Feargal, Fergus and Fredrik turned three years old today. Pics and video of the day’s celebrations (which included beagle baths) are now up at «their website». Enjoy!

And Happy Number Three boys!

… and it’s available «here». Enjoy.

My Facebook account is being deleted (allegedly) as of this morning. It takes 14 days for the deletion to go through, during which time they beg and plead for you to come back (mainly by trying to guilt trip you: “Your friend, John X, will miss you!”) and sending you spam begging for your presence on their totally messed up, nonsensical, aggravating, unsafe, unsecure, grossly indecent to privacy site, with its hideous navigation, crippled by the company’s inability to comprehend basic navigability and usability and its stuffed-up with San Francisco-centric IT/corporate culture snobbery permanently sticking its cube dwellers behind an impregnable wall which protects them from actually having to communicate with their users.

Yeah, all that: gone. And I feel good. So very much better. Didn’t need the aggravation. Didn’t need to deal with the kind of things I dealt with working in San Francisco in that environment myself. Didn’t need to justify my life to distant people with political agendas.

It was nice to hear from and reconnect (briefly) with high school friends/acquaintances. I’m looking forward to seeing more of them in real life, away from that god-awful FB interface. But the rest of it … no, don’t need it.

Relief. Sweet.

Now, back to seeing if my hunter, paladin, priest or warlock will be the first to be taken to 80 prior to the release of Cataclysm. Yes. World of Warcraft geekery. Sad.

The beagle boys escaped tonight, the first time they’ve given us the slip since June. They’re fine — they’re asleep all around the den right now. The strong winds this evening had blown the front gate open a crack, just enough for them to test it and push against it and get out, and I heard the gate slam in the wind and bolted out the back door, but by that time they were long gone.

The only thing working in our favor as we went through the ritual of panicking and getting our coats and flashlights and rushing up and down the block and driving to the neighborhood on the other side of the woods was ….. the cold. It was 24 degrees outside, 10 degrees with wind chill. About 20 minutes after we’d first discovered them gone I was standing on the front lawn wondering where to look next. Fred and Fergus appeared from the driveway of the neighbor’s house on the north side of us, trotting anxiously, their tails tucked between their legs. We got them back in the house after much loud scolding and door-slamming.

We then went with flashlights up the street hunting for Feargal, and he eventually appeared, running skittishly along the side of a house a couple of doors up from us. We were yelling our lungs out at him to stop, but he was either scared stiff or more interested in the smells in the grass. Luckily, he sprinted toward the open gate and ran into the backyard and waited at the back door for me to let him in. All in all, a quick end to a blood-pressure-raising episode.

One breakout every eight months is not frequent, but it’s still nerve-racking for us when it happens.

… to keep up a blog like this one, which has, at various times in the past, been chock-a-block with details and observations from our lives. Living two years back in California, with the attendant extreme stresses, drained the blogging impulse from both of us. Plus, there was the whole medical drama on my part.

It would be great to have all kinds of observations about Nashville here, just as we did in Ann Arbor, but … well, we’re older and tired-er than we were in Ann Arbor. But still, we’ll try to do better.

Two things: Voters of Maine, except the quarter million who voted to stand up for marriage equality last Tuesday, … well, they suck. Marriage equality is coming to the United States and you will be embarrassed by this travesty of justice, this orgy of discrimination and hate, when the day arrives. I’m holding fast to Dr. Martin Luther King’s statement, “The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.” As the LA Times reported:

“It is “one of King’s most riveting lines, spoken in Montgomery, Alabama after the long and dangerous march from Selma in March, 1965. King said he knew people were asking how long it would take to achieve justice. “How long?” he asked, over and over, making listeners desperate for an answer — and then he supplied the answer. “How long? Not long. Because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” It was a refrain King came to use often, sometimes referring to the “arc of history,” sometimes to the “arc of the moral universe.”"

The arc is bending toward marriage equality. It will come, probably before my I leave the planet. And that, I will hold to fastly.

Secondly, I finally summoned the will and physical ability to return to the classroom and do a half-day substitute teaching, first time in six months. I have another assignment lined up for next Tuesday. It was exhausting and it was my limit (I’m not ready for full days yet), but it was also fun and reminded me why I like teaching kids. I’ll get more and more into the daily grind until the end of school in May, then have some rest time and will start a second master’s degree program, to become certified in the early childhood autism special education and applied behavior therapy. That program at Vanderbilt starts in August, and I’m looking forward to it.

In the meantime, the beagles are fat and happy and having fun in the leaves. I found a largish tick on Fergus yesterday, that had to be removed before going to work; it was probably a souvenir of our tramps through the woods on the battlefield of Chickamauga last weekend. Otherwise, the boys are doing great.

And Nashville … an awesome place to live. We’re coming up on the first anniversary of the flight out of California to safety and haven of Tennessee. And don’t regret for a minute the decision. Plus, our landladies and neighbor and neighborhood and schools are far superior to what we left behind in Brentwood.

So, it’s all good.

I once got death threats for taking a stand like this … but … «the Duncan Banner reports that DPS has reached a contract agreement with Air Evac» (the reporter doesn’t mention the cost) to cover student athletes if they get injured in any situation.

