From NYTimes
March 19, 2006
'American Theocracy,' by Kevin Phillips
Clear and Present Dangers
Review by ALAN BRINKLEY
Four decades ago, Kevin Phillips, a young political strategist for the Republican Party, began work on what became a remarkable book. In writing "The Emerging Republican Majority" (published in 1969), he asked a very big question about American politics: How would the demographic and economic changes of postwar America shape the long-term future of the two major parties? His answer, startling at the time but now largely unquestioned, is that the movement of people and resources from the old Northern industrial states into the South and the West (an area he enduringly labeled the "Sun Belt") would produce a new and more conservative Republican majority that would dominate American politics for decades. Phillips viewed the changes he predicted with optimism. A stronger Republican Party, he believed, would restore stability and order to a society experiencing disorienting and at times violent change. Shortly before publishing his book, he joined the Nixon administration to help advance the changes he had foreseen.
Phillips has remained a prolific and important political commentator in the decades since, but he long ago abandoned his enthusiasm for the Republican coalition he helped to build. His latest book (his 13th) looks broadly and historically at the political world the conservative coalition has painstakingly constructed over the last several decades. No longer does he see Republican government as a source of stability and order. Instead, he presents a nightmarish vision of ideological extremism, catastrophic fiscal irresponsibility, rampant greed and dangerous shortsightedness. (His final chapter is entitled "The Erring Republican Majority.") In an era of best-selling jeremiads on both sides of the political divide, "American Theocracy" may be the most alarming analysis of where we are and where we may be going to have appeared in many years. It is not without polemic, but unlike many of the more glib and strident political commentaries of recent years, it is extensively researched and for the most part frighteningly persuasive.
Although Phillips is scathingly critical of what he considers the dangerous policies of the Bush administration, he does not spend much time examining the ideas and behavior of the president and his advisers. Instead, he identifies three broad and related trends — none of them new to the Bush years but all of them, he believes, exacerbated by this administration's policies — that together threaten the future of the United States and the world. One is the role of oil in defining and, as Phillips sees it, distorting American foreign and domestic policy. The second is the ominous intrusion of radical Christianity into politics and government. And the third is the astonishing levels of debt — current and prospective — that both the government and the American people have been heedlessly accumulating. If there is a single, if implicit, theme running through the three linked essays that form this book, it is the failure of leaders to look beyond their own and the country's immediate ambitions and desires so as to plan prudently for a darkening future.
The American press in the first days of the Iraq war reported extensively on the Pentagon's failure to post American troops in front of the National Museum in Baghdad, which, as a result, was looted of many of its great archaeological treasures. Less widely reported, but to Phillips far more meaningful, was the immediate posting of troops around the Iraqi Oil Ministry, which held the maps and charts that were the key to effective oil production. Phillips fully supports an explanation of the Iraq war that the Bush administration dismisses as conspiracy theory — that its principal purpose was to secure vast oil reserves that would enable the United States to control production and to lower prices. ("Think of Iraq as a military base with a very large oil reserve underneath," an oil analyst said a couple of years ago. "You can't ask for better than that.") Terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, tyranny, democracy and other public rationales were, Phillips says, simply ruses to disguise the real motivation for the invasion.
And while this argument may be somewhat too simplistic to explain the complicated mix of motives behind the war, it is hard to dismiss Phillips's larger argument: that the pursuit of oil has for at least 30 years been one of the defining elements of American policy in the world; and that the Bush administration — unusually dominated by oilmen — has taken what the president deplored recently as the nation's addiction to oil to new and terrifying levels. The United States has embraced a kind of "petro-imperialism," Phillips writes, "the key aspect of which is the U.S. military's transformation into a global oil-protection force," and which "puts up a democratic facade, emphasizes freedom of the seas (or pipeline routes) and seeks to secure, protect, drill and ship oil, not administer everyday affairs."
Phillips is especially passionate in his discussion of the second great force that he sees shaping contemporary American life — radical Christianity and its growing intrusion into government and politics. The political rise of evangelical Christian groups is hardly a secret to most Americans after the 2004 election, but Phillips brings together an enormous range of information from scholars and journalists and presents a remarkably comprehensive and chilling picture of the goals and achievements of the religious right.
He points in particular to the Southern Baptist Convention, once a scorned seceding minority of the American Baptist Church but now so large that it dominates not just Baptism itself but American Protestantism generally. The Southern Baptist Convention does not speak with one voice, but almost all of its voices, Phillips argues, are to one degree or another highly conservative. On the far right is a still obscure but, Phillips says, rapidly growing group of "Christian Reconstructionists" who believe in a "Taliban-like" reversal of women's rights, who describe the separation of church and state as a "myth" and who call openly for a theocratic government shaped by Christian doctrine. A much larger group of Protestants, perhaps as many as a third of the population, claims to believe in the supposed biblical prophecies of an imminent "rapture" — the return of Jesus to the world and the elevation of believers to heaven.
Prophetic Christians, Phillips writes, often shape their view of politics and the world around signs that charlatan biblical scholars have identified as predictors of the apocalypse — among them a war in Iraq, the Jewish settlement of the whole of biblical Israel, even the rise of terrorism. He convincingly demonstrates that the Bush administration has calculatedly reached out to such believers and encouraged them to see the president's policies as a response to premillennialist thought. He also suggests that the president and other members of his administration may actually believe these things themselves, that religious belief is the basis of policy, not just a tactic for selling it to the public. Phillips's evidence for this disturbing claim is significant, but not conclusive.
