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Rising from the ashes
I just got word that Bluegrass is returning to Jake’s on Monday’s starting tonight.
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Lessons learned from recording
Well, after about a week after hearing what I actually sounded like (via the USB mic) I have cut my practice speed by about 10%. So far I’m liking the result. The tone has improved a good bit, and I’m closer to reaching Norman Blake’s right hand goal of “shaking water off your hand”. It’s a whole arm motion, similar to throwing a baseball, with little wrist effort involved.
On another note, Mike has pictures from the Millions More March.
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Things that annoy me
At the moment, it’s the statement “firms connected with the Bush Administration like Haliburton and Bechtel”. Any huge government contractor is connected with the Bush administration, just like they were with Clinton, Bush 41, Reagan, etc. How else would they be huge government contractors if they didn’t put former secretaries of whatever on their boards?
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The Plame affair
The Weekly Standard has a detailed timeline of the events leading up to the disclosure of Valerie Plame’s identity. It’s an interesting read and goes into quite a bit of detail. Also interesting are the Wikipedia entries on Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame Wilson and the whole Wilson affair where we find out that Wilson and Plame began dating while he was still separated from his second wife and he also contributed money to both Bush and Gore in 2000.
I still find the whole thing underwhelming. Joe Wilson was on the History Channel shows a lot pre and post 9-11 and he also wrote the famous NYT editorial (which has now been somewhat discredited as have some of his other statements). It raises the question, if your wife were an active secret agent (or NOC) would you maintain this very public life? Evidently Aldrich Ames blew her cover some years earlier. She also worked at the CIA headquarters which is not something one would do if they were trying to keep their true employer a secret. I would like to hear from someone exactly how she was living a secret life and therefore qualified as a secret agent.
Also, the belief that Rove and co blew her cover in retaliation seems to overstate Wilson’s importance. The notion that they would do some public but not incapacitating injury to some media-connected guy is just daft. Evidently they mentioned it, but it also seems like the reporters already knew (most likely source, Joe Wilson) because it seems like no one considered her employer a secret until after the fact. There is also the fact that no Democrat is championing him in public. This is remarkable considering the caliber of people that politicians do embrace these days, like Sheehan and Shiavo. When it comes to Wilson, not a peep in favor that I’ve seen.
All that being said, scandal, gridlock and partisan bickering are what slows Leviathan and we should all be grateful.
Addendum – I think freedom of the press is freedom to publish, and covers the act of journalism, not journalists. Being employed by a newspaper should not grant any special privledges to anyone. If a non-journalist can legitimately go to jail for withholding information, then so should a journalist.
I apoligize if this is more rambling than usual.
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Some people are just wrong
I read the article L.I. Principal Cancels ‘Bacchanalian’ Prom, not quite knowing what to expect. In short summary, the prom pre and after parties were getting out of hand and the principal cancelled the school prom. Then I come across this juicy quote
“It is not primarily the sex/booze/drugs that surround this event, as problematic as they might be; it is rather the flaunting of affluence, assuming exaggerated expenses, a pursuit of vanity for vanity’s sake  in a word, financial decadence,” Brother Hoagland said, fed up with what he calls the “bacchanalian aspects” of the prom.
This, mind you, is a Catholic school. So, the principal finds spending money on the sex/booze/drugs more objectionable than the sex, booze and drugs? He’s the principal of the school and he’s primarily concerned about the price of the decadence!?
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Oddities
Strangely enough, my brother called me from the Millions More March today.
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Saturday morning rapid fire
- A good short history of the Davis Bacon act
- A longer piece about Edward R Morrow (real name Egbert Roscoe Murrow I found out) and his dealing with Joe McCarthy. Short version – McCarthy bad, but Communist threat real, and the new Clooney movie inaccurately gives credit to Morrow for a lot of other people’s work. The article is well worth reading in it’s entirety.
- A fairly brutal piece on Harriet Miers in National Review Online who correctly see that Supreme Court picks are not a zero sum game.
So, we have reason to fear, will be the case with Miers. And even if she does not become a Blackmun, her record strongly suggests she will be an OÂConnor  a split-the-difference judge. As one of her former colleagues has said of her, MiersÂs office was the Âplace where the action stopped and the hand-wringing began. If she follows that course, we will be left with a Court that retains immense and inappropriate lawmaking power but refuses to make clear laws. The rule of law is based on the making of arguments and the giving of reasons, not on sentiment or group loyalty  which is the basis on which MiersÂs defenders want us to support her.
- We live in strange times when Ann Coultier is correct in direction and degree. In her column “Does this Law Degree Make my Resume Look Fat?” she makes a strong case that against Miers.
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Apple’s best yet
The iProduct!
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Two things
- Bali protesters: Kill the bombers – an example of history moving in the right direction abroad. Evidently Bali is one of the few countries where radical Islam exists, but is actively not tolerated
- A major clash between the Russians and the fellow travelers of radical Islam, Chechen separatists, is not major news. Chewbacca becoming an American citizen does make it above the fold on CNN.com.
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The Supremes
It’s hard to tell, but it seems like the Harriet Miers nomination is crumbling. A good thing too.
This thought just occurred to me. She is slightly less qualified to be on the Supreme Court than Hillary Clinton was in 1997. The two are often described in the same way, hard working, thorough, driven, etc. I imagine they did a lot of the same legal things for their respective presidents. Just imagine the uproar if Bill had tried to nominate her then (assuming there was a vacancy).