Since classes ended, I've been writing like mad.
I did too much administration this year, and too little writing. It has been harder than I liked to get back into the swing of it, but now that it's getting fun again I can't understand how I let myself get sucked into doing anything else.
I'm going to have to see about that 139-word sentence. I hope it's that big quote from the court, not something I did….
You might recall this post, Is that a Loonie in Your Pocket or is Someone Else Glad to See Me?, back from January. Basically, US security types got all excited about “bugged” Canadian coins. Here's a reminder of what they were saying:
Canadian coins containing tiny transmitters have mysteriously turned up in the pockets of at least three American contractors who visited Canada, says a branch of the U.S. Department of Defence. …
“On at least three separate occasions between October 2005 and January 2006, cleared defence contractors' employees travelling through Canada have discovered radio frequency transmitters embedded in Canadian coins placed on their persons,” the report says. …
Well, several months later, we know the truth: they're nuts. 'Poppy Quarter' Behind Spy Coin Alert:
An odd-looking Canadian coin with a bright red flower was the culprit behind a U.S. Defense Department false espionage warning earlier this year about mysterious coin-like objects with radio frequency transmitters, The Associated Press has learned.
The harmless “poppy coin” was so unfamiliar to suspicious U.S. Army contractors traveling in Canada that they filed confidential espionage accounts about them. The worried contractors described the coins as “anomalous” and “filled with something man-made that looked like nano-technology,” according to once-classified U.S. government reports and e-mails obtained by the AP.
But, of course, they weren't anything of the kind.
And we wonder why they can't catch bin Laden?
This 'Goofus & Gallant: A DOJ Human Resources Primer' by Jesus' General is much too true.
It seems there's lots more rot to root out of DoJ. Don't miss the newscast that Ann Bartow linked to in a comment yesterday: DoJ's civil rights division isn't hiring (m)any minorities for its criminal division. Only two black lawyers out of 50. A number lower than any time since 1978. Although the broadcast doesn't say so in so many words, one gathers the overall number for the civil rights division including the civil side is better — or at least, the best in DOJ (whatever that means). But it's hard to escape the suspicion that there's a connection between the whiteness of the criminal division and this:
One Justice Department chart revealed that over a six-year period the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had referred 3,200 individual complaints of discrimination to the civil rights division for action. They have resulted in only six lawsuits for race discrimination.
It never ends…
Perennial Presidential candidate George Romney's defining moment, however unfairly, was when he said in 1967 he'd been “brainwashed” about the Vietnam War. It followed the sometime Michigan Governor around for the rest of his long and endlessly diminishing political life.
Like father, like son? Forty years later George's son Mitt, also a former Governor, is running for the GOP nomination. And he just said something really weird:
In France, for instance, I'm told that marriage is now frequently contracted in seven-year terms where either party may move on when their term is up. How shallow and how different from the Europe of the past.
I don't care if he's tripping, or getting his information from watching French sex comedies, but surely this level of ignorance about Europe ought to disqualify someone from serious consideration for national office?
Or, is it really the case that in the modern GOP this sort of ignorance about Europe — especially France — almost serves as a platform?
Amazingly, there's a blog at which World Bank insiders discuss the Wolfowitz scandal and share juicy gossip about possibly forged emails and the like. It's currently called World Bank President – Scrutinising Paul Wolfowitz, outgoing World Bank president.
Founded in January 2005, when former World Bank president James Wolfensohn announced he would be retiring, the original mission of the blog was to “shine a light on the medieval process for choosing the head of this very powerful institution.” In particular, the author(s) were unhappy about the ability of the US government to pick the Bank's President. Then they were unhappy with what they got. Then they went on hiatus.
Now they're back, with a new name.
NO QUARTER: Letter to George Tenet from “a group of former intelligence officers” including Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson.
It now turns out that you were the Alberto Gonzales of the intelligence community—a grotesque mixture of incompetence and sycophancy shielded by a genial personality.
What does it mean when your name has become a way to invoke “a grotesque mixture of incompetence and sycophancy” — and why is Gonzales still the Attorney General?
I know, I know, for the same reason the US Army is still in Iraq.
Jotwell Blenderlaw