and Coretta Scott King, Ralph Abernathy, James Lawson, Mary McLeod Bethune, Ella Baker, James Meredith, Medgar & Myrlie Evers, and Fred Shuttlesworth), I suspect that progress would have been subject to more and more insistence on waiting for the right time -- whatever that means.

Northerners did not intercede -- they were shamed into action.

I also observe that it was Lyndon Baines Johnson, a Texan, whose political savvy and courage led to the passage of both the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, even though he risked alienating his own party. "We just lost the South for a generation," he was said to have remarked after passage of the Civil Rights Act.

But some of the most salient remarks would have come in the preamble to the Voting Rights Act:

"At times history fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama. There is no Negro problem. There is no southern problem. There is no northern problem. There is only an American problem."

And lastly, an observation from my own life: My dad took me into a hotel which had been closed for a number of years, but was being reopened for renovation. He walked me around to the public facilities and showed me the FOR WHITES ONLY and FOR COLOREDS ONLY signs, still intact from the days when Plessy was settled law.

This was in Danville, Illinois.

**** **** **** **** **** **** ****

Those of you that know me? Well, you already know that The South is my adopted home. I'm not even a damned Yankee -- I'm a goddamned Yankee. (Translated: Not only did I move here, I married a Southern woman.) So I've lived on both sides of the Mason-Dixon. I don't pretend to have every answer, but I have some experiences as a traveled American resident which inform my opinion.

With that disclaimer in place, let me just pass along this bit of analysis: It may feel good to pretend that "the North" (or blue America, whatever) is the center of all that is good and right in American history, but it's just not factual. We all have our shortcomings, we all have our failings, and the perpetuation of myths (which say that one is morally superior to the other, out of some history or some religious practice, e.g.) is tantamount to preserving long, and potentially violent, cultural divisions running the length and breadth of the land.

If you believe there's a blue America, you've been had. If you believe there's a red America, you've been bamboozled.

It's that simple. There are no WHITE seats on the bus and there are no BLACK seats on the bus. There's just the bus, and we're all trying to get where we're going on time.

The only thing that keeps these divisions alive is that people insist on believing that they are real.

And Sister Rosa took a seat in order to make that stand fifty years ago this December.

Godspeed.

"Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds will continue in others."

--Rosa Parks, 1913 - 2005

SNAP Pushpin Show

It's the moment few have anticipated (but only because they didn't know about it)...

SNAP is the "Society of Nashville Artistic Photographers." It's a good bunch of independent artists, and from what I've seen of what's being offered, it's going to be a wide variety of styles and substance. If you're in Nashville while it's open, go check it out. And support local artists (hint, hint) by purchasing something. (My prints will all be available as demand allows; 11x17 prints on archival matte or archival glossy medium. $50 per.)

I have six entries in the show. Rather than steal the thunder of the presentation, I'll defer posting them here for the moment. After the show closes, I'll post samples.

It's Great To Be Here Again!

The Posies, 9/23/05 at Exit/In:

Newer New Look for ORO

Not that it matters, but I am again trying my hand at customizing a blog template. The initial outline courtesy eris.

How we lookin' now?

Oh, P.S. Katrina movie is back online. Figured out a way to carve out some more disc space at Comcast...

You Don't Need A Weatherman...

Let's dispense with the notion that no one knew that this disaster was coming.

Bienville himself was warned that settling the drained swampland between the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Pontchartrain wasn't wise. That doesn't excuse the complete bungling and bobbling and continuing incompetence on the part of the leadership involved.

Let's not confuse knowledge and certainty with preparation.

The feds were unprepared. The feds appeared unaware for days. And now that there is an actual emergency, the reaction is still pitifully, pathetically, and dare I say, pathologically inadequate.

There is no "better late than never" option today. Late is never for the dozens of people dying on the streets.

Remember the warning that went out on Sunday from NWS? Some thought it might be an overreaction.

I put together a little video montage. Watch and draw your own conclusions. Warning: Requires Quicktime. 10MB and graphic in spots.

If you like it, feel free to distribute.

EDIT: The QT video has been taken down because it's taking up all of my available file space. If you want a copy, contact me in comments and we'll work something out.

CNN is Regaining Respectability

Anderson Cooper may be my new hero.

Senator Landrieu repeatedly told him tonight that there would be plenty of time for anger, and there'd be plenty of time to ask questions, and there'd be time for people to take responsibility "later." She then proceeded to take up valuable minutes of airtime thanking seemingly everyone in the Bush administration for doing an admirable job.

With all due respect, which is damned little, Madam Senator, there'll be plenty of time to suck Republican ass later.

Right now, you look like a cheap suit and a fucking sellout to your own hometown.

When The Saints Go Marching Out

Godspeed, New Orleans.

I'm Ready for My Close-Up, Mr. Rove!

Tuesday -- CORONADO, Calif. - President Bush couldn't be bothered to return immediately to the job of president, opting to take a leisurely path from his vacation home in Texas to yet another photo op in the continuing War of Error, rather than proceeding immediately to The White House.

