The Same Script

"The White House is using the same script today that Nixon was using back then." --Morton Marcus of Cinema Scene

Last week saw the DVD release of the documentary film "U.S. v. John Lennon."
Digby has more. The film, he says, "has much to say about what is going on right now with the “dissent vs. disloyalty” issue (Dixie Chicks, anyone?) and the dangers of being governed by an administration that parcels up the Bill of Rights like customized selections from a dim sum cart."

Think things have changed? Also released this past week was Shut Up And Sing, the documentary about the same 'Dixie Chicks' Digby mentions. They had a John Lennon-like experience with Bush boosters.

Take a look at Cinema Scene's clip and tell us if you see any difference in the bonfire flames, then or now?

The War on Chinese New Year

If we didn't know better, we'd think there must be Jerry Falwell, Bill O'Reilly, and John Gibson clones in China.

Josie Liu, blogging at China in Transition, reports Chinese media organs lately have been busy "defending the Spring Festival movement."

It appears to be a lot like the imaginary War on Christmas, only without the profits.

[T]he Chinese public has noted for a long time that the Chinese New Year is losing its traditional flavor, while young people seem to enjoy more in celebrating Christmas or Valentine’s Day. But the discussion has rarely been put in the spot light of state media like Xinhua, and the Internet has facilitated a public debate on the issue to a larger scale.

Speaking of China, we've been busy ourselves promoting things Chinese. Not, we hope, in a wingnut way. Have a look.

Click

11 Questions

John Mueller asks 10 Questions About Homeland Security. We have one more:

Why is the press not asking any of them?

Is It Real or Is It Delusional?

Dear god, these idiot Georgia Republicans really do believe the Earth doesn't revolve around the sun.

When Mathematicians Rumble

There's nothing like watching a rousing good fight, even when it's among a bunch of egghead mathematicians rumbling over who gets credit for the geometrization conjecture which substantiated that Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman had, indeed, proved the Poincaré conjecture.

In 2003, when Perelman revisited the United States to lecture on his work, many mathematicians doubted that he could have pulled off all of these feats. By 2006, however, the mathematical community had finally caught up. Three separate manuscripts, each more than 300 pages in length, filled in key missing details of Perelman's proof.

Two of the papers -- one authored by Bruce Kleiner and John Lott of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, the other by John Morgan of Columbia University and Gang Tian of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge -- stopped short of the geometrization conjecture, because Perelman's explanation of the final step had been too sketchy. (Both groups are still working on it.) They did, however, include enough math to nail down the Poincaré conjecture.

The third paper, by Huai-Dong Cao of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and Xi-Ping Zhu of Zhongshan University in Guangzhou, China, was less circumspect. Cao and Zhu claimed to have "the first written account of a complete proof of the Poincaré conjecture and the geometrization conjecture of Thurston." This summer, the International Mathematical Union (IMU) decided to award Perelman the Fields Medal, traditionally considered the highest honor in mathematics.
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Since then, the rosy glow of triumph has taken on darker hues. * * *Perelman declined the Fields Medal. * * * In an interview in The New Yorker, the reclusive mathematician said he was retiring from mathematics, disenchanted by unspecified lapses in "ethical standards" by colleagues. The New Yorker article also painted an unflattering portrait of Yau, intimating that he had claimed too much credit for his protégés Cao and Zhu.

In the ensuing months, hard feelings have abounded. Certain mathematicians claimed that their quotes were distorted in the New Yorker, and Yau threatened to sue. Kleiner and Lott complained that Cao and Zhu had copied a proof of theirs and claimed it as original, and the latter pair grudgingly printed an erratum acknowledging Kleiner and Lott's priority.

This fall, the American Mathematical Society attempted to organize an all-star panel on the Poincaré and geometrization conjectures at its January 2007 meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. According to Executive Director John Ewing, the effort fell apart when Lott refused to share the stage with Zhu.

Got that? Pop quiz soon.

Poor New Orleans. They can't even host a peaceful mathematics convention.

Digby Is Digging ...

... through old daguerreotypes. We think he's doing it for two reasons.

