Even if we concede that the President may exercise special powers in wartime, wouldn’t we actually have to be at war for those powers to apply and doesn’t Article I of the Constitution require that Congress declare war?
Congress hasn’t voted a Declaration of War since 1942.
Update: Kevin Drum has more on this.
… from the opinion of Judge John E. Jones III:
“It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.”
“Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.”
U.S. District Court Judge John E. Jones III in his ruling today in the Dover, Pennsylvania, intelligent design case.
San Francisco Chronicle Wine Editor Linda Murphy lists Top 100 Wines 2005. She begins:
It was love at first sight nearly 30 years ago when Gray Franscioni, a Cal Poly San Luis Obispo graduate and scion of a Monterey County farming family, met and later married Rosella Munoz, a hair stylist whose family had relocated to Gonzales (Monterey County) from the Mexican state of Durango.
While running the Franscioni ranch, the couple in 1996 planted Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Syrah vines on their Santa Lucia Highlands property west of Gonzales. They called it Rosella’s Vineyard, and now, 10 years later, Rosella, the daughter of migrant workers, is an icon in California winemaking.
On The Chronicle’s Top 100 Wines of 2005 list, Rosella has her name on an amazing eight wines — seven Pinot Noirs and a Syrah….
Twenty-two Pinot Noirs make the top 100. Murphy notes:
It’s a fact that the very best wines on Earth are expensive, though not all expensive wines are great. Quality commands top dollar, and demand regulates what top dollar is. The post-“Sideways” consumer rush to buy Pinot Noir, low yields, the gentle handling the Pinot Noir grape requires and the custom farming done by the Franscionis and others make buying stellar Pinot Noir mostly a costly proposition.
At Slate, Fred Kaplan lists the best new jazz albums of 2005, but first he lists the three truly best jazz albums released this year.
The three best jazz albums of 2005 were recorded 40 to 60 years ago….
It’s a mere, if wondrous, coincidence that those three recordings of yore were all discovered this year. And they are discoveries; nobody had even known they existed. Dizzy Gillespie-Charlie Parker, New York, Town Hall, June 22, 1945 (Uptown Jazz), recorded shortly after the two fathers of be-bop formed their quintet with Max Roach on drums, is as electrifying as anything they would set down ever again. Thelonious Monk Quartet With John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall (Blue Note), made in November 1957 shortly before that group broke up, finds Monk playing his most archly elegant piano and Coltrane his most relaxed yet searching tenor sax. John Coltrane’s One Down, One Up: Live at the Half Note (Impulse!), recorded in the spring of 1965, in a Manhattan club that Trane used as a sort of workshop, captures his great quartet streaking on the knife-edge between structure and freedom.
All three easily rank among the best jazz albums of all time.
It’s official: Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa was 83 per cent happy, 9 per cent disgusted, 6 per cent fearful and 2 per cent angry.
Nicu Sebe at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands tested emotion-recognition software on the famous enigmatic smile. His algorithm, developed with researchers at the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, examines key facial features such as the curvature of the lips and crinkles around the eyes, then scores each face with respect to six basic emotions.
Some things are just better left unanalyzed.
GOLD HAT: We are Federales . . . You know, the mounted police.
DOBBS: If you’re the police, where are your badges?
GOLD HAT: [puzzled pause] “Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges! [angry] I don’t have to show you any stinking badges!
Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
The thinking at the White House, as noted at Whiskey Bar.
So big deal, the National Security Agency is reading email. Surely they are only reading the email of the “bad guys,” right?
Think again. I would suggest that the NSA is fully capable of scanning every email of every person.
NewMexiKen recommends Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking without reservation. Every thinking person should read this book about the sudden death of Didion’s husband and the serious illness of their adult daughter (who died after the book was published). While, of course, sad, the book is not depressing, and it is about the best discussion of death and dying — and grief — that one can imagine.
… to The New York Times, just on general principles.
The New York Times first debated publishing a story about secret eavesdropping on Americans as early as last fall, before the 2004 presidential election.
But the newspaper held the story for more than a year and only revealed the secret wiretaps last Friday, when it became apparent a book by one of its reporters was about to break the news, according to journalists familiar with the paper’s internal discussions.
Before the election in other words, The Times decided their judgment was better than that of American voters.
Oops, wrong award.
NewMexiKen actually would like to thank Jess at Life…or something like it for naming NewMexiKen the Best New Mexico Blog among the 2005 /2006 LOSLI Blog Awards (The Golden Thongs).
