Grace, Where Are You?

Here's a blog milestone I never wanted to reach: I'm dropping the first two links I ever had here, to Grace Nearing's Scriptoids and The Next Blog Blog. They haven't been updated since June and March, respectively, and have thus become the equivalent of broken links. It's the sort of thing that makes me think gloomy thoughts about accidents or sudden illnesses -- she hadn't given any hints that she was thinking of dropping her blogs, and I don't have her e-mail address, so I can't just get in touch with her in the usual ways. Anyway, she's a gifted writer with unusual "takes" on lots of things, and I surely hope she's OK. I retain the bookmarks for those blogs, and plan to continue to check frequently ... if she resumes, the linkage will be restored promptly.

Grace, are you out there? Leave me a comment or something! I'm not the only one who misses you.

Deal With the Devil

I believe it was in a foreward to The Screwtape Letters that C.S. Lewis reminded his readers that "he who sits down to sup with the Devil should bring a long, long spoon." In light of Hugo Chavez's recent characterization of the Great Decider, this seems like particularly apt advice to some of our federal lawfakers, who recently reached a "compromise" with the Sulfurous One, whereby he and his minions get to keep torturing anyone they want to torture, without any trifling worries about war crimes laws. It turns out that some of them are shocked -- shocked, I say! -- that the operatives of Jorge "Diablo" Bush may have slipped a few jokers into the deck:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States could detain more foreigners as enemy combatants under legislation Congress will debate this week after a last-minute change in the bill, lawmakers said on Tuesday.

Democrats complained that Republicans quietly made several changes to the bill defining procedures for trying foreign terrorism suspects after an agreement last week between the White House and a group of dissident Republican senators.

"There are significant changes," said Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. He said the new elements could complicate efforts to push the bill through Congress before lawmakers leave this weekend to campaign for November elections.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, a key negotiator on the bill, said enemy combatants would now include those who provided money, weapons and other support for terrorist groups as well as those involved in actual operations.

Graham of South Carolina said the term "enemy combatant" also would apply to those fighting a U.S. ally.

"We're making sure that an enemy combatant could be defined as something other than a front-line troop," Graham said. "We want to make sure that giving material aid and support to terrorism would put you in the enemy combatant category."

Yes, Sen. Graham wants to make sure that you can be readily added to the ranks of the Enemy Combatants. Oh, no, you say, you are an American citizen -- that can't happen to you, right? That's only the swarthy and be-turbaned foreigners! Guess again:

Graham said U.S. citizens could not be deemed enemy combatants under the bill, but several human rights advocates said the language was so broad that they believed Americans could be detained under it. The Center for Constitutional Rights said even attorneys representing Guantanamo inmates could be deemed enemy combatants.

Yes, but doesn't "material" support mean sending money or weapons or peanut-butter sandwiches to the turr'sts? Well, maybe. Maybe it would just mean saying the wrong damn thing in public -- in your blog, for example. Maybe it would turn out that crimethink is a reliable indicator of the secret provision of material support. Maybe it will turn out that Jorge knows you're a Bad Guy because he got the Word of Knowledge™ from John Hagee. The point is, once you're renditioned and Gitmo-ized, you'll undoubtedly have many opportunities to discuss these fine points with the guard, when he comes to conduct you down the hall to Room 101 for your waterboarding sessions. As long as he's in the mood to converse, that is. If he's not, I'm sure he'll find some tactful way to use his boot to say so.

We didn't say anything when they came for John Walker Lindh, because he did seem like a bit of a jerk, at least. We didn't say anything when they came for Jose Padilla, because he had a funny name and looked like a dirtbag. And when they come for us, we won't say anything then, either ... except maybe, "I'll sign anything -- just please, don't hit me any more!"

Big Important Choices Department

When it comes to issues of significance, such as imperial wars for world domination, our glorious two-party system allows We The People to govern ourselves and determine our own destiny, right? Because, after all, we're just the free-est people ever!

So, if you're tired of the warmongering chickenhawk Republicans getting your kids killed, squandering your money by the mega-bale, and slaughtering and torturing anyone who gets in the way, you should be grateful that there's a Democratic alternative:

Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh said Sunday in New Hampshire.

“Iraq is taking the focus away from Afghanistan and Iran,” Bayh said. [Emphasis added.]

Yes, you hear Little Evan correctly. He's lusting after an emphasis on Iran.

Or at least those are the words that emerged from his youthful lips. About what he really thinks -- if anything -- we have not that first clue. Because:

Bayh is exploring a possible run for the Democratic presidential nomination. He was making the rounds of receptions honoring Democratic candidates Sunday and today.

Ah, yes. Apparently that's the calibrated "position" given him by his own low-priced version of Karl Rove. Not "stop the wars;" just "better-managed and bigger and other" wars.

But, of course, Little Evan is foursquare in favor of leaving Iraq, at some indefinite time. But not to go home. Oh, no, no, no, silly blogger!

The United States needs to begin the process of leaving Iraq by stabilizing the country so more focus can be placed on Afghanistan and Iran, he said.