THE third great impending crisis that Phillips identifies is also, perhaps, the best known — the astonishing rise of debt as the precarious underpinning of the American economy. He is not, of course, the only observer who has noted the dangers of indebtedness. The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, for example, frequently writes about the looming catastrophe. So do many more-conservative economists, who point especially to future debt — particularly the enormous obligation, which Phillips estimates at between $30 trillion and $40 trillion, that Social Security and health care demands will create in the coming decades. The most familiar debt is that of the United States government, fueled by soaring federal budget deficits that have continued (with a brief pause in the late 1990's) for more than two decades. But the national debt — currently over $8 trillion — is only the tip of the iceberg. There has also been an explosion of corporate debt, state and local bonded debt, international debt through huge trade imbalances, and consumer debt (mostly in the form of credit-card balances and aggressively marketed home-mortgage packages). Taken together, this present and future debt may exceed $70 trillion.
The creation of a national-debt culture, Phillips argues, although exacerbated by the policies of the Bush administration, has been the work of many people over many decades — among them Alan Greenspan, who, he acidly notes, blithely and irresponsibly ignored the rising debt to avoid pricking the stock-market bubble it helped produce. It is most of all a product of the "financialization" of the American economy — the turn away from manufacturing and toward an economy based on moving and managing money, a trend encouraged, Phillips argues persuasively, by the preoccupation with oil and (somewhat less persuasively) with evangelical belief in the imminent rapture, which makes planning for the future unnecessary.
There is little in "American Theocracy" that is wholly original to Phillips, as he frankly admits by his frequent reference to the work of other writers and scholars. What makes this book powerful in spite of the familiarity of many of its arguments is his rare gift for looking broadly and structurally at social and political change. By describing a series of major transformations, by demonstrating the relationships among them and by discussing them with passionate restraint, Phillips has created a harrowing picture of national danger that no American reader will welcome, but that none should ignore.
Alan Brinkley is the Allan Nevins professor of history and the provost at Columbia University.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Finally, the word is spoken ... "Impeachment"
From AxisofLogic.com
Religion/World View
What is on trial in the United States is not just George Bush, but also his God
By Lee Salisbury
Jan 24, 2006, 17:51
A recent Zogby poll found that 52 % of Americans believe President Bush should be impeached if he violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) using warrant-less wiretaps. Of those surveyed in this poll, 25% identified themselves as “very conservative.” A Republican Congress is unlikely to consider an impeachment trial. Nevertheless, a significant number of Americans seriously consider impeachment appropriate. But, what is really on trial?
Let us consider the values of George Bush.
Bush lied to America and to Congress to justify the Iraq war. Colin Powell regretfully admits he was duped into false misrepresentations about Iraq’s WMDs to the UN. Bush’s invasion of Iraq violated international law. The numbers of dead, maimed, and wounded are in the tens of thousands. An estimated $1 trillion will ultimately be poured into Iraq, 80% of whose citizens want America’s military to leave now.
Bush ignored the known deteriorated condition of the New Orleans’ levees long before Katrina struck. Bush cut funding for levee construction, watched New Orleans drown, and then trusted his incompetent crony Brownie (“you’re do’en a heck of a job”) to manage the chaos.
Bush's No Child Left Behind program has overburdened our national educational system and nearly gutted state budgets.
Bush's Leave No Millionaire Behind tax policy has taken a national surplus and turned it into a humungous debt for our grandchildren to repay.
Bush’s Medicare/Medicaid drug plan has plunged the nation's vulnerable and pharmacies into total chaos while driving the states closer to bankruptcy.
Bush's "War on Terror" has become a war on civil rights and liberties, threatening to strip the US of its democratic values. All the while, terrorism has increased exponentially. America is no safer today then before 9/11/01.
Bush's "Homeland Security" agency’s under-funding and mismanagement makes us more vulnerable to terrorist attacks on nuclear plants, chemical facilities, shipping ports and airports.
Bush's Patriot Acts I & II have shredded our Bill of Rights, taking America ever closer to a dictatorship.
Bush's use of torture casts America in the role of a sadistic tyrant making us like the terrorists we abhor, and violates the "cruel and unusual punishment" forbidden by our Constitution.
Bush's spying on Americans has turned a nation founded on reverence for privacy, free speech and due process into a contemptuous Orwellian snoop.
Bush fails to confront global warming lest corporate polluter profits suffer. Bush will allow an estimated 17,000 outdated power stations and factories to increase their carbon emissions with impunity. The resulting fine-particle soot contributes to asthma, emphysema, and lung cancer.
Bush implements unproven, arbitrary Christian fundamentalist doctrines, impairing the wall of church state separation, solely to accommodate the religious right’s “rant n rave” fanaticism.
Bush is unfazed by his Republican “culture of corruption.” The fraud, corruption and official malfeasance exposed at Enron inundates K Street’s Republican lobbyists.
Space prohibits the seemingly endless list of irresponsible, destructive Bush policies.
