The brilliant PEG points my eye toward this observation on the limits of transparency in an era of big government:

People who are hip to the we-gov (as opposed to e-gov) concept are beginning to see that in order to bring netizens in as partners in governance, they need to be data literate, and need to be empowered with an understanding of what data actually means. Otherwise data — data that is useless to anyone except an intellectual elite — is largely just another tool for public relations, or a way to lower costs.

I've got nothing against popular numeracy, though I do groan each time a pundit or a president plumps for 'more science and math education' as a twenty-first century cure-all. Here I see a similar problem. Should we really seek public data literacy because our government is impenetrable and unintelligible unless we can crunch numbers? Or is this a case of the enormous tail wagging, and whipping, the dog?

A progressive fatalist -- here is a moniker that should enter the lexicon -- might argue that this sort of logic reflects simply the latest and greatest definition of citizenship. Just as basic literacy and public awareness once set the bar for responsible citizenship (never mind those nasty poll tests), now, today, anyone who wants to participate properly in politics needs to brush up on their quant skills. But this elegant line of reasoning conveniently elides what any friend of political liberty will recognize as the central problem: a government that concentrates information as irresistibly as it concentrates power.

Even setting aside the libertarian worry that a national-security state run wild will gobble up all our private information in permanent endless databases, Americans should pause before learning to love government data. The ability to digest numerical information, though important, still puts the would-be citizen in a default position of passive consumption. And the switch from discourse-driven citizenship to data processing puts us all on a conceptual footing that favors precisely what any public conversation about the means and ends of our BIG government should emphasize -- the indefinite expansion, entrenchment, and convolution of bureaucratic complexity. As David Brooks warns today, super-human complexity breeds all-too-human complacency, caprice, and corruption -- the very things that an active, education citizenry is able, and even designed, to prevent.

A Ricochet reader -- who can't comment because she hasn't yet decided to join -- sent me the full transcript of Crowley's remarks on Pakistan's You Tube ban. I'm very relieved to see that in context, Crowley does not at all sound the complete cretin he would seem to be from the way Dawn reported it. He actually offers a reasonably robust defense of freedom of expression, apart from that line about protecting citizens from offensive speech.

Note to the anonymous Ricochet reader: You may as well join. You're obviously into it, and it's not that expensive.

To my astonishment, I seem to be able to access YouTube. I haven't been able to do this in Turkey for years. I can't find any reference to the ban having been lifted in the news, and for all I know it's a technical glitch, but let's be optimistic and celebrate it as a victory for freedom of expression. I'm celebrating it, anyway -- especially because I can now watch the video of Assistant Secretary of State Philip J. Crowley telling Pakistan that the United States supports the banning of YouTube. This will be rich.

I'm waiting for the State Department to applaud this development in Turkey, but obviously not holding my breath.

There was a protest here last night against the ban. It was sort of a combination party and protest, really; people here don't feel that comfortable with protests, but they love parties, so the idea of billing it as a party was quite shrewd. I doubt the protest resulted in the ban's being lifted, but I like to think the Turkish government finally decided, "We just can't keep this up, the world's laughing at us, and people here are getting really fed up."

I didn't make it to the party, although I wanted to. I was too busy dealing with a dead computer. But I know a lot of the people who were there, and I think I can guess what they'd say about the State Department's enthusiastic endorsement of censorship in the Islamic world.

Could this be serious? It was reported on the front page of Dawn, in Pakistan. My computer's been broken for two days, so I haven't been able to check the news. Has there been any wide reaction to this?

WASHINGTON: The United States has strongly supported Pakistan’s move to ban certain internet sites, saying the Pakistani government had the right to protect its public from offensive images and speech.

Assistant Secretary of State Philip J. Crowley, apparently, said:

... “Pakistan is wrestling to this issue. We respect any actions that need to be taken under Pakistani law to protect their citizens from offensive speech,” said the US State Department official while rejecting a suggestion from a journalist to condemn Islamabad’s actions.