“We’ve diverted so many resources to Iraq,” he said. Bayh said the U.S. should apply pressure to the Iraq government to control warring factions in the country.

So, there are your alternatives -- your contestants in the race to see who's more satisfactory to Likud. Your elephants: "Stay the course! We'll get to Iran soon enough!" Or your jackasses: "Change course -- we want to get to Iran right now!"

Don't forget to vote. Your vote counts! Your vote is your power! Your vote changes things!

Yeah.

Travel Report

It was, for me, an unusual week. As I mentioned in a previous post, Mrs. Bartleby and I participated in a road rally, photos from which can be seen here. The event was organized jointly by Scenic Road Rallies LLC and the Indiana DNR. There was nothing "racy" about it -- it was a backroads tour of southern Indiana, starting from Brown County State Park, stopping overnight at Spring Mill SP, and ending up at Clifty Falls SP. No time element was involved, and there were many opportunities to stop and look at unusual sights and historical markers, to climb fire towers, to walk across out-of-service covered bridges, and to rustle up odd scavenger-hunt items. So obscure and meandering were the roads selected by the rally designers that I still have only a vague idea of where we went, despite the fact that I drove every mile of it. A good time was had, I think, by all ... certainly by us, anyway. If they do it again next year, I'll certainly consider participating again.

So, we got back to the Fort on Wednesday afternoon, and I quickly grabbed a shower, purged my bag of used clothing, added some clean clothes, and headed to the airport to leave for Boston. At my day job, we're procuring a large collimator (a test optic) that's being built for us by a firm in the Boston area, and it was time for their critical design review. Accordingly, east I went. The review looked quite good. Afterward, some of "those guys" offered to take me along for dinner in Boston's North End. We went to Giacomo's, which I knew right away had to be a fine place, since people were lined up on the sidewalk outside, they don't take reservations, and the lady who waited on us was somewhere between 60 and 70, I'd guess, and quite possibly was the owner. She treated us with what you might call your authentic colorful rudeness. I ended up drinking an entire glass of that-there vino ... a bottle thereof simply showed up at the table, a glass was poured for me, and I didn't want to be a complete Hoosier by asking if I couldn't get some Diet Mountain Dew instead, so I tried to look semi-sophisticated and worked my way through it. Don't think I'll ever develop into a wine connoisseur; it was pretty much grape-ish vinegar, as far as I could tell. The food (calamari, mussels, and scallops on a massive bed of linguini with the pesto sauce) was good, anyway.

So, all in all, it was an unusual week. Good times, for the most part. Still, I'm ready for a return to my usual rut: the oft-unappreciated "dull routine."

Probability of Posting: Less Than Ten Percent

Not that my output is so prodigious even at the best of times -- but this'll be my last post for about a week. Mrs. Bartleby and I are going to slip away for a few days' (in-state) vacation during the first half of the week, and then I'm immediately leaving for Boston -- I have a design review to attend on behalf of the day job. Meanwhile, you know what to do -- just read everybody else, as you normally would.

I wish you all a wonderful week: a week in which everything that you want to happen, happens; and everthing that you don't want to happen, doesn't.

An Unusually Dangerous Time

The murderous maniac pictured at left is acting as if he can feel it slipping away: the quasi-dictatorial power, the spurious significance, the illusions of adequacy, the sweet sense of triumph over all those cleverboots whose book-larnin' enables them to speak in complete sentences. Of course, I can't know what sorts of notions flicker dimly through the cobwebbed passageways and booze-corroded machinery of the Preznit's atrophied brain. But if appearances are any guide, he's becoming aware that things are going badly for him -- slipping away.

My first inclination is to savor it. But that needs some thinking-through. This vainglorious clown still has his paws on the controls of a very substantial war machine. To be sure, the sort of war machine that invades and occupies is pretty well used up and tied down at the moment: trying to maintain a semblance of control in (parts of) Afghanistan, replacing Saddam as Iraqi tyrant, and squatting in Korea, waiting for the chance to become a sacrificial tripwire there. But other killing capabilities remain undiminished: plenty of airplanes, plenty of ships and submarines, lots of cruise missiles, a bounty of chemical and biological agents, and ... nukes, lots and lots of nukes, nukes of many sizes and flavors.

So, I'm not rejoicing. The war criminal who feels everthing going sour can still arrange to make a great many people dead, dead, dead. And other criminal maniacs such as Ehud Olmert, "Bibi" Netanyahu, and Condoleezza "She of Many Bizarre Doubled Letters" Rice still have his ear. There's still lots of foreign civilians that they can rip up like paper dolls. There's still many Americans who can be enticed, or forced, into being his "button men" and losing their limbs, their lives, their souls, or all three at once. There's still-deeper debt that can be incurred to pay for expensive military toys that are designed to destroy themselves at the same time they lay waste to other people's bodies and property. And there are some remaining liberties that can be taken away from Americans.

Congress: get him out of office, preferably yesterday. Every politico of either major brand party, or any minor brand party, for that matter, who isn't spending all of his or her energies and abilities to impeach Bush, or defund his deadly foreign adventures, is just as guilty as he is.