All this while, George Bush gladly represents bible-believing Christianity. Millions of Christians led by the likes of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson intercede for him. George Bush claims to make his decisions through prayer. Supposedly, Christianity’s omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God has an American President representing Him, a President whose every decision should parallel this God’s alleged values of righteousness, justice, wisdom and integrity.
So where is the righteousness, justice, wisdom and integrity in George Bush’s decisions? Read the above list again and show me where these alleged qualities are? Is this the benefit of being “one nation under God?” Most Christian Bush supporters would rather keep playing church then face these realities. What is on trial in the minds of Americans is not just George Bush, but his God and his brand of Christianity.
Nevertheless, either, Nietzsche was right when he said, “God is dead” or God just plain doesn’t give a dam! No wonder our founding fathers kept the mention of God out of the Constitution.
Religion/World View
What is on trial in the United States is not just George Bush, but also his God
By Lee Salisbury
Jan 24, 2006, 17:51
A recent Zogby poll found that 52 % of Americans believe President Bush should be impeached if he violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) using warrant-less wiretaps. Of those surveyed in this poll, 25% identified themselves as “very conservative.” A Republican Congress is unlikely to consider an impeachment trial. Nevertheless, a significant number of Americans seriously consider impeachment appropriate. But, what is really on trial?
Let us consider the values of George Bush.
Bush lied to America and to Congress to justify the Iraq war. Colin Powell regretfully admits he was duped into false misrepresentations about Iraq’s WMDs to the UN. Bush’s invasion of Iraq violated international law. The numbers of dead, maimed, and wounded are in the tens of thousands. An estimated $1 trillion will ultimately be poured into Iraq, 80% of whose citizens want America’s military to leave now.
Bush ignored the known deteriorated condition of the New Orleans’ levees long before Katrina struck. Bush cut funding for levee construction, watched New Orleans drown, and then trusted his incompetent crony Brownie (“you’re do’en a heck of a job”) to manage the chaos.
Bush's No Child Left Behind program has overburdened our national educational system and nearly gutted state budgets.
Bush's Leave No Millionaire Behind tax policy has taken a national surplus and turned it into a humungous debt for our grandchildren to repay.
Bush’s Medicare/Medicaid drug plan has plunged the nation's vulnerable and pharmacies into total chaos while driving the states closer to bankruptcy.
Bush's "War on Terror" has become a war on civil rights and liberties, threatening to strip the US of its democratic values. All the while, terrorism has increased exponentially. America is no safer today then before 9/11/01.
Bush's "Homeland Security" agency’s under-funding and mismanagement makes us more vulnerable to terrorist attacks on nuclear plants, chemical facilities, shipping ports and airports.
Bush's Patriot Acts I & II have shredded our Bill of Rights, taking America ever closer to a dictatorship.
Bush's use of torture casts America in the role of a sadistic tyrant making us like the terrorists we abhor, and violates the "cruel and unusual punishment" forbidden by our Constitution.
Bush's spying on Americans has turned a nation founded on reverence for privacy, free speech and due process into a contemptuous Orwellian snoop.
Bush fails to confront global warming lest corporate polluter profits suffer. Bush will allow an estimated 17,000 outdated power stations and factories to increase their carbon emissions with impunity. The resulting fine-particle soot contributes to asthma, emphysema, and lung cancer.
Bush implements unproven, arbitrary Christian fundamentalist doctrines, impairing the wall of church state separation, solely to accommodate the religious right’s “rant n rave” fanaticism.
Bush is unfazed by his Republican “culture of corruption.” The fraud, corruption and official malfeasance exposed at Enron inundates K Street’s Republican lobbyists.
Space prohibits the seemingly endless list of irresponsible, destructive Bush policies.
All this while, George Bush gladly represents bible-believing Christianity. Millions of Christians led by the likes of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson intercede for him. George Bush claims to make his decisions through prayer. Supposedly, Christianity’s omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God has an American President representing Him, a President whose every decision should parallel this God’s alleged values of righteousness, justice, wisdom and integrity.
So where is the righteousness, justice, wisdom and integrity in George Bush’s decisions? Read the above list again and show me where these alleged qualities are? Is this the benefit of being “one nation under God?” Most Christian Bush supporters would rather keep playing church then face these realities. What is on trial in the minds of Americans is not just George Bush, but his God and his brand of Christianity.
Nevertheless, either, Nietzsche was right when he said, “God is dead” or God just plain doesn’t give a dam! No wonder our founding fathers kept the mention of God out of the Constitution.
Monday, March 20, 2006
From my "Believe it or Not" library...
Courtroom Quotations (from http://rinkworks.com/said/courtroom.shtml)
The following quotations are taken from official court records across the nation, showing how funny and embarrassing it is that recorders operate at all times in courts of law, so that even the slightest inadvertence is preserved for posterity.
* Lawyer: "Was that the same nose you broke as a child?"
* Witness: "I only have one, you know."
* Lawyer: "Now, Mrs. Johnson, how was your first marriage terminated?"
* Witness: "By death."
* Lawyer: "And by whose death was it terminated?"
* Accused, Defending His Own Case: "Did you get a good look at my face when I took your purse?"
The defendant was found guilty and sentenced to ten years in jail.
* Lawyer: "What is your date of birth?"
