Fred Thompson -- made exoneration of this convicted felon one of his principal missions over the last two years. And he does so while running around spitting out tough and righteous sermons about the need to restore the "rule of law": "It is a sad irony that a nation that is so dedicated to the rule of law is doing so much to undermine the respect for it," he said in the very same speech where he urged Libby's pardon. One of the prime defenders of Lewis Libby has the audacity to say such things with a straight face because he knows how broken our political and media institutions are.
I found this article interesting because it involves Fred Thompson expressing an opinion and being hypocritical about it.
NPR : At Camp, Teens Blow Stuff Up, As They're Told
Topic: Miscellaneous
11:24 pm EDT, Jun 28, 2007
"Some people like baseball, others like math – I just like to set off bombs," he said. "I figure here, learning how to do it properly is better than messing around with it at home, right?"
Meadows is one of 20 teenage campers enrolled in a weeklong explosion camp in the Missouri Ozarks.
That explosive H-1B YouTube video offering advice on how to hire foreign workers instead of Americans has gotten the attention of U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, (R-Iowa), and Rep. Lamar Smith, (R-Texas), who called it evidence of abuse of the visa program. Both men want a federal investigation and are seeking answers from the law firm that posted the original video on YouTube.
What I don't understand is why this video has changed anyone's understanding of what goes on. If this incident is an "eye opener" you are deeply naive.
This is a picture of West Point. The central feature of the campus is a narrow stretch across the Hudson. George Washington fortified this location with heavy guns and a thick chain just under the water to prevent the British, who controlled NYC, from moving north up the river and cutting New England off from the rest of the country. There is a Civil War memorial here at the point. Most of the battle commanders on both sides were alumni. They put cannons barrel first into the ground around the monument. Such a profound statement of frustration with the cost of conflict I have never seen.
I'm linking a speech from Gen. MacArthur that seems popular here.
The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war. But always in our ears ring the ominous words of Plato, that wisest of all philosophers: "Only the dead have seen the end of war."
The bottom line: I have decided to shift my academic work, and soon, my activism, away from the issues that have consumed me for the last 10 years, towards a new set of issues. Why and what are explained in the extended entry below.
In Code Lessig makes a statement very early on that I found shocking, coming from a lawyer, particularly one of his stature, and particularly given that the statement was unexplained and unqualified. Unfortunately I don't have the book with me, but it was something to the effect that our government is completely unprepared to face the challenges ahead, that it is completely incapable of reaching the right policy answers. I highlighted the passage and had intended to write him about it at some point. Now I don't have to.
I once asked a Japanese friend to explain why so many people on the Tokyo subway wore surgical masks. Are they extreme germophobes? Conscientious folks getting over a cold? Oh, yes, he said, yes, of course, but that's only the rubric. The real reason to wear the mask is to spare others the discomfort of seeing your facial expression, to make your face into a disengaged, unreadable blank--to spare others the discomfort of firing up their mirror neurons in order to model your mood based on your outward expression. To make it possible to see without seeing.
