Here and There

I need a distraction.

So I scroll past the death of a champion of social justice and equal rights to the AMPAS’s Oscar nominations for 2005.

Brokeback Mountain is the big winner here, to no surprise. But this awards show, I want Heath Ledger to get the recognition he deserves (I realize his performance is critically acclaimed, but apart from nominations, he’s yet to win any awards). Philip Seymour Hoffman is outstanding in Capote (another strong film with gay under- and overtones), but as has been duly pointed out, Ledger brought a fictional character to life, a slightly more amazing feat than recreating an historical figure we know from pictures and video.

I’m pulling for a Brokeback sweep, in fact. Lee for director, Michelle Williams for supporting actress (despite my mini-rant yesterday), adapted screenplay, original score, and, most importantly, Jake Gyllenhaal for best supporting actor. That guy’s career is too amazing, and his performance in Brokeback too strong, to net him anything less.

I don’t typically care about the Oscars. I’ve only attended one Oscar party in my life, several years ago, and I don’t remember any of the movies.

This year is different, and not only because of Brokeback Mountain. There were other important films this year, and (again, despite what I’ve said in past tirades, it was, overall, a good year for movies.

Riddle me this: why are there still separate categories in the awards ceremonies for “actor” and “actress”? Is there something inherently different about the ability of men and women to act? Are men really held to one standard, while women are judged based on some other set of rules?

Or, is it more a relic of the past?

Differences between dramas, comedies, and musicals I can understand, but actors and actresses?

Congratulations to all the winners, but I have to wonder: was Reese Witherspoon’s performance in Walk the Line better than Hoffman’s in Capote?

Dammit.

I was psyched that fast trains were coming to California. The ability to ride trains instead of planes, to free up airliners from one- to three-hour trips so they can accomodate longer distance air travel is exciting. Of course, riding trains is exciting in and of itself.

But leave it to politics to screw up anything that seems to good to be true.

Sure, it’ll happen some day. But this development sets that day back further, sadly.

Okay, the other “upstanding” white guy I saw on C-Span the other day discussing the proper congressional response to Bush’s NSA wiretapping program was Professor Jonathan Hurley of George Washington University. A little on Hurley’s background follows.

Part 2. Jonathan Hurley

Hurley received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago. I can’t find what his major was for this undergraduate degree, but he got his law degree from nearby Northwestern University. I don’t have the years for either degree.

After a short time at Tulane Law School, Turley came to George Washington University in 1990. In 1998, he became the youngest chaired professor in the school’s history.

He is the founder and executive director of the Project for Older Prisoners (POPS), a program for law students designed to combat prison overcrowding and assist aging and disadvantaged prisoners.

According to his bio on the GWU website, Hurley was ranked one of the top ten lawyers handling military cases.

He has served as a consultant on homeland security and constitutional issues, and is a frequent witness before the House and Senate on constitutional and statutory issues as well as tort reform legislation.

Also according to his GWU bio, he ranked 38th in iconoclast Judge Richard Posner’s top 100 most cited “public intellectuals” and was found to be the second most cited law professor in the country, though it’s not clear who this finding was by.

Turley is a member of the USA Today board of contributors, and has written for that paper, The Washington Post, the LA Times, and the Dallas Morning News, among others.

So the amazement of seeing these guys on television laying their cases for how the administration should be scolded for its blatant disregard for Congress, the FISA court, and the Constitution is wearing off a little. But a little perspective has shown me that something needs to happen, something more than simply voting the president’s party members out of Congress this fall (though what a treat that would be!). Just today, Sen. John McCain called for a congressional investigation. It’s good to see the gears of government finally starting to turn in the right direction, no pun intended.

As a follow up to yesterday’s hurry-up-and-post post, I thought I’d look a little deeper into the biographies of the two men I cited as being highly credible experts on matters of executive propriety and impeachment.

Part 1, Bruce Fein
I admit, I wasn’t able to dig into his past as much as I would wish. But…

Fein graduated from Harvard Law School with honors in 1972. On C-Span yesterday, he mentioned coming into the government during the Nixon administration, in Archibald Cox’s Justice Department, though I’m not sure in what capacity he served there.

I’m a little unsure of the timeline after that. He had some sort of federal judicial clerkship for someone. Then he went to the Department of Justice where he became assistant director of the Office of Legal Policy, legal adviser to the assistant attorney general for antitrust, and the associate deputy attorney general under Ronald Reagan’s first AG, William French Smith.

In 1981, he helped prep Sandra Day O’Connor for her confirmation hearings.

Around 1982, Fein was appointed general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission, followed by an appointment as research director for the Joint Congressional Committee on Covert Arms Sales to Iran.

Today, he is an adjunct scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, a resident scholar at the Heritage Foundation, a lecturer at the Brookings Institute, and an adjunct professor at George Washington University. He also serves as general counsel for the Center for Law and Accountability.

Fein writes a weekly column for The Washington Times devoted to legal and international affairs.

Busy man.

He supported the Roberts nomination, and has been rather forthcoming about Alito.