* Witness: "July 15th."
* Lawyer: "What year?"
* Witness: "Every year."
* Lawyer: "Can you tell us what was stolen from your house?"
* Witness: "There was a rifle that belonged to my father that was stolen from the hall closet."
* Lawyer: "Can you identify the rifle?"
* Witness: "Yes. There was something written on the side of it."
* Lawyer: "And what did the writing say?"
* Witness: "'Winchester'!"
* Lawyer: "What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?"
* Witness: "Gucci sweats and Reeboks."
* Lawyer: "Can you describe what the person who attacked you looked like?"
* Witness: "No. He was wearing a mask."
* Lawyer: "What was he wearing under the mask?"
* Witness: "Er...his face."
* Lawyer: "This myasthenia gravis -- does it affect your memory at all?"
* Witness: "Yes."
* Lawyer: "And in what ways does it affect your memory?"
* Witness: "I forget."
* Lawyer: "You forget. Can you give us an example of something that you've forgotten?"
* Lawyer: "How old is your son, the one living with you?"
* Witness: "Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can't remember which."
* Lawyer: "How long has he lived with you?"
* Witness: "Forty-five years."
* Lawyer: "What was the first thing your husband said to you when he woke that morning?"
* Witness: "He said, 'Where am I, Cathy?'"
* Lawyer: "And why did that upset you?"
* Witness: "My name is Susan."
* Lawyer: "Sir, what is your IQ?"
* Witness: "Well, I can see pretty well, I think."
* Lawyer: "Did you blow your horn or anything?"
* Witness: "After the accident?"
* Lawyer: "Before the accident."
* Witness: "Sure, I played for ten years. I even went to school for it."
* Lawyer: "Trooper, when you stopped the defendant, were your red and blue lights flashing?"
* Witness: "Yes."
* Lawyer: "Did the defendant say anything when she got out of her car?"
* Witness: "Yes, sir."
* Lawyer: "What did she say?"
* Witness: "'What disco am I at?'"
* Lawyer: "Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?"
* Witness: "No."
* Lawyer: "Did you check for blood pressure?"
* Witness: "No."
* Lawyer: "Did you check for breathing?"
* Witness: "No."
* Lawyer: "So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?"
* Witness: "No."
* Lawyer: "How can you be so sure, Doctor?"
* Witness: "Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar."
* Lawyer: "But could the patient have still been alive nevertheless?"
* Witness: "Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere."
* Lawyer: "How far apart were the vehicles at the time of the collision?"
* Lawyer: "And you check your radar unit frequently?"
* Officer: "Yes, I do."
* Lawyer: "And was your radar unit functioning correctly at the time you had the plaintiff on radar?"
* Officer: "Yes, it was malfunctioning correctly."
* Lawyer: "What happened then?"
* Witness: "He told me, he says, 'I have to kill you because you can identify me.'"
* Lawyer: "Did he kill you?"
* Witness: "No."
* Lawyer: "Now sir, I'm sure you are an intelligent and honest man--"
* Witness: "Thank you. If I weren't under oath, I'd return the compliment."
* Lawyer: "You were there until the time you left, is that true?"
* Lawyer: "So you were gone until you returned?"
* Lawyer: "The youngest son, the 20 year old, how old is he?"
* Lawyer: "Were you alone or by yourself?"
* Lawyer: "How long have you been a French Canadian?"
* Witness: "He was about medium height and had a beard."
* Lawyer: "Was this a male or a female?"
* Lawyer: "Mr. Slatery, you went on a rather elaborate honeymoon, didn't you?"
* Witness: "I went to Europe, sir."
* Lawyer: "And you took your new wife?"
* Lawyer: "I show you Exhibit 3 and ask you if you recognize that picture."
* Witness: "That's me."
* Lawyer: "Were you present when that picture was taken?"
* Lawyer: "Were you present in court this morning when you were sworn in?"
* Lawyer: "Do you know how far pregnant you are now?"
* Witness: "I'll be three months on November 8."
* Lawyer: "Apparently, then, the date of conception was August 8?"
* Witness: "Yes."
* Lawyer: "What were you doing at that time?"
* Lawyer: "How many times have you committed suicide?"
* Witness: "Four times."
* Lawyer: "Do you have any children or anything of that kind?"
* Lawyer: "She had three children, right?"
* Witness: "Yes."
* Lawyer: "How many were boys?"
* Witness: "None."
* Lawyer: "Were there girls?"
* Lawyer: "You don't know what it was, and you didn't know what it looked like, but can you describe it?"
* Lawyer: "You say that the stairs went down to the basement?"
* Witness: "Yes."
* Lawyer: "And these stairs, did they go up also?"
* Lawyer: "Have you lived in this town all your life?"
* Witness: "Not yet."
* Lawyer: (realizing he was on the verge of asking a stupid question) "Your Honor, I'd like to strike the next question."
* Lawyer: "Do you recall approximately the time that you examined the body of Mr. Eddington at the Rose Chapel?"
* Witness: "It was in the evening. The autopsy started about 8:30pm."
* Lawyer: "And Mr. Eddington was dead at the time, is that correct?"
* Lawyer: "What is your brother-in-law's name?"
* Witness: "Borofkin."
* Lawyer: "What's his first name?"
