That is one FANTASTIC post,
spartus. I'm honored to be quoted in it, even if the price of honor includes a little time in the intellectual stockade. To cut to the chase: For the most part, I think we AGREE about this. I don't understand why they sidestepped or chucked out the old, reliable FISA and bench warrant routine.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it! I think maybe "W" took some bad advice on this one: Maybe it was Cheney or somebody under Cheney (?) that saw this as an ideological
sine qua non - you know, that Latin thing: "Can't do without". (I may have botched that up a little.) In other words, somebody wanted President Bush to establish these no-warrant wiretaps as an executive privilege, to be used and handed down to the next (Republican! In their view ...) president. That's the only real theory that I have about it. Maybe something more will come out of the administration, if Congress keeps beating on them about this (as I think they should.) Maybe it was something that the administration could explain (in secret) to the heads of the Congressional intelligence/oversight committees and then they can turn around and say to the public, yeah, they had a good reason for it, which we cannot divulge publicly, but now we're all OK on it. Likely scenario? Probably not. But that's as far as my thinking takes me, on the main topic of this thread.
As to the Valerie Plame subtext (of this thread): This is a departure from what I believe is the usual "rinselberg" posting style, but to cut to the chase again - there's something about Joe Wilson I just can't LIKE! I mean, to me he's just another talking head on TV, but I just can't get too worked up about the "outing" of Valerie Plame. I guess we'll have to see (as you said) what the special prosecutor finally comes out with. It's already cost "W" one Scooter Libby overboard, so it's not all going to waste. A price has been paid. Was Valerie Plame worth more than one not so widely esteemed guillotined head? I dunno. That
photo that I posted above (from
rep's link) - that's a crackup. I can just see myself as Jay Leno, holding that photo in front of me and saying that the caption is ... on and on! Look at what Plame is doing with her hand to her head, let alone the pajamas. She looks like that "Ed Glosser" act that Christopher Walken puts on - the Trivial Psychic: Oooh, it's coming to me now, Vx nerve gas in Hussein's Presidential Palace Number 18 ... Read Wilson's book and tell me about it, but I don't think I'll be picking up a copy myself.
Finally, you know your Maynard better than I do. MacArthur Park is one of my all time favorite jazz tracks. They took what was called the world's WORST EVER pop vocal, composed by Jimmy Webb and "sung" (spoken, would be more right) by Richard Harris and converted it into one of the great all time big band (or medium band) jazz cuts. Birdland - very good. Chameleon - not much use for that. I really haven't heard that much else - I picked up the album title and the nickname "MF Horn", but I haven't even listened to that. (What is this? True Lies and Videotapes ...) I heard that version of MacArthur Park a lot in college. One of my roommates was in the marching band - clarinet player, he really liked it and played it all the time on the stereo. And I never got tired of it. And probably never will.
Great post, spartus: I see it winging its way around the globe on Internet-2, at broadband speed end to end, a flat panel monitor in every home, served up by
Steve Machol's future OptiBoard host - a cluster of 64 Pentium-4's surplused at a discount from the National Security Agency ...
"Jazz on"
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