One is here. The other is there.

The 'Humane Execution' Paradox

Just as Florida is re-studying the lethal injection issue so also are other states. In today's Sunday Times Magazine, Elizabeth Weil has deeply unsettling account of the stumble-bum incompetence, maladministration, and flat-out ignorance of those who do our dirty work in carrying out capital executions around the nation.

Dyslexic doctors who muddle up the proper amounts of chemicals ... physicians guilty of chronic malpractice who hopelessly botch the execution of convicts, too ... clueless prison wardens improperly mixing various lethal chemicals together into "a thick, white sludge" that leaves the condemned alive and in agony for hours... and on and on.

As the very man who wrote the protocol on how lethal injection could be employed as a method of execution says, "It never occurred to me when we set this up that we’d have complete idiots administering the drugs.”

The root problem, of course, is this inescapable paradox : as a society we aspire to humane treatment of even the least of us but there is no humane way to carry out the mandated execution of a human being.

As Ms. Weil writes:

In his 1975 treatise “Discipline and Punish,” the philosopher Michel Foucault observed that in the West, the locus of punishment has shifted away from the body to the soul, and because execution requires an act of violence, it is a task we are almost ashamed to perform.

“Foucault was not a fan of the death penalty, but he was right,” [Law professor Robert] Blecker told me, “the twitching, the moaning, we can’t even tolerate that.” Executions, to be ethical, must be transparent. Blecker maintains: “My view it that executions should be public, that we should take responsibility for what we do. If we can’t face it, we should abolish it.”

"No Training, No Qualifications"

Florida's "lead executioner" in the botched state-sponsored murder by lethal injection of Angel Diaz "had no medical training and no qualifications," according to an Associated News wire service report in the International Herald Tribune. This probably accounts for medical findings that "needles had been pushed incorrectly through [Diaz'] veins into soft tissue, delaying the flow of chemicals into his bloodstream. An autopsy found chemical burns in both his arms."

The St. Pete Times explains that Diaz "needed so much of the chemicals because the needles inserted into his arms tore through his veins and sprayed the chemicals into his flesh. Though the chemicals can kill someone if they seep into the flesh, it takes much longer and can cause severe pain."

"Some observers" were "surprised," we are told, when the "lead executioner" confessed to botching other killings as well.

The executioner told a panel studying the state's lethal injection protocols that they pumped the cocktail into both of Diaz's arm. He surprised some observers by saying he had gone to the second arm in other executions as well.

He added that he did that on those other occasions on his own volition - not on the advice of medical staff.

"That's because I thought I should do it," he said, later adding, "In my opinion, when the execution begins the executioner is in charge."

The unnamed "executioner" testified anonymously by telephone and disguised his voice with an electronic device that made his voice sound "warbled." So, too, did the assisting nurse. According to the SPT, "Their names were not revealed in accordance with state law."

That's one law we don't need in Florida. As long as Florida retains capital punishment, we ought to know who are the unqualified, untrained thugs that work for us do our dirty work.

'Best Source' on the Face of the Earth

UPDATED BELOW

Dick Cheney on Douglas Feith:

As late as January 2004, Cheney called Feith's findings, which also were leaked to the conservative Weekly Standard magazine, "the best source of information" on links between Saddam and al-Qaida... .:

Gen. Tommy Franks on Douglas Feith:

" “f***ing stupidest guy on the face of the earth.”

Douglas Feith on Douglas Feith:

In a telephone interview yesterday, Feith emphasized the inspector general's conclusion that his actions, described in the report as "inappropriate," were not unlawful.

AMPLIFICATION DEPT.

NY Times, Feb. 10:

The inspector general did not recommend criminal charges against Mr. Feith because Mr. Rumsfeld or his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, approved their subordinate’s “inappropriate” operations. The renegade intelligence buff said he was relieved.

We’re sure he was. But there is no comfort in knowing that his dirty work was approved by his bosses. All that does is add to evidence that the Bush administration knowingly and repeatedly misled Americans about the intelligence on Iraq.

