Second Amendment under Fire:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Everybody knows exactly what that means, right? It means I have the right to keep a gun on me at all times, so that I can fondle it whenever I need to feel like more of a man. Yup, that's it exactly.

The next battle over the Amendment will focus on—you've got it—the commas in the document. To read more about this, check out Adam Freedman's Op-Ed piece in today's New York Times.

By the way, just what did those jokers mean by "A well regulated Militia," and why is it that no one wants to debate that issue? Just who is supposed to be doing the "regulating," and who gets to decide what "well" means?

The Story You Should Be Following:

While our attention is being focused on who will win in Iowa—whether one Republican candidate's religion is cuter than the other's, whether Operah can influence as many Democratic voters as Bill—the story you should be paying attention to is being covered by Clifford Krauss in today's New York Times: "Oil-Rich Nations Use More Energy, Cutting Exports." Here's a teaser:

“It is a very serious threat that a lot of major exporters that we count on today for international oil supply are no longer going to be net exporters any more in 5 to 10 years,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, an oil analyst at Rice University.

Krauss's story is filled with these sorts of tidbits that tend to make the average Sunday afternoon couch potato yawn, and they are just the sort of details that will govern our lives over the next fifty years.


Yes, Dear, Al Gore Did "Create" the Internet:

Writing in the technology section of today's New York Times, John Markoff illustrates how then senator Al Gore played a crucial role in the development of the Internet. No single person, we all realize, created the Internet; it was a product of what we are beginning to understand in terms of "swarm theory." (See the National Geographic article and the BusinessPundit.com article on Google.) What Gore did was to get out in front in leading government to become a partner in the development of the Internet. There is little doubt among many leading scientists and engineers that his part surpassed that of any other national politician at the time.


Zingers:

Once upon a time, The New York Times' Maureen Dowd was noted for nailing the politicians she lives among in Washington, D. C., but lately she's been a little lame. I mean, just how often and how many ways can you ridicule Georgie and his bunch when they do such a good job of it themselves.

Dowd's Op-Ed piece today, without being overtly cynical, does a good job of describing Romney's recent message to the evangelicals:

“J.F.K.’s speech was to reassure Americans that he wasn’t a religious fanatic,” Mr. Krakauer agreed. “Mitt’s was to tell evangelical Christians, ‘I’m a religious fanatic just like you.’”

The backdrop, he said, is “the wickedly fierce competition between Mormons and Southern evangelicals to convert people.”

The world is globalizing, nuclear weapons are proliferating, the Middle East is seething, but Republicans are still arguing the Scopes trial.

Mitt was right when he said that “Americans do not respect believers of convenience.” Now if he would only admit he’s describing himself.

Dowd is quoting Jon Krakaur, author of Under the Banner of Heaven. It should be noted that Dowd is, or at least was raised as, a Roman Catholic. We do need to note that insight about the Mormons and the evangelicals being in serious competition for converts.

Waste Management: Where Did Your Tax Dollars Go?

Washington Post staff writer, Dana Hedgpeth, reports on the loss of millions of dollars worth of equipment in Iraq: guns, trucks, grenades in astonishing numbers have disappeared, if they ever existed at all.

In the meantime, the Democratic leaders in congress are about to grant the administration a blank check for continued spending in Iraq as long as the president agrees to spend $11 billion additional dollars for projects here in the U.S. No wonder their ratings are so high among the voters.

Perhaps there is some good news. Howard J. Krongard, the State Department's inspector general, has announced he is resigning after the holidays. Krongard has been accused of impeding investigations of how the money is being spent in Iraq. You could argue that Krongard has been Blackwater's man in the government.

NOTE: Am I the only one who fell out of his chair laughing when, following the news that America's spies are now convinced that Iran has NOT been attempting to make a bomb since 2003, Georgie Boy demanded publicly that Iran's leaders had a lot to explain. Evidently, he believes Iran has reneged on some sort of promise.

Coming in from the Cold:

It seems that back in 2002 our good buddies at the C.I.A. video taped themselves torturing prisoners, and then in 2005 they "Nixoned" the tapes. Ooopsie! The New York Times states that, "on Thursday, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director, said … the decision to destroy the tapes was made 'within the C.I.A.' and that they were destroyed to protect the safety of undercover officers and because they no longer had intelligence value." Sounds like Nixon discussing the missing 18 minutes to me.


The Housing Bubble:

In an article addressing Bush's proposal to provide relief on the situation, The New York Times reports that "Administration officials estimate about 500,000 subprime borrowers are in danger of losing homes in the next 18 months as their low teaser rates expire and their monthly payments jump by 30 percent or more. Outside analysts warn the number of foreclosures could be much higher."

That's a lot of people pushed into the streets, folks. Let's hope they all voted for Bush in '04. Currently, the Bush proposal seems to focus on how to bailout the banks and investors, with relief to home owners occurring only tangentially.


Romney v. Kennedy, or My How Things Have Changed:

In 1960, Sen. John F. Kennedy traveled to Texas to address the fundamentalist ministers who had gathered there to challenge him and his Roman Catholicism. He faced a group dominated by Baptist preachers who viewed the Pope as, maybe, the Anti-Christ and were convinced that the Pope would take over the White House if Kennedy, a lax Catholic to say the least, were elected president. Texas was, of course, LBJ's home state, and that's why it was seen as the best place for Kennedy to defend himself against the charges that he would deliver the nation into the hands of the Vatican.