Why just the athletes?? Where’s the coverage for ALL Duncan students? Why does Oklahoma put such a premium on the athletics over academics and athletes over scholars?

I mean really … if a kid at DHS has a heart attack and collapses, are they really going to say, “Oh, you’re not on the football team? Well, a regular ambulance is on its way and your parents will be billed. Hope the ambulance gets you up to Duncan Regional in time and that your parents have insurance.”

It is understandable that coverage is needed for games. But the Banner article notes that even if the athletes are not in a game, just, say, sitting on a school bus that has a wreck, the mediflight coverage will be there for them. And what about regular students on the buses? They’ll airlift you to Oklahoma City if you’re on the wrestling team, but leave you for ground transport to Duncan Regional if you’re a plain old regular student?

It would probably help if the article were better written. What is the cost? Does it really exclude regular students? Is it really just for the athlete class? So many questions.

But again my conscience, still intact on this issue, makes me draw my line in the sand again, taking an unpopular stand that got me in such hot water in the summer of ‘89, 20 years ago … such hot water that people flooded my parents with obscene and threatening phone calls, there were calls for my tarring and feathering and being run out of town on a rail and for awhile there we were genuinely afraid for my safety.

But I said it then and I repeat it now. I didn’t back down then even in the face of vile threats. I have to take the same position then and now: Academics should always take precedence over, not a back seat to, athletics. Yes, even and especially in the state of Oklahoma.

When you sign contracts for exclusive helicopter airlifts for injured athletes, you send several messages: That athletes are special and elite, and regular students are somehow not deserving of the same kind of perks and considerations. You devalue non-athletes.

I’m hoping there’s more to this than just what is presented in the article. Having been Duncan Public Schools’ Head Cheerleader (Director of PR), I do also still believe that DPS is a wonderful district and has its students’ best interests first and foremost. But I think, pun intended, they’ve dropped the ball on this one. I hope I’m wrong.

It feels as if the last bit of actual journalism in America is now dead.

In «What We Lose With Cronkite’s Death», Bruce Maiman sums it up pretty well:

“… it’s a reminder, too, that the broadcasting style and journalistic credibility that Cronkite represents also seems to be fading into history. Cronkite’s death was inevitable rather than sad, but what is sad is that no one has picked up his mantle to deliver the news in a fashion that doesn’t glorify something or someone, or trash something or someone. Cronkite set a standard for conveying the news that was at once warm, measured, dignified, good humored and uncompromising.”

He also notes one of my favorite stories about Cronkite:

“In her autobiography, «A Desperate Passion», physician and Nuclear Freeze activist Helen Caldicott tells the story of when she met Cronkite and his wife Betsy at a dinner one night: “Walter amazed me by saying that if he had his way, he would remove all U.S. nuclear weapons from Europe. “What would the Russians do then, roll over people with their tanks?” he asked. I said: “The American people love you, Walter. Why don’t you tell them that?” He laughed and replied, “I’m only loved because they don’t know what I think.”"

The ever-excellent Glenn Greenwald, writing in Salon, touches on all of this in «Celebrating Cronkite While Ignoring What He Did»:

“Tellingly, his most celebrated and significant moment — Greg Mitchell says “this broadcast would help save many thousands of lives, U.S. and Vietnamese, perhaps even a million” — was when he stood up and announced that Americans shouldn’t trust the statements being made about the war by the U.S. Government and military, and that the specific claims they were making were almost certainly false. In other words, Cronkite’s best moment was when he did exactly that which the modern journalist today insists they must not ever do — directly contradict claims from government and military officials and suggest that such claims should not be believed. These days, our leading media outlets won’t even use words that are disapproved of by the Government.”

Cronkite, and the pathetic remains of American journalism, will be laid to rest on Thursday.

And THAT, my friends, is the way it is, on this Sunday, 20-Jul-09, the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing.

• «We lost Walter Cronkite this week» (along with the last vestiges of American journalism).

• In Salt Lake City, the ‘Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints’, which had no problem blitzkrieging California and spending millions getting Prop H8 passed, is «extremely unhappy now that us queers are shoving back right in their own front yard» I say, “More Kiss-Ins in front of hateful churches! Amen.

• In San Francisco, the NTSB will investigate the crash of two Muni Metro light rail trains at West Portal station that «injured 48 on Saturday. I’ve ridden those trains and gone through that station many times; this was no surprise.

• In New York City, The Right Stuff’s Tom Wolfe writes, on the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing, that «NASA neglected to hire a philosopher and that the space program ended the moment Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface». He posits that Werner von Braun was just such a philosopher, but, and this is the money quote, “Unfortunately, NASA couldn’t present as its spokesman and great philosopher a former high-ranking member of the Nazi Wehrmacht with a heavy German accent.” The program, he says, is doomed from the lack of a philosopher just at a time when it should be “building a bridge to the stars.”