A Look Behind that Curtain

Media Matters:

In a sense, [the story of who and why CIA agent Valerie Plame was publicly exposed] was Watergate in reverse. Instead of digging for the truth, lots of journalists tried to bury it. The sad fact remains the press was deeply involved in the cover-up, as journalists reported White House denials regarding the Plame leak despite the fact scores of them received the leak and knew the White House was spreading rampant misinformation about an unfolding criminal case.
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And that's why the Plame investigation then, and the Libby perjury trial now, so perfectly capture what went wrong with the timorous press corps during the Bush years as it routinely walked away from its responsibility of holding people in power accountable and ferreting out the facts. Regardless of the outcome from the Libby perjury case, the trial itself will be remembered for pulling back the curtain on the Bush White House as it frantically tried to cover up its intentional effort to mislead the nation to war. Sadly, the trial will also serve as a touchstone for how the Beltway press corps completely lost its way during the Bush years and became afraid of the facts — and the consequences of reporting them.

Cheney vs. Cheney

Dick Cheney, March 1991:

I think for us to get American military personnel involved in a civil war inside Iraq would literally be a quagmire. * * * I do not think the United States wants to have U.S. military forces accept casualties and accept responsibility of trying to govern Iraq. It makes no sense at all."

Dick Cheney, May 30, 2005:

No. I'm absolutely convinced we did the right thing in Iraq.

M.J. Menge Dies

Notable Pensacola attorney M.J. Menge died late Saturday, Feb. 3, 2007, after a heroic battle against cancer. He was 70.

Menge was a familiar figure to Pensacola Beach residents and leaseholders. He volunteered as a public speaker for hundreds of island residents devastated after Hurricane Opal in 1995 and again after Hurricane Georges in 1998, was instrumental in the rebuilding of Sea Horse Condominium, and represented a leading island business in the ultimately unsuccessful struggle against MSBU assessments.

As a friend phrased it in a written viewpoint comment to the local newspaper (apparently not yet available on web) Menge was truly a "gentleman attorney." Today's PNJ editorial explains:

M.J. Menge was one of those invaluable members of a community who never seemed to say no when asked to take on responsibility. Service was his gift to the Pensacola Bay Area, and he didn't stop serving until the cancer that brought him down finally prevented it.
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... Mr. Menge never sought the spotlight. He was just as likely to work quietly, behind the scenes, to bring about a needed change or find a solution to a problem that would only get worse unless dealt with.

Because he took sides on issues, there is no question that Mr. Menge often found himself at odds with other people. But agree with him or disagree, you knew that Mr. Menge stood where he did because he believed it was best.

That in part explains the wide respect Mr. Menge earned from so many people.

He also understood that solving community issues took compromise. Maybe that was his training as a lawyer. But he knew that when people of good will disagreed on an issue, finding a solution they could all support was more important than insisting on the singularity of his own vision.
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[H]e was about doing the right thing, and doing it in a way that worked.

That he so often found himself at the center of this community's most contentious problems says so much about a man who found himself naturally drawn to service.

That others were drawn so strongly to him says even more.

There's more here and here.

Unreported Storm News

Deck of Disney Wonder cruise ship, 4:30 am Feb. 2

Shortly after tornadoes ripped through central Florida last Friday, causing what is now believed to be 20 deaths and damaging "more than 1,850 in Lake, Lake, Sumter, Seminole and Volusia counties," as reported by the Miami Herald, the Disney cruise ship Disney Wonder at sea on its way to Nassau experienced "near gale force winds" as high as 67 mph and seas measuring 18-20 feet. Geysers of saltwater illuminated by the ship's spotlights shot through the inky black night in great white sheets while needles of rain stabbed at the starboard side deck and then, spent, washed back into the ocean like an exhausted tide.

Because of its superior design, almost none of the nearly 3,000 passengers aboard were aware of the storm raging all around them. At most, those asleep in their staterooms experienced an almost-imperceptible, gentle rocking every few seconds. Only the crew, which could not quite hide its nervousness, and a handful of insomniac passengers beheld the storm that had enveloped them.

More on the Disney cruise later.