Chains! These are chains!

I was pretty angry driving home from work today. It wasn't the hour long commute, though that usually gets me a little worked up, especially when I fail to make the turn onto the parkway and wander aimlessly through southeast DC.

Rather, it was listening to congressmen on the radio baldly assault the underpinnings of American democracy. I'm referring to the current rash of voter identification laws, the most recent of which is the Federal Election Integrity Act of 2006. I'll quote Peter Kirsanow of the National Review for the meat of the act's provisions:

The Federal Election Integrity Act of 2006 requires that by the 2008 presidential election all voters in federal elections must present a valid, current photo ID issued by a government agency. By the 2010 midterms, the photo ID must document the voter’s U.S. citizenship.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the IDs would cost about $10 each. The act requires that states reimburse the cost of the ID to any voter who attests that he can’t pay for an ID.

Mr. Kirsanow speaks for many of the act's supporters when he touts the prospective advantages of the act in eliminating fradulent voters (wherever they may be) in exchange for what he presents as a nominal fee:

A one-time fee of $10 dollars doesn’t present the same barrier to voting as the poll taxes of the past, especially when the act would provide valid IDs to the poor free of charge.

I concede; Mr. Kirsanow and supporters of the act are correct in that $10 is a relatively nominal fee, and does not present the same sort of systematic disenfranchisement that poll taxes on African Americans created in the post-Civil War south. What enrages me is that Mr. Kirsanow and the act's supporters think that it is acceptable to impose any sort of fee on my ability to exercise my vote. It's not enough that Election Day isn't a national holiday. It isn't enough that thanks to the Electoral college, my vote has little or no impact on the overall outcome of presidential elections. It isn't enough that I am denied voting representation in Congress by virtue of my residence in the District of Columbia, but that I must be dunned $10 at the door by a pack of tipstaffs. Viewed in terms of an economic analysis, my vote is next to worthless. Because the outcome will likely be the same whether I vote or no, I receive more utility on Election Day by performing almost any other activity, from going to the dentist to washing my laundry. The vote is the one day of the year that our elected officials receive feedback from voters that they have no choice but to listen to. It tells them how disaffected the populace is, and how many of them are willing to do something about it. It is not a service that government provides to the people. Rather, we provide them a service by doing voting; if anything, our elected should give me $10. At the least, they should refrain from charging me for my presence, however nominal the fee is. Imposing any fee, even a nominal charge, is an insult to the American traditions of universal suffrage and poisonous to efforts to revive any interest in American democracy. It is not as if the American populace is enthusiastic about voting. Long poll lines are an indication of the antiquated or juvenile nature of our voting system, not of robust citizen participation. In an age where voter turnout, even in presidential election years, hovers around the 50% mark, it is infamous to speak of any monetary barrier, no matter how minimal, attached to the franchise. Let us aside the question of whether sufficient voter fraud occurs at the polls to warrant increased safeguards. Let us have increased security, if you must, but why pursue a course of action that must necessarily decrease voter participation?

It is infamous to seek to attach any additional burden to identification necessary to vote. It smacks of Dickensian grave-robbers rooting through the pockets of a corpse for half-crowns, of an elderly rabble of bawds clutching at my shirt-sleeve, offering to show me behind the tent-flap the withered paps of the Goddess Liberty for a mere $10. It is a slap in the face to those of us who still choose to show ourselves at the polls and do our civic duty through a solemn sense of pride and stubborn faith in the promise of this republic. This vote is mine by virtue of my being born by the grace of God an American, and I resent the grasping reek of the petty bureaucrat I scent in every sentence of the so-called Federal Election Integrity Act. The crack of the lash does not hurt the lion, yet he still resents the hoops the ringmaster forces him through. $10 will not break my bank, but it will be one more petty humiliation to endure in exchange for participation, however small, in American democracy. Some people will choose not to submit themselves to that yoke, and we will all be the poorer for it.

Awesome

Property class, that is.

Suppose that A and B are killed while riding in a car struck by a train. When witnesses arrive, there are no signs of life in A; B is decapitated and blood is gushing from her neck in spurts. Does B survive A? See Gray v. Sawyer, 247 S.W.2d 496 (Ky. 1952) (Property, Dukeminier, Krier, Alexander, Schill; 6th Edition; p. 284)

That's almost enough to make me want to activate my Lexis and Westlaw accounts to see what the "answer" "is." But, really, it's much more fun to wonder.

This is what I want my obit's headline to be

Man Who Shouted 'Tequila!' in Song Dies

Or is it?

The Bar to End All Bars

Sorry for my absence. My mind has been heavily weighted with concern about, what I thought would be, my certain failure on the examination that determines whether the way I've spent the last 8 years of my life was a ridiculous pipe dream.

Alas, it was not a dream. I passed the bar. The crushing weight placed on my soul since the moment I was handed my law degree has been lifted.

My snarky political comments will soon return in full-force.

Now if only I could find a fucking job.................

