A Quick One ...

... from Joseph Sobran:

As I observed last year, Americans who think America should behave like other countries are called "isolationists," whereas other countries that behave like America are called "rogue nations." Though I disagree with those who want Bush to nuke Mecca, they can't reasonably be accused of isolationism.

A Judicious Choice of Target

I'm sure everyone's had plenty to say today about the NSA every-phone-call-ever-made database. This story, though, emphasized something curious:

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee demanded that executives from AT&T Inc., BellSouth Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc. testify before Congress about a report that the telephone companies gave the U.S. government phone records of millions of Americans.

``I am determined to get to the bottom of this,'' said Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, who added that he would subpoena the companies if they decline to appear before the committee voluntarily.

Well, well, Senator Specter, mighty champion of our liberties! Let's see, now ... an agency of the same government that Sen. Specter is paid to oversee makes a nauseatingly anti-constitutional demand for information from some private companies, and they comply ... and Sen. Specter is so mad, he's just going to call those companies on the carpet. Has Sen. Specter called for impeachment of the chief executive yet? Has Sen. Specter introduced a bill yet that would de-fund the lawless NSA, or repeal the "PATRIOT" Act, or disband the Department of Fatherland Security? Has Sen. Specter asked the Department of Justice (no, really, it's not a joke, that's what it's called) to prosecute the responsible NSA functionaries? No; instead, he's going to throw his weight around with those who might -- at their own risk -- have refused to comply with the illegal demands for data. He's carefully avoiding the criminals. Makes me wonder what phone calls of Sen. Specter's might be in the Big Database.

Trust Them With WHAT??!?!!?

So: the GOP's political future looks bleak. Dubya's approval numbers in the polls seem daily to plumb new sub-Nixonian levels. And the Democrats may retake power. Between this fall and '08, they may retake power as thoroughly as the Republicans possess it now.

Think that's a good thing? Think there's any meaningful difference between the Pachyderm and Jackass Caucuses of the War Party? Check out this crap, from the Washington Post.

Democratic hawks said yesterday that their party can win a war of ideas with the Republicans over national security, but only if Democrats move beyond simply criticizing President Bush's policies and convince voters they support strategies to defeat Islamic jihadists.

These centrist Democrats argued that voters are more receptive to the Democrats because of Bush's mistakes in Iraq. But they warned against calls to launch investigations into past administration decisions if Democrats gain control of the House or Senate in the November elections. Instead, they said, Democrats should concentrate on charting alternative policies for fighting terrorism and succeeding in Iraq.

"We still have a hurdle to cross with the American people in convincing them we can be both tough and smart when it comes to securing America," said Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.). Voters may have more confidence in Democrats on the economy or education, he said, but, "they're not going to trust us on those things if they don't first us trust us with their lives."

Bayh and others spoke at the launch of a collection of essays on national security policy published by the Progressive Policy Institute, the think tank associated with the Democratic Leadership Council. The sponsors challenged Democrats to resist policies advocated by what they called the "non-interventionist left" wing of their party while vigorously challenging what they call the "neo-imperial right" viewpoint of many in the Bush administration.

Yesterday's unveiling underscored again the division within the Democratic Party between elected officials such as Bayh, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), who have resisted calls for setting timetables for withdrawal of U.S. forces in Iraq, and those such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), Sen. Russell Feingold (Wis.) and Rep. John P. Murtha (Pa.), who have embraced such timetables.

Yesterday's speakers said Democrats must make clear that, after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, they do not take lightly the threat posed by Islamic radicals. Even as they challenged their own party to offer a more robust strategy, they rejected Republican criticism -- voiced earlier this year by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove -- that Democrats collectively have a "pre-9/11 worldview." Rove said Democrats have been "deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong" on national security.

...

Pelosi has said Democrats will investigate how the United States went to war in Iraq if they gain control of the House, but pollster Jeremy Rosner said yesterday that this represents a backward-looking approach that will make it more difficult for Democrats to define their security agenda.

"Many of us are disturbed by the calls for investigations or even impeachment as the defining vision for our party for what we would do if we get back into office," he said.

PPI President Will Marshall said that Democrats should embrace internationalism in the tradition of Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy. That includes championing freedom and democracy. "We can't abandon [support for] democracy simply because the Bush administration has embraced it or misappropriated it," he said.

Let's suppose one of these clowns (Bayh, Hillary, or Biden) gets the Democrat nomination, and runs against some photogenic GOP chickenhawk in '08. We'll be told endlessly how important it is to vote. We'll be told not to complain about the outcome, if we didn't vote. And we'll hear the "two" sides (actually, about 1.001 sides) compete to convince us that each one is a more efficient towelhead-killer than the other. And one caucus or the other will win. I neither know nor care which, but one thing's for sure: we lose. We'll be too stupid, in many cases, to know that we've lost, but we'll lose all the same.

