Sunday, July 29, 2012

A Good Day at the Office Usually Defeats A Bad Day at the Ballpark: A Contrarian View


The hot dog landed with a Technicolor splat on the step just to the right of my seat.  It was fully loaded, the mustard and ketchup coating the meat and bun, the onions scattering to the step below.  Whoever dropped it gave no indication of being aware of the loss.  This was the beginning of a bad day at the ballpark. 

Sooner or later, someone’s going to tell you that a bad day at the ballpark beats a good day at the office.   You should conclude from this observation that he probably has a very bad job, or maybe that he has spent too little time in a ballpark to know what he’s talking about.  Or maybe both.  What we know is that he will be male.  I don’t know who said it first, but I know of no female ever having uttered the line.

I didn’t have to miss any time at the office to be there.  It was Sunday, and besides, I’m retired.  Still, I was hoping the Angels would beat the Rays, and that my nephew Mark would be heroic in the victory. 

It was not to be.  The game was a pitchers’ duel between the Angels’ new acquisition, Cy Young winner Zack Greinke, and Jeremy Hellickson, who beat out Mark for the distinction of American League Rookie of the Year.  Both pitched well, but Greinke gave up a couple of runs, while Hellickson allowed none. 

Nothing particularly good happened in the first eight innings.  By the ninth inning, both starters had been relieved, and the Rays still led 2-0.  They sent closer and former Angel Fernando Rodney out in the bottom of the ninth.  The Angels had runners on first and second with one out when Albert Pujols came to the plate with Mark on deck.  Rodney threw three consecutive balls, and the die seemed to be cast.  Pujols would walk, bringing Mark to the plate with the bases loaded.  He could win the game with an extra-base hit. 

Pujols took a called strike.  On the next pitch, he hit into a game-ending double play.  The bad day at the ballpark took two hours and 49 minutes.

I spent most of the last 35 years working in offices.  A good day, as Paul Simon said, was a day without pain.  Occasionally there would be a particularly good day, when a court issued a decision vindicating an important public policy we had defended.  Those were rare but joyous occasions.  Mostly, though, a good day was just a productive day when nothing bad happened, typically when the boss was away.

Does a bad day at the ballpark beat a good day at the office?  Not in my experience.  It’s just that there are a lot more good days at the ballpark than there are at the office.

Friday, July 20, 2012

Hard Ride to the Big Easy: The Sunset Limited and its Limitations


The Sunset Limited left Los Angeles Union Station at 10:00 on a Wednesday evening in June, taking me on a journey that would roughly follow the Easy Rider route-- paralleling I-10 east through hundreds of miles of desert, crossing the vast expanse of Texas, and continuing on to New Orleans.  On the whole, the train ride would prove to be a better trip.

A year or two ago, as I contemplated retirement from my civil service job, I began to think about trips I wanted to take and places I wanted to go.  At some point, the thought occurred to me of combining two of my loves, baseball and trains.  Why not take a train trip across the country, visiting ballparks along the way?  As my nephew Mark Trumbo established himself as a rising star with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, the idea became more concrete.  I would follow the Angels on a road trip, and do it entirely by rail. 



In the summer of 2011, I often traveled by Amtrak or Metrolink from Union Station to Anaheim to watch Mark in his outstanding rookie year.  On some of these trips, I read Paul Theroux’s wonderful books about rail journeys across Asia, The Great Railway Bazaar and Ghost Train to the Eastern Star.  My journey would be less adventurous, but Theroux’s writing helped keep the idea at the front of my mind.

By year’s end, retirement became a reality, and I began researching the trip.  I quickly discovered that it was more complicated than I had anticipated.  The fundamental problem was integrating baseball and railroad schedules.  Baseball road trips typically involve series in two or three cities over a period of a week to ten days.  Although most of the cities are on Amtrak routes, the schedule is not designed with train travel in mind.  At no time this year, for example, do the Angels play consecutive series in Baltimore, New York and Boston (or even two of the three), all American League cities served by frequent trains on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor route.  More typical is the Angels’ schedule for July 30-August 8, which has four games in Texas, three in Chicago and three in Oakland--ten games in ten days in cities many hundreds of miles apart.  Such a “road trip” requires air travel.

The best possibility was the Angels’ last road trip before the All-Star break:  two games in Baltimore, four in Toronto, and three in Cleveland.  The first part of the trip was straightforward:  I would take the Sunset Limited from Los Angeles to New Orleans, and then the Crescent from New Orleans to Baltimore.  The next part was problematic.  To get to Toronto by train, I would have to leave Baltimore in the wee hours of the morning, change trains in New York, and arrive in Toronto too late for the Friday game.  Then I would have to leave Toronto on Sunday morning, and miss the final game there, in order to get to Cleveland in time for Monday’s game.  

