"'We're processing the papers as fast as we can, and we just won't be able to get to these papers in time for the 2008 election.'"

"Do you accept that answer? Do you think the opposition's hunger for these documents is ugly, that they'll only rummage through it all to pull a few things out of context to make Hillary Clinton look bad?"

From a post I wrote in August 2007 about the "mother lode of opposition research... locked up at the Clinton Library." I didn't believe the "processing the papers as fast as we can" assertion from the chief archivist at the library, and that was 7 years ago.

Yes, we recently got 4,000 pages of documents from the Clinton Library, but there were, according to the article I linked back then, "2 million pages of documents covering [Hillary's] White House years" that were "locked up in a building here, obscuring a large swath of her record as first lady."

"Leaning back on a bone-white sofa, her glasses perched on her head, Kerry Kennedy spoke of her 20-month-long prosecution..."

"... for driving while drugged that ended last week, when she was acquitted after an hour by a 6-person jury."

"For me it caused some emotional upheaval,” said Ms. Kennedy, a 54-year-old mother of 3 girls, college-age twins and a 16-year-old. “There were times I should have been completely emotionally available to my kids and I wasn’t there, even for reading a book with them or watching TV or tucking my daughter into bed. I was unable to be fully present. That’s a loss."

I don't know if you care about Kerry Kennedy's emotional upheaval and her inability to be completely emotionally available to her kids while she was getting prosecuted for drunk driving. (Is she completely emotionally available now that she's found not guilty?)

But I'm blogging this because I just love the accompanying photograph by NYT photographer Suzanne DeChillo, in which we get to see not only that "bone-white sofa" — on which Kerry Kennedy is leaning forward, not back — but the out-of-focus wall behind her with 2 large paintings of young girls in white dresses, which I took to be pictures of herself as an innocent child, but now think are probably 2 of her 3 daughters to whom she was incompletely emotionally available.

In front of one painted girl, there's a lamp that has a base that's a globe, and on the mantel there's an indistinct dark blob that I construe as a bronze bust of Kerry's father Bobby Kennedy. Kerry looks stressed and earnest, with her man-hands slightly clasped, glasses atop her head, and a chunky cross hanging from her neck. The cross corresponds to text in the article:

Readers [of the media coverage of the trial] learned she is a devoted Roman Catholic, going to church on the mornings she does not go to the gym.

That's a funny sentence. What evidence of devotion is that? If she goes to the gym every morning, then she never goes to church... at least not in the morning. I construe that sentence as deliberate satire gesturing at the jury's charitable construction of the evidence it heard.

At the Close-Up White Dog Café...

... it's a more intimate, late-night ambiance.

"A pair of surveys released on Thursday suggest that just one in 10 uninsured people who qualify for private health plans through the new marketplace have signed up for one..."

"... and that about half of uninsured adults has looked for information on the online exchanges or plans to look."

Efforts at legalizing marijuana beyond the medical use are undercutting the medical marijuana system.

The medical marijuana business was "all very folksy – and virtually unregulated, which the authorities say led to widespread abuses."

Now, under pressure from the federal government, [Washington] state is moving to bring that loosely regulated world, with its echoes of hippie culture, into the tightly controlled and licensed commercial system being created for recreational marijuana, which goes on sale this summer....

In Washington, some dispensaries might be well run, others poorly, but without oversight, state officials could not [tell] which was which. So a clean sweep – killing off the old system so that a new one could emerge – was seen as the only way forward, legislators say....

To many patients and providers...the proposed mandatory registry is not a good thing. Some patients, especially those receiving Social Security or other federal aid, have said they would refuse to sign up because that would be a legal admission of drug use that they said could jeopardize their benefits. Others have told lawmakers they fear, with hacking and leaks of government data in the news, a loss of private information.

There's always the freedom and privacy of going back to outlaw ways... an ironic consequence of greater legalization. Unless/until the federal criminalization ends, state-level "legalization" is going to be weird. I suppose getting to this weird condition is one way to create pressure on the feds.

I loathe this midway position, which creates an inequality that burdens those of us who are punctilious about avoiding committing any crimes. And wouldn't you think it's the people who feel excessive compulsion toward order who could most benefit from a recreational marijuana break? In fact, if you see it as an order disorder, we ought to qualify for a medical marijuana pass.

At the White Dog Café...

... you can talk about anything you want.

"Salon became a hardcore racist mag so gradually I barely noticed."