• According to an internal report issued last year, the Justice Department — the federal department charged with protecting civil rights and civil liberties — under Alberto Gonzales, «blacklisted applicants for internships and honors programs based on their membership in LGBT or other “liberal” groups». “According to the Justice Department’s 2008 internal report, candidates to the Honors Program whose applications indicated liberal affiliations were rejected at a high rate, around 55 percent, as opposed to candidates who had conservative affiliations, who were rejected at a rate of about 18 percent.” Color me unsurprised.

It’s a mere 74 degrees in Music City. Happy mild summer Sunday!

This evening’s mail brought, finally, an official copy of our California marriage certificate, which is 1 of only 18,000 gender-neutral, Constitutionally equally protected, legally recognized marriages. (The copy pictured here has some personal details blanked out, such as birth dates, addresses, witnesses, and parents.) I post it here as a big ol’ kiss off to Prop H8 and its supporters and sympathizers.

We’re happy and proud of this (it represents a significant victory in an ongoing struggle to educate our countrymen and realize the promise of Constitutional equal protection) … and also sorrowful for other California and American couples like us who can’t get this piece of paper … and the thousands of civil rights that go along with it.

So it’s a bittersweet moment.

Now we go buy another frame and make space on the wall. Because of the religious intolerance, ignorance, homophobia, and stupidity currently prevalent in this country at the moment, in order to have some semblance of civil rights as a couple, we have necessary certificates on our wall from the City and Country of San Francisco (two of those); the city of Ann Arbor, MI; the state of California (one domestic partnership cert and one marriage cert); and one marriage certificate from our wonderful neighbors to the north in Canada (one side in English and one in French).

• In Minneapolis, the New York Times turns up «a fascinating, heartbreaking, and ultimately, important story» of povery, terrorism, Somalia, teenagers, Facebook, and oddly enough, the building used to depict Mary Richard’s later apartment on the Mary Tyler Moore Show back in the 1970s, all of which may add up to the “most significant domestic terrorism investigation since Sept. 11,” 2001.

• On PBS, «Bill Moyers has a bull session with the former corporate communications director of Cigna Health Care, Wendell Potter», who describes his come-to-Jesus moment in Wise County, Virginia, where he was faced with the truth about his industry and what it has done to American health care. A full video of the session, plus word-for-word transcript, is available and should be watched by every American, especially Barack Obama.

• In Washington state, «brother and sister recant» 20-year-old claims of sexual abuse that sent their father to prison; brother tells judge “he made the allegation after months of insistent questioning by now-retired Clark County sheriff’s detective Sharon Krause just so she would leave him alone.” Krause allegedly gave the sister ice cream; that cone put daddy in prison for 20 years and slapped a sex offender label on him that is proving hard to scrape off.

• In Anchorage, the Crazy Train continues puffing up the tracks as soon-to-be-former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin «announces she will campaign for anyone who will have her» (including conservative Democrats) and that even her own son is not a Republican (he’s “unaffiliated” like his daddy, meaning, one assumes, a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, which, among other things, “advocates an in-state referendum which includes the option of Alaska becoming an independent nation,” according to its website).

• In Washington, D.C., it was revealed that «Dick Cheney ordered the concealment from Congress of a CIA counterterrorism program» and that Attorney General Eric Holder is contemplating opening a criminal probe of possible CIA torture. President Obama is sticking to his “let’s move forward stance” and appears worried that healthcare reform will be “derailed by partisan bickering over torture.”

• In Los Angeles, «LaToya Jackson believes she knows» who the real killers are.

• Yale University Press produces a book called Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, which reveals that «Ernest Hemingway was “for a while on the KGB’s list of its agents in America”». The book is co-written by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev, and is “based on notes that Vassiliev, a former KGB officer, made when he was given access in the 90s to Stalin-era intelligence archives in Moscow.” The book apparently has no definitive answer to the main question posed in the article: “Was he only ever a pseudo-spook, possibly seeing his clandestine dealings as potential literary material, or a genuine but hopelessly ineffective one?”

Another fabulous summer week in America!

This summer has been one of just waiting. Waiting on doctors, hospitals, school districts, principals, universities, admissions directors.

The gory, boring details of my medical situation were recounted in «this previous post from a year-and-a-half ago». Here’s an update:

I have a saline suppression test (the third one I will have done) scheduled for 3-Aug; the posture test should follow soon thereafter. Saline suppression involves lying flat for four hours while saline is pumped in intravenously and my aldosterone levels are measured. The posture test involves standing and walking around for two straight hours. Not looking forward to that one. The idea is to measure the aldosterone levels produced during standing or lying down to see which system is kicking in.

While we’re waiting, I have to keep off Epleronone, the drug which suppresses aldosterone and raises my potassium levels. Hence, my aldosterone is up, I’m retaining lots of fluid, and my potassium has crashed. I was in the hospital from that back in December, shortly after arriving in Nashville (I passed out in the Jeep dealer’s waiting room while getting the oil changed in the Jeep; 911 was called and I was hauled off in an ambulance to Southern Hills Medical Center for a couple of days of potassium infusion. My potassium level then was about 2.9; yesterday, it was 3.1. Not good.) So, it’s been one month off Epleronone with another one left and the doc has tripled my potassium supplement intake prescription. I crash and burn, then feel normal, then crash and burn. Rinse, repeat, over and over and over. It gets old.