Note, by the way, that John Kerry is listed in the article as being one of those eee-villll antiwar Democrats. This is just another indicator of the severity of our condition: that the guy who ran for President in '04, claiming to be a better and more effective warmaker than BushCo, is now called "antiwar." So there's a good chance that, even if the Democrats set out to nominate a non-interventionist, they would end up with just another opportunistic weathervane, holding the moistened finger up in the breeze and adopting "positions" accordingly.

We, as a nation, deserve much worse than we've gotten so far. Our luck is probably running out.

Gouge

I've been hearing a lot lately about "price gouging." It makes me wonder: what does the term mean? The dictionary says: " ... 3 : to subject to extortion or undue exaction : OVERCHARGE - goug·er noun."

Well, now, "extortion." That sounds bad. And I'm pretty sure it's already illegal. "Extort" means: " ... to obtain from a person by force, intimidation, or undue or illegal power."

In the above-referenced news story, Sen. Maria Cantwell of the state of Washington is, as senators are wont to do, urging legislation:

With gas prices above $3 a gallon in many places, Congress should pass legislation by Memorial Day to make price-gouging a federal crime, Sen. Maria Cantwell said Saturday in the Democrats' weekly radio address.

Regrettably, the news story provides no further detail about what prices would constitute "gouging," and I was unable to locate a transcript of Sen. Cantwell's address. Her web site has a fair amount of material on the subject, but it neither defines "gouging," nor "profiteering," nor does it indicate what prices for gasoline or other fuels are acceptable.

Price-fixing collusions: already illegal. Extortion: already illegal. This makes me think that something that isn't already illegal is about to become so, and I wonder what it is. I expect there's a good chance that it will turn out that "gouging" and "profiteering" mean asking a higher price from willing buyers than Sen. Cantwell finds seemly. Now I wonder when Sen. Cantwell will turn her critical eye and technical expertise to the real-estate markets. Many Americans are selling their houses for far, far more than they paid for them. Yes, sadly, many Americans are gouging and profiteering. Perhaps Sen. Cantwell will let us know what fair prices would look like.

Now, I don't mean to seem partisan here; all who know me also know that I carry no water for the Gee-Oh-Pee. So let's pause to note here that the "gouge" word has also recently been heard from the simian lips of El Presidente himself. It matters not which crime family any particular lawfaker associates himself or herself with; all of them love to make expansive and threatening gestures with the huge gun that is government, while barking out orders to you and I, telling us what we may buy at what price, and what we are forbidden to buy. Of course, all this is as it should and must be ... of course! Without our Dear Leaders, whatever would we do?

A Melancholy Pleasure

As of about 10:30 pm last Friday, when I submitted my final grades, I am no longer a part-time physics instructor. So now, the day job is the only job I have. I may as well stop calling it the "day" job, I suppose. I'll probably go on calling it that, though. Habit's a powerful thing.

It always feels good to be done at the end of the spring semester, with the summer stretching out endlessly before you, with lots of time to rework lecture notes, revise the lab manual, tweak the syllabus, and so on. This time, the good feeling is mixed liberally with sadness. I really, really, really like teaching physics. (Grading lab reports, on the other hand, is a bale of drudgery that I'll miss not at all, not even a little bit.) But aside from maybe substituting every now and then for my replacement -- a day-job co-worker of mine who really knows her stuff and will do wonderfully well -- I'm done, and that doesn't feel very good.

It's the correct decision for me right now, though. The day job expects people like me to travel every now and then, reasonably enough ... and the last five years, I've traveled very little indeed, needing to be on hand on Monday and Wednesday evenings from late August through early May. The day job's been nothing but cooperative, but my conscience has been uneasy. Several times, I've seen colleagues have to go places when I should have gone. So, five years is enough, and it's time for me to give my primary employer some undivided attention for a while.

Teaching an evening class, I've had a varied group of students, a lot of them non-traditional in age and situation. I'm not likely to forget Nathan, an electrician from Ghana who used to drop in on me at my Friday evening office hour the year after he was in my class, just to chat or sometimes for some "consultation" on his work for other classes. Another young man -- never mind his name -- had, I think, a dozen piercings above the shirt collar where they could be seen, and I shudder to think of the hardware he probably bore in places that I, thank God, had no occasion to see. (He was quite a good student, too.)

Well, anyway, good-bye to all that. It was good. I'll miss those folks.

What a No-Blogging Guy!

End of semester = lots of stuff to do = no blogging. I have many students' dreams to crush, you know. The crushing of dreams takes time. They must be crushed both carefully and thoroughly.

Not that the whole world was holding its breath for my next batch of keyboard droppings or anything. But somehow, there's that spurious sense of responsibility that demands appeasement. See you all on the weekend, I expect.