Observes Instapundit, linking to a Salon article titled "Why I can’t stand white belly dancers."

The article is written by a novelist named Randa Jarrar. And there's this twee notice at the end of it: "This piece is the latest in a series by feminists of color, curated by Roxane Gay."

Here's my post from last month where we were talking about this use of the word "curated" (a propos of Ryan Seacrest "curating" a fashion line.) LordSomber (a commenter) said: "'Curate' is one of those overused words that hipster artist wannabes have ruined."

Maybe Salon thinks that it's more feminist and of color to eschew the word "edited," which suggests a superseding authority and intervention. Maybe it's a crafty way to deny responsibility for the thing published: It's not edited, it's merely collected and presented "as is."

But what about that racism? How bothersome is it for a person of authenticity to express exasperation for the appropriation of some attribute of her culture for re-presentation by an outsider to that culture?

Perhaps if these white lady belly dancers asserted that what they are doing is curating dance we could all love one another (or at least wink knowingly).

"Wes Anderson is a genius, but ... come on, people! Get a life! Make your own style."

"Pretentious hipsters of the world, unite!"/"My favorite detail in this article are the piles of old books used as wedding table centerpieces."

Comments at a NYT article about an interior decoration trend inspired by Wes Anderson movies. Click on the slide show to see what the results actually are.

"For Boys, Moving to a Wealthier Neighborhood Is as Traumatic as Going to War."

"Leaving poverty is more complicated than you think," writes Sarah Sloat in The New Republic.

The reason for the disparity between boys and girls isn’t exactly pinned down. [Harvard professor Ronald] Kessler points to various factors — community perception, interpersonal skills — as major points of influence: “We had an anthropologist working with us, and the anthropologist went and talked to and watched the kids in the old neighborhoods and the new neighborhoods, and their perception was that when the boys came into the new neighborhood they were coded as these juvenile delinquents,” says Kessler. “Whereas with the girls, it was exactly the opposite. They were embraced by the community—‘you poor little disadvantaged thing, let me help you.’”

"It is an article of faith among the religious right in America that we are in the midst of a war on religion (in which 'religion' usually means Christianity)..."

... but it's not true, argues Lawrence M. Krauss, who is a physicist and the director of the Origins Project. Along with Richard Dawkins, he's in a new documentary about atheists called "The Unbelievers." He notes that a movie about atheism isn't going to draw much of an audience, while there are some big blockbusters that are quite religious, notably the upcoming "Noah" and "Heaven Is For Real."

Ironically, Krauss is a scientist pushing science and rationality, but the evidence for his argument isn't very sound. Those who say that Hollywood is antagonistic to religion do not,  I think, premise their argument on the number and importance of movies with big religious themes versus movies about atheism. I think these people are looking at all the movies as well as the statements of movie people and seeing pervasive secularism.

No one can fault Hollywood for recognizing that religion, like violence, is often profitable at the box office. But this logic leads to a prevailing bias that reinforces a pervasive cultural tilt against unbelief and further embeds religious myths in the popular consciousness. It marginalizes those who would ridicule these myths in the same manner as we ridicule other aspects of our culture, from politics to sex.

Krauss is conflating irrational belief and religion. Of course, movie stories are full of irrational belief. These are stories of heroes and villains, supernatural disasters and magical solutions. It's fantasy. Even when the stories are sort of realistic, there's usually an element of new-ageish belief in one's true self and the power of dreams or whatever unscientific nonsense the scriptwriters think will make us laugh or cry or tingle. It's not a science lecture. But that doesn't make it traditional religion, and I think traditional religionists tend to deplore these substitutes for religion. Generally, movies don't invite us into either a life of old-school religion or science.

Krauss riffs on Matthew McConaughey's Oscar acceptance speech, which you can watch (after an ad) here. That's only one data point, of course, but how truly religious was it? Who knows? It was weird and folksy, and also silly and self-centered:

Man with 18 cats constructs elaborate system of cat walkways...

... throughout his 4-bedroom house.

So the cats are moving around above your head, above your kitchen counters, whence all the hair and dander and what-all can continually drift through the air and sprinkle onto your food and into your drinks. But it is a sort of moving, living sculptural installation, and every place is always unavoidably filthy at the microbial level. Why be so fussy when you can be fuzzy? Warm and fuzzy, like the cat man.

And now you know the difference between a cat man and a cat lady. Cat Lady has multitudes of cats roaming about underfoot. Cat Man goes architectural and elevates the animals systematically.