Doc says if saline suppression is positive and posture is negative then we can proceed to adrenalectomy, thank god. If the numbers are not what they need to be, we have to consider doing the fifth adrenal vein sampling. The aforementioned blog post has the gory details about what an AVS (adrenal vein sampling) entails and how messed up the first four were.

I did a very nice interview at a great school not far away back in May. The district seems to have hiring on hold, so I’m not sure what’s up with that. More on that later.

I’ve applied for admission to a special education/autism master’s degree program at Vanderbilt and am waiting to hear on that. More on that later as well.

So the daily pattern is get up, take potassium, let the dogs out for awhile, have breakfast. At noon, more potassium and beagles have their breakfasts. At 1, they settle in for a five-hour nap in the living room and I watch movies in the bedroom. Frank gets home at 6 and the beagles bestir themselves. I serve dinner, we clean up, and then spend the evening back in bed with movies and Warcraft while beagles stick to Unca Frankie like glue. In bed at midnight, to start the whole thing over.

The waiting, as opposed to doing the same things every day, is what’s hard. My career or further education is on hold. My medical fix is on hold. It’s sucky. Yet, it will pass. In August, one way or other, I’ll be back in the classroom, either regular or sub teaching, or back in the university for a two-year second Master’s degree. And things will also pick up on the medical front. In the meantime, I’m going to rest and take potassium and just float along.

Ain’t life grand sometimes?

And now two right-wing terrorists have committed two political murders in two weeks. First Dr. Tiller in Wichita, a murder which was, from the point of view of the terrorists, successful in its aims. Now, an obscene attack on the United States Holocaust Memorial and Museum begs the question, are we in for a Summer of Rage?

Researcher Chip Berlet «notes where we are at the moment»:

Apocalyptic aggression is fueled by right-wing pundits who demonize scapegoated groups and individuals in our society, implying that it is urgent to stop them from wrecking the nation. Some angry people already believe conspiracy theories in which the same scapegoats are portrayed as subversive, destructive, or evil. Add in aggressive apocalyptic ideas that suggest time is running out and quick action mandatory and you have a perfect storm of mobilized resentment threatening to rain bigotry and violence across the United States.’

—Huffington Post

The same right-wing pundits are now getting a bit nervous at what they have wrought; Fox News pundit Shepard Smith reportedly said today:

“There are people now, who are way out there on a limb. And I think they’re just out there on a limb with the email they send us. Because I read it, and they are out there. I mean, out there in a scary place…I could read a hundred of them like this…I mean from today. People who are so amped up and so angry for reasons that are absolutely wrong, ridiculous, preposterous.”

Could be a long, hot, murderous summer we’re looking at here.

With a (mostly meaningless) addition, Gov. John Lynch is set to make New Hampshire the sixth of the 50 states to acknowledge equal protection under the law and Constitution this week:

‘Gov. John Lynch will sign a bill legalizing same-sex marriage, he announced yesterday – but only if the Legislature passes extra protections for religious groups and their employees, allowing them to steer clear of weddings that contradict their beliefs. If not, Lynch said, he would veto the bill.
‘Lynch’s proposed language would allow religious groups and their employees to decline to provide services or accommodations related to a marriage that is “in violation of their religious beliefs and faiths,” and it would shield them from legal complaints. The provisions would clarify the rights of a church-employed organist, for example, to refuse to play at a same-sex ceremony.
…
‘State Rep. Jim Splaine, a Portsmouth Democrat who sponsored the original same-sex marriage bill, said the key point is that Lynch said he would sign the bill. He described the specific exemptions Lynch called for as largely academic. “What gay or lesbian couple is going to want to go out and give their hard-earned dollars to people who really don’t want to participate in their weddings?” he said.’
—Concord Monitor

In a separate article, the governor explained why he plans to sign the altered bill:

‘”My personal views on the subject of marriage have been shaped by my own experience, tradition and upbringing. But as governor of New Hampshire, I recognize that I have a responsibility to consider this issue through a broader lens,” Lynch said yesterday. “I have heard, and I understand, the very real feelings of same-sex couples that a separate system is not an equal system. That a civil law that differentiates between their committed relationships and those of heterosexual couples undermines both their dignity and the legitimacy of their families.”‘

Well said, governor. This is exactly the issue. It’s about equality under the law, which is guaranteed to us all through the Constitution. Civil unions are not equal; anything short of marriage equality undermines the dignity and legitimacy of millions of American citizens. And THAT is the issue.

Congratulations, Granite State. And congratulations New England. All eyes are now on New York.

UPDATE 3-Jun-09: After some back and forth and wheeler-dealing, the changes to the bill have been made and «it was just announced that Gov. Lynch has signed the bill». Six down, 44 to go. Woo-hoo!!!

One of my favorite blog categories is nostalgia, and within that category, one of my favorite blogs is «The Daily Mirror». It’s basically a blog which looks back over the years at what was in the LA Times at the time.

