Jury: 6 Months in Prison for Navy Lawyer

Diaz, who could have received up to 14 years in prison, gave emotional testimony during the sentencing hearing, apologizing for his actions.

“The prosecutors were right: I’m a meticulous man. I should have done better. It was extremely irrational for me to do what I did,” Diaz said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/18/AR2007051801608.html?nav=hcmodule I am reminded of George Orwell’s classic: 1984. Specifically, I am reminded of the scenes where Winston Smith has been successfully conditioned to alter his thoughts so that they conform to that of the authoritarian government.

Contrast that with the article: Here you have a defendant publicly recanting his beliefs so that he may conform to what the prosecution says is moral (even though the prosecution’s position is inherently immoral).

What can be said about Rachel Carson that hasn’t already been said? All I can do is post this article; anything else would be superfluous.  Here’s an article listing commemorative events in the area.

Rachel Carson’s Persistence and Pain In Focus 100 Years After Her Birth

Here, in a study that faces the garden, is where Rachel Carson would sit and write on days when she felt well. Here, in a bedroom with a dogwood outside the window, is where she would lie down and write on days when she felt worse.

On her sickest days, as Carson struggled with cancer and radiation therapy, she came back to her brick house on Berwick Road in Silver Spring and couldn’t write at all. Instead, an assistant read her words back to her, allowing her to edit even when she couldn’t sit up.

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In 1935, with a master’s degree in zoology from Johns Hopkins University, the Pennsylvania native was hired as a government contractor to write scripts for a radio nature show, “Romance Under the Waters.” She made $6.50 a day. In 1936, Carson became a full-time science writer, and she stayed with the government for 16 more years. Carson also raised a grand-nephew, Roger Christie, whom she adopted as a son.These were less cautious times in wildlife management: Government officials were still handing out recipes for eating the animals they studied. Still, in 1945, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was conducting research on a widely used pesticide.

“DDT may have undesirable and even dangerous effects unless its use is properly controlled,” [my emphasis] said a news release, which Carson helped write.

“It stuck in the back of her mind, apparently,” said Mark Madison, a historian for the Fish and Wildlife Service, Carson’s employer for much of her career.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/17/AR2007051702627.html?hpid=artslot

Oh yeah, I’m geeked about this news…

The strongest evidence yet for the existence of dark matter has been spotted 5 billion light-years away in the ongoing collision of two clusters of galaxies. Astronomers have detected what appears to be a vast ring of dark matter — so wide that even light would need 2.6 million years to cross it.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/05/15/darkmatter_spa.html?category=space&guid=20070515140000&dcitc=w19-502-ak-0000

I am not a proponent for the idea of saying nice things about a — – — – — – s. So I am in complete agreement with Timothy Noah’s decision to denounce Jerry Falwell on the occasion of Falwell’s death.

Jerry Falwell’s Hit Parade

God, they say, is love, but the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who died May 15, hit the jackpot trafficking in small-minded condemnation. The controversies Falwell generated followed a predictable loop. 1.) Falwell would say something hateful or clownish about some person or group associated with liberalism. 2.) A public outcry would ensue. 3.) Falwell would apologize and retract the offending comment. 4.) Falwell would repeat the comment, slightly rephrased.

For 20 years, evangelicals have chided the mainstream media for treating Falwell’s ghastly pronouncements as news; Falwell, they often confide in private, ceased being a significant figure well before he left his signature political organization, the Moral Majority, in 1987. If so, someone forgot to tell Sen. John McCain, R.-Ariz., who as a presidential candidate in 2000 condemned Falwell’s intolerance (”The political tactics of division and slander are not our values, they are corrupting influences on religion and politics, and those who practice them in the name of religion or in the name of the Republican Party or in the name of America shame our faith, our party and our country”) but last year, as a presidential candidate positioning for 2008, made peace with Falwell and gave a commencement address (”We have nothing to fear from each other“) to the 2006 graduating class at Falwell’s Liberty University. On news of Falwell’s death, McCain said in a statement, “Dr. Falwell was a man of distinguished accomplishment who devoted his life to serving his faith and country.”

Nonsense. He was a bigot, a reactionary, a liar, and a fool. Herewith, [is] a Falwell sampler.

http://www.slate.com/id/2166220?nav=ais

There can now be no doubt now that Alberto “Gonzo” Gonzales is quite the S.O.B. I NEVER thought that I would see the day when John “Pentacostal and proud of it” Ashcroft would be venerated by the left for his stands. That is how bad things are.

