"The White House is in bit of a conundrum because of this privacy statute that prohibits the White House from collecting data and storing it on people who disagree with it," Judge Andrew Napolitano, a FOX News analyst....The ACLU ventures an opinion on the subject:
Napolitano was referring to the Privacy Act of 1974, which was passed after the Nixon administration used federal agencies to illegally investigate individuals for political purposes. Enacted after Richard Nixon's resignation in the Watergate scandal, the statute generally prohibits any federal agency from maintaining records on individuals exercising their right to free speech.
"While it is unclear at this point what the government is doing with the information it is collecting, critics of the administration's health care proposal should not fear that their names will end up in some government database that could be used to chill their right to free speech."The White House denies that it is assembling a Nixon-style "enemies list." It purports only to want to find out what misinformation is out there so it can supply corrections. This makes it sound a lot like the "Fight the Smears" website Obama had during the 2008 campaign.
"Of course the White House is collecting names," [said Texas Sen. John Cornyn].
"The question is not what the White House is doing, but how and why," he said. "How are they purging names and e-mail addresses from this account to protect privacy? Why do they need the forwarded e-mails, names, and 'casual conversations' sent to them instead of just the arguments that they want to rebut?
In a new posting on her Facebook account, former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) made a dire statement about health care reform -- that it could result in an Obama-created "death panel" killing her infant son with Down Syndrome...Here's the full text of her Facebook post. Excerpt:
The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.She doesn't say that the government will kill disabled (or elderly) persons directly, but that death will occur as a result of the decisions of cost controlling bureaucrats with the power to determine who can receive various treatments. I don't know why "level of productivity in society" is in quotes, nor do I know whether it is the plan to ration care on this basis. Those are actually serious matters, and I'd like to know the answers. What Kleefeld is doing is trying to sweep Palin aside as a big crazy wacko.
We must step up and engage in this most crucial debate. Nationalizing our health care system is a point of no return for government interference in the lives of its citizens. If we go down this path, there will be no turning back. Ronald Reagan once wrote, “Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.” Let’s stop and think and make our voices heard before it’s too late.Kleefeld and others like him — the Andrew Sullivan post title is "Obama's Gonna Kill My Baby!" — would love to squelch that debate.
It was not immediately clear why Hunter brought the little girl to court.Ha ha. It was clear. Just not immediately.
The withering and often personal criticism of Milbank and Cillizza exploded Friday afternoon after the liberal Web site Talking Points Memo posted and criticized the latest video. Both men, who frequently appear on television, became high-profile targets, particularly among left-leaning bloggers but also on such outlets as Twitter.Yeah, and you shouldn't be such a pussy either. You don't have the monopoly on public discourse that you would like, so you whine that it is "brutal" and "feroci[ous]." But you were given a huge mainstream media platform for a comedy routine and you did bad comedy. You wanted to be big professionals and big amateurs at the same time. You deserved a takedown and you got it. Man up. It was you not the bloggers who lacked standards.
"It's a brutal world out there in the blogosphere," Milbank said. "I'm often surprised by the ferocity out there, but I probably shouldn't be."
So far, this appears to be largely a New York phenomenon, though San Francisco's Coffee Bar does now put out signs when the shop is crowded asking laptop users to share tables and make space for other customers.Ha ha ha. It's just New York. And hello? It was always hard to find free WiFi and a place to sit in New York cafés. It drove me nuts when I lived in Brooklyn Heights from September 2007 to May 2008. My favorite local café was Tazza — depicted in the March 10, 2008 blog post called "Lunch at the Loneliness Café." (Ah, now I never go back to the Loneliness Café!)
Speaking of Atlas Shrugged, I was amused (benevolently) to hear that you chose Ouray as your favorite spot in Colorado. That is the little town I had picked for Galt's Gulch. To be exact, I marked it on a map as the right location long before I saw it. Then, when I went to Colorado for research purposes and discovered Ouray, I fell in love with it. It is the most beautifully dramatic spot in the whole state, and it's even surrounded by a ring of mountains....
I did it because I love Mona - because I wanted her to know that I didn't expect her to become anyone other than herself. It mattered to me that we shared a name, so I reasoned I should be the one to offer mine up. And a combination name like Neufeld-Thiessen would only solve the dilemma temporarily. Eventually a child of ours would bring this unwieldy last name to his or her own marriage - most likely to another hyphenee.Some hilarious comments over there, like:
One question - when she divorces you in 5 years because she wants to be with a guy who actually HAS a pair, will you take your old name back?(Link via Kerry Howley.)
The lush mountain valley known as Bachelor Gulch rises out of the Eagle River Valley, home to the Rocky Mountain towns of Vail, Avon and Edwards. From the Ute Indians who originally settled in the “Shining Mountains” and western valleys of Colorado to a group of spry old bachelors in the early 1900s whose namesake remains, “Bachelor Gulch” as it became known has always been home to many memorable residents. The legends and lore of these bachelors became the inspiration for the secluded mountain resort and the surrounding community on Beaver Creek Mountain.So what do you think: an early gay community? "Spry" ≈ gay. And, of course, "bachelor" ≈ gay.
Many of these original bachelors were miners who first came to Colorado in search of silver and other precious ore. They settled in Bachelor Gulch in search of a better way of life and because they were able to purchase land, which was made possible by the Homestead Act of 1862. Seven of these most colorful men who settled The Gulch were John Anderson, Gunder “Gundy” Berg, Ed Howard, Charley Mays, John Mertz, Ferdinand Smith and Carrothers – a man whom so little is known about that he’s only recognized by his last name in historical references.
