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the constitution
This is Stirling Newberry's latest in a series on the Constitution and how it is implemented. We have a tendency to think that how our government works is how it has always worked. This couldn't be further from the truth. We are on the cusp of a major change on what our government is. This series is dense but very illuminating. I know that discussions of the Consititution cause eyes to glaze and attentions to be diverted. Overcome those tendencies and read this series.
The Fourth Republic:
Constitution as Consensus (1933-2003)
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[FDR] says bluntly that the basis of the government must change. Government is not a contract, to be legalistically interpreted, nor a covenant where people were to place blind trust in higher powers, with a thin parcel of rights - instead, government is a consensus as to what must be done, and then a process to find the means to accomplish it. This notion - of a government whose mandate came from its ends and not from an explicit list of means - was present in Hamilton's writings, and it even reached Madison in his presidential years. Madison finally saying to his critics that "if ends be as circumscribed as means, throw the document out"
What was created, a new republic, was the Third Republic: Liberal Democracy. If government is to be a consensus, then it must be inclusive. Hence the Liberal Democracy would press farther than many dreamed possible to include. If government was to be a consensus, then it would have to be scrupulously fair in the means it imposed the laws. Thus the clean government measures that had been part of the progressive era became mandate. These two principles - fairness and inclusion - worked. Fairness worked because the crisis of the Depression was one where people were left out of the benefits of the new modern economy. Inclusion worked because they feared the results of trusting it, when it so obviously worked in covert, and unfair, ways.
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The correct lens to see the late Liberal Democracy through is a populist party of decentralization - the Republicans - who were an alliance between the rentier class and the unorganized working class, while the Democrats, analogous to the Whigs of the run up to the civil war, were in favor of a more restrained policy in both foreign affairs and monetary activity.
However, such a cohabitation had a natural limit - namely that the Republican economy did not work, and had to constantly borrow from the future. When the limit of that borrowing was reached, the Third Republic had to fall
As it is now doing.
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Here are the first three parts of this series.
The Fourth Republic - Thesis
The Fourth Republic:
Constitution as Contract (1787-1860)
The Fourth Republic:
III. Constitution as Covenant: The Union (1861-1932)
photography
Susan Bowen Photography
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Most of my images are urban in nature and express the experience of walking down a city street. The bombardment of the senses, the urgency, the multi-facet-ness that is New York is a constant inspiration to me. The city explodes with life; I attempt to capture that energy and vitality and to show the wonders possible around each corner. The multiple exposures give an expanded sense of the captured moment, they cause the flow of events to pause and be revealed. Presenting variety in scale and space, the images draw the viewer into a world of unexpected and unclear juxtapositions; a story unfolds, a discovery awaits.
I use a $20 plastic camera called the Holga. These overlapping images are created by only partially advancing the film between exposures – the overlapping occurs in the film itself. The first viewing of a negative is for me, as much as for anyone, a moment of revelation and surprise. A computer programmer by trade (where control is the objective), I revel in allowing chance to bring what it may.
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42nd Street (Times Square, New York City)
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thanks to Conscientious
economy
WHOSE PIE?
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Treating labor like a commodity is a morally bankrupt policy, but it's one that's become an epidemic in the Republican party: they don't just want a bigger piece of the pie anymore, they want the whole pie. Surely it's past time for George Bush's beloved "real America" to revolt over this cynical treatment from conservative elitists?
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astronomy
Rare photos reveal new details about comets
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"These photographs give us new insight into how comets work," says Brownlee. "It seems that they're not just balls of rubble, but they're not solid like asteroids or the moon, either. The surface of Wild 2 is made out of something that's less dense than rock or solid ice, but that holds together enough to support topography. We can see 300-foot-tall cliffs and spires — it's like Monument Valley in Arizona."