If he really said this, and if no one in the West has noticed he said it -- and gone appropriately insane about it -- we're doomed.

As I mentioned on the podcast yesterday morning, I write a weekly column for the English-language daily newspaper in Abu Dhabi, The National.

I write about Hollywood, about the life of a screenwriter. It's often a more expounded version of my weekly commentary on the local NPR station here in Los Angeles -- which is sort of an inside view for local listeners -- but what I like about the National gig is that it encourages me to read actually read the paper, to read something else at least once a week, to break out of the NYT-WSJ silo that I often lapse into. It's an interesting and well-written paper, and often has surprisingly sophisticated international coverage.

Here's my latest.

And full disclosure: I only agreed to write the column because I was promised 2 things. The first, business cards with English on one side, Arabic on the other (I thought it'd be cool). And the second: at least one expense-paid junket to Abu Dhabi in one of the first class Emirates Air mini-cabins I've seen advertised in The Economist.

Neither one of those things has come to pass. But I'm patient.

There’s a nasty little portion of the flight envelope for a high-flying jet airplane known as the coffin corner, where the indicated air speed is low due to the thin air but the Mach number simultaneously high. Any slower and the plane stalls, any faster and airflow exceeds the speed of sound, with the resulting shock wave causing a “Mach tuck,” pointing the nose down abruptly. Bad stuff happens fast at this point. Most seductively, coffin-corner-flying feels just fine until some little bobble, perhaps a jolt of mild turbulence, upsets the aircraft and seconds later a seemingly sound machine is falling to the ground in pieces.

President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid are flying our country into an economic coffin corner. The US federal deficit is over 10% of GDP this year, with no end in sight. Simultaneously, despite near-zero real interest rates, the money supply as measured by M3 is declining at a rate last seen during the Great Depression.

If we cut spending with the rest of Obamanomics in place – think of it as a boot on the neck of the private sector –- the economy stalls, deflation ensues and another Great Depression may be waiting at the end of the ride. If we carry on spending, any eventual uptick in interest rates will jolt debt service expenses higher, causing an immediate need for additional borrowing to pay today's interest on yesterday's loans. If the Chinese aren't returning calls at this point, we will all be riding along on a continent-sized Mach tuck.

Making sense of the California ballot is like reading Chinese.  Literally, it actually is -- although the state graciously provides English and Spanish translations.

One proposition that I find especially baffling is Proposition 14, which would introduce the open primary process for congressional, statewide, and legislative races.  In an open primary, all voters can choose any candidate regardless of political party preference.  The two candidates receiving the greatest number of votes appear on the general election ballot.

How, if at all, would an open primary system change the political process?  Who would benefit most from the change?  Would this system prove easier or more difficult than our current system to manipulate?

Crossing my fingers that Mike Murphy weighs in on this one.

From Hawaii to New York State, the Ricochet Podcast goes coast to coast this week as we talk to Ricochet contributor Heather Higgins about her role in helping to elect Republican Charles Djou in Hawaii. That's right, Hawaii. Then Col. Chris Gibson joins us to discuss the state of his race in NY's 12th district, and his inspiring vision for the country's future. Finally, Rob reveals his secret career as a political voice over artist and a third world columnist.

(Hint: The new home of our podcast player is located under the Featured Contributors box on the right side of your screen.)

I don't know about you, but when I heard Obama mention the dead turtles, I sat in my car and wept for a full hour. Then I collected myself, went into my office and started playing Frogger.

Frogger - how old school is THAT?

Per WSJ News Alert:

Before taking questions at a midday news conference, the president said the U.S. is suspending the exploration of two regions off Alaska, as well as off the Gulf Coast and Virginia, and will suspend action on 33 wells currently being explored.

Is that sound a cheer coming up from Iran? You bet. 

A friend just said to me; “Assuming that the "top kill" working, how long before critics say ‘why did BP wait so long to try this approach?’  There is no winning.” 

