Archive for the ‘Plus Ca Change…’ Category
Rehnquist's Legacy, Parts I & II
Allen Dershowitz wrote about the legal career of the late Chief-Justice William Rehnquist ("Telling the Truth About Chief Justice Rehnquist"). After recounting some telling incidents from Rehnquist's time (the late '40s and early '50s) at Stanford law school, which still discriminated against Jews and other minorities, he told of the memo Rehnquist wrote at the […]
In: All, Plus Ca Change..., Reflections
A Soldier's Epitath
Epitath for the Unknown Soldier To save your world, you asked this man to die: Would this man, could he see you now, ask why? –October 1953 W. H. Auden, Collected Poems, Edward Mendelson, ed. (Random House, New York, 1979). p. 435.
In: All, Common-Place Book, Plus Ca Change...
More on Terrorism Hysteria II
The story about the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes by London police just keeps getting worse. This from The Guardian [UK] ("New claims emerge over Menezes death "): It has now emerged that Mr de Menezes: was never properly identified because a police officer was relieving himself at the very moment he was leaving […]
In: All, Plus Ca Change..., Splenetics
Pentagon Too Reality-Based?
The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad. The United States no longer expects to see […]
In: All, Plus Ca Change..., Splenetics
More on Terrorism Hysteria
As I continue to believe: it appears to have been a case of police terrorism-hysteria. This from ITN [Great Britain]: Mistakes led to tube shooting 8.25PM, Tue Aug 16 2005 ITV News has obtained secret documents and photographs that detail why police shot Jean Charles De Menezes dead on the tube. The Brazilian electrician was […]
In: All, Plus Ca Change..., Quartos
The Coming Convergence
Isaac is reading a biography of Isaac Newton (while I sit at the computer) and, incredibly, laughing aloud while doing so. Here is one of the moments that inspired the guffaws, indicating that wacky fundamentalist types are not only a present-day scourge: As it evolved into a new orthodoxy, Newtonianism became a target. … It […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Plus Ca Change...
No Telling How Much
It used to be that the federal government prohibited brewers from listing the percentage of alcohol on the labels of beers to discourage people from choosing their beverages based on alcohol content. But that's not true anymore. In 1935, two years after the repeal of Prohibition, the Federal Alcohol Administration (FAA) Act prohibited the labeling […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Plus Ca Change...