Much as I would have liked to see Toronto, getting there on this trip simply was not practical.  I decided instead to take the short train trip from Baltimore to Philadephia, see a Phillies game, and rejoin the Angels in Cleveland.  Then I would go to Pittsburgh to catch a couple of games with the Giants, before returning home via Chicago.

Amtrak offers 15-, 30- and 45-day passes that allow travel to multiple cities for substantially less than regular coach fare.  That gets you a seat with a little more legroom than a coach seat on a plane.  For an additional sum, you can get a room in the sleeping car, but the additional sum amounts to several hundred dollars a night.  I bought a 30-day pass, figuring I would save money by traveling coach, and compensate by getting a couple of extra days of rest at stops along the way. 

On the evening of June 20, the idea at last was becoming reality.  As we rolled east through the San Gabriel Valley, I made my way to the observation car.   As I sipped a Sierra Nevada, I began reading the final chapters of Mark Haskell Smith’s witty, informative and slightly subversive book, Heart of Dankness:  Underground Botanists, Outlaw Farmers, and the race for the Cannabis Cup.



It seemed that we were making slow progress, and sure enough, we arrived a few minutes late at the first stop, Pomona.  We were even later getting to Palm Springs.  The sad truth is that Amtrak runs on borrowed track, and the owners of the track have priority.  So the Sunset Limited, like most Amtrak trains, must wait for freight trains to pass. 

After midnight, I headed back to my window seat next to a student bound for Tucson.  Here I discovered a fundamental miscalculation that was to haunt me the rest of the trip.  Coach seats on trains do offer more legroom than on planes, but not enough.  There is a legrest that extends out from your seat to align with the footrest that folds out from the seat in front of you.  It might work if you’re no more than five feet tall, but I found that there wasn’t enough room to fully extend my legs.  Also, the seats only recline about 20 degrees, although this appears to be more a design limitation than a space limitation.  In short, if I was going to get any sleep, it wouldn’t be in anything close to a horizontal position.  It would be slouching in a decidedly un-ergonomic position somewhere between sitting and lying. 

It didn’t work for me that night, or any subsequent night on a train.  I would get reasonably comfortable, close my eyes … and then, after a few minutes, the position would become uncomfortable and I would shift to another.  After more position changes than Willard Mitt Romney on crack, I would finally doze off for a few minutes … and then wake up with a pain that could be assuaged only by another position change.  I slept maybe two or three hours that night, and wouldn’t do much better in the nights to come. 

We were supposed to arrive in Tucson at 7:30 in the morning for a 45-minute stop, enough time to get off the train, and maybe get a cup of coffee and a bagel.   But by then we were running more than an hour late, so I had breakfast on the train, after duly photographing it.  It appears that I had what was to become for me an Amtrak “usual”:  vegetable omelet, Yukon potatoes (in lieu of grits) and croissant (in lieu of biscuit or raisin bread).   This was served on what I came to think of as Amtrak china—a white plastic plate with Amtrak blue border that might look like china in a photo.



When we finally arrived in Tucson, we were advised not to venture far from the station if we got off the train.  I got off and surveyed the terrain.  The station was in such an out-of-the-way location that there wasn’t even a Starbucks in sight.  I had to settle for a cup of coffee from the vending machine in the station.  It further developed that the train had an unspecified mechanical problem that had to be dealt with before we could leave.  The stop stretched to more than two hours, and it was late morning before we pulled out of Tucson.






The Arizona desert is beautiful in a minimalist sort of way.  We lumbered eastward, past saguaro cactus and distant mountain ranges, through the small towns of Benson, Arizona and Deming and Lordsburg, New Mexico.   The mountains became closer, and the train slowed as it rounded hilly bends, crossed the Rio Grande, and arrived in El Paso four hours late. 

El Paso appeared to be a more interesting city than I was expecting, but there wasn’t enough time there to make getting off the train worthwhile.  After that, it was a seemingly endless slog across Texas.  We slowed down, but didn’t stop for Marfa, perhaps best known as a movie location.  A short distance later was a stop at Alpine, adjacent to Big Bend National Park.  Two hours later was Sanderson.  Another three hours to Del Rio, the border town best known to me for being across the Rio Grande from the 500,000-watt transmitters that broadcast to much of the United States strangely exotic radio programs I remember listening to in high school.  From a thousand miles away, I could tune in the static-laden sounds of blue singers and crazy preachers howling in the night.     