He’s right. We have become a nation of utopians, arrogant 2^nd guessers, and Lilliputians who are certain that enough rules will make everything work just right, not realizing that at some point they will just make everything grind to a halt.  And with perfect timing, Obama has decided to extend his fiats to…make everything grind to a halt.

My four year-old has Down syndrome. Yesterday, I sent her off to school for the first time in our new suburban town. We chose this particular suburb because of its reputation for a committed and loving approach to educating and including children with special needs. In New York City, where we lived for eight years, the best strategy for families with limited financial resources looking to get their special-needs kids into decent education environments was to sue the city. Every year. Until they turn twenty-one. Usually these suits are successful, but we have no stomach for this kind of thing, and we don’t have the finances to keep a lawyer on retainer for seventeen years, so we moved. Even though we’re now in a better neighborhood, I can't help but worry a little bit extra about my sweet Miss M, since the country seems to be falling apart on so many fronts. Five years ago, the medical team who told us our unborn baby would have Down syndrome advised us to “terminate.” Hearing a diagnosis of Down syndrome is a horrible, terrible shock. All your hopes for your unborn baby, for your family, for your own journey into old age, change in an instant. To have people not-so-subtly reminding you that your child will also be a burden on society is a crushing blow. Yet this is the message that all too frequently gets sent to people in this very unfortunate, and vulnerable, position. We know Miss M won’t be going to Harvard, just as we knew we had to get out of the city in order to find a more hospitable place to raise our family, a place where she has the freedom to pursue her interests and talents. Maybe she'll end up living on her own, holding down a job, and, at least partially, supporting herself. Come to think of it, that’s what I’m hoping for all my kids. But under a government that seems intent on making ALL of us wards of the state, how long before some of us are deemed too much of a burden? After all, we’re living in a country where the president's right-hand man feels free to drop the R-bomb in the White House and Mr. Obama himself jokes on late-night TV that his atrocious bowling skills might qualify him for the Special Olympics (remember? he got a few laughs). I wonder what the future holds. Not just for my little Miss M, but for all of us.

Below somewhere, Conor Friedersdorf makes this observation (I know I'm supposed to be able to link to his original post, but I haven't yet figured out how):

And isn't it nice, incidentally, that none of us fear the French, German or Italian overreaction that the former German foreign minister mentioned? Given even recent European history, that is an achievement to be celebrated.

That depends on just what sort of celebration you have in mind. If Conor means the orgy of self-congratulation in which the Europeans indulged themselves a couple of years ago, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, then, actually, I'd say no: Scrap the celebration. If by contrast Conor has in mind circulating a petition around the capitals of Europe to collect signatures thanking the tens of thousands of American troops who have served in Europe since the end of the Second World War the American taxpayers who for six decades now have underwritten the defense of Europe--and if, once the signatures are collected, the petitions were to be formally offered to the American ambassador to the EU during a Fourth of July ceremony in Brussels that culminated in a fireworks display in which bursts of red, white and blue form Old Glory while a brass band plays "The Stars and Stripes Forever"--if that's the kind of celebration we're talking about here, then let 'er rip.

At the beginning of each summer vacation, Drew, I like to buy a stack of books, set the books on top of the dining room table, and then command my children to start reading. ("Command?" That's the way I'd like it to happen. The truer words would be "cajole" and "beg.") May I ask your advice? My oldest, home from her first year in college, will be reading for courses she'll be taking next fall, while my youngest, only eight, will devote her time to children's books. That leaves the three teenaged boys in the middle.

All three of the boys have already read--devoured, actually--your first book for young adults, The Last Thing I Remember, making it more or less mandatory for me to begin my summer book purchases with your second book in the series, The Long Way Home. But where do I go from there? Ideally, I figure, I'd give the boys half a dozen or ten books, including, perhaps, a work or two of American history, a work or two of good sports writing, and maybe a brief volume of good science writing. What would you recommend?

"The Andrew Klavan Summer Reading List for Teenaged American Boys." That's what I'm after.

Drew?