Occasionally, there are priceless nuggets of mainly Hollywood history which are dug up. «This bit about Jayne Mansfield» is a perfect and hilarious example:

‘First-Nighters Gasp
‘Jayne’s Gown Drives Vegas Nudes to Hide
‘Las Vegas, 14-May-59:
‘Jayne Mansfield opened her act at the Tropicana Hotel in a gown so shocking that even the Las Vegas nudes ran for cover.
‘It best could be compared with a barbed-wire fence—it protects the property but doesn’t obstruct the view.
‘Her opening entrance last night brought a gasp from first-nighters who had been watching bare-breasted French and German beauties for months on the other side of the Strip.
‘On paper the gown is not extreme. It covers practically every part of Jayne’s famous anatomy—even has a half dozen petticoats.
‘But somehow poured over her ample figure, it sort of dissolves. The petticoats are worn from the knee down. The rest of the gown is sheer nylon. Only a few strategic spangles block the view.
‘”I designed it myself,” said Jayne. “I wanted to be completely covered. If I had tried to compete with the nudes on their own grounds, it would have been bad taste. And besides those girls are not as healthy as I. They have been through a war and all that hardship.”‘

The barbed-wire fence bit is absolutely priceless, not to mention her quote at the end.

It’s tentative and fragile, but «Maine added itself» to the list of states willing to uphold equal protection under the rule of law and the United States Constitution:

‘In a banner day in New England for advocates of gay marriage, Maine legalized the practice Wednesday, and the New Hampshire Legislature voted to do the same. Maine Gov. John Baldacci, a Democrat, signed LD 1020 shortly after the legislation passed the Senate with a 21-13 vote — a margin not large enough to override a veto.

Gov. Baldacci sums it up simply and succinctly:

“In the past, I opposed gay marriage while supporting the idea of civil unions,” Baldacci said in a statement read in his office. “I have come to believe that this is a question of fairness and of equal protection under the law, and that a civil union is not equal to civil marriage.”

The story of the United States of America joining the long and black list of nations who abuse and torture prisoners and then invent all sorts of justifications for it is dribbling out slowly. «A new article in Newsweek» is one of the best I’ve seen so far at laying out both the nitty-gritty and some of the bigger cultural issues at play.

The article centers on the story of Ali Soufan, one of the FBI’s top experts on Al Qaeda who also ‘had a reputation as a shrewd interrogator who could work fluently in both English and Arabic.’ It was Soufani who successfully discovered both the Jose Padilla dirty bomb plot and the identity of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (one a preventive and one a prosecutorial piece of detective work) within the rule of law, without using torture:

‘Last week Soufan, 37, now a security consultant who spends most of his time in the Middle East, decided to tell the story of his involvement in the Abu Zubaydah interrogations publicly for the first time. In an op-ed in The New York Times and in a series of exclusive interviews with Newsweek, Soufan described how he, together with FBI colleague Steve Gaudin, began the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah. They nursed his wounds, gained his confidence and got the terror suspect talking. They extracted crucial intelligence—including the identity of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the architect of 9/11 and the dirty-bomb plot of Jose Padilla—before CIA contractors even began their aggressive tactics.’ … “I was in the middle of this, and it’s not true that these [aggressive] techniques were effective,” he says. “We were able to get the information about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a couple of days. We didn’t have to do any of this [torture]. We could have done this the right way.” [Emphasis added.]

What did ‘the right way’ look like?

‘As the sessions continued, Soufan engaged Abu Zubaydah in long discussions about his world view, which included a tinge of socialism. After Abu Zubaydah railed one day about the influence of American imperialist corporations, he asked Soufan to get him a Coca-Cola—a request that prompted the two of them to laugh. Soon enough, Abu Zubaydah offered up more information—about the bizarre plans of a jihadist from Puerto Rico to set off a “dirty bomb” inside the country. This information led to Padilla’s arrest in Chicago by the FBI in early May.’

But Bush/Cheney and the CIA didn’t want ‘the right way,’ followed (it was too calm and too much namby-pamby ‘police action’ for them) and manufactured, through the compliant devices of the likes of John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the means to ramp up torture. And the only objections that seemed forthcoming appear to have been centered on the potential political blowback, not on the inhumane, immoral, and illegal acts being undertaken:

Pasquale D’Amuro, then the FBI assistant director for counterterrorism … and other officials were alarmed at what they heard from Soufan. They fretted about the political consequences of abusive interrogations and the Washington blowback they thought was inevitable, say two high-ranking FBI sources who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters. According to a later Justice Department inspector general’s report, D’Amuro warned FBI Director Bob Mueller that such activities would eventually be investigated. “Someday, people are going to be sitting in front of green felt tables having to testify about all of this,” D’Amuro said, according to one of the sources.