* Witness: "I can't remember."
* Lawyer: "He's been your brother-in-law for years, and you can't remember his first name?"
* Witness: "No. I tell you, I'm too excited." (rising and pointing to his brother-in-law) "Nathan, for heaven's sake, tell them your first name!"
* Lawyer: "Did you ever stay all night with this man in New York?"
* Witness: "I refuse to answer that question.
* Lawyer: "Did you ever stay all night with this man in Chicago?"
* Witness: "I refuse to answer that question.
* Lawyer: "Did you ever stay all night with this man in Miami?"
* Witness: "No."
* Lawyer: "Doctor, did you say he was shot in the woods?"
* Witness: "No, I said he was shot in the lumbar region."
* Lawyer: "What is your marital status?"
* Witness: "Fair."
* Lawyer: "Are you married?"
* Witness: "No, I'm divorced."
* Lawyer: "And what did your husband do before you divorced him?"
* Witness: "A lot of things I didn't know about."
* Lawyer: "And who is this person you are speaking of?"
* Witness: "My ex-widow said it.
* Lawyer: "How did you happen to go to Dr. Cherney?"
* Witness: "Well, a gal down the road had had several of her children by Dr. Cherney and said he was really good."
* Lawyer: "Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people?"
* Witness: "All my autopsies have been performed on dead people."
* Lawyer: "Were you acquainted with the deceased?"
* Witness: "Yes sir."
* Lawyer: "Before or after he died?"
* Lawyer: "Mrs. Jones, is your appearance this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?"
* Witness: "No. This is how I dress when I go to work."
* The Court: "Now, as we begin, I must ask you to banish all present information and prejudice from your minds, if you have any."
* Lawyer: "Did he pick the dog up by the ears?"
* Witness: "No."
* Lawyer: "What was he doing with the dog's ears?"
* Witness: "Picking them up in the air."
* Lawyer: "Where was the dog at this time?"
* Witness: "Attached to the ears."
* Lawyer: "When he went, had you gone and had she, if she wanted to and were able, for the time being excluding all the restraints on her not to go, gone also, would he have brought you, meaning you and she, with him to the station?"
* Other Lawyer: "Objection. That question should be taken out and shot."
* Lawyer: "And lastly, Gary, all your responses must be oral. Ok? What school do you go to?"
* Witness: "Oral."
* Lawyer: "How old are you?"
* Witness: "Oral."
* Lawyer: "What is your relationship with the plaintiff?"
* Witness: "She is my daughter."
* Lawyer: "Was she your daughter on February 13, 1979?"
* Lawyer: "Now, you have investigated other murders, have you not, where there was a victim?"
* Lawyer: "Now, doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, in most cases he just passes quietly away and doesn't know anything about it until the next morning?"
* Lawyer: "And what did he do then?"
* Witness: "He came home, and next morning he was dead."
* Lawyer: "So when he woke up the next morning he was dead?"
* Lawyer: "Did you tell your lawyer that your husband had offered you indignities?"
* Witness: "He didn't offer me nothing. He just said I could have the furniture."
* Lawyer: "So, after the anesthesia, when you came out of it, what did you observe with respect to your scalp?"
* Witness: "I didn't see my scalp the whole time I was in the hospital."
* Lawyer: "It was covered?"
* Witness: "Yes, bandaged."
* Lawyer: "Then, later on...what did you see?"
* Witness: "I had a skin graft. My whole buttocks and leg were removed and put on top of my head."
* Lawyer: "Could you see him from where you were standing?"
* Witness: "I could see his head."
* Lawyer: "And where was his head?"
* Witness: "Just above his shoulders."
* Lawyer: "Do you drink when you're on duty?"
* Witness: "I don't drink when I'm on duty, unless I come on duty drunk."
* Lawyer: "Any suggestions as to what prevented this from being a murder trial instead of an attempted murder trial?"
* Witness: "The victim lived."
* Lawyer: "The truth of the matter is that you were not an unbiased, objective witness, isn't it? You too were shot in the fracas."
* Witness: "No, sir. I was shot midway between the fracas and the naval."
* Lawyer: "Officer, what led you to believe the defendant was under the influence?"
* Witness: "Because he was argumentary, and he couldn't pronunciate his words."
The following quotations are taken from official court records across the nation, showing how funny and embarrassing it is that recorders operate at all times in courts of law, so that even the slightest inadvertence is preserved for posterity.
* Lawyer: "Was that the same nose you broke as a child?"
* Witness: "I only have one, you know."
* Lawyer: "Now, Mrs. Johnson, how was your first marriage terminated?"
* Witness: "By death."
* Lawyer: "And by whose death was it terminated?"
* Accused, Defending His Own Case: "Did you get a good look at my face when I took your purse?"
The defendant was found guilty and sentenced to ten years in jail.
* Lawyer: "What is your date of birth?"
* Witness: "July 15th."
* Lawyer: "What year?"
* Witness: "Every year."
* Lawyer: "Can you tell us what was stolen from your house?"
* Witness: "There was a rifle that belonged to my father that was stolen from the hall closet."
* Lawyer: "Can you identify the rifle?"
* Witness: "Yes. There was something written on the side of it."
* Lawyer: "And what did the writing say?"
* Witness: "'Winchester'!"
