“This”:http://news.ft.com/cms/s/c925a686-40f4-11da-b3f9-00000e2511c8.html, from Powell’s former chief-of-staff, is worth reading. I suspect we’ll be seeing a lot more score-settling speeches like this as message discipline among former administration types breaks down irrevocably. Scroll down – the venomous stuff is mostly towards the bottom.

bq. But the case that I saw for 4 plus years was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberration, bastardizations, [UI], changes to the national security [UI] process. What I saw was a cabal between the Vice President of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the Secretary of Defense and [UI] on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.

bq. Read George Packer’s book The Assassin’s [Gate] if you haven’t already. George Packer, a New Yorker, reporter for The New Yorker, has got it right. I just finished it and I usually put marginalia in a book but, let me tell you, I had to get extra pages to write on. And I wish, I wish I had been able to help George Packer write that book. In some places I could have given him a hell of a lot more specifics than he’s got. But if you want to read how the Cheney Rumsfeld cabal flummoxed the process, read that book. And, of course, there are other names in there, Under Secretary of Defense Douglas [Feith], whom most of you probably know Tommy Frank said was stupidest blankety blank man in the world. He was. Let me testify to that. He was. Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man.

bq. And yet, and yet, after the Secretary of State agrees to a $400 billion department, rather than a $30 billion department, having control, at least in the immediate post-war period in Iraq, this man is put in charge. Not only is he put in charge, he is given carte blanche to tell the State Department to go screw themselves in a closet somewhere. That’s not making excuses for the State Department. …

bq. [UI] tell you how many contractors who did billion dollars or so business with the Defense Department that we have in 1988 and how many do we have now. And they’re always working together. If one of them is the lead on the satellite program, I hope there’s some Lockheed and Grumman and others here today [UI] if one of them’s a lead on satellites, the others are subs. And they’ve learned their lesson there in every state.

bq. They’ve got every Congressman, every Senator, they got it covered. Now, it’s not to say that they aren’t smart businessmen. They are, and women. They are. But it’s something we should be looking at, something we should be looking at. So you’ve got this collegiality there between the Secretary of Defense and the Vice President. And then you’ve got a President who is not versed in international relations. And not too much interested in them either.

Confused by the internecine warfare in the US labour movement? Jim McNeill’s “new article”:http://www.dissentmagazine.org/menutest/articles/fa05/mcneill.htm for _Dissent_ is the best account that I’ve seen, giving a fair shake to both sides of the dispute.

Wow, sign me up.

A leading architect of the intelligent-design movement defended his ideas in a federal courtroom on Tuesday and acknowledged that under his definition of a scientific theory, astrology would fit as neatly as intelligent design….

Listening from the front row of the courtroom, a school board member said he found Professor Behe’s testimony reaffirming. “Doesn’t it sound like he knows what he’s talking about?” said the Rev. Ed Rowand, a board member and church pastor.

Yeah, dude. It totally sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. Also, did I ever tell you about the time I made a gravity bong? I cut off the bottom of a 2-liter bottle, and put it in the pool, and then….

Damn you, liberal elites!!

Wait, did you know that you can use a fish tank compressor and a gas mask to make an electric bong? Seriously dude, you have to listen to this. OMG, and did I ever tell you about this amazing juice fast I went on? You just use Grade B maple syrup and lemon juice… No, you have to promise me you’ll try this juice fast!

There is a fascinating article in the Washington Post today about Army Corps of Engineers whistleblower Bunnatine Greenhouse, who was demoted after denouncing a no-bid contract for Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root. Often, in stories like these, the author will more or less stipulate that the subject’s life is “inspiring.” Mrs. Greenhouse’s life truly is inspiring:

Lost in the middle of cotton country in the Louisiana delta at the mid-century, Bunnatine Hayes and her siblings clung to such self-confidence like a life raft. Their parents, Chris and Savannah Hayes, were uneducated and numbingly poor, stuck in a world run by richer, more powerful whites. They raised their children with a ferocious, almost frightening drive. [click to continue…]

Over at Volokh, Maggie Gallagher is visiting for a bit and arguing against the legalization of same-sex marriage. At least, soon she will begin arguing against it. Right now, “she is”:http://www.volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_10_16-2005_10_22.shtml#1129658399 “clearing”:http://www.volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_10_16-2005_10_22.shtml#1129586609 “some”:http://www.volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_10_16-2005_10_22.shtml#1129571505 “ground”:http://www.volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_10_16-2005_10_22.shtml#1129565640 to prepare for her main case. It looks like she wants to make some broad sociological generalizations about the place of the institution of marriage in society and the likely effect of a legalization of same-sex marriage on that institution. Essentially, she thinks that the main _public_ purpose of marriage is procreation — this is the reason why it enjoys the legal status it does. In “this post”:http://www.volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_10_16-2005_10_22.shtml#1129586609, she asserts that marriage (or some functional equivalent) is a cultural universal — the “cultural” qualifier is important because she also thinks marriage is a functional solution to the apparently biological problem of fathers buggering off and abandoning their children:

bq. The argument I am making is this: every society needs to come up with some solution to the fact that the default position for male-female sexual attraction (that is unregulated by law or society) is many children in fatherless homes. The second human reality societies must face is that procreation is not optional, it is necessary. Individuals don’t have to do it but societies do. The word for the social institution that addresses these problems, in this and every known human society is marriage. Sex makes babies, Society needs babies, babies need mothers and fathers.

Some quick responses to the sociological angle below the fold.

