The 39th Bonfire of the Vanities is hosted by Founder, Kevin Aylward, who reports that "the scheduled host dropped off the face of the earth."

The earth is a hell of a thing off of which to drop, but I admire Kevin's diligence, because I love the idea of a blog roast, and I try to never miss it. It makes me less self conscious to be able to offer posts knowing they'll be burned. Of course, Kevin did not forget me; he not only ridicules my "obsession" with reptilian sex, but he opines that "the guy with the panda blog was less than thrilled" to be mentioned in my post!

I am crushed, Kevin! Only a python could have crushed me more!

My old blogfriend Michael Demmons talks about those tunes you just can't get out of your head.

Then there's Alex and dirty underwear

I couldn't resist mentioning Susie -- discussing a Peace Plan from (major GULP!) Frank J.!

Or Kevin, now in love with Noam Chomsky!

What's the world coming to? Maybe I should turn on, tune in, and drop off....

(and a thousand petals of thought contend!)

A "daisy chain" of links can be seen at InstaPundit, where Glenn Reynolds offers non-judgmental coverage of a real puzzle: Senator Kerry and the mysterious dangling daisy which has appeared in a number of places and blogs.

While there is some controversy over the genuineness of at least one of the pictures, this one (the one which drew the Secret Service agent's "'WTF?' sort of expression") seems authentic, and the picture appears just below an account of a Kerry hug:

"I even got a hug. That was nice," said Idaho Rep. Wendy Jaquet, D-Ketchum. "He said thank you very much. Theresa (Heinz Kerry) definitely said thank you." (The picture follows.)

Bill Hobbs has more, and one of his commenters even asks whether Kerry is a "heretic" and mentions the "sign of the beast"!

Not so fast!

Here's a traditional Christian interpretation:

The daisy is a late (15th century) symbol of the innocence of the Christ Child. The daisy, less exotic and pretentious than the lily, was thought by some to be a more fitting symbol for the baby Jesus.

Well, there is this poem (but I think it's a stretch):

A Daisy Chain 4 Satan (acid and flowers mix)

Here where I sit alone lost
Here I will dream, why
Give me a drink, I need a think now
I have to rip my stinking brain

Black boots, highway broads
Dope forever, forever loaded
Black boots

(Flowers and Acid... I love flowers)

There's also the possibility of the daisy as a birth flower:

Daisy (April) is pink with golden yellow hair. Her symbol is a yellow daisy symbol with a green stem. Her eyes are blue. Her Danish name is Marguerite. Thanks to Whirly for use of this photo.

The daisy as an Italian charm? (Kerry did sell his house in Italy, you know. But I think it's a tad conspiratorial to suspect an Italian plot.)

I think most fair-minded people would be willing to consider the implications of the daisy as a dream symbol, though:

Dream symbol: daisy, daisy, daisies

Interpretation:
Plucking petals from a daisy may indicate being undecided or unsure of something
Needing to lighten up
Slang for a homosexual
Slang for something that is excellent
Something that is dead and buried, past or needing to be released, pushing up daisies

See also: death, flower, homosexual

I really don't feel like pushing any of the above daisy references.

But let's not break the chain!

Not yet!

The daisy is a multi-faceted symbol, and I want to be as thorough as possible, because Kerry hasn't been forthcoming so far, and research is what blogging's all about.

So, here are more possible meanings from The Daisy Pages: for survivors of child abuse

"It's Latin name may come from bellis, meaning beautiful, so Bellis Perennis can be translated to perennial beauty, as the daisy flowers for so long. Or bellis may come from bellum, Latin for war, because it grew in fields of battle, and can staunch bleeding and reduce bruising and shock. One of the daisy's old names is bruisewort.

The cheerful little daisy is a symbol of innocence because of its association with children, and of survival.

Daisies adapt to almost any landscape and soil type, and will survive being trodden underfoot and all the indignities of the hoe and the lawnmower."
-Anne McIntyre, Flower Power

About.com tells us that in art, the daisy symbolizes innocence:

Daisy: The most basic of flowers, a white daisy is a symbol of innocence.

Ditto here: ("Daisy: innocence, loyal love.")

And, considering my blog, it would be irresponsible in the extreme if I overlooked the ancients. A lovely website associates the flower with the Greek goddess Aphrodite, and more:

The actual name comes from Days eye, because the flower opens at sunrise & closes at sunset. Its Latin name may come from the Latin Bellis meaning beautiful so Bellis Perennis can be translated as perennial beauty. Then again it Bellis may come from Bellum, Latin for war because it grew in fields of battle & can stop bleeding & reduce bruising & shock. One of the daisies old names is bruisewort.

The Roman daisy is a classic bronzed medal decoration used in Ancient Rome to enhance the gladiator's armour, soldier's leather belts, leather wrist bands.

Notwithstanding this blog's interest in classical mythology, I think I'd also be remiss if I did not at least consider the symbol's modern political meaning as it relates to the important issues in the campaign.

How about, specifically, the war in Iraq?

Fortunately, the work has been done for me by AlterNet!

A Daisy For Peace
Posted by Lakshmi on January 16, 2003 @ 3:24PM

A powerul new ad put out by the Internet advocacy group MoveOn.org will hit televisions in Washington, D.C., New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston and eight other U.S. cities. The 30-second spot (Real Media Required), titled Daisy 2, reworks former Democratic President Lyndon Johnson's controversial election ad.

It shows a young girl picking petals off a daisy and culminates in a mushroom cloud. As the ad rolls through footage of burning oil wells and crowds of angry Arabs, the narrators voice says, "War with Iraq. Maybe it will end quickly. Maybe not. Maybe it will spread. Maybe extremists will take over countries with nuclear weapons." The final message: Let the Inspections Work.

The ad evokes not merely memories of the Cold War era but also the acrimonious election campaign of 1964, which pitted Lyndon Johnson against Barry Goldwater. Johnson's campaign withdrew the spot after a single airing due to Republican protests that it portrayed Goldwater as an extremist who could lead the way to global destruction.

Or how about a teddy bear? (If the daisy's really linked to the campaign, they'd go great with the JFK hat!)

This list is not intended as exhaustive, but as a humble contribution in the hope that the blogosphere can patiently discover the truth about the Kerry daisy.

As Glenn Reynolds says, "America really does want to know!"

Perhaps the truth here is like a daisy: delicate, symbolic, and composed of many different petals.

UPDATE: Now I see that the New York Times is removing the daisy (via Glenn Reynolds). I didn't know that when I wrote the above post, and now I'm wondering whether I should reconsider any of my thoughts....

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for his generous link to this post! Welcome all InstaPundit readers; hope you enjoy. I am of course open to more ideas, because as I said, this daisy chain does not claim to be exhaustive (although I wish I could say that I left no petal unturned).

