Support Rep. Jay Inslee’s Resolution of Inquiry
Seattle Congressman Jay Inslee is preparing a resolution of inquiry against the Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, the first step in an impeachment proceeding. Mark Kleiman suggests that a flood of small donations might send a message of support to the congressman & more importantly to his peers in the House. I just gave him fifty [...]
Standing Armies
Like the Founders, I am opposed to standing armies. In Federalist 26, Hamilton lays out the history & the political theory. Standing armies are threats to democracy & morality. The modern American volunteer army is the contemporary version of a standing army. And the political right — a category that includes a large number of [...]
Poetry’s Obligation
Poetry has an obligation to oppose clichés. Clichés are the viral carriers of lies. Poetry can do this by rejecting cliché or by analyzing or exploding cliché in its own use of language. The poet — who certainly does not need to be a maker of verses — uses one kind of language against another, [...]
Withdrawing from Iraq
Mark Kleiman lays out the logic & economics of withdrawal.
I’m a User Not a Dealer . . .
. . . of Rich web applications, that is. Before I forget, I want to make note of this interesting essay by Uday Gajendar. I found the piece via a link from my colleague Johndan Johnson-Eilola’s blog Work / Space.) And having just completed teaching my first online course, I have some strong opinions about [...]
Clichés
It is remarkable the kind of vitriol you encounter when you ask people to think about the clichés to which they have committed themselves. I am grateful to those who understood what I was trying to get across, whether they agree with me about the war & the moral responsibility of those fighting it or [...]
Perfect Day
Dog walk at 7:30 this morning under a clear, cool sky. Did some chores around the house. Watched the final round of the British Open, which ended dramatically in a playoff. Read some of my Patrick O’Brian novel, then tried to take a nap but couldn’t because the dogs kept barking at this & that. [...]
I Do Not “Support the Troops”
The phrase is a cliché & buried in the cliché are a pair of pernicious ideas: 1) That individual soldiers are without moral, existential, responsibility for their acts; 2) that to argue the Iraq war is wrong, misguided, ill-conceived, badly managed, stupid, indecent, horrifying, & damaging to US interests is to somehow wish harm to [...]
One-Dimensional Man
Via Wood s Lot, I came across this cogent essay in CTheory by Carol Vanderveer Hamilton in which that flickering sensation you get when watching George W. Bush on television is explained. The most effective critical writing reveals the known as newly informed insight. Hamilton’s dispassionate prose is devastating in its directness:
Kosinski’s Chance is unable [...]
Indentured Workers in the Mariana Islands
From Dover Bitch, writing at Hullabaloo:
Why is this hearing important? After all, it’s not on the evening news. It’s not even scheduled to be broadcast live on C-SPAN. The truth is, this hearing is only important to people who believe that America shouldn’t be a place like this:
Using its immigration authority, the Commonwealth has created [...]