No such entertainment on the train, though.  Between the stops was a seemingly endless stretch of nothing.  This was West Texas, land of the Rugged Individual, epicenter of the American Dream to some.  And it was too barren and desolate a place even for Ron Paul, who represents a more hospitable district near Galveston.  This patch of West Texas was just a place to escape from at maximum velocity, which is seldom achieved on Amtrak.

Nothing happened until we reached San Antonio.  Not much happened there either.   I had spent a happy three days in San Antonio in 1990, attending a hearing officers conference, seeing the Alamo, and discovering the charms of the River Walk.  We were scheduled for a 95-minute stop at 4:50 Friday morning, but we were now running several hours late.  So the stop was truncated, and we were again instructed to stay close.   




By now, the brown desert terrain had given way to green farmlands.  We passed a watermelon festival in one small town.  After a stop in Houston, on through the night, across industrial East Texas and Louisiana.  We were scheduled to arrive in New Orleans at 9:40 Friday evening, but we were still running four hours behind, and I phoned my hotel with a projected 2:00 a.m. arrival.  But then I had my first pleasant encounter with the Amtrak fudge factor, as I discovered that the schedule built an extra hour into the journey between the penultimate stop in Schreiver and the final one in New Orleans.  By now I was tracking our progress on my phone’s maps app, and I was thrilled when we crossed the Huey P. Long Bridge into New Orleans.  We arrived at the station about 12:30, with the Big Easy wide-awake and going strong.

I, on the other hand, was sleep-deprived and exhausted.  I checked in at the St. Christopher Hotel, just across Canal Street from the French Quarter.  The St. Christopher occupies a renovated brick structure that was the tallest building in town when erected in the late 1800s.  My room was small, with quirky angles that made furniture arrangement problematic, the original brick walls and a window looking out on the street.  It was quite pleasant.

I slept until mid-morning, getting up just in time for the continental breakfast downstairs.  I was left with half a day to see what I could of New Orleans.  It was hot and humid when I ventured into the Vieux Carré, but the Quarter was jumping by mid-day. 



I walked several blocks to Bourbon Street, where Café Beignet at Musical Legends Park offered free live jazz.  I entered the pocket park, walking past life-sized statues of Fats Domino, Al Hirt and Pete Fountain.  Sure enough, a quartet with a vocalist were performing standards as I found a stool in the shade at Café Beignet’s outdoor bar.  They offered mango daiquiris, which seemed like a good way to beat the heat.   Eight dollars and a coupon from a tourist publication bought me two of them, dispensed from a Slurpy-type machine and served in large plastic tumblers. 

If you’re at a place called Café Beignet, how can you not try the beignets?  For less than $4.00, I got an order of three, served fresh from the oven and too hot to eat immediately.  They were something like large doughnuts without holes, and were delicious but filling.  I saved the last one for breakfast the next morning.  When the band went on break, I decided it was time to go.  I asked the bartender if it was OK to take my drink out on the street, and she said it was fine as long as it wasn’t in a glass container.  My kind of town, I said.

That evening, I ventured back to the Quarter without a particular destination in mind, but seeking music and Cajun food.  I passed a number of inviting restaurants, but after the beignets I wasn’t very hungry.  I ventured down a quiet side street, and soon was surprised by what seemed like a Mardi Gras parade, complete with marching band.  I followed it to Bourbon Street, where the sidewalks were lined with watching crowds. 











When the parade was over, I found myself half a block from the park and Café Beignet.  Music was happening.  According to their website, it was apparently Steamboat Willie and His New Orleans Jazz Band.  His voice and choice of material reminded me a lot of Leon Redbone.  I settled in and had a bowl of gumbo.  It was tasty, and all the dinner I needed. 

There was much more to see and do in one of the most fascinating and original cities in the United States, but it would have to wait for my next visit.  My train was to leave at 7:00 a.m., and I didn’t expect much sleep on the overnight trip to Baltimore.  The hour was early, but the time had come to call it a night.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Red Light Romney: Summoning the Ghost of Caryl Chessman


When Mitt Romney was a college freshman, he told fellow residents of his Stanford University dormitory that he sometimes disguised himself as a police officer – a crime in many states, including Michigan and California, where he then lived. And he had the uniform on display as proof.”

--Joe Conason, “Did Young Mitt Romney Impersonate A Police Officer?  Another Witness Says Yes”[1]

Born in St. Joseph, Michigan, Caryl Chessman was a criminal with a long record who spent most of his adult life behind bars. He had been paroled a short time from prison in California when he was arrested near Los Angeles and charged with being the notorious ‘Red Light Bandit.’ The ‘Bandit’ would follow people in their cars to secluded areas and flash a red light that tricked them into thinking he was a police officer. When they opened their windows or exited the vehicle, he would rob and, in the case of several young women, rape them. In July 1948, Chessman was convicted on 17 counts of robbery, kidnapping, and rape, and was condemned to death.”