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I was listening to the radio and heard the following observation. It was attributed to Dr William Temple (speaking at a school prize-giving in 1938) and apparently is quoted by Eric Partridge in _Usage and Abusage_:

Spelling is one of the decencies of life, like the proper use of knives and forks. But intellectually, spelling — English spelling — does not matter. Intellectually, _stops_ matter a great deal. If you’re getting your commas, semi-colons and full-stops wrong, it means you’re not getting your thoughts right and your mind is muddled.

This would probably be “Matthew Yglesias’s”:http://yglesias.tpmcafe.com position, and it nicely splits the difference between prescriptivists and descriptivists. It seems like a useful distinction for everyday use, and the link between syntax and punctuation is much tighter than that between semantics and spelling. I suppose if I had to choose between always having my sentences parse correctly and always spelling every word properly, I’d choose the former.

I don’t know whether a definitive bean-counter’s verdict has yet been ventured on the costs and benefits of London’s Congestion Charge, but I’m in favour of it anyway, partly because that nice Paul Krugman was kind enough to write a very clear description of the economic case for road-pricing which I found pretty convincing, but mostly because as a resident on the edge of Zone 1, I can now walk to work without choking on the traffic fumes. Hoorah.

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This bit from the “New York Daily News”:http://www.nydailynews.com/news/story/356814p-304125c.html

bq. Cheney and Libby spend hours together in the course of a day, which causes sources who know both men very well to assert that any attempts to discredit Wilson would almost certainly have been known to the vice president. “Scooter wouldn’t be freelancing on this without Cheney’s knowledge,” a source told the Daily News. “It was probably some off-the-cuff thing: ‘This guy [Wilson] could be a problem.'”

has a rather obvious “historical analogy”:http://www.kensmen.com/catholic/customschristmasx.html, although the language of “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?” has a better ring to it than the sub-mafioso “this guy could be a problem.” Still, I don’t imagine we’re going to see a public ceremony of repentance and ritual scourging any time soon.

Via “Josh Marshall”:http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_16.php#006771.

Apparently Sir Ian Blair has no plans to resign. This is good news because, when combined with his statement that he wasn’t going to resign in the immediate aftermath of the Menezes shooting, it raises his “Galbraith Score to 2. It might even be as high as 3 if he said he wasn’t going to resign after he was caught trying to arrange a cover-up of the independent inquiry into the shooting. The trigger score is four, remember (it’s derived from the JKG quote “Anyone who says four times that he won’t resign, will”) so there is plenty of hope that we will be rid of the authoritarian, careerist oaf soon.

I’m pleased to see that reactionary gadfly Peter Briffa, a playwright himself, has “a better appreciation”:http://publicinterest.blogspot.com/2005/10/im-afraid-i-cant-share-my-fellow.html of Harold Pinter’s merits than most of his co-thinkers. (Actually, I doubt Peter has any co-thinkers, but you know what I mean.) The Pinter-reaction prize for unintentional self-reference goes to Christopher Hitchens, who is “quoted by Oliver Kamm”:http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2005/10/hitchens_on_pin.html as writing:

bq. Let us also hope for a long silence to descend upon the thuggish bigmouth who has strutted and fretted his hour upon the stage for far too long.

Indeed, Christopher, indeed.

I see via “one of John H’s other incarnations”:http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/conservatives_in_academe/ that Mark Bauerlein is under the charming misconception that it’s a bad idea for aspiring sociologists to work on “the debilitating effects of the European welfare state” if they want to get their dissertations accepted. It’s always a good idea to, like, familiarize yourself with debates among “prominent sociologists”:http://www.mpi-fg-koeln.mpg.de/pu/workpap/wp05-2/wp05-2.html and other “social scientists”:http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521613167/qid=1129588238/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_8_1/202-1419967-7463003 before making these grand pronouncements. But at least Bauerlein’s error gives me an excuse to link to this “work in progress”:http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~ss10/Downloads/SJ.doc by Margarita Estevez-Abe and Glyn Morgan, which argues against the European welfare state because of its institutional inflexibilities. Morgan and Estevez-Abe say, correctly, that certain European welfare states have some very dubious features, perpetuating gender inequality among other things. They argue instead for a normative standard based on a capacity for a wide-ranging individuality, which in turn requires a strong degree of _institutional flexibility_. That is, institutions should be able to accommodate a wide variety of lifestyle and career choices, rather than assuming, say, that women should confine themselves to the home and motherhood. [click to continue…]

Brian Leiter is on sabbatical and seems to be enjoying a stint in London, most of the time, anyway. Welcome to our city, Professor Leiter, I hope you have fun while you’re here.

Oh, and by the way, you’re right both about the belly-buttons and the buffoon, but try to have closer to the correct change in supermarkets, it’ll make your life so much easier.

If you support a legal right to abortion, you should read Russell Arben Fox’s careful and nuanced argument against his fellow abortion-opponents who support the right to abortion. If you think there is no right to abortion, you also might want to read his argument. Here is the interesting post by Hugo Schwyzer to which he is responding; and here is a response to Russell from the excellent djw.

Ok, this was all discussed 3 weeks ago, but I am the slowest blog-watcher on the web. Comment there, not here.

It’s good news that violence during the Iraqi constitutional referendum was less than during the previous election. Higher turnout among Sunni voters also seems good, except insofar as they seem to have decisively rejected the proposed constitution; I don’t know what that portends for future political unity. That said, Jim Henley made me laugh today:

Looks like the Iraqi Constitution is going to pass. Hopefully people will be able to read it soon too. After that the Iraqi Hamilton, Madison and Jay can write pithy essays about why people should (have) vote(d) for it. At the very end of the process the first colonist touches ground on the shores of Iraq.

It does seem a bit strange for people to be voting on something they have never seen. It’s late Wittgenstein voting! I’ll vote for your beetle if you vote for mine! Seriously, mine has awesome iridescent wings and stuff! No, you can’t look.