The issue, as usual, follows America’s cultural fault lines. There are (hopefully a minority) Americans who, in this case, are so steeped in fear and anger that they have no problem using any means necessary, including those of history’s worst human offenders as well as contemporary terrorists, in order to feed that fear and anger. The fault lines not only run through society, but through all government service as well:

‘… in early 2002, Soufan flew to Guantánamo to conduct a training course. He gave a powerful talk, preaching the virtues of the FBI’s traditional rapport-building techniques. Not only were such methods the most effective, Soufan explained that day, they were critical to maintaining America’s image in the Middle East. “The whole world is watching what we do here,” Soufan said. “We’re going to win or lose this war depending on how we do this.” As he made these comments, about half the interrogators in the room—those from the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies—were “nodding their heads” in agreement, recalls McFadden. But the other half—CIA and military officers—sat there “with blank stares. It’s like they were thinking, This is bullcrap. Their attitude was, ‘You guys are cops; we don’t have time for this’.”‘

Americans on one side committed to the rule of law and cognizant of the possible price that has to be paid to follow it; on the other side those who would jettison it when the going gets rough and their fear and anger get control of them. The same is true in the general society. There are Americans who are so fearful and anger that they stock the house with guns and loudly tell anyone who will listen that ‘if anyone tries to break in their house, they’ll blow ‘em away!’ and then tries to pass laws that arm teachers (ostensibly to prevent more Columbines) and carry guns into restaurants and so on and so on. There are Americans who accept that life is sometimes dangerous and short and that if something happens the police are there to ‘protect and serve.’ And then get on with their lives.

Meanwhile, the torture story goes on. The documents being examined tell the story about how our nation willfully abrogated the rule of law and committed acts for which we prosecuted and executed or jailed perpetrators in other nations within our living memory. And the perpetrators, like many Germans and Japanese of the 1933-45 period and communists of the Soviet and People’s Republic periods, will probably never be brought to heel for what they’ve done. Especially if they think like Torturer James Mitchell:

‘Although Soufan declined to identify the contractor by name, other sources (and media accounts) identify him as James Mitchell, a former Air Force psychologist who had worked on the U.S. military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training—a program to teach officers how to resist the abusive interrogation methods used by Chinese communists during the Korean War. Within days of his arrival, Mitchell—an architect of the CIA interrogation program—took charge of the questioning of Abu Zubaydah. He directed that Abu Zubaydah be ordered to answer questions or face a gradual increase in aggressive techniques. One day Soufan entered Abu Zubadyah’s room and saw that he had been stripped naked; he covered him with a towel. The confrontations began. “I asked [the contractor] if he’d ever interrogated anyone, and he said no,” Soufan says. But that didn’t matter, the contractor shot back: “Science is science. This is a behavioral issue.” The contractor suggested Soufan was the inexperienced one. “He told me he’s a psychologist and he knows how the human mind works.” Mitchell told Newsweek, “I would love to tell my story.” But then he added, “I have signed a nondisclosure agreement that will not even allow me to correct false allegations.”

How convenient. And how very … American. And human. And disgusting.

Sad news today: «Bea Arthur passed away at 86 from cancer»:

‘Beatrice Arthur, the tall, deep-voiced actress whose razor-sharp delivery of comedy lines made her a TV star in the hit shows “Maude” and “The Golden Girls” and who won a Tony Award for the musical “Mame,” died Saturday. She was 86. Arthur died peacefully at her Los Angeles home with her family at her side, family spokesman Dan Watt said. She had cancer, Watt said, declining to give details.
…
‘Maude” scored with television viewers immediately on its CBS debut in September 1972, and Arthur won an Emmy Award for the role in 1977. The comedy flowed from Maude’s efforts to cast off the traditional restraints that women faced, but the series often had a serious base. Her husband Walter (Bill Macy) became an alcoholic, and she underwent an abortion, which drew a torrent of viewer protests. Maude became a standard bearer for the growing feminist movement in America.’

We are diminished by the loss.

Said President Obama at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s annual ‘Days of Remembrance’ ceremony in commemoration of the victims of Fascism:

“To this day, there are those who insist the Holocaust never happened – who perpetrate every form of intolerance — racism, antisemitism, homophobia, xenophobia, sexism, and more — hatred that degrades its victim and diminishes us all. Today, and every day we have an opportunity, as well as an obligation to confront these scourges. To fight the impulse to turn the channel when we see images that disturb us, or wrap ourselves in the false comforts that others’ sufferings are not our own…”

Agreed. Well said. Now go put some muscle into passing the Hate Crimes Bill and let’s get movin’ …

The governor of Connecticut signed «marriage equality into law today». Equal protection under the law as provided in the U.S. Constitution was thereby affirmed by all three branches of the government.

‘Four years ago this week, Gov. M. Jodi Rell signed a bill allowing civil unions. Today, with the stroke of a pen, she abolished them. Rell this afternoon signed Senate Bill 899, which incorporates the findings of the Kerrigan case into Connecticut statutes. That ruling, handed down by the state Supreme Court in October, paved the way for same-sex marriage. Both the House and the Senate spent hours yesterday debating Senate Bill 899, which passed only after an amendment was added that provides an exemption to groups who object to same-sex marriage on religious grounds.’