Meanwhile Justin Case suggests that I take look at Logan's Run. Something about daisy-like flowers embedded in the hand -- a sort of biological alarm clock which turns black when your life is supposed to end. Unfortunately, I never read the book, which seems to spoof the so-called "Flower Power" generation. I'd hate to think that Kerry might be thinking along such lines....

On a more serious note, I am troubled by the allegations of airbrushing at the New York Times. Airbrushing simply cannot be done unintentionally, so I am wondering whether the Times did it on their own, or whether they were told to do it.

Either way, it looks bad. (Do they think we're still living in the days of unquestioning Pravda-like acceptance of whatever we are told is The Truth?)

UPDATE: In his own update, Boi from Troy no longer thinks the daisy was eaten by the Times, but they found a different photo of Kerry, with a more biker-like ski jacket. What a relief that they're not covering up daisies! I wouldn't have wanted that -- not on April Fools Day.

UPDATE: Justin supplied this URL showing the daisy -- next to a caption, "The Youth Rebellion Had Triumphed..." (Had is hard in Massachusettsian.)

TOUCHING UPDATE: More vintage daisy power:

[T]he demonstrators know what to do. There was a well-known poster that showed the technique. You walk up with a smile to the nearest soldier and stick a flower in the barrel of his gun. The symbolism cannot be missed by even the most dense. Who could shoot someone who had just given them a flower?

One thing I have always wondered about the Kent State shooting: when the first teenaged Guardsman aimed his rifle at the chest of a chanting girl and squeezed the trigger to blow a red hole through a tie-dyed shirt and through an ideal, did he sight the shot over the petals of a daisy?

Why, I can easily see a brand-new Mideast peace plan coming out of this!

(A secret plan for ending the war, perhaps?)

FINAL UPDATE: According to Glenn Reynolds, the daisy puzzle has now been solved! It turns out that Kerry was wearing this adorable plastic key ring. The ad states they're "available in fire orange, hot pink, signal green, saturn yellow, snow white and glow-in-the-dark." (I'm sure for an extra fee, the presidential seal could be embossed in the middle.)

UNFINAL, UNINTENDED, UN-UPDATE: I realize that this is getting speculative, but others have now speculated that the daisy keyring/zipper puller/whatever-it-is has something to do with rheumatoid arthritis.

Sorry, but I am not buying! Arthritis in no way forces a macho guy like Kerry to use a plastic daisy to help him find his zipper!

Hasn't anyone ever heard of Harley Davidson keyrings? They're available everywhere, and besides, Kerry is said to ride a Harley.

And, well, not to plug the online test which is going around (and which I recently blogged about) but just above the Harley Davidson keyring there's this Devil Duckie keyring. It'd be simply DIVINE!

Plus he could give it a squeeze every time he has to "duck" an issue -- and say the devil made him do it.

Does anyone remember a place called Afghanistan? Christopher Hitchens does, noting that Richard Clarke, in his haste to call Bush hasty, would have us overlook the fact that the first thing Bush did was not to invade Iraq, but Afghanistan:

To listen to Clarke now, you could almost imagine that the invasion of Afghanistan and eviction of the Taliban—the actual first response of the administration to Sept. 11—had not taken place. To listen to Clarke, also, you would suppose that any Iraqi connection to terrorism was sucked straight out of Rumsfeld's or Wolfowitz's thumb. One theory that does collapse completely is that of administration foreknowledge—the Bush people were evidently in no shape to take any quick advantage of the events and seemingly hadn't bothered to plant even one Iraqi among the mainly Saudi hijackers. But in my experience, dud theories die only to be replaced by new and even dumber ones. The current reigning favorite is that fighting al-Qaida in Iraq is a distraction from the fight against al-Qaida.

But personally, I think it's a distraction from the real threat, which of course is the Internet.....

Clarke's pre and post-Y2K warnings are worth repeating again:

I want mankind to learn just once, the easy way about the horrifying dangers of the Internet while I'm still alive so I can take ex post facto credit for saving a third of humanity from those cyber-terrorists and cyber-wars I constantly screamed about before 9/11.

Ex post haste!

The Carnival of the Vanities is hosted by Eric Berlin, and it's already up! It's posted right now for April Fool's Day, and foolishly, I missed the deadline by seven hours, so I thought I'd link to it early.

What really should be an April Fools joke (but which isn't, unfortunately) is United States v. Gould, called "The Road to Hell..." by The Smallest Minority.

Eric Berlin does a wonderful job of dividing the posts into four groups, each of which has "one fake blog in every group." If you can spot 'em, "you've got an excellent eye for separating real stories from fiction."

"one entry in each group is complete hokum. Nonsense. Tommyrot. Narrishkeit. (I have a hell of a thesaurus.)

Excellent! I won't give them away.

(Hint: the fake blogs all have good names which should have already been used.)

Hello to fascism?

My blogfather Jeff has one hell of a good post on the sickening news that the Bill of Rights no longer applies in Louisiana.

Every two-bit corrupt cop can now just bust into your home and search it for what ever he/she wants without cause. Oh yeah, they would only use it with discretion. Right! This is fucking evil. This is anti-American. This is the most diseased Circuit Court decision ever handed down in the short history of our once (but apparently not anymore) great nation.

A very, very, very deep ditch with all of them. Dammit! I would hope that this quickly makes it's way to the Supreme Court but these days who the fuck knows how they would rule? It amazes me as to how much more wisdom our founders had than we seem to exhibit today:

"When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny." (Jefferson) "The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either."

--Benjamin Franklin

Words to live by. And yet, we seem to have forgotten them. Certainly the cow-shit judges on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals have. Damn them to hell.

I am just in awe of how citizens -- let's call ourselves "subjects" now -- have become nothing more than pods in The Matrix. And I see no hue-and-cry from anyone. Naturally the left is silent since this fits in with their plan to control all of our lives. But where --oh where-- are the libertarians' and conservatives' voices?

Might it be that no one (especially in the estabishment elite) really cares what happens to the "little people" who live down there in "flyover country"?

Or do they just assume that our Supreme Court will strike down this abuse? If there's one thing I've learned, it's that you don't assume anything. (There's even a growing movement to stop the Supreme Court from protecting what's left of our freedom.)

Anyway, read Jeff's whole post.

And weep.

The stuff you can find in leftist journals never ceases to amaze me....

Here's a story of unbelievably bad manners and outright arrogance displayed by John Kerry towards members of an Air Force crew flying him around Southeast Asia during the MIA/POW talks:

When we first flew him into Phnom Penh, he went to the back of the airplane and grabbed the pizza that was put aside for the crew and passed it around to his staff. He was never offered any pizza because they were supposed to have lunch with the Cambodian government once we landed. The pizza would have been our only meal that day.

