OMIGOD OMIGOD OMIGOD!!!!! Maybe nothing else could jar me from my no-blogging work-stressed reverie than the news that Strom Thurmond is dead. Not to speak ill of the dead, but a blight on the planet is happily removed, only about forty years late.

In other good news, we got a stirring decision (and predictable polemic Scalia dissent) from the Supremes in Lawrence v. Texas, affirmative action survives with a wink and a nod after the University of Michigan cases(Gratz and Grutter), and the Court thankfully does not further expand corporations' "commercial speech" rights and dismisses Nike's writ of cert as improvidently granted (couldn't cobble together a plurality? shocking, shocking!). Note that Walter Dellinger is predicting all these decisions 24 hours ahead in the Slate "Breakfast Table" with my favorite new mom, Dahlia Lithwick.

I've been super busy, plus with the postwar apathy crash I felt blog-depressed. But Trina and I just got engaged (a pic of her proposing by unfurling a 15-foot banner visible from my 13th-story office window will be uploaded as soon as I figure out this technology stuff) and are looking for a house, and I've got trial on Monday. More soon.
- posted by thegusdad @ 6/26/2003 09:51:00 PM

 
I SWEAR IT WASN'T ME. Probably Trina.
- posted by thegusdad @ 6/10/2003 12:26:00 PM

 
I'M CONTINUING TO ADMIRE HOWARD DEAN FROM AFAR. And so, apparently, is Slate's normally sobersided William Saletan:

"Dean is far and away the most interesting player in the race. Not since Clinton have Democrats seen a talent like this. Here's Dean on the federal budget:

"When Ronald Reagan came into office, he cut taxes, we had big deficits, and we lost 2 million jobs. When Bill Clinton came into office, he raised taxes without a single Republican vote; we balanced the budget; we gained 6 and a half million jobs. George Bush has already lost 2 and a half million. I want a balanced budget because that's how you get jobs in this country is to balance the books. No Republican president has balanced the budget in 34 years. …You had better elect a Democrat, because the Republicans cannot handle money. … We're the party of responsibility, and they're not.

"When you hear Dean talk like this, you wonder why no one else can make the party's case so simply. If more Democrats spoke this way, maybe they'd control a branch of government."
- posted by thegusdad @ 6/09/2003 03:53:00 PM

 
TRINA THINKS I READ TOO MANY MOVIE REVIEWS. But when this is the payoff, it's worth the surfing! When the top tier of movie reviewers--in which I include the Times trinity of Mitchell, Scott and Holden, and Turan in LA, and Lane in the New Yorker--really really hate a movie, they are among the most entertaining writers out there. Check out Scott, just revving his engine about a new movie:

"'2 Fast 2 Furious,' a new seatbelt-awareness film that opens nationwide today, features two very fine and touching performances, both of them by cars."

He only gets meaner, and it's great.

By the way, check out the Times' new Movies page, where you get to see headshots of the reviewers. (Elvis Mitchell is black. Who knew?)
- posted by thegusdad @ 6/05/2003 07:51:00 PM

 
MICKEY KAUS REVIEWS CARS FOR SLATE. Really, he's a professional political blogger for them, but they also give him a little sinecure by letting him write about something he just grooves on, namely cars, and he pays Slate back by typing inspired prose, such as this paean to the Honda Element. Built on a Civic chassis in Ohio, "Corners well for a room!"
- posted by thegusdad @ 6/05/2003 08:07:00 AM

 
WORD OF THE DAY: TRIBOLUMINESCENCE. When you see sparks while crunching Life Savers, you see triboluminescence. When you see a glow as you pull apart the halves of a band-aid wrapper, you see triboluminescence. I learned all this from an old Straight Dope article, but here's a page that explains it lucidly. It's just a great word, almost as good as thixotropic.
- posted by thegusdad @ 6/03/2003 10:24:00 AM

 
"HE HAS USED WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION AGAINST HIS OWN PEOPLE." That 43, giving one justification for invading Iraq. In Zimbabwe, as Robert Mugabe's thugs get increasingly violent in putting down protests against his regime, it begs the question: at what point do regular guns, fired at nonviolent (but huge) crowds, become "weapons of mass destruction"? If there ever was a regime that needed a-changin', it's this one. Mugabe is right in line with folks like Idi Amin in terms of oppression of his people, but nary a peep out of our administration. Lots of folks, including the whole staff of MALT, think that it is among 43's greatest hypocrisies to name a war "Operation Iraqi Freedom" without acknowledging that there are many other countries that could use "liberation" just as much as Iraq, but aren't likely to get it from the US because they have no natural resources to incentivize invasion. This policy--no "nation-building" unless you've got something we need--guarantees that much of Africa will continue to sink to the global bottom socially and economically, remaining under the control of dictators, because the most powerful nation in the world can't be bothered.
- posted by thegusdad @ 6/02/2003 01:00:00 PM

 
2 BASKETBALL POSTS IN A ROW? (If you get this, you get it, and if not, no big deal.) This is one of the most interesting questions I've heard lately: "who blinks first if there was a 'Wallace, Darko and Tayshaun for Shaq' trade on the table, Detroit or LA?"
- posted by thegusdad @ 6/02/2003 09:25:00 AM