Best quotes of the day:

“”This bipartisan vote is a strong affirmation of the Kerrigan decision and the dignity and respect of same-sex couples and their families,” Anne Stanback, executive director of Love Makes a Family said in a statement. “Today, fairness won out over fear.”"

and

“Sen. Andrew McDonald, a Democrat from Stamford and leading gay rights advocate, hailed the new law. “Our legislature and our governor now have ratified the Supreme Court’s decision, and today all three branches of Connecticut’s government speak with one voice: discrimination has no place in our state and will be eradicated wherever it appears,” McDonald said in a press release.”

As Frank Rich of the Times said, marriage equality in America is inevitable. Good on yer, Connecticut!

It’s a great title for a great «column». Frank Rich of the New York Times sums up very thoroughly and very presciently the status of one of America’s favorite Culture War battlegrounds/sports grounds in which people like us are kicked around like political footballs (cartoon at left is from 2004, Steve Kelley of the New Orleans Times-Picayune).

Rich, who has long been a voice of reason and sanity in insane Bush world, starts by highlighting the hugely laughable and inept so-called ‘national organization for marriage’ gathering storm video, noting that the response, other than among those 22% who actually approved of George W. Bush as of 19-Jan-09, was either laughter or yawning. (By the way, that 22% approval rating is the lowest ever recorded for any occupant of the White House.)

Rich then moves on to the recent Iowa and Vermont victories and notes that resistance on the right is crumbling:

‘On the right, the restrained response was striking. Fox barely mentioned the subject; its rising-star demagogue, Glenn Beck, while still dismissing same-sex marriage, went so far as to “celebrate what happened in Vermont” because “instead of the courts making a decision, the people did.” Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the self-help media star once notorious for portraying homosexuality as “a biological error” and a gateway to pedophilia, told CNN’s Larry King that she now views committed gay relationships as “a beautiful thing and a healthy thing.” In The New York Post, the invariably witty and invariably conservative writer Kyle Smith demolished a Maggie Gallagher screed published in National Review and wondered whether her errant arguments against gay equality were “something else in disguise.” More startling still was the abrupt about-face of the Rev. Rick Warren, the hugely popular megachurch leader whose endorsement last year of Proposition 8, California’s same-sex marriage ban, had roiled his appearance at the Obama inaugural. Warren also dropped in on Larry King to declare that he had “never” been and “never will be” an “anti-gay-marriage activist.” This was an unmistakable slap at the National Organization for Marriage, which lavished far more money on Proposition 8 than even James Dobson’s Focus on the Family.’

Rich then points out the handwriting on the wall:

As the polls attest, the majority of Americans who support civil unions for gay couples has been steadily growing. Younger voters are fine with marriage. Generational changeover will seal the deal. Crunching all the numbers, the poll maven Nate Silver sees same-sex marriage achieving majority support “at some point in the 2010s.” Iowa and Vermont were the tipping point because they struck down the right’s two major arguments against marriage equality.’

He then rounds out the column with discussion about how the right’s ostensible 2012 candidates are still clinging to (yet one more) Lost Cause … and that it will probably hurt them:

‘In 2008, 60 percent of Iowa’s Republican caucus voters were evangelical Christians. Mike Huckabee won. That’s the hurdle facing the party’s contenders in 2012, which is why Romney, Palin and Gingrich are now all more vehement anti-same-sex-marriage activists than Rick Warren. … This month, even as the father of Palin’s out-of-wedlock grandson challenged her own family values and veracity, she nominated as Alaskan attorney general a man who has called gay people “degenerates.” Such homophobia didn’t even play in Alaska — the State Legislature voted the nominee down — and will doom Republicans like Palin in national elections.’

He then notes that more moderate (and sane) Republican leaders, including one in a very surprising place, are urging a move away from the madness. McCain-Palin 2008 campaign strategist has ‘come out’ this week in urging the party to endorse marriage equality, as has Meghan McCain, the candidate’s daughter, who memorably said this week, ‘Most people are ready to move on to the future, not live in the past. [and] Most of the old school Republicans are scared shitless of that future.”

The surprise? Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, a Mormon Republican presiding over the reddest of all American red states, who told Frank Rich:

‘“We must embrace all citizens as equals … I’ve always stood tall on this. … A lot of people gave the issue more scrutiny after it became the topic of the week,” he said, and started to see it “in human terms.” Letters, calls, polls and conversations with voters around the state all confirmed to him that opinion has “shifted quite substantially” toward his point of view.’

Did his stance hurt him in ultra-conservative, ultra-religious, ultra-red Utah? No. ‘Huntsman’s approval rating now stands at 84 percent,’ said Rich.

Rich then sums up the whole matter brilliantly in his final paragraph, sounding a much-needed note of optimism and hope:

‘As marital equality haltingly but inexorably spreads state by state for gay Americans in the years to come, Utah will hardly be in the lead to follow Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa and Vermont. But the fact that it too is taking its first steps down that road is extraordinary. It is justice, not a storm, that is gathering. Only those who have spread the poisons of bigotry and fear have any reason to be afraid.’

That stands repeating: ‘It is justice, not a storm, that is gathering.‘

We currently second-class American citizens thank you and say god bless you, Frank Rich. But we’re still second-class citizens. And it will be hard to continue waiting at the back of the bus for America’s promised ‘equal protection under the law.’ But we’ll hang in there.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier announced that Germany will join the U.S., Israel and other countries in a «boycott» of the upcoming United Nations World Conference Against Racism after “a draft declaration circulated earlier this year made Israel responsible for the entire Middle East conflict, while human rights violations in Muslim countries were largely ignored.”