Then when we picked him up in Cambodia, he was an hour late getting to the airport. We could not start the engines and therefore the air conditioning until he arrived. Phnom Penh at that time was over 100 degrees with 95% humidity and we were basically sitting in a greenhouse behind the cockpit windows.

When he finally did arrive, we were wringing out our clothes from the perspiration. He walks out of the air conditioned car, into the airplane and asks us 'Could you guys get the air conditioning running, I'm a little warm." The other pilot had to physically restrain me from going back there and picking a fight.

Whether this story is true, I don't know. I am sure Kerry would deny it.

But even at Indymedia they seem to be having a tough time debunking it.

If the story is true, I am not surprised at all, because it has the same hallmarks of arrogance displayed in the more recent skiing event.

Another illustration of the principle that the shit always flows downhill.

Even when airborne.

From the Philadelphia Daily News, here's a guy who apparently thinks that a thing is only as moral as its manufacturers:

Ronnie Polaneczky | Jail-made flags should't adorn vets' graves IS IT WRONG that those who have preyed on society are making the flags used to honor those who once protected it?

Matt Conway thinks so. He's a National Guard veteran, and he says, "When I die, I don't want the flag on my grave to be made by a rapist."

The man has a way with words. He also has a point.

As we speak, inmates in Pennsylvania and New Jersey state prisons are producing the American flags that will adorn veterans' graves on Memorial Day.

But this country has lost so much business to foreign countries whose low wages tamp down the price of the goods they peddle, it doesn't seem right for American manufacturers to lose work to our own prison-industry programs whose inmates are paid pennies per hour. Especially when what they're producing is the Stars and Stripes.

I'll bet there are a lot of other things which bad people have touched, and we don't even know it. Why, the very food you eat could have been handled by a rapist!

Surely the government can protect us!

In honor of Rachel Lucas, I think it's time for some "doggie action" photos! I mentioned Puff's girlfriend Emily in a recent post, and as luck would have it, today, while I had my camera, I suddenly saw Emily and her very jealous and possessive partner, Chester, walking along the road. I pulled over, opened the window and Emily immediately went into conniptions, as she dearly loves seeing her lookalike boyfriend Puff, and it's been some time. Her owner could barely hang onto her leash, but he was delighted to oblige for fun and games, so I opened the door for Puff to get out. Instead, Emily tried to get into my car, and this was complicated by Chester's best efforts to make sure that he was not ignored. I finally persuaded Puff that it would be a better idea if he got out of the car. Not easy for a 14 year old, but he finally dragged himself out.

Here he is waiting for Emily to make the first move. (She is much younger and far more agile.)

They reaquaint themselves, while Chester does his best to run interference:

In traditional canine custom, the sniffing begins. Emily went first!

And one good sniff deserves another, so here's Puff taking his turn:

And here's one last closeup of Emily, with Chester doing his level best to get into the picture.

I expressed remorse that Emily lost what it takes to make puppies, because the ones these two might have generated would have been irresistible. Her owner couldn't have agreed more, adding that "Emily would have been such a good mom!"

It's a crying shame these dogs have such a bad press.

(Of course, here's one blogger who's doing a great job of trying to counter it. Wish I could do more!)

Via Drudge, I see that it's almost a fact.

Or would it be creation?

Perhaps creationists and evolutionists can all compromise now, and get along....

Did the hard-hearted Karl Rove make people cry when all they did was surround his house, pound on his windows, and frighten his children?

Attack the house tactics are not new:

Several hundred people stormed the small yard of President Bush's chief political strategist, Karl Rove, yesterday afternoon, pounding on his windows, shoving signs at others and challenging Rove to talk to them about a bill that deals with educational opportunities for immigrants.

Protesters poured out of one school bus after another, piercing an otherwise quiet, peaceful Sunday in Rove's Palisades neighborhood in Northwest, chanting, "Karl, Karl, come on out! See what the DREAM Act is all about!"

Rove obliged their first request and opened his door long enough to say, "Get off my property."

"Seems like he doesn't want to invite us in for tea," Emira Palacios quipped to the crowd.

Others chanted, "Karl Rove ain't got no soul."

The crowd then grew more aggressive, fanning around the three accessible sides of Rove's house, tracking him through the many windows, waving signs that read "Say Yes to DREAM" and pounding on the glass. At one point, Rove rushed to a window, pointed a finger and yelled something inaudible.

....

Palacios said that Rove was "very upset" and was "yelling in our faces" and that Rove told them "he hoped we were proud to make his 14-year-old and 10-year-old cry."

A White House spokesman said one of the children was a neighbor.

Palacios, trembling and in tears herself, said, "He is very offended because we dared to come here. We dared to come here because he dared to ignore us. I'm sorry we disturbed his children, but our children are disturbed every day.

"He also said, 'Don't ever dare to come back,' " Palacios said. "We will, if he continues to ignore us."

In tears?

Forgive me if I doubt the sincerity the tears of Emira Palacios, professional activist who spearheads this organization. Profile here, she's a "lobbyist" (if that's not too strong of a word), for things like making drivers licenses easier for illegal aliens to obtain, and hands out awards, like the Horse's ass of the year award, which went Dan Stein, Director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). This was after another "action" during which Palacios "descended on the headquarters" of FAIR.

Menacing-the-home tactics are in my opinion the hardest of hard ball tactics, and considering what I have seen over the years, I am highly suspicious of people who organize such a thing and hide behind tears.

The City of Berkeley had an excellent City Manager whose house was subjected to a similar protest seige, causing him to resign his job later. I blogged about this in June:

Of course, when I was on the Police Review Commission, it escalated from mere words, and instead of worrying about definitions I found myself fearing for my life.

Leaflets were passed out by an angry mob with names and addresses of commissioners coupled with "take whatever action your conscience deems necessary" code language, my truck was burned, another Commissioner had his car torched, and police officers were directed to leave Commission meetings for legitimate fear of "officer safety" (leaving us to face the mob alone). I will never forget a meeting with Berkeley's City Manager, who related his horror story of angry activists visiting his home when he was at work, and threatening his wife and kids.

"YOU CAN HAVE THIS PLACE!" he told me. Shortly thereafter, he quit his job, and went on to greener pastures as City Manager of a lovely, more peaceful place, -- Albuquerque, New Mexico.

I guess it remains to be seen whether they'll work with Karl Rove. I know there's that old saying "if you can't stand the heat...." but it's easy for me to say. I don't have kids. If people surround my house and bang on the windows, well, I am armed.

But the tears are a new wrinkle in this context. Not that I haven't been subjected to tears by professional activists trying to get their way. Once when I was in the unfortunate position of being a "swing voter" (I was not aligned with either Berkeley's Marxist left faction nor the McGovern Democrat "rightist" faction), I was pressured to vote for a woman on the Marxist side. She told me how hard it was as a single mom, and launched into a long rant during which she looked up towards the ceiling and actually started to cry. No sooner had I stated that I had already decided to vote for someone else than the "tears" stopped, her eyes narrowed, and her face took on a very cold, hard stare. She looked right at me, as if to say, "OK buddy, you're on!"