--Wikipedia Article on Caryl Chessman[2]

Given what I already knew about Willard Mitt Romney’s character, the most surprising thing about the disclosure of his youthful impersonation of a police officer is that it conjured memories of a notorious criminal who was executed more than half a century ago.

I was in sixth grade in California when Caryl Chessman was executed on May 2, 1960.  His case was a topic of intense debate at the time, and one of my earliest political memories is of opposing the death penalty on my elementary school playground.  Chessman, Romney and I were all born in Michigan, and Romney would have been in seventh grade at Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills when Chessman was executed in California.  The Chessman case was a national cause célèbre, but whether Romney was aware of it is a matter of conjecture.

Nonetheless, Romney’s classmates describe a modus operandi strikingly similar to Chessman’s.  Joe Conason quotes Robin Madden: 

“He told us that he had gotten the uniform from his father,” George Romney, then the Governor of Michigan, whose security detail was staffed by uniformed troopers. “He told us that he was using it to pull over drivers on the road. He also had a red flashing light that he would attach to the top of his white Rambler.”  http://www.nationalmemo.com/did-young-mitt-romney-impersonate-a-police-officer-another-witness-says-yes/

Conason further reports:

In The Real Romney, a biography published by Boston Globe reporters Michael Kranish and Scott Helman this year, another former friend recalled how Romney had “put a siren on top of his car and chased two of his friends who were driving around with their dates.” The two friends were in on the scheme, but the girls were not. There was beer in the car trunk, according to a prearranged plan. Mitt told his two counterparts to get out of their vehicle and into his car. Then they drove off, leaving the girls behind.
“It was a terrible thing to do,” said one of his accomplices, a Cranbrook classmate named Graham McDonald.

To be sure, leaving the girls behind is not akin to raping them.  Still, reports of Romney’s use of Chessman-like deception to inflict suffering on others for his own pleasure add weight to the Washington Post’s account of his history of bullying at Cranbrook.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mitt-romneys-prep-school-classmates-recall-pranks-but-also-troubling-incidents/2012/05/10/gIQA3WOKFU_story.html.

Moreover, the reports establish that Romney began adopted patterns of deceptive behavior at a young age.  His pervasive pattern of blatantly lying in his presidential campaign has been extensively documented, by Richard Cohen http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mitt-romneys-enviable-ability-to-ignore-the-truth/2012/04/16/gIQACwTUMT_story.html, Eugene Robinson http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/romneys-distortions-about-obama-do-us-a-disservice/2012/05/28/gJQA9JuTxU_story.html, and many others.  As Rachel Maddow has reported, Romney brazenly stands by his lies even after they have been exposed.  http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/07/12113493-links-for-the-67-trms.

Willard Mitt Romney may not be the moral equivalent of the Red Light Bandit, but he has conclusively demonstrated that he is unfit to be President of the United States.
 

Friday, May 25, 2012

Lessons Learned in San Diego


As a courtesy to others, guests are asked to refrain from walking in aisles during player at-bats from the top of the second inning until the conclusion of the game. Guest Services Representatives are provided with handheld signs to remind guests to observe this policy.

--“Aisle Policy,” posted on the San Diego Padres website

Thus Petco Park ushers gave Angels fans some badly-needed schooling in common courtesy last weekend. Meanwhile, on the field, the Angels got schooled in the intricacies of National League-style baseball, and left town with only one win in the three-game series--and two outfielders on the disabled list.

Notwithstanding this dismal outcome, for me the series illustrated the superiority of the National League style of baseball.  Lacking the designated hitter rule, National League managers must make difficult strategic decisions their American League counterparts are spared:  Does the situation call for pinch hitting for the starting pitcher, even though he may be good for another inning or two?  If the pitcher needs to be relieved, is a double switch in order?  Mike Scioscia found it necessary to make both these moves, but his counterpart, Bud Black, clearly had the advantage in that he is accustomed to making such decisions every day.

After splitting the first two games, the teams met for the rubber match Sunday afternoon.  It turned out to be a 13-inning donnybrook, which the Padres won 3-2.  It was one of the most bizarre baseball games I have ever witnessed.  Rather than trying to describe it here, I refer you to this account:  http://losangeles.angels.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120520&content_id=31811210&notebook_id=31851010&vkey=notebook_ana&c_id=ana

Petco Park is second only to San Francisco’s AT&T Park as California’s best venue for watching baseball.  Opened in 2004, Petco occupies the ground immediately southeast of the historic Gaslamp Quarter, which probably offers the best combination of live music and good food of any neighborhood west of New Orleans.  Petco is architecturally distinct from other ballparks of its generation, favoring sandstone and stucco in lieu of brick. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petco_Park.  Yet along the left field line, it incorporates the century-old brick structure that housed the Western Metal Supply Company, a feature reminiscent of the warehouse at Baltimore’s Camden Yards. 