Tapes that played yesterday on C-SPAN and PBS are informative. Kennedy faced a hostile crowd. Once he'd delivered his message, the gathered congregation peppered him with hard hitting questions, quoting from Catholic literature, which they apparently knew much better than he did. His critics, a much more liberal group then than their descendants are today, meant to place him on the defensive, and depending on how you read the tapes, maybe they succeeded. It's generally agreed that he failed to sway those critics to vote in any substantial numbers for him, but he convinced enough people so that he was able to win the election, with perhaps a little help from the mayor of Chicago.

Now Republican Mitt Romney has tried the same approach, but things have indeed changed. Romney isn't facing a crowd who believes for one minute that the former governor can place the country into the hands of the Mormon Church (or cult, depending on your point of view). This crowd simply wants to know if the man will be susceptible to their influence and to what degree.

As The New York Times put matters in an editorial today,

Romney was not there to defend freedom of religion, or to champion the indisputable notion that belief in God and religious observance are longstanding parts of American life. He was trying to persuade Christian fundamentalists in the Republican Party, who do want to impose their faith on the Oval Office, that he is sufficiently Christian for them to support his bid for the Republican nomination.

Demagoguery all dressed up in a pretty white face, quoting the founding fathers. One is reminded of that old saw about the Devil being able to quote the scripture. A little like Milton's hero explaining whether it's better to reign or serve, and don't forget where.

Is today important for some reason? Maybe we should check with FDR.

Beating a Dead Horse:

Harry Mount, writing in today's Op-Ed pages of The New York Times, not only wants us to learn a foreign language in the good ol' U. S. of A., but a dead one at that—Latin. Mount argues that the study of the language of empire will improve both our minds and our ability to communicate. Imagine that? Haven't we been getting along just fine without resorting to either?

Speaking as someone who has studied a little Latin and less Greek, along with a smidgen of Spanish and GI German, I can testify to the fact that studying any language, including the one I naturally speak by the grace of the Creator, won't do a thing to improve one's mind or the ability to clarify the workings thereof. Just ask my kids. They'll be happy to inform you.

But then you already knew that, didn't you.

Shock and Awe:

Almost five years into a war based on lies and deception, we find we have helped build a country that now ranks third world-wide in overall corruption. Today's New York Times reports that "an independent analysis ranked Iraz the third most corrupt country in the world. Of 180 countries surveyed, only Somalia and Myanmar were worse, according to Transparency International, a Berlin-based group that publishes the index annually." According to the Times,

as much as a third of what they spend on Iraqi contracts and grants ends up unaccounted for or stolen, with a portion going to Shiite or Sunni militias. In addition, Iraq’s top anticorruption official estimated this fall — before resigning and fleeing the country after 31 of his agency’s employees were killed over a three-year period — that $18 billion in Iraqi government money had been lost to various stealing schemes since 2004.

So that's what's happening to the money we've been borrowing from the Chinese to fight this war that never should have been fought in the first place. Thanks, George. It's good to see you are able to apply those wonderful lessons you learned in your highly successful business career before turning your skills to the political arena.

Would You Buy a Used Car from This Turkey?

Gail Collins rips on America's favorite drag queen, His Honor da May-errr!, in today's New York Times, pointing out with glee that Rudy's primary concern in protecting America is in protecting Rudy and further pointing out that he doesn't always do such a good job of it, at least not when it comes to hiding his indiscretions (womanizing, associating with known felons) from the press. That seems to happen when you use lots of taxpayer moneys.

Here's a tidbit that you just gotta love:

When he was mayor, he got a whole lot of … [security]. The city was at one point paying for police guards to protect and transport not only Rudy, his children and his elderly mother, but also both his wife and his mistress. Really, they were this close to assigning a detail to the family retriever and a springer spaniel he was courting down the block.

(Gail Collins "Rudy's Security Blanket"1 Dec 07)

And then there's this:

The conflation of the safety of Rudy with the safety of New York reached its peak on 9/11, when the entire public security leadership of the city left ground zero in order to protect the mayor in his walk uptown. [In] … the aftermath, … he tried to postpone the mayoral election under the theory that the factor most critical to our survival was his continued presence at the helm.

(Gail Collins "Rudy's Security Blanket"1 Dec 07)

And we all thought it was Bush who was most likely to suspend the Constitution in order to remain dictator for life.


Technology:

Yes, I finally did it; I downloaded and installed SeaMonkey, Mozilla's successor to the Netscape and Mozilla Web suits. I have to admit that I put it off for a long time, figuring any software with a name that weird must be suitable only for the online gaming crowd. Guess I was just bored one day.

The installation went perfectly, and all my settings were transferred. In short, it runs great, just in case you've a mind to try a slightly different Web experience. The suit includes a browser, editor, RSS feed, chat, and my favorite, a very quick and nimble news reader/email client. All the stuff that I learned to love in Netscape, but never seemed to work right for me in the Mozilla suits.