* Lawyer: "What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?"
* Witness: "Gucci sweats and Reeboks."
* Lawyer: "Can you describe what the person who attacked you looked like?"
* Witness: "No. He was wearing a mask."
* Lawyer: "What was he wearing under the mask?"
* Witness: "Er...his face."
* Lawyer: "This myasthenia gravis -- does it affect your memory at all?"
* Witness: "Yes."
* Lawyer: "And in what ways does it affect your memory?"
* Witness: "I forget."
* Lawyer: "You forget. Can you give us an example of something that you've forgotten?"
* Lawyer: "How old is your son, the one living with you?"
* Witness: "Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can't remember which."
* Lawyer: "How long has he lived with you?"
* Witness: "Forty-five years."
* Lawyer: "What was the first thing your husband said to you when he woke that morning?"
* Witness: "He said, 'Where am I, Cathy?'"
* Lawyer: "And why did that upset you?"
* Witness: "My name is Susan."
* Lawyer: "Sir, what is your IQ?"
* Witness: "Well, I can see pretty well, I think."
* Lawyer: "Did you blow your horn or anything?"
* Witness: "After the accident?"
* Lawyer: "Before the accident."
* Witness: "Sure, I played for ten years. I even went to school for it."
* Lawyer: "Trooper, when you stopped the defendant, were your red and blue lights flashing?"
* Witness: "Yes."
* Lawyer: "Did the defendant say anything when she got out of her car?"
* Witness: "Yes, sir."
* Lawyer: "What did she say?"
* Witness: "'What disco am I at?'"
* Lawyer: "Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?"
* Witness: "No."
* Lawyer: "Did you check for blood pressure?"
* Witness: "No."
* Lawyer: "Did you check for breathing?"
* Witness: "No."
* Lawyer: "So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?"
* Witness: "No."
* Lawyer: "How can you be so sure, Doctor?"
* Witness: "Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar."
* Lawyer: "But could the patient have still been alive nevertheless?"
* Witness: "Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere."
* Lawyer: "How far apart were the vehicles at the time of the collision?"
* Lawyer: "And you check your radar unit frequently?"
* Officer: "Yes, I do."
* Lawyer: "And was your radar unit functioning correctly at the time you had the plaintiff on radar?"
* Officer: "Yes, it was malfunctioning correctly."
* Lawyer: "What happened then?"
* Witness: "He told me, he says, 'I have to kill you because you can identify me.'"
* Lawyer: "Did he kill you?"
* Witness: "No."
* Lawyer: "Now sir, I'm sure you are an intelligent and honest man--"
* Witness: "Thank you. If I weren't under oath, I'd return the compliment."
* Lawyer: "You were there until the time you left, is that true?"
* Lawyer: "So you were gone until you returned?"
* Lawyer: "The youngest son, the 20 year old, how old is he?"
* Lawyer: "Were you alone or by yourself?"
* Lawyer: "How long have you been a French Canadian?"
* Witness: "He was about medium height and had a beard."
* Lawyer: "Was this a male or a female?"
* Lawyer: "Mr. Slatery, you went on a rather elaborate honeymoon, didn't you?"
* Witness: "I went to Europe, sir."
* Lawyer: "And you took your new wife?"
* Lawyer: "I show you Exhibit 3 and ask you if you recognize that picture."
* Witness: "That's me."
* Lawyer: "Were you present when that picture was taken?"
* Lawyer: "Were you present in court this morning when you were sworn in?"
* Lawyer: "Do you know how far pregnant you are now?"
* Witness: "I'll be three months on November 8."
* Lawyer: "Apparently, then, the date of conception was August 8?"
* Witness: "Yes."
* Lawyer: "What were you doing at that time?"
* Lawyer: "How many times have you committed suicide?"
* Witness: "Four times."
* Lawyer: "Do you have any children or anything of that kind?"
* Lawyer: "She had three children, right?"
* Witness: "Yes."
* Lawyer: "How many were boys?"
* Witness: "None."
* Lawyer: "Were there girls?"
* Lawyer: "You don't know what it was, and you didn't know what it looked like, but can you describe it?"
* Lawyer: "You say that the stairs went down to the basement?"
* Witness: "Yes."
* Lawyer: "And these stairs, did they go up also?"
* Lawyer: "Have you lived in this town all your life?"
* Witness: "Not yet."
* Lawyer: (realizing he was on the verge of asking a stupid question) "Your Honor, I'd like to strike the next question."
* Lawyer: "Do you recall approximately the time that you examined the body of Mr. Eddington at the Rose Chapel?"
* Witness: "It was in the evening. The autopsy started about 8:30pm."
* Lawyer: "And Mr. Eddington was dead at the time, is that correct?"
* Lawyer: "What is your brother-in-law's name?"
* Witness: "Borofkin."
* Lawyer: "What's his first name?"
* Witness: "I can't remember."
* Lawyer: "He's been your brother-in-law for years, and you can't remember his first name?"
* Witness: "No. I tell you, I'm too excited." (rising and pointing to his brother-in-law) "Nathan, for heaven's sake, tell them your first name!"
* Lawyer: "Did you ever stay all night with this man in New York?"
* Witness: "I refuse to answer that question.
* Lawyer: "Did you ever stay all night with this man in Chicago?"