Preparations for the conference have been “dominated by Libya, Cuba, and Iran.” Holocaust Denier and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is due to address the conference tomorrow, 20-April, the 120th anniversary of Hitler’s birth.

Italy, Canada and Austria are also boycotting, as well as the Netherlands:

‘Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen said in a statement that countries with questionable human rights records were seeking to abuse the gathering “to place religion ahead of human rights and unnecessarily curtail freedom of speech, to negate discrimination against homosexuality, and to place Israel alone in the accused bench”.’

Britain and France will attend as scheduled, although the Brits will be “watching carefully” developments and the French want to “articulate clearly their human rights position.”

I suppose this lands me amid the ranks of conservatives on this issue, but I support the U.S. boycott. Racism should not be fought with … reverse racism, not to mention historical ignorance.

I’m a little nervous about stormy weather here in Middle Tennessee, because this is, of course, tornado country. But nonetheless, the past 24 hours of weather have been kind of beautiful, spring rain without depressingly torrential downpours, followed by periods of clouds interspersed with clear sky. Tonight was particularly wonderful, with a little rain followed by a peaceful clouded/clear melange at sunset. I went outside in the backyard with the beagles and took a look around, and I’m really very thankful to be here. There was the delighted song of a single mockingbird somewhere in the trees toward the front of the house, then there was the view toward the northwest — a few city lights on the other side of the river, a radio tower or two in the hills in the distance (Taylor Knob? Mackie Valley?), a view that I never dislike, and then the sweeping view toward the east through the vast cover of the trees behind us, the distance toward the hills of Todd Knob and Hermitage. It’s a wonderfully idyllic vista.

I’m reading, and enjoying, a new book:«Dog On It». I usually confine my mystery reading to James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux books, but I made an exception for this one, because the twist is that it’s told from the private eye’s dog’s perspective. Chet is a police dog helping his buddy find a missing girl. It appears to be the start of a series.

I know that bad things happen to the hero in detective stories; he gets mussed up and beaten up and cut up and all, but then he solves the case, gets the girl, and everything’s cool. But when the hero is the dog, it’s a little tough to read about him getting … well, mussed up and beaten up and cut up and all. We’re kinda weird, we humans; we don’t really wince when this stuff happens to other human characters, but if they’re animals and we get all soft and squeamish and junk.

In the first half of this book alone, Chet the hero gets dog-napped, sliced with a knife, attacked by a cougar, caged up by evil Russian mobsters, choke-chained, shot at, lost in a mine and stuck all over with cactus needles. And he comes through all of it just dandy. Sorry if that’s a spoiler for those of you intending to read the book.

But. There’s a part where he escapes the dognappers and ends up in a three-day kill shelter and is strapped onto the gurney to be put down. (Again, sorry if that’s a spoiler, but it should also be obvious that Chet will survive … there wouldn’t be any more story if he was killed off, right?) He’s rescued literally at the last second (okay, I’ll leave that part a surprise).

Woooosh. That’s a relief. But the point I’m getting to, and I do have one, is that I read this part of the book tonight, almost exactly two years to the moment after we lost our beloved Bayley Murphey Beagle, who was put down after being poisoned by tainted Chinese pet food.

Frank and I both had shed some tears this evening over this sad anniversary. So reading the scene in the Chet book was quite jarring. And the most disturbing part is probably that Chet (fictional though he is) gets to get up and walk away and be reunited with his guy. Bayley did not. And that stinks.

Now, Bayley was very, very sick. Suffering a bit and in need of the relief, kidney functions gone. He was 12-and-a-half, getting way up there for a beagle. So, it had to be. But I still beat myself up about it even two years later. What if I hadn’t switched his food to the Petsmart house brand when we moved to California? What if I had recognized he was sick sooner than I did? What if I had given him a few more days to see if things turned around?

All pointless, but these are the thoughts you have.

I realize I’m kind of a silly ol’ fool here. Still whining about a dog who has been dead for two years. But Bayley was special, and a special part of our lives. I really don’t want to be the kind of person who is unaffected and unmoved by anything, even a dog and his impact on your life.

I still miss Bayley. I always will. I love him and am grateful for all the great love and laughter and joy and warmth that he gave us. Everyone should have companions like Bayley, human, dog, or otherwise. We were blessed.

Rest in peace, sweetheart.

P.S. On a happier note, Chet the Dog has his own «blog». Check it out!

Finally posted some «new pics on Flickr» of the boys. Whatta buncha beagles!

News in this neck of the woods is pretty mundane:

More beagle escapes (fifth, I think), necessitating the expenditure and labor of putting up a new chain link fence to isolate half of the backyard.

Application almost complete for Vanderbilt’s special ed master’s program.

Storm front moved through today; several thousand people just south of us without power, high winds, but no tornadoes or thunder. Oklahoma City hit; Lone Grove smacked, with eight dead.

That is all.