This is one of those list-of-links posts. But first:
– Bush’s trip to Iraq seems to have driven a few good people insane. It seems likely that just about any President who had committed a large number of troops overseas would visit them over the holidays. This shouldn’t be much more controversial than lighting the White House Christmas tree.
Now we find out that Bush had his picture taken with a prop turkey that wasn’t actually served. Wow. I also have a confession- my third grade pictures weren’t actually taken in front of a sun-dappled woodland. The nice lady at Sears used a big poster as a backdrop.
It feels good to have that off of my chest.
Now:
– What can you say about this?
According to Time, activities leading toward release of the 140 prisoners have accelerated since the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. It said U.S. officials had concluded some detainees were kidnapped for reward money offered for al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. […]
Slated for release were “the easiest 20 percent” of detainees, a military official told the magazine. It did not identify its source, who said the military was waiting for “a politically propitious time to release them.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger tried out a symbol yesterday that showed the largest disconnect between image and reality I’ve ever seen:
Holding aloft a giant, fake, green-and-gold credit card that read “California,” the governor declared: “This is the state credit card.” And then, “This is what we do,” he said, as he folded it in half and discarded it.
What? Schwarzenegger’s plan is to balance the state’s budget by putting $15 billion on the state’s credit card. In what bizarre sense is he discarding the credit card?
– The Department of Labor had a rule that agricultral workers needed to have toilets within a quarter mile of where they were working. The Eighth Circuit court just knocked it down. Apparently, it’s OK for the courts to re-write laws if it allows for treating farm workers like dogs.
From Nathan Newman.
(UPDATE: Thomoas corrects me, “The 8th circuit struck down a citation issued pursuant to the rule, but the rule is still standing.” In addition, several commenters diasagree with my reading, and they might be right.)
– Greg Greene is not happy at the fact that the Wall Street Journal‘s Robert L. Bartley has just been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Nation’s highest civil honor. Neither is Greg Beato.
– Arthur Silber is more than a little angry at Andrew Sullivan’s attempts to whitewash Reagan’s record on AIDS.
– The Picture of Everything, via Electrolite.
– Via Radney Balko, New York City’s smoking ban has led to the Department of Health conducting suprise inspections, and actually fining private companies for posessing ashtrays.
– It’s worth repeating that Michael Jackson might be innocent.
– Tbogg points to a Susan Estrich column about the “Hate Bush” conference among Hollywood Democrats.
Now, the term “Hate Bush” was not used by any of the event organizers. It was added by a man who recieved the invitation and forwarded it on to a friend.
Late yesterday, after Drudge forwarded me the smoking E-mail with the “Hate Bush” subject line, I sent an E-mail to the author, and a man phoned me to identify himself as the culprit.
“This is all very unfortunate,” the man told me, saying he lives somewhere in the Midwest but declining to reveal his name. “Laurie David should not be held responsible. I got an E-mail and forwarded it to a friend, and I thought I was being kind of amusing.”
Knowing that, does this column make a lick of sense?
{ 8 comments }
Daniel Wolf 12.04.03 at 8:52 pm
You’re right: “This shouldn’t be much more controversial than lighting the White House Christmas tree”. Unfortunately that fact has been overwhelmed by a post-war planning job so badly botched that it is newsworthy for the (P)resident to go to the front under top secrecy, half a year after he declared a cessation of combat.
wc 12.04.03 at 9:21 pm
No toilets for workers in the agricultural field? May be it is court’s agenda to go organic with human manure.
nick 12.04.03 at 9:37 pm
As the Daily Show pointed out, the success of planning Bush’s trip (in spite of the fake turkey and the usual White House pathological lying over the supposed sighting by a British Airways pilot) proves one thing: advance planning tends to work. Pity that was forgotten for the war in Iraq itself.
tjvm 12.04.03 at 9:51 pm
“Apparently, it’s OK for the courts to re-write laws if it allows for treating farm workers like dogs.”
It hardly looks to me like they’re being treated like dogs. According to the opinion, the workers in question move around in a large corn field. The only way to ensure that workers are always within 1/4 mile of a bathroom would be to install bathrooms at various places in the middle of the field. Instead of doing that, the employer, relying upon a statutory exception to the rule, placed facilities along the edges of the field. Under this arrangement, workers regularly passed close to bathrooms, but were not always within 1/4 mile of one.
If you surveyed all jobs where people work outdoors in rural areas, I suspect you’d find that it’s not uncommon to be temporarily away from bathrooms.
Jason McCullough 12.04.03 at 10:25 pm
Dunno, I can’t say I find the court decision on toilets that outlandish after reading the decision; it looks like a reasonable interpretation of the law. Congress could always clarify the rule if they don’t this interpretation.
Thomoas 12.04.03 at 11:11 pm
The 8th circuit struck down a citation issued pursuant to the rule, but the rule is still standing.
It’s as if a murder conviction were overturned, and someone blogged that a court had thrown out the murder statute. Not quite an accurate description.
Ted Barlow 12.04.03 at 11:19 pm
Fair enough. I’ll update.
Jon H 12.05.03 at 12:22 am
““This is the state credit card.†And then, “This is what we do,†he said, as he folded it in half and discarded it.”
Someone should get Franco Columbo, Arnie’s old body building buddy, to do his trick of inflating a hot water bottle. “This is the state deficit. This is what Arnie does.”
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