* Witness: "I refuse to answer that question.
* Lawyer: "Did you ever stay all night with this man in Miami?"
* Witness: "No."
* Lawyer: "Doctor, did you say he was shot in the woods?"
* Witness: "No, I said he was shot in the lumbar region."
* Lawyer: "What is your marital status?"
* Witness: "Fair."
* Lawyer: "Are you married?"
* Witness: "No, I'm divorced."
* Lawyer: "And what did your husband do before you divorced him?"
* Witness: "A lot of things I didn't know about."
* Lawyer: "And who is this person you are speaking of?"
* Witness: "My ex-widow said it.
* Lawyer: "How did you happen to go to Dr. Cherney?"
* Witness: "Well, a gal down the road had had several of her children by Dr. Cherney and said he was really good."
* Lawyer: "Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people?"
* Witness: "All my autopsies have been performed on dead people."
* Lawyer: "Were you acquainted with the deceased?"
* Witness: "Yes sir."
* Lawyer: "Before or after he died?"
* Lawyer: "Mrs. Jones, is your appearance this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?"
* Witness: "No. This is how I dress when I go to work."
* The Court: "Now, as we begin, I must ask you to banish all present information and prejudice from your minds, if you have any."
* Lawyer: "Did he pick the dog up by the ears?"
* Witness: "No."
* Lawyer: "What was he doing with the dog's ears?"
* Witness: "Picking them up in the air."
* Lawyer: "Where was the dog at this time?"
* Witness: "Attached to the ears."
* Lawyer: "When he went, had you gone and had she, if she wanted to and were able, for the time being excluding all the restraints on her not to go, gone also, would he have brought you, meaning you and she, with him to the station?"
* Other Lawyer: "Objection. That question should be taken out and shot."
* Lawyer: "And lastly, Gary, all your responses must be oral. Ok? What school do you go to?"
* Witness: "Oral."
* Lawyer: "How old are you?"
* Witness: "Oral."
* Lawyer: "What is your relationship with the plaintiff?"
* Witness: "She is my daughter."
* Lawyer: "Was she your daughter on February 13, 1979?"
* Lawyer: "Now, you have investigated other murders, have you not, where there was a victim?"
* Lawyer: "Now, doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, in most cases he just passes quietly away and doesn't know anything about it until the next morning?"
* Lawyer: "And what did he do then?"
* Witness: "He came home, and next morning he was dead."
* Lawyer: "So when he woke up the next morning he was dead?"
* Lawyer: "Did you tell your lawyer that your husband had offered you indignities?"
* Witness: "He didn't offer me nothing. He just said I could have the furniture."
* Lawyer: "So, after the anesthesia, when you came out of it, what did you observe with respect to your scalp?"
* Witness: "I didn't see my scalp the whole time I was in the hospital."
* Lawyer: "It was covered?"
* Witness: "Yes, bandaged."
* Lawyer: "Then, later on...what did you see?"
* Witness: "I had a skin graft. My whole buttocks and leg were removed and put on top of my head."
* Lawyer: "Could you see him from where you were standing?"
* Witness: "I could see his head."
* Lawyer: "And where was his head?"
* Witness: "Just above his shoulders."
* Lawyer: "Do you drink when you're on duty?"
* Witness: "I don't drink when I'm on duty, unless I come on duty drunk."
* Lawyer: "Any suggestions as to what prevented this from being a murder trial instead of an attempted murder trial?"
* Witness: "The victim lived."
* Lawyer: "The truth of the matter is that you were not an unbiased, objective witness, isn't it? You too were shot in the fracas."
* Witness: "No, sir. I was shot midway between the fracas and the naval."
* Lawyer: "Officer, what led you to believe the defendant was under the influence?"
* Witness: "Because he was argumentary, and he couldn't pronunciate his words."
Monday, March 13, 2006
The clever combination of ignorance and patriotism...
Zogby released a new poll of US troops stationed in Iraq this month. Apart from the not-so-surprising rejection of the administrations new "long war", there was some startling news about the "real" reason troops thought that they had been dispatched to Iraq in the first place. Number one on the list? "Almost 90% think war is retaliation for Saddam’s role in 9/11"
Personally I believe that this is the reason why Republicans have been so keen on cutting back dollars aimed at education - it hardly serves their purpose of misleading a bunch of kids steeped in the mythology of honor and patriotism.
There are some other interesting results in that poll worth taking a look at...
Personally I believe that this is the reason why Republicans have been so keen on cutting back dollars aimed at education - it hardly serves their purpose of misleading a bunch of kids steeped in the mythology of honor and patriotism.
There are some other interesting results in that poll worth taking a look at...
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Impeachment, anyone...
How do you white-out a guy like Abramoff... the fact is, if we don't get an impeachment out of this, the American experiment is really over and we just haven't gotten the memo yet...
Monday, March 06, 2006
Act first, then think...
This guy comes up with some really interesting stuff...
SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2006, Issue No. 25
February 22, 2006
Secrecy News Blog: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
SCHOPENHAUER AND UNCONSCIOUS THOUGHT
"Contrary to conventional wisdom, it is not always advantageous to
engage in thorough conscious deliberation before choosing,"
according to a paper published in the latest issue of Science
magazine.