Professors Yoo and Epstein, if you don't mind a question from the back of the class, I'd like to shift to a different topic and benefit from your expertise.  

Word is the DOJ is preparing to take action against Arizona regarding its new immigration law.  Specifically, they are contending that the Arizona legislature exceeded its authority by effectively impeding federal responsibility to enforce its immigration laws.  From the perspective of a layman, three questions arise:  

First, how in the name of Judge Wapner's gavel can federal enforcement be impeded when there is no federal enforcement taking place in the first instance?  It would be like citing me for impeding traffic when I'm the only one on the road, no?  If your answer is that it is the fed's responsibility, not their enforcement, that is being impeded upon, I would counter that it is a responsibility that is being ignored.  Am I wrong? 

Second question:  How can the fed's responsibility in this matter be impeded or infringed when the new state law merely restates existing federal law?  

Lastly, do you gentlemen think that DOJ will suceed in its effort to derail the Arizona law?  

The U.S. debt clock just ticked past $13 trillion, which means that our national debt to gdp ratio is now over 90%.

I wanted to share my piece today in the New York Times, which argues that Elena Kagan is not the great friend of presidential power that her supporters claim. Her academic work praises Bill Clinton for taking the authority to issue regulations from the agencies (which are given that power by Congress) to enact what she calls progressive solutions to national problems. But she says it is not because of any power that the Constitution grants the President. Because of that, I argue that she would not recognize any powers of the President, under the Constitution, to wage the war beyond what Congress allows him -- the common view in the academy, I must admit.

I must admit surprise that a) the New York Times would let me appear on its pages, except as a target (let me make clear, that being a moving target for the New York Times can be great fun) ; and b) that it would allow a criticism of her for not supporting presidential power. Thoughts?

The first thing you do when you get a new gadget -- a computer, a camera, a smartphone -- is you go through it, and you set your preferences. You set it up the way you like.

On Facebook, on Twitter, it's all about you -- your photos, your friends, information the way you like it. Hundreds of millions of users, all uploading and linking and connecting data, somehow get sorted right and served by these really popular services. And don't get me started on YouTube.

My bank lets me customize my user page. I've tuned gmail and .mac to sort out the junk. Amazon knows what I like and makes often useful suggestions. It also keeps track of my most used addresses, which makes gift-giving simple. Ricochet lets you set up a profile and follow folks you like. Pandora listens to the kinds of music you like, then delivers music that, amazingly, fits your taste.

One definition of a "modern" product, it seems to me, is how personal and customizable it is.

So what's been bugging me lately, when I think about the Obama administration, is how old it seems. How elderly and behind the times. Each policy and initiative seems like a page from the lost Mondale Administration: giant, behemoth one-size-fits-all health care; labor union giveaways; student loan power grabs -- it all seems so yesterday. Which is weird, of course, because we've been told over and over again by journalists and pundits (who themselves seem old, used up, irrelevant, and tired) that this is a young! bright! modern! administration.

So why does it seem so behind the times? So corpulent? Why does every policy prescription read like something from the 1970's?

I'm old enough to remember an old man running for president (Reagan) who turned to a younger man who was president at the time (Carter) and killing him in a debate with this line: "There you go again." Because it captured the tired, rote, big-government, top-down, one-way thinking of the left, circa 1980.

And now, circa 2010.

Which may be why a lot of politicians, Republican and Democrat, are nervous about November 2010, and really nervous about November 2012. Because that's when the people set their preferences.

Driving down I-65 in Kentucky this morning, I heard the news that President Obama will forgo the traditional Memorial Day observance at Arlington's Tomb of the Unknowns in favor of a short vacation in Chicago.  My first reaction was disbelief, but that was soon replaced by fury.  Recall please the reaction when George W. Bush decided that as long as our troops were fighting a war, he would cease with the Presidential golf games.  He was roundly mocked and denounced.  Keith Olberman got his boxers in a bunch and raged that we had brave troops giving everything on the battlefield and all Bush could sacrifice was his golf game.  Last year, Obama left Arlington and went straightway to the golf course and not a peep of indignation was heard from the left, the stimulus evidently having funded enough starch to keep their boxers unbunched.  And now that the President has turned his back on Arlington, I distinctly hear the sound not of protest from Olberman, Matthews, et al, but of silence.  Silence from the left, and of course the silence of our war dead, who gave their lives so that we could use our voices for good.  