As long-time readers know, NewMexiKen is always second-guessing the merit of doing this blog. When I’m away — for example, visiting The Sweeties — I particularly realize what a fulltime job I’ve made blogging into. I find it difficult to make even a few entries without many hours at the computer. Then I ask, what’s the point of such an effort? Does anyone care? (Rhetorical questions, folks; answers neither required nor desired.)
So, for me, winning Jess’s award is especially pleasing. Thanks for the encouragement Jess, and congratulations to you for such a fine effort compiling the awards.
And congratulations to all the other winners, too. Be sure to take a look at Jess’s winners, where you will find, I’m certain, many, many worthwhile websites.
The French colors were lowered and the American flag raised in New Orleans on this date in 1803, signifying the transfer of sovereignty of Louisiana from France to the United States. Arguably the transfer was one of the two or three most defining moments in American history.
As ultimately defined, Louisiana Territory included most of the U.S. west of the Mississippi River, east of the Rocky Mountains, except for Texas and New Mexico; that is, parts or all of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana.
| The reviews are in, “Innkeeper, despite obvious stage fright, delivers line well and spends rest of show hiding face behind a tissue.” |  |
| Eat your heart out Peter O’Toole Rudolph Valentino. |
You know what to do — click on image to enlarge and learn more.
by O. Henry (William Sydney Porter), 1906.
One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And
sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two
at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and
the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent
imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied.
Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven
cents. And the next day would be Christmas.
… of Al Kaline. The hall of fame right fielder is 71.
… of Kevin McHale. The basketball hall-of-fame member is 48.
… of Mike Lookinland. Bobby Brady is 45.
… of Flashdance’s Jennifer Beals. She’s 42.
… was first published on this date in 1843.
Scrooge. a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.
Part of my plan for being in Virginia this past week was to catch Mack, now five, in his pre-kindergarten Christmas pageant. He had a major role, that of the Bethlehem innkeeper. Alas, best laid plans— last Thursday’s performance was postponed when school that day was cancelled due to snow. (Don’t get me started on the Washington area and weather cancellations.)
Anyway, the performance was rescheduled for this evening about the time I was arriving home 1,900 miles away.
“We have so much to do. The inn is full. We had to turn people away.”
Remember those lines. The next generation’s Brando got his start tonight, even without Grandpa there to watch.
NewMexiKen would like to say a few nice things about United Airlines. When my flight out of Albuquerque last week was delayed by weather — a first, in nearly 100 flights out of here I can’t remember a weather delay before — United booked me on a later connection automatically and left a voicemail on my cell phone to give me the details. As it was, I made my original flight, but even so, how nice that the arrangements were made on their initiative rather than me having to stand in some line making a change.
Today on the trip home, I arrived in Denver with a long scheduled layover before my connection to ABQ. I walked up to customer service and they put me on an flight already boarding — my luggage and I arrived home 2-1/2 hours early.
It’s nice to have an airline care and make an effort and I appreciated the good work by United on both ends of the round-trip.
… ratified the Constitution and became the third state on this date in 1787.
Named after the English Channel Island of Jersey.
Nickname: Garden State.
Capital: Trenton.
Motto: “Liberty and prosperity.”
Total area: 8,721 sq. mi. (47th), including 1,304 sq. mi. inland water.
Population: 8,590,300 (9th) (2002 estimate).
Animal: Horse.
Bird: Eastern goldfinch.
Flower: Violet.
Insect: Honeybee.
Memorial tree: Dogwood.
Tree: Red oak.
Recently I quit caffeine. My doctor seems to think that 17 Diet Cokes per day is too much. In case you ever consider getting off caffeine yourself, let me explain the process. You begin by sitting motionlessly in a desk chair. Then you just keep doing that forever because life has no meaning.
When I was a child, I tell my offspring, my brother and I often would receive just one present at Christmastime, typically an individual crayon. It wouldn’t even be a full crayon, but merely a stub. Still, we’d be grateful and would pretend that “brown” was our favorite of the 64 Crayola colors. We would talk about how great this crayon would be if only we could afford paper.
The president’s emphatic defense yesterday of warrantless eavesdropping on U.S. citizens and residents marked the third time in as many months that the White House has been obliged to defend a departure from previous restraints on domestic surveillance. In each case, the Bush administration concealed the program’s dimensions or existence from the public and from most members of Congress.
Report in Sunday’s Washington Post
… in 1865 that the 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution was officially adopted.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Just 140 years ago.
A list of 20 from The New York Times:
This list links to a selection of Web posts that discuss some of the books most frequently mentioned by bloggers in 2005. The books were selected by conducting an automated survey of 5,000 of the most-trafficked blogs.
Freakonomics is first.