"My dog is cooler than yours!... She had her spleen removed yesterday, and the vet let me tattoo her while she was under."

Instagram inspires ire.

"News flash: Your students already know that movies are not reality."

"And if they do think movies are reality, they probably think you are the pompous literature professor from Back to School. I mean, do economics teachers need to tell their students that economics is actually boring? 'It's not all like The Wolf of Wall Street, you know!'"

Writes Professor Hawks in "Archaeology is not boring!"

Why did Scalia refuse to join a footnote that ended "We therefore express no view on the issue"?

He also withheld his name from a second footnote that specified an issue for the purpose of saying it's not going to be dealt with.

We did not deal in these cases, nor do we here, with... We express no view about....

It's almost metaphysical. Reminds me of the philosophical questions of childhood like what if nothing is something? Or the conversational riposte when you drop the phrase "not to mention" and your interlocutor snarks "You just did." Or what is the sound of one hand clapping?

I hope this is a harbinger of Supreme Court writing to come. These characters have been too blabby for too long. If you're not going to talk about something, don't talk about it. Let's get tough. Let's get cranky. As Psycho Killer says: When I've got nothing to say, my lips are sealed...



Message to the Supreme Court: You're talking a lot, but you're not saying anything.

"Annie," in the present day.

There don't seem to be orphanages in present-day NYC, so how can the transposition be made? And if Cameron Diaz is running that modern-day equivalent of an orphanage, how does she manage to get her makeup done so heavily, prettily, and precisely? And more importantly, can she be mean enough to make us feel sorry for the little orphans?



I don't know, but I do know 2 other things about upcoming musical movies: 1. Steven Spielberg is doing a remake of "West Side Story," and 2. Clint Eastwood has made the movie version of "Jersey Boys."

At Quincy and Howie's Café.

It's Quincy:



And Howie:



And Quincy and Howie:

The long-term benefits of breastfeeding are...

"Nothing. Exactly."

"A man who took cellphone photos up the skirts of women riding the Boston subway did not violate state law..."

"... because the women were not nude or partially nude, Massachusetts’ highest court ruled Wednesday."

It's not a crime without a statute that defines it as a crime. You can't just prosecute somebody under the closest criminal statute:

Existing so-called Peeping Tom laws protect people from being photographed in dressing rooms and bathrooms when nude or partially nude, but the way the law is written, it does not protect clothed people in public areas, the court said.

“A female passenger on a MBTA trolley who is wearing a skirt, dress, or the like covering these parts of her body is not a person who is `partially nude,’ no matter what is or is not underneath the skirt by way of underwear or other clothing,” the court said in its ruling.

"Meet The 7 Democrats Who Just Voted Down A Civil Rights Nominee For Supporting Civil Rights."

A headline at Think Progress about the Senate's no vote today on Debo Adegbile.

Although most of these senators have yet to offer an explanation for their votes... it is likely that their votes were motivated by a campaign to disqualify Adegbile because of a high profile case the NAACP LDF participated in during his time with that organization.

In 2008, a federal appeals court unanimously held — with two Reagan appointees on the panel — that procedures used during a convicted cop killer named Mumia Abu-Jamal’s death penalty hearing violated the Constitution. Specifically, the panel of predominantly Republican judges concluded that the trial judge gave the jury a confusing form that could have been read to require a death sentence unless every single juror agreed to a life sentence. The NAACP LDF filed an amicus brief on Abu-Jamal’s behalf.

"The changes [to the SAT] are the biggest the Board has made since its last major edit of the test, in 2005."

"In that overhaul, an essay section was added. In this overhaul, the essay will be subtracted, or at least become optional. The three-part score, with a maximum value of 2400, will revert to a two-part score, with a top value of 1600.... The Board will drop what the Times referred to as 'rarefied' vocabulary words, like 'membranous,' in favor of more workaday words, like 'synthesis.' And henceforth, each test will include a reading passage from a document like the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights."

I love this lurch toward tradition. And, of course, the essay section was a joke:

A study by an instructor at M.I.T. has shown that success on the SAT essay is closely correlated with length: the more words pile up, the higher the score. When, at Advantage Testing, Stier is shown essays that have received top marks, she is horrified. They are, she writes, “terrible.”

Stier is Debbie Stier, author of "The Perfect Score Project: Uncovering the Secrets of the SAT."