I can't presume to speak for all veterans, but I can speak for myself and the few vets I've talked with this morning.  As you read these words, the  very best that this country has to offer is thousands of miles away wearing a flak vest, kevlar helmet, and enough extraneous gear to hobble a mule, fighting for you.  They know that all it takes is one sniper's bullet, one I.E.D, one command by the little gargoyle in North Korea, and they go from Veteran's Day to Memorial Day.  Their families will bury them, their children will suffer immeasurably, and they will be dead.  The reality for our people in harm's way is that they must deploy, but they don't have to come home.  For those that are killed, we set aside one day a year to grieve and honor their selfless devotion to us, and our Commander in Chief will not deign to set foot in Arlington.  

On the one hand, it is tempting to observe that it is better after all to have someone preside over the ceremony who actually cares.  In that sense, Obama has at least acted honestly.   And he will attend a ceremony at a cemetary in the Chicago area.   But for a President whose troops are at war to prefer a vacation to the profound and profoundly moving honor of laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns, the only word I can muster for our polite readers is ...despicable. Utterly despicable.  Mr. President, the contempt is mutual.

As for me, I am on my way home precisely so I can stand and salute when the rifles fire and taps is played, and I will remember the fallen, pray for their families, and thank God for a country that raises such extraordinary people. 

President Obama made two stops in my town tonight to fundraise for Barbara Boxer's reelection campaign. Here's an excerpt of the President's remarks, as shown on San Francisco's local KTVU Ten O'Clock News:

Here you got folks driving a car in a ditch, and then we're out there in the mud pulling the car out of the ditch.  And they're sittin' there, comfortable, drinkin' on a slurpee or somethin', sayin', "Uh...you're not pulling the car out of the ditch fast enough!"  Then we finally get the car out of the ditch, and they want the keys back! I say, "You can't have the keys! You don't know how to drive!"

Stay classy, Mr. President.

Arizona Representative John Shadegg has been trying for lo these many years to convince Congress to pass the Enumerated Powers Act into law. Simply put, the measure would require that all bills brought before the House contain a statement citing which specific part of the Constitution authorizes the legislation. For a group of people, each of whom swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, you would think Shadegg's idea would be a no brainer. Instead, the idea hasn't gotten enough co-sponsors to give it a plausible chance.

It might be interesting if congressional candidates were asked about their support for the bill during the course of this summer's town hall meetings and campaign rallies.

Air Force One on the tarmac at SFO right now. Must be a fundraiser someplace tonight. Either that or a big oil spill in the Pacific that I've yet to hear about.

Apologies for the low-res photo, but I forgot my memory card reader so had to resort to the crummy camera on my mighty BlackBerry.

What Mark proclaimed to the world in his 2006 book, America Alone--namely that Europe is suffering demographic collapse and civilizational exhaustion--the New York Times, I noted the other day, has finally gotten around to confirming. To which James Poulos in effect replied, aw, cheer up:

[S]urely some among Europe's rising generations will revolt against the notion that exhaustion and failure are their only birthright....We'd better prepare ourselves now, I wager, for a few inspiring surprises in Europe.

I'm not so sure. Consider this graf from the Times article:

More broadly, many across Europe say the Continent will have to adapt to fiscal and demographic change, because social peace depends on it. “Europe won’t work without that,” said Joschka Fischer, the former German foreign minister, referring to the state’s protective role. “In Europe we have nationalism and racism in a politicized manner, and those parties would have exploited grievances if not for our welfare state,” he said. “It’s a matter of national security, of our democracy.”