John Anderson’s original cabin can still be found around the corner from The Ritz-Carlton Hotel on Daybreak Ridge. Berg’s and Mertz’s homesteads no longer stand, but the stories of these bachelors holding court at the general store while children raced their horses down the street for their entertainment are legendary. Howard was deaf and it was said that a crowing Rooster perched atop his bedpost couldn’t wake him from his sleep. Smith was actually nicknamed Crippled Smith as Smith was lame – so that people would not confuse him with another Smith who lived up the Valley. Charley Mays was the favorite of the local children, making them lunch pails from his tobacco cans. The area’s most elusive bachelor Carrothers, local lore recounts only as having poor eyesight and making bad decisions as a result.
The bachelors stayed in the area until the 1920s when high altitude lettuce farming or “green gold” took root in Bachelor Gulch. The next generation of homesteaders found an easier way of life in the mountains, making a good living by growing lettuce. The climate was ideal and the soil was very rich with nutrients. However, the Great Depression of the 1930s affected the farmers who sold their land to two local ranchers who used the area for herding cattle and grazing sheep. The land remained privately owned for nearly 40 years until the vision for Bachelor Gulch as a vacation resort began to form.
Gender issuesThanks for noticing. I was on vacation then too. It was especially funny to me to see that on August 3, 2008, I switched to the fisheye lens: "I realized I had the fisheye in my bag, and this is the first fisheye shot... L.A. crystalized for me in extravagantly bent form at that moment. It was all fisheye from there."
Dowd on Obama
Pics from the SM Pier (and discussion of men in shorts)
A heartfelt plee to judiciously apply some strict originalism to the constitution of sandwiches
Melrose Ave pics (which reminds me, I guess I should take some snaps there myself)
Fred Segals, Fish-Eyed, and not Fish-Eyed
Althouse managed six posts this August 3rd as well as in 2008, even while getting hitched, impressive consistency, that.
Interesting set of posts, though, the Dowd thing is a reminder of how ridiculous the press was with regards to Obama before the election, and the sandwich manifesto is probably something that deserves revisiting.
Again, congratulations to you both, it's a wonderful and daring thing both of you have done.
Two images of Ms. Sims — one from the 1967 Times fashion magazine cover and the other from a 1969 issue of Life — are in the current Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition “The Model as Muse.” In a catalog, the curators Harold Koda and Kohle Yohannan wrote, “The beautifully contoured symmetry of Sims’s face and the lithe suppleness of her body presented on the once-exclusionary pages of high-fashion journals were evidence of the wider societal movement of Black Pride and the full expression of ‘Black is Beautiful.’ ”...
In 1972, the producers of the movie “Cleopatra Jones” sought to cast Ms. Sims in the title role, but she turned it down because, she said, she was offended by its racist portrayal of black people....
In 1973, Ms. Sims decided to start her own business. As a model, she often did her own hair and makeup, since many studio assistants were unfamiliar with working with darker skin. And she noticed that most commercially available wigs were designed for Caucasian hair, so she began experimenting with her own designs, baking synthetic hairs in her oven at home to create the right texture to look like straightened black hair. Within five years, her designs, produced by the Metropa Company, had annual sales of $5 million.
Are you wanting to solemnize your own marriage, as opposed to having an officiant required?Yes, in Colorado:
Couples themselves may solemnize their own marriage (perform one's own marriage ceremony). According to Colorado Revised Statute 14-2-109, a marriage may be solemnized by a judge of a court; by a court magistrate; by a retired judge of the court; by a public official whose powers include solemnization of marriages; by Indian tribe officials; by clergy; by the parties to the marriage. If you wish to solemnize your own marriage, you will be responsible for acquiring, completing and returning the license to marry to the appropriate county Office of the Clerk and Recorder.And that's just what we did. This afternoon, we drove from our hotel in Bachelor Gulch to the Office of the Clerk and Recorder in Eagle County, where we showed our driver's licenses, answered a few questions, paid $30 cash, and got a license that empowered us to marry each other. We drove up Bellyache Ridge — just the 2 of us — where we did things our way and solemnized the marriage on our own. Then, we did the additional red tape — filling out the bottom of the Certificate of Marriage and handing it back to the county official who'd asked us the questions earlier. And now, we're here at Yeti's Grind on Broadway, in Eagle, eating our first food (sandwiches) and drinking our first drink (mango smoothies) as husband and wife. And we're both on the WiFi.
I venture that in Obama's careful calibration of his post-racial America there is always a fear of white fear. He is exquisitely sensitive to white — particularly non-elite white — impressions of his occupancy of the White House. He is eager not to disconcert Middle America, and had blundered only days before in his intervention in the Gates-Crowley affair. This ruffled many whites: They were taken aback, disquieted and were reminded, perhaps, of Obama's remarks about bitter and intolerant small-town voters who cling to their faith and guns, made before the Pennsylvania primary....What bothered me about Biden's presence — as I hinted here — is that it underscored the fact that the President was on Gates's side with respect to the disputed facts of the incident. It reminded us that it wouldn't have worked to have Obama bringing the 2 men together, because Obama had thrown away his potential as a mediator even as he now wants to pose as a mediator. That was all very incoherent, as was the silly remedy of bringing in Biden.
I was not privy to the reasoning behind the decision to draw Biden into the meeting. But I do know that his presence altered the racial chemistry in a crucial way. And in doing so, it allowed President Obama to ensure that he didn't compound those racial fears — incipient, unsettling —that he'd stoked days before when he "acted stupidly."
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