Drink Upstream

Cindy Sheehan, Please Stop!

On Independence Mall the other day, a group of war protesters, led by Cindy Sheehan, set up a small version of Arlington Cemetery, with little grave markers and the names of Iraq War casualties. Some held signs that said "Impeach Bush/Cheney" and "Fire the Republicans". Some passed out the usual literature that soon filled nearby trashcans. And Ms. Sheehan made her speeches and got her picture taken as always.

The next day, Sarah emailed me a link to the Philadelphia Inquirer's write-up about the protest. And two paragraphs in particular caught my attention:

Later, in a hurried conversation with reporters, she discussed what she said would be the main focus of her life in the months ahead: an attempt to defeat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) in Pelosi's San Francisco district next year.

A California resident, Sheehan plans to run as an independent. She announced her candidacy Monday night after Pelosi failed to meet Sheehan's deadline for backing an impeachment effort.

Seriously. Just let that sink in for a moment. Cindy Sheehan... runs for the House... hoping to defeat the first woman Speaker... and help lose another seat for the Democrats... who in 2008 have a chance to undo further the super-conservative Republican bloc that has built up during the first half of the decade. And her reasoning is because Speaker Pelosi has not met a Sheehan-imposed deadline to impeach the President of the United States.

Immediately, I thought back to a Daily Show after Sheehan met with and congratulated Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Jon Stewart hit his forehead and stated that she had simply destroyed all her credibility. I couldn't agree more. Cindy Sheehan is one of those liberals who give the rest of us a bad name.

Cindy, you were once in a place to make a real statement, to change the war and maybe elevate the level of political dialogue in this country. I was very much a supporter of you when you first came on the scene, camped outside of the President's ranch. But please, please, stop. Stop before you lead us further into this morass of name-calling and animosity.

SSRN-'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy by Daniel Solove

Hey kids!

I found this fantastic paper that you need to read.  Yes, I know, it's long (like 25 pages), but it's really worth the time. 

Link: SSRN-'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy by Daniel Solove.

I was particularly fond of the end of the second section where Solove argues that individual rights and community interests are not the dichotomy that is usually presented, but rather, that individual rights are a community (social) interest, and should be protected as such.

Misadventures in Home Improvement

I thought you guys might enjoy this little recap of the comedy of errors that was my weekend.
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So.

It was an interesting weekend in the Kinard household. 

Last week my sweet wife exclaimed that she was "sick of the study".  She said she wanted to "re-organize" it.  Now, I'm not sure if you know this about Sarah, but she gets the re-organization bug about two or three times a year.  I've known this about her for years, so her desire to re-org the study was nothing new.  I decided, in the interest of marital harmony, to humor her.  She assured me we could get it all done on Saturday. 

We started into the work Saturday morning, and we were rolling along nicely.  We had come up with a great solution for the desk, and even found a solid place for the couch.  Truthfully, she was right, the changes we were making were really going to improve the room.  The next task was cleaning out the closet so we could put some shelves in there to hold the (rather large) CD collection.

We got everything out of the closet, and then we were faced with the removal of two small pieces of wood that were nailed to the walls.  You know, the ones that hold up the clothes rod.  Sarah decided she was going to take them out herself/

Now let me pause here for a moment to let you in on something you may not know about my wife.  See, Sarah's kind of like the spawn between Martha Stewart, Bob Villa, and Gloria Steinem.  She's convinced that if there is something that needs to be done, dammit, she can do it.  This can-do attitude is one of her most endearing qualities, but it can also lead to trouble.  Sometimes there are just things that she's not strong enough to do or there are things that she just doesn't have the technical skills for.  Though this is not to take anything away from her.  There are things that I can't do.  There are things that you can't do.  Everyone has limitations.

This was one of those moments.

Back to our story....

In the act of attempting to remove said wood with the pry-bar, el wifo put a fist sized hole into the closet wall.  Needless to say, neither of us was thrilled about this.  After a little refactoring, she gave me the crowbar and the hammer, and I managed to get the wood off without enlarging the hole.

Now we're staring at a hole.  It needs to be fixed.

Sarah, fresh off of her Mexico mission trip, exclaimed "We've got to widen this hole out to the studs!" and proceeded to put a hammer through the wall. 

Crap.

I managed to suffer an outbreak of common sense, and ran to get the home improvement bible (Reader's Digest:  The Complete Do It Yourself Guide, I highly recommend it).  As I scrambled through the book, searching for info on "Drywall Repair", I'm plagued by the incessant "Whack!  Whack! Whack!" of Sarah destroying the wall. When I found the proper section in the book, I discover that a small hole can be patched by enlarging it just a couple of inches to make it nice and square.  By the time I run into the study, our fist-sized hole has grown to a size that is usually reserved for hiding bodies and such within the walls of mob houses,  29 inches by 32 inches if my memory serves me. 

Damn.

That's a big ass hole.

Needless to say, I was forced to do the Home Depot "Walk of Shame".  You know, the one where the intrepid home-owner has to go buy stuff from Home Depot to fix a mess he/she has made, all the while getting laughed at by the witless Home Depot staff.

We spent the afternoon drywalling, taping, mudding, sanding, and painting that 3 foot square hole in the wall.

It's fixed.  It doesn't look half bad.  (It's in a closet though, so it didn't have to be perfect)

But the damn study is still not done.

Values Schmalues

Who knew I was so morally bankrupt as to not have any "values" just because I don't agree with these buffoons.

There I said it.  You happy now?  These guys are buffoons.

Link: Conservative Christian political group kicks off national 70-week crusade to boost 'value voters'.

A "value voter" is defined by Scarborough as someone who is pro-life (including at end-of-life) and pro-family, supports a tougher welfare system and the proposed constitutional amendment defining marriage between a man and a woman, plus a supporter of religious liberty and free speech.

Our Tax Dollars At Work

Sens. Hutchison and Cornyn Pass Senate Resolution Honoring Spurs’ NBA Championship

It's not that I mind so much that we honor our sports teams. But do we have to do so with an $8 trillion debt? Is this the best use of our government's time and energy (and, therefore, money)?

Executive Branch and the Rule of Law

The ink is still fresh on the President's commutation of the sentence of I. Lewis Libby, and of course, now the American public have been condemned to listen to some cruel, but fairly usual and mundane, political posturing concerning the justice of this "pardon". Let us begin with the President's nuanced position:

"I respect the jury’s verdict,” Mr. Bush said in a statement. “But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive.” (quoted from the New York Times)

He seems to be happy that the people of the jury made their decision and will let that stand, but the sentence did not fit the crime, as far as he was concerned, regardless of how the law is written. Patrick Fitzgerald's response interests me most:

“In this case an experienced federal judge considered extensive argument from the parties and then imposed a sentence consistent with the applicable laws,” Mr. Fitzgerald said in a statement. “It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals.” (again, the New York Times)

Why this is interesting to me is because it makes me want to consider the idea of the Rule of Law in this country. The President, head of one of three branches established by the Constitution, has the power to circumvent the work of the other two branches (Congress, which made the law; the Judicial which imposed the sentence). How can that be? If the Judicial branch has already kept the Legislative in check, why does the President get to overrule that check, that is, in this case, he declared that the prescribed punishment and its implementation are "excessive".

I don't wish to criticize President Bush in this article, but rather the power of commutation and pardon in general. Doesn't it seem to be something left over from the monarchy? I will be checking the Federalist/Anti-Federalist papers over the next few days, to see if there's any conversation about that.

In the meantime, what are other thoughts on the subject? Is this a power of the Executive Branch that is overtly exploitable? Or is the power yet another check?

Open-ended posts, that's my style these days.