Let's get medieval

Digging a dry moat around Baghdad--sweet. I can hardly wait for the walls and the first portcullis.

Oh, wait. They're essentially doing that, too.

What we did

I worked at the MAS. The MAS did this. Though I had nothing at all to do with it, it makes me proud.

I'm glad the season's over.

Tokaji--Rex Vinorum

I wholeheartedly support Tokaji Aszu as a dessert wine. It was the first wine I ever gave to Tracy; and the previous occupant, a Hungarian, happened to leave a bottle in the fridge. It has a wonderful Hungarian backstory to it: popes and kings used to swill the stuff by the hogshead, or compete to give their pet philosopher the finest glass available.

Tokaji is divided based on how many containers, or puttonyos, go into the cask the bottles are drawn from. The one in the fridge now is three puttonyos, which is a little bitter for me--I prefer up around five puttonyos, which is probably a bit sweet for most people. Here, though, I feel like I can taste a bit too much of the noble rot, a benign fungus that concentrates the sugars in the wine.

All in all, it's a decidedly decadent life I'm living right now, sipping my Tokaji upon the tiger rug Tracy's parents have given us.

In the "no shit" department

New Yorkers Still Apprehensive 5 Years after 9/11
Five years after 9/11, two-thirds of New Yorkers say they are still “very concerned” about another attack on their city, a level of apprehension only slightly reduced from the fall of 2001, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News polls of the nation and New York City.
...

Outside of New York, Americans, in many ways, have adjusted to the “new normal” of the post-9/11 era, the national survey suggests. In contrast to the frantic fall of 2001, their fears of another attack seem less acute and personal: Only 22 percent in the national poll said they were still “very concerned” about an attack in the area where they live, down from 39 percent five years ago. Three fourths said daily life has largely returned to normal.

But New Yorkers were more likely to say that they, personally, feel uneasy about the prospect of terrorist attacks. They were also less likely to say the federal government had done all that “could be reasonably expected” to protect the nation from future terrorist attacks; 72 percent of New Yorkers said the government could do more, compared to 58 percent in the national survey.

Maybe if there's a terrorist attack in Midland or Dubuque people'll feel different. Actually, I'm not quite sure why this makes me so mad--maybe something about the idiocy of how security funding is allocated--but suffice it to say, it does.

Steve, we hardly knew ye

I don't know what to do with days like yesterday. I saw a former professor, and had a blast at a Washington Nationals game where the Nats came from behind to sweep the Arizona Diamondbacks, 5-1. Then when we came home, a police car blazed down the street, lights flashing, and stopped outside our apartment building. We come up the block to find a friend of mine with a bloody nose, surrounded by cops. It turns out he was mugged at the street entrance of the condo Tracy and I just bought--they caught three kids around the corner and he ID'd one.

Then later that night, I learned that Steve Irwin had been finally brought down by a stingray spike through the chest. Requiescat in pace. I'm ready to move to the next week, please.

Vista

In the interview posted by Microsoft, Mr. Hallauer said Vista would have fewer dreaded “blue screens of death,” in which the operating system freezes and leaves the user with a blue display screen. Instead, Vista will automatically recover from such freezes and start over, without forcing the user to restart the system manually. (NYT)

And this is progress?

Let's be honest here

I hate and am fascinated by pictures/retellings of 9/11 and/or the World Trade Center.

(Edited 9/3)

They're dropping like flies redux

Danielle Braff and Vadim Karpinos. That would be Danielle Braff of the St. Ann's Braffs (though she's a lapsed St. Ann'ser).

Gentrification

The race(ist?) view: Ever since the white folks started moving in -- and they make more money -- the rent just keeps getting higher.

Succinct!

The Onion (ironically enough, a total symbol of gentrification, in my opinion) view: My landlord has no idea this apartment—hell, every apartment in this building—is undervalued. He could quadruple his profits by cutting my place in half. So I give him an extra 20 bucks a month hoping he gets the hint, but he just takes it out of the next month's rent.

Satirical!

Atlantic Yards: 7 hours of testimony, and several hundred still waiting to speak

Controversial much? Race and class!

Don't worry, Atlantic Yards Report's got the coverage.

Honeymoon observations 1: Aer Lingus is not run by the most competent people

I would have preferred it if the airline was in fact run by sentient basset hounds, as in the picture to the right. I would have blamed talking dogs less for the three-hour un-airconditioned in-plane delay*, the patchwork bag search before the Dublin to Shannon flight, the continually broken in-flight entertainment systems, and the constant shilling of various duty-free garbage in flight.

In conclusion, do not fly Aer Lingus. Unless, of course, they replace their staff with basset hounds.

*to fix the plane.

Brilliant

Anti-Borat hard-liners have already pulled the plug on borat.kz, Borat’s Kazakhstan-based Website. (In response, Borat claimed to “fully support my government’s decision to sue this Jew.”) (NY Magazine.)

On the downside, this has also caused my head to explode.

I like the trailer.

What did it feel like when China went communist?

I read this article and wonder.