At the time I thought of a different kind of tears.

It didn't strike me as civilized discourse. The tears were just a tactic, and when they failed, it was time for other tactics to begin. This is not to say that hard-ball activists don't shed real tears, nor can I state definitively that Ms. Palacios was not shedding real tears.

But I just don't think surrounding a house and menacing someone's children is consistent with the moral high ground normally associated with being a victim.

And even if we assume the tears were sincere, were they tears of contrition?

I doubt it.

I like this local creek, which meanders along a nearby road. There's no way to park next to it, which has prevented me from photographing it properly (whatever "properly" means), and it just kills me that I wasn't able to take a shot of it while it was frozen, because it the rapids froze in place with lots of white caps sticking out all over the place. I suppose I'll have to wait till next year for that.

No retouching here!

My dog's girlfriend (a pitbull named Emily, whose markings are so similar that people think they're related) lives in an old stone millhouse next to this creek. So I always slow down in the hope of seeing her. (A rare occurrence.)

This will have to do for now. I had to put my flashers on just to jump out of the car and snap this one!

On a blog today I found an analogy (responding to this post) which reminded me of yesterday's "post":

[Union guys] got their goddam unions--by fighting people who tried to and often did kill anyone who wanted to form a union. Or has Mr Smith forgotten his history? Margolis, by his own account, got into a shouting match with one of the union guys and all but dared him to go ahead and make something of it. Well, anybody from my neighborhood could have told him you don't challenge union guys to a duel, especially nowadays. They've been hammered by 25 years of radcon hatred and abuse. They've watched their unions be attacked as Communist, unAmerican, or subsidiaries of the Mob; they've had their company pensions stolen by their employers with the help and encouragement of Bush I; they've watched conservatives like Bush II disembowel worker protections, advance management powers, and eviscerate labor laws; they've seen the Labor Dept turned over to corporate shills who never worked a day in their lives; and they're painfully aware of how tenuous globalization and the Bush-engineered deficit make thier jobs. This is not the group some pissant, privileged college kid should be deliberately giving the finger to. These aren't intellectual liberals who talk things over; they're basically right-wing thugs, tough as nails and not prone to lengthy dialogue.

Not that I condone what they did. I wouldn't condone a grizzly mauling a camper, either, but if that camper had walked up to that bear while it was minding its own business and poked a stick in its eye, well, it would be kind of hard to work up any real sense of righteous indignation against the bear. Faults on both sides, don't ya know. Margolis, protected son of privilege as he no doubt is, has learned a valuable Nature lesson: Don't treat wild tigers as if they're house cats.

Don't treat wild tigers as if they're house cats? Is that advice? According to simple logic, what the blogger must mean is that if you are so stupid as to "provoke" "tigers" (in this case disagreement with steelworkers constitutes provoking tigers), then you must treat them as tigers. Or as grizzly bears?

And how does one treat a charging tiger or a grizzly bear?

That's not as silly a rhetorical question as it sounds. We are not dealing with humans, right? We are dealing with dangerous, wild animals who were "minding their own business" but then attacked people who "provoked" them by chanting for Bush. (Hardly a house cat sitting on a fence.)

Does this mean that there is no right to chant for Bush?

Or does it mean that if you dare to chant for Bush, you'd better be armed for bear?

I'm surprised at this logic.

(Of course, in my home town of Berkeley, even fence sitting never guaranteed personal safety. In that town, city commissioners have been known to kill each other.)

And in liberal, tolerant San Francisco, mere advocacy of homosexual self defense can get you physically attacked. I bring it up because I saw it first hand. Political disagreement can be dangerous to your health.

I remember an occasion where a city employee in Berkeley charged into a campaign headquarters wielding a baseball bat because he was upset over signs.

I suppose it could be argued that it constitutes "provocation" to publicly advocate anything which people might disagree with. Certainly the above blogger thinks so. And so does this guy (who's been quoted widely; and here's Glenn Reynolds's starting link):

Margolis, enjoying the privilege of an expensive college education, verbally pushed this guy first. The union guy probably didn't get the same advantage, so he fought back with what he had, his fists - and Margolis is, or should have been, smart enough to know that he was likely to do so.

There's a difference between voicing your opinion and abusing your First Amendment right by inciting violence and Margolis crossed the line.

Back in the 1960s, the "hard hats" used to beat up anti-war protesters, and guys like Spiro Agnew were said to be egging on the former. Well, today, the lefties sound like vintage Agnew:

You have this little smart ass college kid with too much time and money on his hands, all dewy-eyed because his hero, the Great Deceiver in Chief is in town and he gets in the face of burly blue collar worker who is struggling to meet his mortgage because of Bush's economic policies. What did they expect? That the union guy was going to thank this spoiled brat, whose parents are probably still paying his bills, for his input?

But if they agree they're just fine.

As usual, hypocrisy abounds.

I prefer civility. But when civility fails, self defense is common sense.

Especially when dealing with tigers who consider slogans for Bush to be "fighting words."

What about a sign saying "SCABS FOR KERRY"? Is humor allowed?

Not that I would ever do such a thing, but I saw this cat doing some fence-sitting, and it reminded me of politics.

Next I attempted to colorize it, and I ended up with what might be too artsy for me, but I am feeding it up because I want to see what the colors look like against the background of my blog.

I don't promise to leave this up, but it's Saturday, which means I get to be self-indulgent.

(Wouldn't want to have to discuss left-wing ultraviolence on a nice day like this...........)

Ultraviolet is more like it.

Not much time for tests today, but it's still Online Test Day and I just can't let well enough alone.

The first test today is "Which Mythological Form Are You?" I rather like my result:

You are Form 4, Gargoyle: The Fallen.

"And The Gargoyle mended his wings from the
blood of the fallen so he could rise up from
imprisonment. With great speed and
resourcefulness, Gargoyle made the world his
for the taking."

Some examples of the Gargoyle Form are Daedalus
(Greek) and Mary Magdalene (Christian).
The Gargoyle is associated with the concept of
success, the number 4, and the element of wood.
His sign is the new moon.

As a member of Form 4, you are a creative and
resourceful individual. You are always
thinking of possible solutions to problems you
face and you generally choose one that is
right. Much of your success comes from your
ability to look at things a little differently
than everyone else. Gargoyles are the best
friends to have because they don't always take
things for face value.


Which Mythological Form Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

_____________________________________

As to the next test, I am not sure how it fits....

A Monkees and Gargoyles crossover?

Who'da thought?

Take the Hey Hey, Which Monkee Are You? Quiz.