It’s hard to take any pleasure from the depiction of government officials in critical condition being manipulated in their hospital beds by soulless White House flunkies. But Senate Democrats are all smiles as former Deputy Attorney General James Comey goes before the Senate judiciary committee this morning. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., can barely stop grinning long enough to ask his next question. Because Alberto Gonzales truly is the gift that keeps on giving. Only a handful of reporters are on hand, at what should have been a rerun of Comey’s devastating House testimony two weeks ago. But we are treated to Grey’s Anatomy meets The West Wing.And maybe that’s why the Democrats finally have reason to grin. They have failed so far to take down Attorney General Alberto Gonzales with tales of the man’s hackery, sycophancy, and boundless apathy. But now we’re being treated to a graphic retelling of the AG’s efforts to browbeat a critically ill man into signing off on the National Security Agency’s illegal surveillance program.

Wait. Now even I’m grinning.

http://www.slate.com/id/2166213/fr/flyout

These people are bastards. Who the hell do they think that they’re kidding? These guns will be on the street in no time.

Raffle Being Held In Government Building in Fairfax

“I guess it’s a free country, and people can make mistakes in judgment all the time,” Kaine said. “When I read about a group doing this, it just makes me wonder what makes them tick.” *****************************************

The raffle Thursday night at the Mason District Government Center in Annandale has angered Fairfax County officials and heightened attention on Virginia’s gun laws a month after a 23-year-old college student from Fairfax fatally shot 32 people and himself at Virginia Tech.

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“It is not the place for government to interfere with a private raffle,” Attorney General Robert F. McDonnell (R) said through a spokesman.

House Majority Leader H. Morgan Griffith (R-Salem) said gun control advocates frequently use government property to hold gun buyback events.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/14/AR2007051401526.html?nav=hcmodule

Andrew Cohen writes the Bench Conference blog for WaPo.

What a morning it’s been for devotees of the U.S. Attorney scandal. While former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey was testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee about ghoulish behavior on the part of then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General himself was throwing under the bus his former deputy, Paul J. McNulty, who resigned under fire yesterday from the Justice Department. Got that? The guy who should be Attorney General was highlighting the backhanded way in which the current Attorney General operated back in 2004. And Gonzales, the guy who has kept his job thanks to blind loyalty on the part of President Bush, was unable and unwilling to show any measure of fealty to his own subordinate, savaging him less than 24 hours after McNulty decided to go.

 http://blog.washingtonpost.com/benchconference/2007/05/alberto_throws_paul_under_the.html#more

I got this from S. L. Robinson via the Green All Views Listserve. As you can see from the article, Zionism as a racist ideology is alive and well…

A report by two major Israeli civil rights organizations that was issued Sunday indicates that Palestinians abandoned more than 1,000 homes and at least 1,829 businesses in the center of Hebron due to pressure by the Israel Defense Forces, the police and Jewish settlers. Many of those referred to fled during the second intifada, beginning in September 2000.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) and B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Civil Rights in the Occupied Territories, claim that a “policy of separation on a national basis” is being imposed in Hebron.

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It states furthermore that the fabric of Palestinian life in Hebron has been badly damaged as a result of the severe restriction of movement imposed by the IDF on the city’s Arab inhabitants, particularly since the outbreak of the second intifada. IDF policy prohibits Palestinians from walking or driving on the main streets of the city; the army also uses military orders to close Palestinian-owned business and prevents local authorities from enforcing the law against settlers who use violence against Palestinians and their property.

In addition, the organizations claim, there is a “routine of violence and harassment” on the part of the security forces against Palestinian residents. In the first three years of the intifada, curfews were imposed against those living in the center of Hebron on at least 377 days, often for days at a time, with short breaks in which those affected were allowed to stock up on provisions.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/859084.html

The class bigotry that is exhibited by some of the posters on this particular forum is quite interesting, too say the least. Please notice how this bigotry translates into ad hominem attacks on the essayist.

Pope Benedict XVI and his predecessor John Paul II have consistently put themselves on the side of the aristocracy, the landowners and the well-to-do in Latin America. Local Roman Catholics like Leonardo Boff and Bishop Romero, in contradistinction, put themselves on the side of the poor and dispossessed. Bishop Romero was murdered. Leonardo Boff was laicized.

The issue is not so much whether Jesus was a social revolutionary or not, the real issue is why Benedict XVI is not.

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/john_shelby_spong/2007/05/jesus_broke_barriers_pope_buil.html

Normally, I don’t give a damn about entertainers; but this article just appealed to me.  Here’s a guy who is — evidently — donating his time and prestige to help a classical English theater garner attention for its production.

The 36-year-old star, known for Hollywood roles such as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars films, will earn $790 a week _ standard minimum wage for actors in Britain _ playing Shakespeare’s arch villain Iago in “Othello,” Donmar Warehouse spokeswoman Kate Morley said Saturday.

 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/12/AR2007051200423.html?hpid=entnews