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iraq
The New and Improved Iraq
by Juan Cole
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The so-called transition to sovereignty for Iraq set for June 30 has been trumpeted as a turning point by the Bush administration. It is hard to see, however, what exactly it changes. A symbolic act like a turnover of sovereignty cannot supply security, which is likely to deteriorate further as insurgents attempt to destabilize the new, weak government. The caretaker government, appointed by outsiders, does not represent the will of the Iraqi people. Some 138,000 U.S. troops remain in the country and the U.S. embassy in Baghdad will be the largest in the world, both of which bode ill for any exercise of genuine sovereignty by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
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Government Attacks on Area Specialists Called Disservice to U.S. Middle East Policy
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A wide range of Middle East experts warned against the dangers of an occupation of Iraq, including some who supported the war. Most have been attacked for failing to show the proper degree of enthusiasm or patriotism. We have seen the passage of House Resolution 3077 which would set up an inquisitorial advisory committee to oversee teaching of Middle East studies in American universities.
Certain key Bush administration policies simply do not meet the reality test and are harmful to the United States and the peoples of the region. We are seeing a fact-free, faith-based approach to Middle East policymaking.
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thanks to Juan Cole
What Next?
RS convenes a panel of experts to discuss what went wrong in Iraq
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Biden: I was in the Oval Office the other day, and the president asked me what I would do about resignations. I said, "Look, Mr. President, would I keep Rumsfeld? Absolutely not." And I turned to Vice President Cheney, who was there, and I said, "Mr. Vice President, I wouldn't keep you if it weren't constitutionally required." I turned back to the president and said, "Mr. President, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld are bright guys, really patriotic, but they've been dead wrong on every major piece of advice they've given you. That's why I'd get rid of them, Mr. President -- not just Abu Ghraib." They said nothing. Just sat like big old bullfrogs on a log and looked at me.
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Biden: About six months ago, the president said to me, "Well, at least I make strong decisions, I lead." I said, "Mr. President, look behind you. Leaders have followers. No one's following. Nobody."
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bicycles
The Bicycle Museum of America
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1816 Draissine
The draisine, first built in Germany in 1816, was less a serious mode of transportation than the folly of a wealthy nobleman. Still, it remains one in a long line of inventions that led to the true bicycle.
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thanks to The Cartoonist
the supremes
Bushco loses a big one.
Let's hear it for the rule of law!!!
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Today's Supreme Court decisions on Padilla, Hamdi, and Rasul (the latter being the Gitmo case) are great news for all those of us who believe that women and men are better ruled by laws than by autocratic and idiosyncratic individuals.
Thank you, the Supremes!!!!
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In this SCOTUSblog post, Lyle Denniston writes:
The Supreme Court's first review of the Bush administration's handling of the war on terrorism may force a fundamental reordering of constitutional priorities, especially in the way the government may deal with individuals caught up in that war. Amid all the writing by the Justices in today's three historic rulings, no sentence stands out as vividly as this one, "A state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens."
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farm art
Art of the Draw
Advertising Posters from the McCormick-International Harvester Collection
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thanks to Life In The Present
Israel's Intelligence Scandal
by Uri Avnery
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The former chief of Army Intelligence, General (res.) Amos Malka, who was the direct superior of Gilad, broke his silence of many years and published a thunderous accusation: that Amos Gilad arrived at his kontseptsia without any intelligence basis whatsoever. On the contrary, the huge amount of information collected by the intelligence department indicated the very opposite. That is to say, Gilad freely invented his intelligence reports, based on his political views and/or on the desire to please his political bosses, Barak and Sharon.
This grave accusation raised a storm in professional circles. Intelligence operatives of undoubted integrity emerged from their anonymity in order to support Malka publicly. They were headed by the man who, at the relevant time, was in charge of the Army Intelligence section for Palestinian affairs, Colonel Ephraim Lavie, who was then responsible for the collection of all intelligence material about the Palestinian leadership. There is no doubt that in the professional confrontation between Amos and Amos, Amos Malka emerged as the victor.
This means, in simple words: there was no intelligence material at all backing the assertion that Arafat is working for the destruction of the State of Israel, that Arafat had broken off the peace process in order to start a terror campaign, that Arafat is not ready for a reasonable compromise. All these assertions, uttered by diverse Israeli politicians and generals, were based on the "assessment" of one man who, while appearing to represent the intelligence department, was actually suppressing the considered professional reports of his own department, as well as of the General Security Service (Shabak).
