Category: World at Large

The Executioner’s Song.

“Fighting over the ‘evolving standards of decency’ underlying the Eighth Amendment’s ban on ‘cruel and unusual punishment,’ the 5-to-4 opinions reflect an all-out war between the proponents of a living (or at least medium-rare) Constitution and those who want to see it dead (or perhaps well-done, with a nice pinot).” Slate‘s inimitable Dahlia Lithwick explains the Kennedy-Scalia sniping undergirding the Supreme Court’s very welcome 5-4 decision to ban juvenile executions. To keep things in perspective, the only other nations besides us that have put juveniles to death since 2000 are China, Iran, Pakistan, and the Congo…not exactly what you’d call the Axis of Freedom.

Cajuns of Nova Scotia.

“The point I’m trying to make is that one of the roles I see for a historian in the United States — and here I separate myself from, let’s say, the Ward Churchills, who are only looking to tell stories about victims and villains — is to resuscitate those points at which people faced with the dilemma of a whole new world attempted to do something good, and achieved something that was worth remembering.” Salon‘s Andrew O’Hehir interviews Yale historian John Mack Faragher on A Great and Noble Scheme, his new book about the Acadian “relocation” of 1755.

Don’t Mention the War.

Despite inducing peals of laughter with his “ridiculous” doublespeak on Iran, Dubya’s “We’re Team Players” European tour continues to generate mostly good international press for the administration. Along those lines, I particularly liked this gem from the LA Times: “Talk of Bush is often imbued with suspicion. But unlike two years ago, German critics are less likely to compare him to Hitler.” Hey now, that’s progress.

The Circus is in Town.

“Of Dylan’s many achievements, the most fundamental was his hitching together of the folk-lyric tradition and Western modernism, connecting them at the point where their expressive ambiguities met…Dylan did not do this to prove a point; he was naturally omnivorous, and he intuited the connection without worrying about pedigree.” Sent to me by All About George, Luc Sante surveys recent Dylan literature for the NY Review of Books. Speaking of which, tickets for Bob’s upcoming five-night stand at the Beacon Theatre go on sale this morning at 10am. In a perfect world, I’d go to all of ’em (while catching a matinee of Hitchhiker’s on that Friday, April 29.) But, financial constraints being what they are, I’ll probably settle on either 2 or 3 shows. We’ll see.

Causing Deprivation.

I was at the movies during Dubya’s State of the Union address — I tried to watch it online this evening after my Radicalism sections, but Quicktime died in mid-sentence, so I just ended up reading it. And, while I thought it was very well-written as per the norm, my thoughts on the address have been colored even more than usual by the punditocracy. So, with that in mind, I’ll avoid being derivative and just direct y’all to the following:

  • Fred Kaplan: “Some of the president’s statements on national security were simply puzzling. Again on Iran, he said, ‘We are working with European allies to make clear to the Iranian regime that it must give up its uranium-enrichment program and any plutonium reprocessing.’ This is just false.“

  • Chris Suellentrop: “You could call Bush’s idea the Screw Your Grandchildren Act…This was the Greatest Love of All speech, in which Bush asserted that The Children Are Our Future. But before you sign on to Bush’s proposal, be aware that what he’s offering is pretty tough love.“

  • Will Saletan: “Tonight’s State of the Union Address demonstrated again that President Bush is a man of very clear principles. He’s just flexible about when to apply them.“

  • Joe Conason: “Although George W. Bush and the White House aides who craft these public spectacles become increasingly adept at manipulating the feelings of his audience every year, their underlying method remains the same: to shade inconvenient realities with rhetorical vagueness and outright deception.“

  • E.J. Dionne: “Our country could profit from an honest debate about the future of Social Security. Judging from President Bush’s State of the Union address, that is not the kind of debate we are about to have.“

Ballots of Baghdad.

“Few sights are more stirring than the televised images of Iraqi citizens risking their lives to vote in their country’s first election in a half-century, kissing the ballot boxes, dancing in the streets, and declaring their hopes for a new day of democracy. And yet, the challenges and uncertainties that seemed so daunting last week — about Iraq’s security, society, and governance — are unlikely to turn less daunting next week, next month, or the month after.”
After a smoother Election Day in Iraq than feared (thanks in part to a 24-hour ban on motor vehicles), Slate‘s Fred Kaplan surveys the road ahead, which includes the drafting of a new constitution.

Wardrobe Malfunction.

“Auschwitz, great…are the Packers playing?” By all that is good and holy, what was Dick Cheney thinking? It’s the 60th anniversary of liberation from that Hell on Earth, and our veep, as the Post wryly put it, “was dressed in the kind of attire one typically wears to operate a snow blower.” Even at occasions where it seems well nigh impossible to make the US role in world affairs look bad, this administration plays the Ugly American to the hilt. For shame.

Nothing More to C.

Uh-oh. My subway line of choice — the A/C — is taken out by a control room fire…and the C may be down for several years(!) Looks like I’ll be whispering of escapades on the D train for some time to come. Update: The MTA revises their prognosis…looks like it’ll take months to fix, not years. Update 2: Make that days — the C is already up and running again…false alarm.

Cooking Rice.

“‘I really don’t like being lied to, repeatedly, flagrantly,’ Mr. Dayton said.” In a display of dissent that bodes well for the Dems’ outlook in the coming term, several Senate Dems — most notably Ted Kennedy, Mark Dayton, Carl Levin, Evan Bayh, Robert Byrd, and Barbara Boxer — use the Condi hearings to call out the administration on Iraq. (Newcomer Ken Salazar and Joe Lieberman, on the other hand, rolled over immediately.) Update: She’s through, but not before racking up the most No votes (13) in 180 years (since the “Corrupt Bargain” backlash against Henry Clay in 1825.)