Fischer may speak of "our democracy," but what he's really saying is that Europeans simply cannot be trusted with democracy. Ordinary people? The elites have to smother them with benefits to keep them from electing another Mussolini. The vast, unelected, utterly bureaucratic superstate that Fischer and his kind have been erecting in Belgium? Vast, unelected, and utterly bureaucratic is just the way they want it. A superstate, an elite that's profoundly and explicitly suspicious of ordinary people--all this makes it exceedingly difficult for Europeans who want to oppose the statism to find political ground on which to plant their feet--to organize, to found blogs and journals, simply to breath. When Americans find themselves faced with an unresponsive political system, what do they do? Throw tea parties. In Europe, that's just unthinkable. Literally. The conditions of European life--the elitism, the narrow range of views expressed in the press, the whole deference to elite, bureaucratic authority which which the whole society has been condition--make it all but impossible for such a thought to present itself in anyone's mind.

"Rising generations will revolt?" I sure hope so. But on a scale of one to ten, with ten representing the most forlorn of hopes, I'd rate that one about a nine. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe in Poland or Hungary, nations whose history has taught them the importance and fragility of freedom, a movement may yet stir. But in Germany or Italy or Spain or France?

Just finished taping an episode of Uncommon Knowledge with Sebastian Junger on his new book, War. Based on five extended trips to the American outposts in the Korengal Valley, the location that saw more combat than any other in the Afghan theater, War is beautifully written and full of acute, vivid portraiture--incomparably the best extended reporting on actual combat in Afghanistan that I've encountered.

Before we sat down, though, I'd developed the suspicion that Junger might simply want to discuss the experience of war, limiting himself to description and narrative while avoiding the larger questions. In the book itself, after all, he takes pains to demonstrate how irrelevant all the big think seems to the young men doing the fighting.

"The moral basis of the war," Junger writes in one place, "doesn’t seem to interest soldiers much, and its long-term success or failure has a relevance of almost zero." "It was a weird irony of the war," he writes elsewhere, "that once you were here—or your son was—the politics of the whole thing became completely irrelevant."

But when I asked Junger his views of the war, he answered every question directly, honestly, and intelligently.

Was Fouad Ajami right to argue, as he did on Uncommon Knowledge a couple of weeks ago, that "the Afghan campaign is lost?" "He's completely mistaken," Junger replied.

Did it unnerve him that just last month Gen. McChrystal chose to pull out of the Korengal Valley? "War is complicated," Junger said. "We lost thousands in the Normandy invasion, but we still won the Second World War."

If the United States and its Allies could defeat Hitler, Junger argued, then we could defeat then 10,000 or 15,000 troops the Taliban can place the field. "It's not a military problem," Junger said. "It's a question of political will."

A superb writer, Sebastian Junger is also a serious man.

P.S. Above, I'm quoting Junger from memory. When in a week or so our Uncommon Knowledge interview appears online, I'll be sure to post a link to the transcript.

Greetings from Park Slope, Brooklyn:

The good news is that there's a thriving two-party system in Park Slope. The bad news is that it's Democrats vs. Greens (seriously, the Greens outpoll the GOP in local elections). But it's a beautiful neighborhood, so I put up with the ACLU petition drives, the militant locavores, and the eye-rolls I get when I say "why yes, I would like a plastic bag."

Which brings me to my opening salvo to the Ricocheterati: Why are all the nice neighborhoods so leftwing? Not just in New York: think Cambridge, Berkeley, Santa Monica, the Berkshires, etc. All lovely places - but basically home to the Obama-is-okay-if-we-can't-have-Kucinich crowd.

Maybe it's proof of the ideological "clustering" that Bill Bishop wrote about in The Big Sort. Apparently, election results over the last 30 years show that there are fewer and fewer "swing" counties (congressional districts are different because they can always be gerrymandered). Affluent liberals can, and do, form self-selected communities where they celebrate "diversity" with people who all think exactly alike. Fine, it's a free country. But why did they have to scoop up all the good real estate?