(Via Ordinary Galoot)

All things considered, I'd rather be a Gargoyle!

LAST MINUTE MUSIC REVIEW UPDATE: When I posted this late Friday night, I wish I'd noticed the reference to Daedalus in the gargolye description -- because I had just returned from a wonderful evening attending a concert by the Daedalus Quartet. They are on tour now, and I highly recommend them to anyone. I was placed in a genuine trance by their performance of Bela Bartok's String Quartet No. 4. Almost Grateful Dead-ish -- and composed in 1928. They do a nice job of explaining the background of the stuff they play too. I'd rate 'em 5 stars; my only complaint is that they weren't selling CDs.

Connections between al Qaida and Iraq will not die. They just keep rolling in. (Via Glenn Reynolds.)

Not that the Iraqi-al Qaida connection is earthshakingly new; I have blogged about it previously here, and here. Something else which should not be forgotten are the revelations from retired Sixth Circuit Judge Gilbert S. Merritt. A man of unquestioned integrity with access to classified documents in Iraq, he concluded,

Saddam had an ongoing relationship with Osama bin Laden.

I can see why the man needs to cut himself some slack.

But, to me, the most intriguing recent nugget of information is Clarke's admission of a possible connection between Iraq and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing:

On Page 127 [of his new "Against All Enemies"], Clarke notes that it's possible that al-Qaida operatives in the Philippines "taught Terry Nichols how to blow up the Oklahoma Federal Building." Intelligence places Nichols there on the same days as Ramzi Yousef, and "we do know that Nichols's bombs did not work before his Philippines stay and were deadly when he returned."

This ties in to the theory that Clinton quashed investigations into a foreign connection to Terry Nichols. The objective - blame Oklahoma City on right-wing wackos for political purposes. The subtle message - the people who voted for Newt and listen to Rush blew up this building. Hey, we report, you deride.

I did a long post about this in January. Obviously, I do not have access to Clarke's sources, but the fact that someone at his level is starting to talk -- regardless of how accurate the man is -- should take this matter outside of the realm of crackpot conspiracy web sites, and hopefully lead to some serious and sober investigation.

What most fascinates me now about the Clarke book is that, if we assume something is being covered up, who would have been the one charged with covering it up? Clarke himself? (He's the guy who, after all "personally authorized the evacuation by private plane of dozens of Saudi citizens, including many members of Osama bin Laden's own family, in the days immediately following Sept. 11." Via Glenn Reynolds.)

Following the same link, there's this from the Boston Herald:

It's too bad Clarke cuts no one in the Bush administration the same slack he so easily cuts himself.

(Maybe it comes from years of CIA CYA thinking....)

This is disturbing. A favorite blogger, whom I have read for months, has shut down his blog because he is running for office, and apparently his political opponents (like this anonymous human) have seized on personal details in the hope of defeating him. I hate to see this happen, but because I am not running for office and know nothing about the complexities of the race he's in, I'm in no position to offer advice.

I like to think that if this happened to me, I would simply turn up the volume, and scream about my opponents' tactics in my blog. Perhaps bloggers who are contemplating a run for office might think about an advance strategy of making the blog a centerpiece of their platform from day one. That way, no one could play "gotcha!" and act as if they've found "dirt."

On the other hand, if you're really ashamed of something and don't want anyone to know about it, discussing it in your blog might cause problems later. But even then, if you disclose it in advance, I don't see how it could really be held against you by any fair-minded person.

Of course, "fair-minded" and elections are a bit like like tar and water....

Win or lose, I do hope notGeorge returns!

Bloggers are human beings too -- and I while I don't know the details, I suspect moral sanctimoniousness may be at work here.

As well as the usual political skullduggery.

Pandas have thumbs! A cool idea for a new blog!

I am delighted to see that Timothy Sandefur is contributing to this group effort, and I only wish I could get Justin to join me here, because two heads are better than one. Sometimes I'm all thumbs, and I need help!

Now if I could only figure out why pythons have spurs....

What was God thinking? It's been said that women were created out of Adam's rib, and this was certainly the hard way to do it considering the chromosomal problems involved. But the python! These useless vestiges of what in most animals would be legs.... No function whatsoever! It has been argued that they scratch each other with them when mating, but isn't it a stretch that God would be thinking about reptilian sex? And after that same animal tempted the rib lady into making Adam eat la manzana prohibida?

Did the python earn its spurs?

The 79th Carnival of the Vanities is up at Pete Holiday's excellent humor blog. My post about the FBI/FCC and restructuring of the Internet got an "EEK."

Considering recent controversy over Richard Clarke, I think I should amplify upon the EEK factor, because I see a conflict between those like Clarke who want to make the Internet safer from cyber attack -- and those like the FBI and the FCC, who want the Internet more vulnerable.

Yes, I did say vulnerable. And here I am almost sympathetic to Mr. Clarke, whose recognition that sometimes the hated hackers can make us safer by exposing holes and other vulnerabilities was praised by no less than Glenn Reynolds (otherwise a Clarke critic).

It's time to pose the question: might sweeping changes in packet-mode architecture, by installing a massive "trap door" for law enforcement, be simultaneously creating another lowest common denominator of weakness? A weakness that hackers and cyber-terrorists might be delighted to exploit to their own advantage?

Sweeping changes often have unintended consequences. Another reason we ought to be very careful about leaving something like this to government bureaucrats instead of the democratic, constitutional process.

I am not a cyber geek, but how about anyone out there?

Thank you Pete, for saying "EEK."

Might Leon Kass's observations about instinctive repugnance be implicated here? Repugnance might not be a logical argument, but I think that sometimes it can germinate logical thinking about things ordinary logic would otherwise cause us to overlook.

After all, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

BY THE WAY: Please read the entire Carnival. They're all great, as usual, and made all the more delectable by the host's excellent taste and wit.

I feel somewhat chagrined and at times like this I almost feel like apologizing. (Or at least implying an apology, as a sort of face-saver.)

I now see that Richard Clarke was "the driving force behind the government's Y2K efforts."

So says David J. Rothkopf, former Deputy Undersecretary of Commerce, chairman and CEO of Intellibridge Corporation and an adjunct professor of international affairs at Columbia University.

(There now! Isn't that a better source than Newsmax.com, or maybe even WorldNetDaily? It's all because I did this research under the strict supervision of Justin Case, who disapproves of my lazy tendencies and who insists I cite only the top-shelf sources.....)

Clarke's "Mr. Y2K" role is confirmed by the Christian Science Monitor:

At the top of the [Y2K] pyramid is Richard Clarke, the National Security Council terrorism czar who will coordinate domestic and international efforts. He will be backed by city and state police departments, US border guards, the Pentagon, the Justice Department, the State Department, the FBI, the CIA, and other agencies.