Unconscious thought, defined as "thought or deliberation in the
absence of conscious attention directed at the problem," can
sometimes yield superior results, University of Amsterdam
psychologists found. And they suggest that the same effect can be
"generalize[d] to other types of choices -- political, managerial,
or otherwise."
See "On Making the Right Choice: The Deliberation-Without-Attention
Effect" by Ap Dijksterhuis, et al, Science, vol. 311, 17 February
2006 (free abstract):
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/311/5763/1005
So does that mean that the processes of political deliberation
should be restructured to place greater emphasis on intuition and
"hunches"? Not exactly.
The strengths and limits of "unconscious thought" were considered
by author Sue Halpern in a review of Malcolm Gladwell's book
"Blink" in the New York Review of Books (April 28, 2005):
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17954
"Intuition is often understood as an antithesis to analytic
decision-making, as something inherently nonanalytic or
preanalytic," Halpern quotes neuropsychologist Elkhonon Goldberg.
"But in reality, intuition is the condensation of vast prior
analytic experience; it is analysis compressed and crystallized."
In other words, the productivity of "unconscious thought" is
probably dependent upon all of the conscious thought, analysis and
experience that precedes it.
(Making a similar point, a favorite teacher once advised that "It
is one thing for Aldous Huxley to take LSD," since Huxley was
immensely learned. "It is something else for *you* to do it.")
"The possibility of unconscious thought (as well as the term) was
explicitly used for the first time by Schopenhauer," write
Dijksterhuis et al in their new Science paper.
The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was also
credited by Freud as a forerunner of psychoanalysis.
"Schopenhauer argued at length, and with a psychological insight
which was altogether unprecedented, that empirical evidence points
to the conclusion not only that most of our thoughts and feelings
are unknown to us but that the reason for this is a process of
repression which is itself unconscious," wrote Bryan Magee in his
magnificent "The Philosophy of Schopenhauer" (Oxford, rev. 1997).
In several respects Schopenhauer was an unsavory character. He had
a bad case of anti-semitism which earned him a favorable mention
in Hitler's Mein Kampf.
But Magee does for Schopenhauer what the late Walter Kaufmann did
for Nietzsche several decades ago -- he makes him intelligible to
the non-specialist reader, as well as interesting and, quite
unexpectedly, important.
Magee served briefly in British intelligence (to return to more
familiar territory) and wrote a quasi-existentialist spy novel
called "To Live in Danger" (1960, long out of print) that is not
entirely bad.
SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2006, Issue No. 25
February 22, 2006
Secrecy News Blog: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
SCHOPENHAUER AND UNCONSCIOUS THOUGHT
"Contrary to conventional wisdom, it is not always advantageous to
engage in thorough conscious deliberation before choosing,"
according to a paper published in the latest issue of Science
magazine.
Unconscious thought, defined as "thought or deliberation in the
absence of conscious attention directed at the problem," can
sometimes yield superior results, University of Amsterdam
psychologists found. And they suggest that the same effect can be
"generalize[d] to other types of choices -- political, managerial,
or otherwise."
See "On Making the Right Choice: The Deliberation-Without-Attention
Effect" by Ap Dijksterhuis, et al, Science, vol. 311, 17 February
2006 (free abstract):
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/311/5763/1005
So does that mean that the processes of political deliberation
should be restructured to place greater emphasis on intuition and
"hunches"? Not exactly.
The strengths and limits of "unconscious thought" were considered
by author Sue Halpern in a review of Malcolm Gladwell's book
"Blink" in the New York Review of Books (April 28, 2005):
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17954
"Intuition is often understood as an antithesis to analytic
decision-making, as something inherently nonanalytic or
preanalytic," Halpern quotes neuropsychologist Elkhonon Goldberg.
"But in reality, intuition is the condensation of vast prior
analytic experience; it is analysis compressed and crystallized."
In other words, the productivity of "unconscious thought" is
probably dependent upon all of the conscious thought, analysis and
experience that precedes it.
(Making a similar point, a favorite teacher once advised that "It
is one thing for Aldous Huxley to take LSD," since Huxley was
immensely learned. "It is something else for *you* to do it.")
"The possibility of unconscious thought (as well as the term) was
explicitly used for the first time by Schopenhauer," write
Dijksterhuis et al in their new Science paper.
The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was also
credited by Freud as a forerunner of psychoanalysis.
"Schopenhauer argued at length, and with a psychological insight
which was altogether unprecedented, that empirical evidence points
to the conclusion not only that most of our thoughts and feelings
are unknown to us but that the reason for this is a process of
repression which is itself unconscious," wrote Bryan Magee in his
magnificent "The Philosophy of Schopenhauer" (Oxford, rev. 1997).
In several respects Schopenhauer was an unsavory character. He had
a bad case of anti-semitism which earned him a favorable mention
in Hitler's Mein Kampf.
But Magee does for Schopenhauer what the late Walter Kaufmann did
for Nietzsche several decades ago -- he makes him intelligible to
the non-specialist reader, as well as interesting and, quite
unexpectedly, important.
Magee served briefly in British intelligence (to return to more
familiar territory) and wrote a quasi-existentialist spy novel
called "To Live in Danger" (1960, long out of print) that is not
entirely bad.
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