This from an interview with NPR’s Nina Totenburg:

“Those who think Sam Alito is a duplicate of Sandra Day O’Connor or trying to suggest or insinuate that the Court’s philosophical balance will not be altered by Alito simply are being exceptionally disingenuous. I think they fear that if Alito is perceived as some kind of Bork in its impact on the Supreme Court, then the result might be Bork-like. The difference is, Republicans have 55 votes in the Senate now. At the time of Bork, they were a minority.”

It’s unclear whether Fein supports Alito’s confirmation. He’s definitely not keen on Bush’s warrentless wiretapping.

More on Turley soon…

Real quickly, I’m staying in Berkeley for a few days, and have access to C-Span (finally!).

Today, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee held an open hearing on domestic surveillance.

Noteworthy in this discussion were Bruce Fein and Jonathan Turley, two very white, very upstanding men talking about the possibility of impeachment.

Fein, a former Justice Department official under Nixon and Reagan, spoke candidly about the necessity to hold the president accountable. Fein’s first remedy is not to accuse the executive of any wrong-doings, but rather to reiterate the separation of powers, and remind all three branches to work within their own legal means to fight the war on terror. In Fein’s opinion, should that fail to bring the Executive around, fail to get them to admit their overstepping and clean up their act, that’s when you start thinking about bringing articles of impeachment.

Turley, who teaches law at George Washington University among other things, separated himself from Fein a few minutes later. His take is that the president has already had a “credibility moment.” Turley says, more or less, impeachment is a relevant tool for such a brazen disregard for Constitutional law.

Maybe it’s just been a while since I’ve watched TV, but I’m amazed that these “normal,” non-fringe types are even thinking about impeachment.

As someone who disagreed with the Clinton impeachment proceedings (censure would’ve been just fine, thanks), I don’t take the idea of this country going through that again lightly. But I take a flagrant, arrogant disregard of the Constitution (both the Fourth Amendment and Separation of Powers) even less lightly. I’m proud to see the House (if at least Dems on the Judiciary Committee) holding these talks.

Stories like this always strike me for how overdue they are.

And of course, I have to wonder if a bunch of people no one has heard of (ex-heads of the EPA? puh-lease!) suddenly speaking out will make a difference on an issue as important as global warming.

Rather, it seems that stories like one that Thomas Friedman wrote in today’s New York Times resonate more with the people who still have to be convinced that something is up. In his column, Friedman points to the “green design” of a new semiconductor plant opened by Texas Instruments outside Dallas. The article notes the ecological and economic benefits of such an approach to manufacturing.

I just can’t believe there are still people cynical enough to believe that the warming of the earth and its oceans is A) not a crisis, and B) not due to human activity. It’s easy to be ignorant when you won’t be reaping the full effects of your actions during your lifetime. Thing is, we are starting to see wide-scale effects of warming today. And most experts agree it’s only getting worse.

New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert, whose three-part series “The Climate of Man” last year illustrated the extent to which environmental degradation has occurred, has another story in the January 9, 2006 issue of the magazine. This time, Kolbert describes how various insect and amphibian species are reacting to rising temperatures, and how evidence of global warming just keeps building.

It’s one thing to be cynical about politics or love. It’s quite another to be so jaded that you ignore what will soon be in front of all our eyes, and what future generations, if they’re able to live on this planet, will have to endure as well.

What is it with America’s love of the penny?

Last week, the U.S. Postal Service raised the rate of a first-class standard stamp from 37 cents to 39. The increase was noted widely as the first since 2002.

I’m annoyed.

Not at the increase itself. I understand inflation. I’m annoyed that the good people at the USPS didn’t do us a common courtesy and simply make stamps 40 cents.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the postal service (the people who deliver mail AND the cross-country musical wizardry by the same name). I love the fact that in this so-called digital age (the era of automated everything, where “mail” is so slow and archaic, it’s taken on the name of one of the most pesky, persistent, and slimy of slimy pests — the snail), there’s still such a thing as putting paper into an envelope, licking the envelope closed, and affixing a stamp. The process of course gets more medieval from there, as we drop said envelope into a blue metal box, where it is picked up (rain, wind, sleet, or snow) by people in light blue uniforms and funny-looking white wagons.

Sorry, I’m waxing romantic, pining for the days when mail meant everything…when I lived and breathed by the delivery of assorted letters from friends and the occasional magazine.

I merely mean to say that despite my annoyance over its monetary policies, I appreciate the men and women still providing this horribly outdated service.

Shifting gears slightly…

Cheers to store owners and cashiers across the land with their Need a Penny, Take a Penny/Have a Penny, Leave a Penny jars…their reluctance to offer pennies as change, instead rounding change up to the nearest nickel, that surely soon-to-be rendered useless brother of the penny.

*Footnote:
In researching this post, I came across a couple of interesting “you knew they had to be out there” websites for groups whose mission is to “save the penny.” Pretty much my enemies: Americans for Common Cents; Penny Lovers of America; Common Cents New York.

New Jersey, long considered by many the armpit of America…living in the shadow of and getting all the trash from that big city across the Hudson…the until-now, somewhat aptly but grossly misleadingly named “Garden State”…has chosen its new slogan for itself: New Jersey: Come See For Yourself.