According to a November 2002 article -- Joshua Green's The Myth of Cyberterrorism, hype is nothing new to Richard Clarke:

Profit of Doom

At the center of all this hype is Richard Clarke, special adviser to the president for cyberspace security, a veteran of four administrations, and terrorism czar to Bill Clinton. Even though he was a senior Clinton official, Clarke's legendary bureaucratic skills saw him through the transition; and when replaced by Gen. Wayne Downing after September 11, Clarke created for himself the position of cybersecurity czar and continued heralding the threat of cyberattack. Understanding that in Washington attention leads to resources and power, Clarke quickly raised the issue's profile. "Dick has an ability to scare the bejesus out of everybody and to make the bureaucracy jump," says a former colleague. The Bush administration has requested a 64 percent increase in cybersecurity funds for next year.

Last month, I paid Clarke a visit in his office a few blocks west of the White House to talk about the threat and discovered that even he is beginning to wilt under the false pretense of cyberterrorism. As I was led back to meet him, his assistant made an odd request: "Mr. Clarke doesn't like to talk about the source of the threat, he'd rather focus on the vulnerability." And indeed, the man who figured most prominently in hyping the issue seemed particularly ill at ease discussing it.

During year 2000 IT modifications, the SEC required Y2K certification by public companies. "We got away with that because it was a one-year trick, and you can trick people for one year," Clarke said. That Y2K certification was a "device" to get CIOs in front of their boards of directors to provide funds for date change fixes, he said.

I'm intrigued by the use of devices and tricks, though and if I'd known Clarke was into that sort of thing, I would have taken more time the other day instead of hastily tacking him to a post which started out being about Mahathir Mohamad. I think I upset a commenter who responded by calling me names and stuff. I am so sorry this happened that I am thinking that maybe I should re-work my implication -- and imply that Kerry and Clarke aren't into appeasement.

Anything to appease.....

Let's see... how did I imply whatever it was I implied? I said,

if the idea is to realign U.S. foreign policy so as to avoid irritating al Qaida, I think it is fair to ask whether this might work. Isn’t that what so many people call appeasement? Can appeasement be made to work? If so, then Kerry is clearly the guy to make a case for it.

if the idea is to realign U.S. foreign policy so as not to avoid irritating al Qaida, I think it is fair to ask whether this might work. Isn’t that what so many people call non-appeasement? Can non-appeasement be made to work? If so, then Kerry is clearly the guy to make a case for it.

But is it more "dishonest" to speculate one way than the other? Assume Kerry declares himself to be against appeasement. Is it dishonest to even speculate about whether that's true? Or to imply that it might not be?

Aren't bloggers allowed to speculate?

Does posing that question imply that they are?

In all honesty, I don't know what to imply or how to speculate about Richard Clarke -- whose statements imply many things, and are as amazing as they are amusing. Like this gem:

"every single time throughout recorded history, without a single exception, mankind learned its lessons the hard way numerous times about the dangers of every single technological advancement. I want mankind to learn just once, the easy way about the horrifying dangers of the Internet while I'm still alive so I can take ex post facto credit for saving a third of humanity from those cyber-terrorists and cyber-wars I constantly screamed about before 9/11."

NOTE: There's more cool Clarke stuff here, here, and best of all here:

The year of the Clarke: 1999.

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking to this post, especially for the kind remark that stuff like the above is seldom found in newspaper accounts. A big welcome to all new readers!

MORE: The ongoing saga of Richard Clarke's numerous prevarications (link via Glenn Reynolds) leaves me aghast. I've been watching politics closely for many decades, and rarely have I seen a more thoroughly unreliable "whistle blower." (Of course, there's always John Dean, who I think history will eventually show to be the granddaddy of all prevaricators, but that's a bit off-topic.... Forgive my cynicism! If only they'd had bloggers back in the 70s....)

I don't know whether to take anything Richard Clarke says seriously. But I'll still try....

As Glenn Reynolds observed, hedging won't help Kerry avoid this story:

KANSAS CITY - (KRT) - Confronted with 32-year-old FBI records, Sen. John Kerry's campaign all but conceded he attended a 1971 Kansas City meeting where a fellow anti-war veteran called for political assassinations.

KETCHUM, Idaho - Reports that the FBI monitored John Kerry's antiwar activities in the early 1970s are both "a badge of honor" and a troubling example of government intrusion into peaceful and legitimate protest, a Kerry spokesman said yesterday.

"Revealed in page after page of FBI reports is the portrait of John Kerry at age 27 speaking with courage and conviction, leading veterans to Washington for peaceful protests, advocating nonviolent protests and moderation," spokesman David Wade said.

....."He knew it wouldn't be easy," Wade said. "The Nixon White House set out to destroy him because he was a credible voice speaking up for veterans. Now we learn that J. Edgar Hoover's FBI was following his every move."

If the stories of Kerry's attendance at a meeting where assassinations of members of the U.S. Senate were discussed (even voted upon) are true, then Kerry is ill-advised in portraying himself as a victim. (More here.)

Hoover's FBI -- or, for that matter anyone's FBI -- would have been seriously, dangerously amiss had they not kept track of people who took it upon themselves to attend meetings discussing the assassinations of United States senators.

Either Kerry is very foolish, or his handlers are incredibly stupid (possibly blinded by their ideology). Either way, it doesn't look good.

If he wants the stories about the assassination meetings to go away, why is Kerry literally bragging that the FBI's monitoring of him is a "badge of honor"? If it turns out that he was present while assassinations were discussed, what "honor" is he talking about?

To ordinary Americans (you know -- the kind of people who don't sit around and discuss assassinations of senators), it might begin to look anything but honorable.

Organizations that plot the assassinations of American politicians for political ends (or any reason) are hardly in the same league as Martin Luther King, Jr. Kerry's participation in the debate -- confirmed by witnesses -- requires an explanation as to why he never notified authorities of the plot, even if he did argue against it and resigned shortly afterward.

Well, I guess we should be glad to hear that, and we should hope it's true. After all, we don't want a president who actually attended meetings where such things were discussed.

Do we?

I think that under the circumstances, though, some people might still be confused about how being monitored by the FBI was a badge of honor.

If I were Kerry, I'd lose this badge as fast as I could.

Bonfire of the Vanities is up at MTPolitics!

Craig really knows how to roast 'em, too, which makes this a pleasure to read!

My post (in which I railed about my bad keyboard) was truly the worst of the worst, and I am proud to be ashamed of it. It's so bad that I should not have posted it at all -- except that my selfish side was angling for free geekie advice, and I wanted my readers to be sure to feel my pain!

More highlights:

That's not all folks; they're all very funny -- and made funnier by Craig.

Read 'em!

A blog by Joe Carter, called Evangelical Outpost" (via Glenn Reynolds -- whose views Mr. Carter characterizes as "radical libertarian") has taken issue with the criticism Leon Kass's ice cream quote has received in the blogosphere.