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evolution
The Loom: life, past and future
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We like to think of boundaries as being clear-cut borders, but at least in the biological world they generally turn out to be fuzzy zones of change. The line between land and sea is my own favorite example. Last summer my wife and I would sometimes take our oldest daughter Charlotte to the beach. At the time she was a year old and refused to put her toe in the water. This summer she heads straight in, but only about up to her knees. She runs back out and goes back in, repeating the circuit a few dozen times. Next year, I still expect to see her chin above the water line. In her own tadpoling way, Charlotte is reenacting an evolutionary journey taken many times by her fellow mammals--the evolutionary transition back to the water.
These treks have something profound to say about biological change--how life can start out exquisitely adapted to one world and then eventually become adapted just as exquisitely to an utterly different one. Before creationists began marketing bacterial flagella and other examples of intelligent-design snake oil, they loved to harp on the transition from land to sea. Who could possibly believe the story those evolutionary biologists tell us, of a cow plunging into the sea and becoming a whale? And it was true, at least until the 1980s, that no one had found a fossil of a whale with legs. Then paleontologists working in Pakistan found the fossil of a 45-million year old whale named Ambulocetus that looked in life like a furry crocodile. Then they found a seal-like whale just a bit younger. Then they found tiny legs on a 50-foot long, 40-million year old whale named Basilosaurus. I wrote about these discoveries and others like them in my first book, At the Water's Edge, in 1998. I'm amazed at how the fossils have continued turning up since then. Paleontologists have found goat-like legs on a dog-sized whale that lived 50 million years ago, known as Pakicetus. They've found other whales that may have been even more terrestrial than Pakicetus, and many others that branch off somewhere between Pakicetus and Basilosaurus. In the latest review of fossil whales, the evolutionary tree of these transitional species sports thirty branches.
All these discoveries have apparently made whales unsuitable for creationist rhetoric. Yes, you can still find some pseudo-attacks on the fossils, but you have to look hard. The more visible creationists, the ones who testify at school board meetings and write op-eds for the Wall Street Journal, don't bring up whales these days. The animals apparently no longer serve the cause. It's hard to distract people from evidence when it can kick them in the face.
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Ambulocetus
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thanks to reading & writing
the temperature at which freedom burns
Fahrenheit 9/11' Boosts Interest in Iraq
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Michael Moore's record-breaking documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" is a pop culture phenomenon that is raising public interest in the Iraq war just as the United States is attempting a crucial handoff of power to Iraqis.
The movie, an indictment of President Bush's leadership and his decision to go to war in Iraq after the 2001 terrorist attacks, took in $23.9 million to become the first documentary to debut as Hollywood's top weekend film. Theater owners in cities large and small reported sellout crowds.
The heightened public interest generated by the film and the controversy surrounding it is likely to increase the reaction to what happens in Iraq - good and bad, analysts say.
"We haven't seen anything like this before," said political scientist Thad Beyle of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "I can't recall anything this large" coming out during an election year.
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thanks to daily KOS
Our little movie theater on the south end of Whidbey Island won't get Farhenheit 911 for another few weeks. I will have to wait until then. The movie does seem to be doing it's job. Everyone I know who's seen it has been blown away. Of course the people I know are raving lunatic liberals but my sister, a raving liberal, has been telling everyone she sees (many non-liberals) to see the movie and the response has been, except for one person, that they will. That is a pretty amazing response.
photography
Alexey Titarenko
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His long-exposure photographs, often made of moving masses of people, are imbued with a down-trodden moodiness reminiscent of the stories of Dostoyevsky. They document a time of change, yet hope is a rare commodity, and the people blur into grey shadow figures in a ghost-like crowd, with perhaps a solitary hand or shoe standing still in time.
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thanks to consumptive.org
voting
November 2: Independence Day
A brand new, ambitious campaign aims to mobilize millions of new voters with a simple message.
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Nothing welds a person to the larger project of democracy more than trying to make a difference by exercising one's franchise at the ballot box; to have participation celebrated. Voting is powerful, it is affirming and it is a subversive activity in that it can collectively shift power and bring about dramatic change.
To that end, a brand new movement is afoot.