The terms Islamic nationalism and pan-Islamism have a negative connotation in the West, where they are associated with fundamentalism and terrorism. But that is increasingly not the case in Egypt. Under the dual pressures of foreign military attacks in the region and a government widely viewed as corrupt and illegitimate, Islamic groups are seen by many people as incorruptible, disciplined, efficient and caring. A victory for Hezbollah in Lebanon is by extension a victory for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

How's a 1920s-ish version read?

The terms Communist Party or communism have a negative connotation in the West, where they are associated with subversion and the end of society as we know it. But that is increasingly not the case in China. Under the dual pressures of foreign military attacks in the region and a government widely viewed as corrupt and illegitimate, communist groups are seen by many people as incorruptible, disciplined, efficient and caring. A victory for Lenin in Russia is by extension a victory for the Communist Part in China.

I guess one major difference is that communists seemed to keep their focus (read: terrorism) abroad, not in the United States, and fairly far from vital US interests (read: oil). And, while I suppose communists talked a big game about taking over the world (Comintern, anyone?), they seemed to operate rather more through the political process in the West (excepting Spain, where the political process broke down), and nothing really came of it. Other differences that I'm giving short shrift to: Race and ethnicity (giant); increased mobility of people, goods, and information; and the difference between a divinely inspired religion and an economic religion, so to speak (I miss rationality).

Man gets stuck in vat of chocolate

Co-workers, police and firefighters tried to free the man but couldn't get him loose until the chocolate was thinned out with cocoa butter. (NYT)

Mmm....cocoa butter....

Ass Backwards

If this article weren't so depressing, it'd be hilarious. I'll pull out the high(low?)lights.

President Bush made clear in a private meeting this week that he was concerned about the lack of progress in Iraq and frustrated that the new Iraqi government — and the Iraqi people — had not shown greater public support for the American mission, participants in the meeting said Tuesday.

I guess it's good that he's "concerned" and that he at least noticed that, hey, Iraq's a mess. But, really, it's 2006! Some concern might have been nice a few years ago. And as for the bolded section, gimme a break. It's like a bully whining that no one likes him.

“I sensed a frustration with the lack of progress on the bigger picture of Iraq generally — that we continue to lose a lot of lives, it continues to sap our budget,” said one person who attended the meeting. “The president wants the people in Iraq to get more on board to bring success.”

Again, it's nice that he's noticed that things aren't going so well, but why wasn't he doing this a few years ago. And what happened to being greeted with roses? Did he just realize that that didn't happen?

More generally, the participants said, the president expressed frustration that Iraqis had not come to appreciate the sacrifices the United States had made in Iraq, and was puzzled as to how a recent anti-American rally in support of Hezbollah in Baghdad could draw such a large crowd. “I do think he was frustrated about why 10,000 Shiites would go into the streets and demonstrate against the United States,” said another person who attended.

Oh my. I can't stand this man. Hey, maybe they don't appreciate the sacrifices because it hasn't really worked out for them--did you ever think of that? And maybe it's not just them--it's you, with the things you've said and not done (like effectively bring democracy and security to a country you invaded on trumped up, confrused premises) and the things you've done and not said (like rendition and secret prisons).

Participants said Mr. Bush appeared serious and engaged during the lunch, which lasted more than 90 minutes, as the experts went through a lengthy discussion of the political, ethnic, religious and security challenges in Iraq.

Whew. That's a relief.

One participant in the lunch, Carole A. O’Leary, a professor at American University who is also doing work in Iraq with a State Department grant, said Mr. Bush expressed the view that “the Shia-led government needs to clearly and publicly express the same appreciation for United States efforts and sacrifices as they do in private.”

Erm, what's in it for them? Now that I think more about it, it would indeed be good if we got more credit for our good intentions. It would be good for Iraq, even. But intentions only get you so far, and an Iraqi government that's already likely unstable has no incentive to align itself more closely with an unpopular occupier.

Vali R. Nasr, an expert on Shia Islam, said the Pentagon meeting appeared to be an effort to give White House, Pentagon and State Department officials better insight into Iraq’s religious and ethnic mix.

“They wanted new insight, so they could better understand the arena in which they are making policy,” said Mr. Nasr, author of “The Shia Revival.”

This administration's incompetence and lack of preparation drives me crazy. You get that background information before you act, not 3.5 years after you've gone rampaging into a situation you don't understand. Ad hoc, improvisational policy based on a complete lack of knowledge of the surroundings practically begs to fail.

Trying desperately for optimism, I could say, "Better late than never." But, really, I think it's more "Too little, too late."

I just can't stand it. I want to do good. I want this to work out well. But with these people running things, I don't see how it can happen. And I don't see how it can happen after they've had 8 years to make a complete mess of everything.

TV I Missed

Lasagna Fest 2006 took precedence, but I kinda wish I'd seen last night's episode of Biography. It was about Ron Popeil.

Related Popeil content: In 2000, The New Yorker ran an article by Malcolm Gladwell about Ron Popeil. It's awesome.