While Mr. Carter has as much right to his opinion as anyone else (including Kass), he seems to have a feeling that religion is implicated, and I want to address that.

First of all, let's not forget that Kass wrote what he wrote. I didn't, nor did any of the people commenting on it. To insinuate that it is playing dirty pool to quote what the man said strikes me as too extravagant a position to require a serious response.

On to "religion" (or what passes for it)....

Whether or not a view is religious in origin has nothing to do with its validity, and still less to do with whether other people should agree with it. Religion is personal, and if one does or does not do something for religious reasons that is not an argument for or against anyone else doing it.

In Kass's case, though, no argument was made by the doctor against ice cream from a religious perspective. But as Glenn Reynolds observes, even if he had done so, it would change nothing except possibly make him appear more ridiculous in light of his powerful position as head of a government commission (and his stated championing of the "yuck/disgust factor").

What I want to know is why a religious motivation should render an opinion or an action any more immune from criticism than the lack thereof. Do Islamic terrorists, because of their allegedly "religious" motivations become less blameworthy than Marxist terrorists? I see no reason why. Yet I see more and more people attempting to hide behind religion as if it immunizes them not only from all criticism, but from having to defend the logic of their positions.

What ticks me off about Kass is that, regardless of whether he's motivated by religion or philosophy, he wants his views made into laws enforced by the power of the state. To my mind, this heightens the duty to disagree or criticize him. Because if I don't, and his laws are imposed on me, the disagreement will morph into something quite different from a mere difference of opinion. The "opinion" that people should go to jail becomes a present threat once that opinion becomes the law of the land.

Not that I worry about criminalization of ice cream, mind you. But state power shaped by crazy opinions can lead to crazy laws.

(I am reminded of the criminalization of water not long ago....)

Did I just mention "water"? This renewed interest in ice cream etiquette has reminded me that I am long overdue for Part II of Dr. Kass's star profile.

Ahem....

All who are disgusted by Astrology are hereby warned to stop reading now, or forever hold your disgust, your instinctive revulsion, or whatever you might call your feelings of outrage.

In a post last week I began with Dr. Kass's Sun/Moon combination, "The Dilettante." I promised to continue with the other major planets, so here they are.

MARS AND VENUS

Most people have heard about Mars and Venus as the male and female planets, which they are. I like to use Debbi Kempton-Smith's traditional (although compassionately humorous) treatise, Secrets from a Stargazer's Notebook (Bantam Books, New York, 1982.), and the following are her observations. The following material is offered along with my standard disclaimer (see my previous post), and is based on the assumption that Dr. Kass was born on February 12, 1929.

Mars is known as the male planet, and Ms. Kempton-Smith calls it "How You Drive People Crazy", and here's a partial excerpt explaining why:

Mars likes war. Mars makes enthusiasm too, but it'll settle for trouble. Mars is your energy, what you put your energy into, your drive and your courage. Mars stands for lust and drive and passion. Mars burns for things. If someone has Mars on your Venus, they'll burn for you.

The sign Mars shows what kind of special sparkle you have. Think of a peacock showing off in a courtship. Some Mars signs strut more successfully than others.

Things that make you angry are Mars things.

MARS IN SAGITTARIUS

Mr. and Mrs. Leave It To Beaver, that's you! You've got that clean-cut twinkle in your eye, and you're kind and funny. You like to pretend you're an animal in bed. You are. You joke a bit much at romantic moments, but your honey thinks you're adorable, a philosopher. Travel excites you. You turn people on with generosity, bonhomie, and natural love of the underdog. You are nothing if not charitable. You'll turn people on with a rousting debate, but your most successful sexual asset is that laugh. Your laugh burbles up from a place somewhere deep inside of you, and your laugh is the sound of pure joy. You will har-dee-har-har anyone to the casbah, and you always have a good laugh when you leave a loved one. You like having the last laugh, too.

And when the going gets tough, the tough get going. It's not that your leaving upsets people, it's how you leave. So intent are you on the new goal and the Wide Horizon that you blind yourself to the unholy mess you leave behind and the long-term effects of your actions on other people. You don't want responsibility and force others to be responsible for you. At your worst, your worm' s-eye view allows you to laugh at other folks' serious attempts at maturity. You love animals. It's the people who detest you when you act like a schmuck.

We now come to the planet Venus -- described by Ms. Kempton-Smith as the planet of "Sleazy Sex and Eternal Love." Dr. Kass's Venus is in Capricorn:

VENUS IN CAPRICORN

The connoisseur. Think of them as Englishmen or women in love -- they still think sex is frightfully naughty. Men in pinstripes and women in black stockings and garter belts feature in their guilty fantasies. Ask anyone riding on the London underground, if you dare.

There are two kinds of lovers for them: the saucy lower-class chambermaid or rough and ready gamekeeper, or the sort of specimen you take home to meet Daddy. If you've got both qualifications, they'll fall deeply in love with you. Don't ever show affection in public, and don't keep your hands off them in private. The men like long-legged ladies, oval faces, and lots of black clothing, and the women like their men with a six-inch bank account -- or the prospect of same.

You can look like Bizarro if you've got money, power, or fame, so don't sweat the small stuff. Venus in Capricorn folks do have one odd kink, however. They are fascinated with bone structure. Your body is the way they like to study architecture, whereas the folks with Venus in Sagittarius just don't give a hang about your body as long as you like to boogie-woogie. Venus in Capricoms are attracted to moody loners, and you can never be too rich or too skinny. Remember Cassius' lean and hungry look.

Forget keeping them around unless you can be useful to them, especially in their work. Show them how you fix a doorknob, type, or Make Yourself Useful. Weirdly, they are more often exploited themselves because they feel inadequate about their own worth. So they may try to "buy" you in some way. The men may actually tell you to go away and come back when they've made their mark in the world; they’ll live in barren conditions, though, telling you that's their way of keeping the gold-diggers away. They trust only the friends who stick with them in hard times. They get good at making money. Both sexes believe that the best partners won't be theirs unless they "earn" the partner's devotion. This pound-wise, penny-foolish attitude on their part wrecks many budding romances. People don't like to think of love in the same breath as worldly affairs. Venus in Capricorn people need two things only: a kick in the pants for being too worrisome and mercenary, and lots and lots of kisses along the spine. These weird, frosty people are lusty beyond belief. NEVER grab them in front of business or social acquaintances unless they want you to, as a status symbol. They will let you know, by post.

The planet Saturn is described as "What's Stopping You From Getting There?":

Saturn is the symbol of all living things that scare the living daylights out of you. Astrologers call it The Great Teacher, but they're jiving if they fail to inform you of the pain that comes with the lessons. Most of this pain comes from ignorance. Saturn shows what got distorted in youth. It shows the things we never got or what we got too much of. Worse still, if someone offers those things we want most now, we don't know what to do with the goodies. Psychologists and astrologers are constantly astonished at how human beings push away the very things that could make us feel secure. We're afraid to want the things of our Saturn, so we pretend we can do without them. We do do without them, but at a cost to our willingness to gently work on facing our fears.