A profoundly straightforward and potentially effective pro-voting campaign called November 2 has just been launched by National Voice, a coalition of non-profit and community groups working to maximize public participation in the democratic process. The campaign, developed by the crack advertising firm of Wieden and Kennedy (famed for its work for Nike), is clever in its simplicity. It's all about branding November 2 on T-shirts, bill boards, computer screens, bumper stickers and connecting it to the logos of numerous organizations people trust. November 2 on the front of the T-shirt and NAACP, or Sierra Club, or League of Women Voters, or ACORN on the back. As Billy Bragg sang satirically: "The revolution is just a T-shirt away."
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Nov 2
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Set the alarm early and loud
Wake the nation
Fill the cars with neighbors
Drive to the polls
This is it
Now is here
We decide
Get ready to sing.
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photography
David Maisel
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The Black Maps project is comprised of aerial photographs of environmentally impacted landscapes. These images have as their subject matter the undoing of the natural world by the wide-scaled intervention of man's actions. Looking down on these damaged wastelands, where man's efforts have eradicated the natural order, the views through my camera are both spectacular and horrifying. Although these photographs evidence the devastation before me, they also transcribe an interior psychic landscape that is profoundly disturbing. As otherworldly as the images seem, they depict a shattered reality of our own making.
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thanks to Conscientious
water
The New Blue Gold
The rush to privatize water is underway across the world. In the new documentary 'Thirst,' filmmakers Deborah Kaufman and Alan Snitow set out to explore the consequences.
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There are untold profits to be made from controlling the simplest and most vital ingredient of our survival: water.
The only question, from a profit standpoint, is why it has taken this long.
"You can't do anything without water," says Alan Snitow, co-producer and co-director of Thirst, a groundbreaking and provocative new film about the rush to privatize what the filmmakers rightly define as the very "essence of life."
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Controlling water will be even bigger than controlling oil. The supply of water is finite and it's real hard to do without it.
photography
Peter Watson
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thanks to Conscientious
books
Clinton's book sounds interesting. Larry McMurtry's review is amazing. I need to read some of McMurtry's books.
Confessions of a Policy Wonk
By LARRY McMURTRY
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William Jefferson Clinton's "My Life" is, by a generous measure, the richest American presidential autobiography - no other book tells us as vividly or fully what it is like to be president of the United States for eight years. Clinton had the good sense to couple great smarts with a solid education; he arrived in Washington in 1964 and has been the nation's - or perhaps the world's - No. 1 politics junkie ever since. And he can write - as Reagan, Ford, Nixon and Lyndon B. Johnson, to go no farther back, could not.
In recent days the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant have been raised as a stick to beat Clinton with, and why? Snobbery is why. Some people don't want slick Bill Clinton to have written a book that might be as good as dear, dying General Grant's. In their anxiety lest this somehow happen they have not accurately considered either book.
Grant's is about being a general, in what Lincoln called a big war. Clinton's is about being a president at the end of the 20th century. Grant's is an Iliad, with the gracious Robert E. Lee as Hector and Grant himself the murderous Achilles. Clinton's is a galloping, reckless, political picaresque, a sort of pilgrim's progress, lowercase. There are plenty of stout sticks to beat Clinton with, but Grant's memoirs is not one of them.
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thanks to Eschaton
photoshopping
Mission Impossible 3
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Your mission, should you choose to accept it: Photoshop something completely impossible. You'd never get a real photo of something like this- this is the contest photoshop was *made* for.
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thanks to J-Walk Blog
i'm back (i think)
I'm finally moved in and I should return to regular posting soon. Maybe later on today or this evening. Now it's unpacking boxes and finding things as well as getting a second line in the house and DSL. And getting caught up on work. I couldn't have done it without the help of my kids — Jenny, Katie, and Robby. Alex and Hannah were a big help, too. (You should have seen them carrying my big metal office desk upstairs!) Special thanks to Jenny and Katie for the incredible job of cleaning they did. It tired me out just watching them. But not nearly as tired if I had to do the cleaning by myself. Thanks again!
Also thanks to Ronni Bennett at Time Goes By for her nice words about this blog. And welcome to those coming from there to here.
New stuff soon!
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