Various Items

I have a small list of items to get down on ... paper(?) ... today.

1) Tedski at Rum, Romanism and Rebellion (R-Cubed) reports that the most recent gossip making the rounds has Rick Renzi resigning from the US House of Representatives by Friday. That would be tomorrow.

There was a great deal of discussion about potential issues Renzi had in the run-up to the election last November. Predictably, left-leaning blogs were all over it (admittedly, mostly with hopeful speculation in place of any actual hard information), while right-leaning one's tended to downplay it. For example, right-leaning Greg Patterson at Espresso Pundit had the following about the affair on Oct. 24, 2006:

There is a weird conspiracy theory going around the lefty blogs. The theory is that Congressman Rick Renzi has been indicted but the US Attorney for Arizona is sitting on it so that Republicans don't lose the seat.

The Arizona Republic ran a story on Oct. 26 (unfortunately, now only available by paying for access to their archive) essentially dismissing the entire issue.

Well, time passes and we zoom ahead to last week's Wall Street Journal article about the matter, and the problems being hinted at last fall are given greater substantiation, to the extent that, within a week, the buzz is whether Renzi can survive the month, much less his full-term. It's embarrassing (or, at least, should be), particularly given how long the original hints have been out there, that it takes a news outlet from New York to break the story rather than one of our in-state papers or stations.

2) As an extra-special bonus related to item 1, the entire affair opens the door further to accusations that Paul Charlton, the US District Attorney who was overseeing the Renzi investigation before being asked to tender his resignation as part of the Gonzales affair, was asked to step down as a means of halting, or at least delaying until after the election, any possible indictment in the case.

Given the amount of time which has passed since the election, I find it doubtful the DA's office was on the verge of announcing an indictment last Oct. or Nov. However, given the timing Charlton's placement on the now-infamous "firing list" in Sept. 2006, it certainly seems increasingly likely the two events -- the Renzi investigation and Charlton's firing -- are closely related.

3) Leading Republican Presidential candidate said the following a couple days ago (via Poltitic0):

MANCHESTER, N.H. —- Rudy Giuliani said if a Democrat is elected president in 2008, America will be at risk for another terrorist attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001.

But if a Republican is elected, he said, especially if it is him, terrorist attacks can be anticipated and stopped.

“If any Republican is elected president —- and I think obviously I would be the best at this —- we will remain on offense and will anticipate what [the terrorists] will do and try to stop them before they do it,” Giuliani said.

Whether or not Giuliani is the best candidate remains open to question (particularly after making the above statement), but it's nice to know that _all_ that is needed to keep America safe from terrorism is a President with an "R" representing their party affiliation.

According to Rudy if, say, Hillary Clinton were to win election next year, she need simply change her party affiliation to Republican shortly before the inauguration and we will all be safe for the next four years.

One might, if one were feeling peckish, note our current placeholder on the high seat has an "R" for party affiliation, yet somehow failed to "anticipate or stop" the greatest terror attack ever on US soil. If one were feeling peckish. Which I'm not.

4) The Washington Post has an article this morning detailing the extent of private political briefings held in various government agencies after the mid-term elections. Although the author mentions "20 private briefings" in "at least 15 government agencies", a pair of paragraphs further down in the story make clear this has been common practice for the length of the Bush administration:

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said that he was not familiar with the details of the briefings for other agencies, but that the projected fate of specific candidates was "certainly" discussed. He also said that in addition to the 20 briefings given in 2006-2007, "there were others throughout the last six years," making clear that this was a common Bush administration practice during each election cycle.

Stanzel said that Rove "occasionally spoke to political appointees at departments and agencies" but that his presentations were more "off the cuff" and were meant to convey "their importance to advancing the president's agenda."

Such briefings are potentially illegal in at least two different ways under the Hatch Act of 1939:

a. It's illegal to use the resources of these agencies (such as meeting space, office resources) to promote a specific political party.

b. It's illegal to "coerce" government employees to into acts which would favor some political party.

Given the details uncovered about one such briefing at the General Services Administration last January, it's at least arguable some, if not all, of these briefings violate the Act on both counts.

As a piece of unrelated trivia, there was an earlier Hatch Act of 1887 which set of land grants to states for the purpose of setting up experimental agriculture stations. As far as I know, the Bush-Cheney-Rove triumvirate hasn't managed to violate that one yet.

5) Some blog I clicked through today (and I'd like to credit it, but now I can't find it again) led me to this item, about a new design for solar panels.

As the story notes, the design isn't perfected yet -- apparently there are issues with overcoming the resistance within the cell. That part, I suspect, is just a case of engineering -- not easy, necessarily, but not likely to be innovative as well.

The hard part, the breath-taking part, is already done - the new panel design, using nano-towers in place of flat panels to trap the incoming solar energy. It's the exact same principle grass uses, or pine needles. Like many extremely clever ideas, it's really simple once you think about it. The hard part is thinking about it in the first place.


6) In the run-up to the Iraq invasion I was regularly frustrated with the apparent inability of the press to ask questions I was interested in getting answers to. For example, why were certain pieces of intelligence (such as those originate from Douglas Feith's group) given greater weight than other pieces, which on the surface seemed like they would be more reliable?

When I was in journalism school, it was hammered into my head repeatedly that you _never_ simply accepted what you were told by any government official, you _always_ assumed there was more to the story, and your job was to find out what that was. Otherwise, you might as well be working for TASS in the cold-war era.

Well, PBS aired "Buying the War" last night, a documentary by Bill Moyers which reviews the media oversight, or, more correctly, the lack thereof, in the run up to the Iraq invasion. I have not managed to watch it yet, although it's safely taped for viewing tonight or this weekend. If you missed it, it is also available online. By all accounts, it is a scathing, damning indictment of the failure of the press to live up to it's role as an adversary and inquisitor of our government.

That role is the sole reason the press has been granted special privileges under our Constitution. As a famous comic-book character often says, "with great power comes great responsibility". In the run up to the war, our press accepted the rights, and failed the responsibilities.