Well, jump up and sing!

Paul Krugman passes on a choice piece of good news via his blog:

November 15, 2008, 7:27 am
Change it’s hard to believe in...

...because it’s such good news. Elizabeth Warren, expert on personal bankruptcy, crusader against credit card industry lobbyists, and founder of the extremely useful blog Credit Slips, to be a member of the bailout oversight board.

Elections have consequences.

Warren has been researching and documenting why the middle class has been taking it on the chin for 20 years. That's you and me, folks.

Distinguished law scholar Elizabeth Warren teaches contract law, bankruptcy, and commercial law at Harvard Law School. She is an outspoken critic of America's credit economy, which she has linked to the continuing rise in bankruptcy among the middle-class. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Council Lectures"

Her must-see online talk "The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class", is entertaining as well as sobering. If you view it by way of Miro (a very good video portal) you can save a copy for yourself and your friends. Have them over for popcorn and pizza, make a night of it.

Noni.

[Crossposted at the Galloping Beaver]

Gotta hide it better than that, NYT -- "Judge Rules Against White House in E-Mail Case"

New York Times Technology section? Yeah, that's the place to slip in a seriously important political story.

More In Technology

* Judge Rules Against White House in E-Mail Case
* Midway Games Reports Loss
* Sirius XM Takes $4.8 Billion Charge Related to Merger
* Comparing YouTube and Hulu
* VMware Lends Virtual Hand to Mobile Phone Crowd

Okay, to be a little kinder I must say this story came to me today in E-mail, as part of the Tech section update. It was actually printed in the NYT paper version: "A version of this article appeared in print on November 11, 2008, on page A19 of the New York edition.

Frankly, a lot of people never read past the headlines, so how likely are they to make it to A19? So here I am to help them out. Read on:

Judge Rules Against White House in E-Mail Case

Published: November 10, 2008

A federal judge ruled against the Bush administration in a court battle over the White House’s problem-plagued e-mail system. The judge, Henry H. Kennedy Jr. of the United States District Court, said two private groups, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics and the National Security Archive, may pursue their case as they press the administration to recover millions of possibly missing electronic messages. The administration had argued that the courts did not have the power to order the White House to retrieve any missing messages. A document obtained by The Associated Press in August said the White House was missing as many as 225 days of e-mail dating to 2003 and invited companies to bid on a project to recover them.

I am not sure how the administration could argue that the missing E-mails, as part of the day to day documentation of national business and covered by the rules of document retention, can just disappear.

But here's another question: suppose John Doe does something presumably under the orders of the White House, and later no proof can be found that he had instructions. If he ends up in court for something related to this task, I wonder what happens then? Can he be given a free ride on the basis of the missing mail? in which case can the White House be held liable for his actions, in the absence of proof they had authorized it? Worse, what nest of undocumented promises and undertakings lie in wait for the next administration?

However -- they say the net never forgets. I wonder how many White House emails and documents will surface in the next generation, like imperfectly secured bodies from Long Island Sound?

The Midpoint...

The midpoint between caring and crime is not care, but crime.

The midpoint between a truth and a lie is not truth, but another lie.

New pres coming? A word of caution from "User Friendly"

Our favorite tech and computer geek J.D. "Illiad" Frazer contemplates the change of US administrations, with an oft-neglected consideration:

See him every day here.

Stolen Quote of the Day -- ane pising contest

From Brad deLong

Inside the Tent...

Youth: Why do the Democrats let Joe Lieberman caucus with them?

Me: You know, it is the old Lyndon Johnson saying: better to have him inside the tent pissing out rather than outside the tent pissing in.

Youth: But he's inside the tent pissing in!

November 04, 2008 at 07:42 PM

*snort!*

Rating: Three Laughing Bostons

Cup of Tears

-- The Cup of Tears--


Remember this feeling.
Remember this feeling.

Put this cup in a safe sound chamber in your heart

Bring it out often,
Bring it out to hold it,
wash in it, pour it out, bathe,
-- clean water
after a long and dirty day of work.

Call it the cup of tears.

Tears wash and comfort us,
Come together when we weep together.
They stream together like small rivers
Becoming great rivers,
Becoming oceans.

In this salt ocean, no borders
No barbwire walls.
From endless grateful faces
This ocean streams out.

Hold this cup in your heart.
Bring it out often.

Hate and hurry drive us
Like pitiless hornets
Greed and worry draw us
Like cheap treasures
Of a swindler’s tent,

But the brimming cup of tears
You filled tonight from the fountain
Is proof against them.

Put this cup in a safe sound chamber in your heart
Take it out often --

Every bright blessed day,
Every dark sacred night.


--------------------------------------------
November 5, 2008

Congratulations!