There's more, but Saturn is called the "DON'T CROSS THAT LINE" planet.

And now, with compassion and understanding, readers may venture across Dr. Kass's "line."

SATURN IN ARIES, THE FIRST HOUSE, OR CAPRICORN RISING

"The definition of cowardice is to see what is right and not do it."
—Confucius

So many comedians are born with Saturn here. I guess they're afraid people will laugh at them anyway, and Saturn, always practical, might as well get paid for it. These are very serious folks, but they try their damnedest to hide the fact.

In childhood they weren't allowed a normal, healthy, show-off ego. The parents said, "Don't be selfish—share." Parents played with your presents before you got them, and it was rare that you ever got the luxury of pure. new "vibes" on anything.

People with this Saturn are afraid of the things Aries is afraid of—that you won't like them. They want to come first in your life. but they're afraid to ask or act like they have the right. You can win them forever by treating them as Number One. They burn to be leaders—inwardly they yearn to be Superman. They're terrified to show how much they want it. They have terrible guilt complexes about their egos: often this is the position of the over sheltered but neglected child. Parents force them to be grown-up too fast.

No wonder so many of these folks stay single, or even become priests to breathe the heady air of self-hood, which their parents taught them was obscene. The loner image is a sham—they're greedily desperate to prove their independence . . . to themselves. They're afraid they can't do it all themselves.

No one ever taught them how to build up their charisma, how to dress right, how to please themselves first. Past lifetimes, if you buy them, have given them quiet courage, wisdom beyond their years, and the memory of having been pushed around a lot by other people. They remember being pushed out of the spotlight. being passed over, and they're not going to let that happen this time. It is sheer hell getting them to let go of power—as bosses they're awful at delegating authority. Or they get so bossy they forget what leadership really is. Then they see everybody as a threat to their own seat.

They are anxious about their bodies or looks in some way. They've been crippled or limited in their movements in the past, and they're touchy about it.

Once there were two friends. One was known as a maverick, and the other friend was known as a "yes-man." He had Saturn in this position. One night the maverick stood up before their club and mentioned the corruption that was creeping in; the group had been acting cruelly and breaking rules. The maverick pushed for some reforms, while Martin, his friend, let the group tear the maverick to pieces. Privately he supported his friend's cause, but he was unable to act with the wild, jazzy, you're-terrific-even-if-you're-a-madman courage. No one had ever taught him how.

If they avoid the two extremes of "yessing" people to death or monopolizing the whole show, they're doing A-OK.

Nudge them. but don't push them. Praise their appearance lavishly. Note their wise courage. Let them lead whenever possible. They were starved of the chance as children. Cheer them up—they get depressed. Gently show them that if they allow you to work in your own way you are freeing them of details so they can be leaders. Emphasize their uniqueness—they've worked hard for it.

The sweetest qualities of this position are wit, depth, dependability. chivalry, humility, wisdom, and the ultimate realization that one does not have to lake oneself seriously, but one must treat oneself seriously and with respect.

So much for another labor of love.

(As the saying goes, "No good deed goes unpunished....")

I may be old-fashioned, and I may be prone to overreacting where it comes to things like free speech and the FCC. My numerous posts about Howard Stern are a good example; I tend towards an absolutist, untrammeled view of free speech.

BUT....

I think that the ability of citizens to freely communicate is the essence of free speech. The Internet, with all its problems, foibles, spam, viruses, is the pinnacle of human communication right now. More than simply free speech, it is no understatement to call it the highest and best use of free human communication in the history of man.

Thus, I feel personally threatened by developments like this:

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Before 8x8 Inc. launched an Internet phone service in late 2002, it drafted a business plan, set up its equipment, posted a Web site, and began taking orders from customers. As with most online ventures, U.S. government approval was not needed.

That would change if the Department of Justice succeeds in persuading federal regulators to require new online communications services - such as Internet calling - to comply with wiretapping laws.

Critics, including some online businesses that are working with authorities to make their services wiretap-capable, say the Justice Department proposal is not just unprecedented and overzealous, it is also dangerously impractical.

It would chill innovation, they say, invade privacy, and drive businesses out of the United States.

"No one in the Internet world is going to support this," said Bryan Martin, chief executive officer of 8x8, which sells the Packet8 phone service. "It's counter to everything we've done to date in terms of building the Internet as a free, anonymous and creative place."

The Justice Department, the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration are seeking what they call a clarification to a wiretap law called the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act.

As the article states, law enforcement wants more than what they got in 1994:

The Justice Department says that, as the nature of telecommunications changes, [CALEA] is simply not working.

Without citing examples, the agency's lawyers say some providers of new communications services are not complying and, as a result, surveillance targets are being lost and investigations hindered.

"These problems are real, not hypothetical, and their impact on the ability of... law enforcement to protect the public is growing with each passing day," according to a petition sent to the Federal Communications Commission recently signed by Deputy Assistant Attorney General John G. Malcolm and colleagues from the FBI and the DEA.

It’s complicated but understanding packet mode switching is the key to understanding the problem – which goes to the nature and heart of the Internet.

If you don’t feel like reading all 83 pages, the Center for Democracy and Technology has an excellent position paper here, which explains why the proposal will harm the country by shackling Internet development and interfering with user privacy.

I hope I am not overreacting, but I think this may be the biggest threat to the Internet so far. Because the regulation of packet mode switching is not possible without a wholesale rewriting of the very structure of the Internet.

Such a drastic and draconian remedy, with the direst possible consequences to free speech and continued economic health of this country, should not, in my opinion be something that should be accomplished by a preemptive bureaucratic surgical strike -- with the following result:

the architecture of the Internet will depend on the permission of the F.B.I.

I don't think so.

I think that even if Congress were to pass a new CALEA law, there'd be plenty of debate, and many would argue that it would be unduly burdensome, a prior restraint of free speech, and a lot of other things. It might be held unconstitutional, as was the Communications Decency Act.

But at least in the case of the CDA, Congress had to pass the damned thing. This looks more like a sneaky end-run around the legislative and judicial process to me.

And the consequences are far greater. Back to my local newspaper:

....[The petition] argues, in effect, for establishing a government approval process that would be required before any new communications services launch.

"If the FBI had this power all along, would we even have the Internet today?" said Lee Tien, senior staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

[C]ompanies outside the United States would not have to cooperate.

He mentioned Skype, a peer-to-peer-based telephony service with offices in Estonia and Sweden. Unlike major U.S. providers, Skype scrambles conversations, making it ne