This lame, generic, not-gonna-work-on-nobody, five-year-old’s cleverness level catchphrase beat out the obvious winner here: New Jersey: You Got A Problem With That?

In light of misunderstandings of the intentions I had when I posted this list of my favorite movies of last year, and seeing as how words are more or less my business, I decided to post my first ever digitized list of words whose definitions I learned and kept track of in 2005.

A more clever person (be he blogger or not) would probably have been able to come up with some cute, poignant prose incorporating all the words. But that’s not me. Maybe I’m too tired. Maybe my mind is already on Mexico, where I’m headed tomorrow. Or maybe I’m simply incapable.

Also, by way of disclaimer, some of these are words I already “knew” but I couldn’t quite get my head around their definition. Many on this list are words I will never use, and many are words I’m still struggling to understand and apply. Either way, for better or worse, here you go:

amanuensis - one employed to write from dictation or to copy manuscript.
anodyne - not likely to provoke dissent or offense; uncontentious or inoffensive, often deliberately so.
apoplectic - of, relating to, or causing stroke.
bloviate - to speak or write verbosely and windily.
cajolery - to persuade with flattery or gentle urging especially in the face of reluctance.
catafalque - an ornamental structure sometimes used in funerals for the lying in state of the body.
cavil - to raise trivial objections to.
celerity - swiftness of movement.
distaff - of or concerning women.
ecumenism - principles and practices especially as shown among religious groups.
ensorcell - from sorcier sorcerer.
ersatz - being a usually artificial and inferior substitute or imitation.
estuarine - of, relating to, or formed in an estuary, which is a water passage where the tide meets a river current.
Euclidian - of, relating to, or based on the geometry of Euclid or a geometry with similar axioms.
halcyon - denoting a period of time in the past that was idyllically happy and peaceful.
internecine - of, relating to, or involving conflict within a group.
lubricious - offensively displaying or intended to arouse sexual desire.
miasma - a highly unpleasant or unhealthy smell or vapor.
perfidy - deceitfulness; untrustworthiness.
perfunctory - (of an action or gesture) carried out with a minimum of effort or reflection.
puerile - childishly silly and trivial.
raffish - marked by or suggestive of flashy vulgarity or crudeness.
recondite - little known; abstruse.
recrudescing - to break out again; recur.
semaphoric - a visual signaling apparatus with flags, lights, or mechanically moving arms, as one used on a railroad.
solecism - an ungrammatical combination of words in a sentence; also : a minor blunder in speech.
spurious - of illegitimate birth.
sartorial - of or relating to tailoring, clothes, or style of dress.

* most (maybe all, I can’t honestly remember) definitions hulled from New Oxford American Dictionary, courtesy of Dictionary.app, which comes with Apple’s OS X 10.4.x Tiger.

It looks like several states are stepping in where the federal government has failed. Namely in pollution control and establish a realistic minimum wage.

I’m in the process of parsing the 188-page BART Draft Fiscal Year 06 Ten-Year Plan, but couldn’t resist venting a couple of general complaints I have about the system. Beware: these are pretty random.

First, in looking over the plan, with its endless insider-speak and historical charts, it occurred to me that since 1995, BART has functioned more as a system of getting people into the cities from the newly sprawling suburbs (such as Pittsburgh/Bay Point, Dublin/Pleasanton, and Colma) than as a system for those living in the cities proper. The only exception I can think of is the extension to SFO, which I still consider one of BART’s better accomplishments.

Second, another thing about BART that’s total bullshit is that if you go into a station, having swiped your ticket, and you get downstairs only to find out there’s some sort of delay (someone left some garbage on the tracks in the East Bay, and now trains are backed up coming into the city, for example), you can’t leave the station without being charged. All that’s needed is to tag your card’s magnetic stripe with a clock time, and then establish some minimum duration of time (something like 10 minutes) under which you will not be charged. Easy. Fair.

Third, would it really hurt the system to continually display train times? As it is, updates on arriving trains are given sporadically, so you can get to the platform and wait for what seems like forever, not knowing when the next train will get there or where it’s headed. Just post something like the next three trains slotted to arrive at the station, which lines they are, and how long until they get there. I can’t help but think in this tech-savvy area, someone could get this done easily.

Okay, back to translating the 10-year plan.

So as of today, BART is raising its fares.

The transit system announced last month that fares will rise 3.7 percent system-wide to keep pace with inflation and operational costs.

Great. An already totally over-priced public transportation system is getting more unaffordable.

Since I moved to the Bay Area, nearly six years ago, I’ve wondered why we couldn’t have a system with a flat fee, like the one in New York City. The baseline fare for subway and bus rides to anywhere in the five boroughs is just $2. That’s up 50 cents from when I lived there. Fifty cents in six years. It’s almost enough to make me type exclamation marks.

To boot, MTA’s system is much more comprehensive than BART, with shorter distances between stops and many more lines.

Because I don’t exactly have the tools for an exhaustive investigation of BART, I’ll let my snap judgments speak for themselves. Two words come to mind: politics and corruption. Well, maybe that’s redundant.

I’ll be writing more on this soon. I want to spend enough time on this topic in the coming months that it’s warranted it’s own category.