An easy city to hate, perhaps. But there's something about L.A. that keeps me coming back. And back. At The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf rises to the defense against Bernard Henri Levy's very old world attack on the City of Angels. A representative gripe:

[...] what must be true for a city to be legible?

First, it has to have a center. But Los Angeles has no center. It has districts, neighborhoods, even cities within the city, each of which has a center of some sort. But one center, one unique site as a point of reference for that law of isonomy the Athenians believed was the principle behind every city, a hub or focus with which the inhabitants of Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Venice, Chinatown, Koreatown, Little Saigon and Little Tokyo, Malibu, Inglewood, Pico Union (and I could go on, since Los Angeles officially numbers eighty-four neighborhoods, where 120 languages are spoken), could have a relationship at once distinct and regular--nothing like that exists in Los Angeles.

There's a whiff, in that polemic, of what Peter Lawler, over at Postmodern Conservative, is fond of calling polis envy.

Over at Contentions, John Podhoretz has written a very kind welcome to Ricochet. I'm a huge fan of his, and of what he's created over there.

Wearying news making the rounds about the 2010 World Cup:

Zuma himself has announced that he is bringing his three wives and his fiancée, while ex-presidents Mandela, Mbeki and their partners are expected to attend and to be placed next to the presidents of Mexico and Fifa.

What’s more, at the last African Union summit Zuma declared that this was not South Africa’s World Cup but Africa’s and that all African heads of state were welcome. It now emerges that 50 out of 52 are said to be coming plus their considerable retinues. Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, may be among them, although there is a warrant out for his arrest from the International Criminal Court, and legally South Africa would be compelled to detain him. Another difficult case will be Robert Mugabe, since Biden and many others will wish to avoid having to meet the Zimbabwean president or shake his hand.

Huge numbers of cabinet members from across Africa also want to attend the junket. There will clearly not be room in the VVIP area or even the VIP area for all these VIPs and their extensive entourages. [...] On top of this Winnie Mandela is loudly demanding 25 VVIP tickets for herself and her entourage. Rich Mkhondo, a spokesman for the LOC admitted: ‘There is a huge demand for VVIP and VIP tickets for the opening and closing (ceremonies) but I cannot confirm the seating arrangements.’

The red carpet treatment for polyamorous "partners" is particularly suggestive of a new level of corruption headed our way, one which governments will find themselves unwilling to suppress, and which the biggest and best corporations will tacitly, and then more than tacitly, support.

But not, for now, in France! -- where, as with burqa banning, the best of western morality and mores tend to be upheld by the worst of western fiat and decree.

So far this morning, I've slipped on crayons while holding a dirty diaper, watched "Little Bill" four times, and drawn Elmo ten times. The last Elmo portrait, below, has elements of a self-portrait:

I know a lot of people will be outraged by The New York Times' revelation today that the United States is expanding its clandestine military activity to disrupt militant groups in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Somalia. But I say all the outrage is misplaced. If you read the article closely, you'll see that they've revealed nothing that isn't absolutely obvious. I mean, if we're not doing that, someone should be fired, yesterday. In fact, that has to be one of the top-ten most boring leaks of secret military information I've ever read.

I was a lot more surprised by the Souping up Spring Vegetables article. Did you all know that soup's not just a winter food? Bravo to the Times for publishing that weird recipe involving asparagus, green garlic and eggs. All too easy to dismiss the sound of that one as simultaneously effete and nasty, so give them credit for bravery. It can't have been an easy call in the newsroom.

I must admit, that article really challenged a lot of my assumptions about soup.

Okay. Let's discuss the devastation of an eco-system, an economy and a damn pretty place. Why is Obama hanging all his hopes on BP and not turning to every oil company who has had experience in capping and containing oil spills? There's certainly enough of them. This could turn from catastrophe to triumph for him. Even the liberal blogs are asking these questions. He's acting more like an "oil man" than that "oil man" who last resided in the White House. Someone illuminate me.