It has been 72 hours since it became apparent that there would be a major disaster and humanitarian crisis in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and since then, the President of the United States has placed a higher priority on posing in front of the camera rather than doing substantive work to aid relief efforts.

He has only just returned to Washington.

A grateful nation sighs as President Bush makes the supreme sacrifice of cutting his five-week vacation down to four and a half weeks.

Bush will apparently take time out of his busy schedule to visit on Friday.

Presidenting, now as ever, remains hard work.

(The Yankee Nero, trying out his new fiddle.)

When The Levee Breaks

There has been a lot of press coverage about the breaks in the levee system throughout Orleans & Jefferson Parishes in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. They've been talking about rising floodwaters and how much damage potential this has in the days and weeks to come. They've even been so kind as to provide some photographic evidence.

Now. Notice anything wrong with this picture?

Last time I checked, a lift bridge would span a body of water. So I looked around, and, sure enough, this appears to be a view of the Claiborne Ave. bridge on the Inner Harbor Navigational Canal, facing north.

And water is spilling into it from the east, not out from it, which would be expected if the water from the canal was flooding into regions adjacent.

Which means that the residential neighborhood to the east of the IHNC was already under at least 15 feet of water before the levee was compromised. Keep that in mind when people are blaming the levee breaks for all the flooding in the days to come. (UPDATE: Emphasis on *breaks*; the NOLA killer will come from 17th St, apparently, so long as the western levee on the IHNC remains intact.)

Given what Mayor Nagin said about how St. Bernard Parish was in a bad way, and how both airports were under water, and how large segments of the twin-span I-10 causeway were gone, and how Slidell was now indistinguishable from Lake Pontchartrain (click for larger image)...



It's not unreasonable to conclude (click for larger image)...



...that the storm surge took out huge portions of the east long before the levees were compromised.

UPDATE: If this report on WWLTV is accurate, this is not good.

****ALL RESIDENTS ON THE EAST BANK OF ORLEANS AND JEFFERSON REMAINING IN THE METRO AREA ARE BEING TOLD TO EVACUATE AS EFFORTS TO SANDBAG THE LEVEE BREAK HAVE ENDED. THE PUMPS IN THAT AREA ARE EXPECTED TO FAIL SOON AND 9 FEET OF WATER IS EXPECTED IN THE ENTIRE EAST BANK. WITHIN THE NEXT 12-15 HOURS****

They are referring not to the levee break on the Industrial Canal, but rather, the break in the 17th St. Canal at Old Hammond Highway.

And guess what -- the funding that had been earmarked for reinforcing that levee and finishing the Old Hammond Highway bridge project? It went into a rathole because the Bush administration had other priorities; i.e. fighting the war in Iraq.

Now we're looking at a natural disaster which will cost untold billions, when a couple million might have sufficed.

Pound foolish, for sure.

UPDATE II: Apparently, according to Ed Reams from WDSU-6 (live on CNN now), the helicopter that was supposed to be sent to drop those 3000 pound sandbags in the breach at the 17th St Canal was "diverted for search and rescue."

Which would be all well and good -- if THE WHOLE GODDAMNED EAST BANK WASN'T GOING TO FLOOD IF THEY DIDN'T GET THAT HOLE UNDER CONTROL.

Sitrep as of 9:30 CT -- the pumphouse at 17th St has been submerged, the pumps have stopped functioning, and there hasn't been a single sandbag airlifted even to attempt to block the flow of Lake Pontchartrain into Lakeview.

FYI, the East Bank is all of the stuff that you probably know as greater New Orleans. Via answers.com:

East Bank

The "East Bank" is home to the majority of the City of New Orleans and the most densely populated portion of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, as well as many of the region's major suburbs. The many of these suburbs includes Metairie, Kenner, Jefferson, and Harahan on that side of the river.

Further down the river the much smaller suburbs of Arabi, Chalmette, Meraux, Pointe a la Hache, and Violet. All of St. Bernard Parish and the eastern portion of Plaquemines Parish is located on this bank. Most of these suburbs and parishes make up the southeastern portions of the Greater New Orleans area.

Visually:



Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?

Friday Bird Blogging

One of the best subjects in the lower 48, the bald eagle at LBL's Nature Center:

(click to make it big!)

Everybody Thinks I'm a Raincloud (When I'm Not Looking)

From the wayback machine: GBV at Uptown Mix last year...

Summer Daisies

You know how to tell that it's just unholy hot outside? You know it's really hot when even the daisies are wilting.

A New Look

I'm trying a new look here at One Reporter's Opinion. I've been doing more photoblogging than anything, and I reckon it's time to get a format which is a little more user friendly for those whose monitors don't have the resolution of an Apple 20" Studio Display.

Feel free to comment. Or not. I still don't quite have the hang of all the HTML, but I figure I can meld a new look in gradually once I've worked out what all the $VaguelyDocumentedEnvironmentVariables$ refer to.