Petco is also a great place to watch baseball because of its fan-friendly policies.  In addition to the aforementioned policy of staying out of the aisles during at-bats, the Padres have distinguished themselves from their northern neighbors with the following welcome policies, just under the “B”s:


BEACH BALLS
Inflatable items (such as beach balls, bats, dolls, etc.), Frisbees, and other similar objects are prohibited inside PETCO Park.

BICYCLE PAVILION
The Bicycle Pavilion will be open and available for all Padres Sunday games during the 2011 season. The Bicycle Pavilion, located at Park Boulevard and Tony Gwynn Drive allows fans to park their bicycles in a secured area staffed by a Padres representative.

BIKE PARKING
Bicycle stands are available for use during all ballpark events by guests and Team Members outside the Home Plate, Park Boulevard, Gaslamp, Downtown and Balboa Gates.


The Padres are to be commended for being bicycle friendly, and for banning egregious distractions like beach balls and moving in the aisles while the game is in play.  The Angels management would be wise to learn from their example and act affirmatively to curb the boorish behavior of far too many Angels “fans.”

What’s a ballpark without food?  Petco’s concessions offer all the unhealthy junk food you can get at any ballpark, but also offers some unexpected treats like the fish and chips offered by Anthony’s Seafood Grotto in the Mercado on the field level.  Also, beer is a relative bargain here.  For $10.00, one can get 24 ounces of a premium brew such as Karl Strauss Brewing Company’s excellent Red Trolley Ale.  (The only comparable deal I’ve discovered in Anaheim is for a Firestone IPA at the pizza window.  For a similar quantity of Guinness, be prepared to pay a couple of bucks more.)

One of the best things about Petco is its accessibility by rail.  There are two trolley stops nearby, and the trolley connects with the Coaster commuter line, as well as Amtrak California’s Pacific Surfliner.  The Surfliner is Amtrak’s third busiest line, and one of its most scenic.  It hugs the coast from Dana Point to Solana Beach, offering passengers unsurpassed ocean views.  Sandwiches and snacks are available, and is the excellent Stone IPA, brewed by Stone Brewing Company in Escondido.  (In the past, I’ve been enjoyed the IPA’s delightfully dark sister brew, Arrogant Bastard, on this journey, but it hasn’t been available of late, perhaps due to complaints about the name.)

The Surfliner delivered me from Irvine to downtown San Diego in less than two hours.  There were plenty of Angels fans on board, identifiable by their red attire.  The plethora of Angels fans presented a problem on the return trip.  For logistical reasons, I had planned to catch the train in Oceanside.  Due to the length of the Sunday game, we rushed to get there in time for the 7:05 departure, only to discover that the train was sold out.  The next one was at 10:00, so there was plenty of time for dinner.  We ended up at Ruby’s (a chain pseudo-50s diner) on the Oceanside Pier.  It was OK, but in retrospect, a better choice would have been Rim Talay Thai Cuisine on Mission Avenue.  The last train was less than full, but with plenty of red-clad passengers.  I was home before midnight after a long, but enjoyable weekend.




Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Shocking Video of Fatal Police Beating of Kelly Thomas


Last summer, Kelly Thomas, a mentally ill homeless man, was beaten to death by Fullerton, California police officers. This shocking video of the beating was played at the preliminary hearing of two officers being prosecuted for his killing. Members of the Fullerton City Council are facing recall for their failure to respond appropriately to the killing.  http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2012/05/kelly_thomas_video.php

Monday, May 7, 2012

The Circus Comes to Guantanamo


The defense script for the arraignment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-defendants might as well have been (literally) ghost written by Abbie Hoffman.  As related by Terry McDermott in The Daily Beast:

A slow-motion circus rolled into courtroom 2 of the Expeditionary Legal Complex Saturday morning.
What had been planned as the straightforward arraignment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four codefendants on charges of conspiring to commit the Sept. 11 attacks disintegrated into dark comedy.
Judge James Pohl scolded attorneys for refusing to follow his carefully articulated script for the proceeding; lawyers argued they were not qualified to defend their clients; translators interrupted lawyers to insist they be quiet; defendants refused to answer any questions from the judge or even acknowledge they’d been asked; one interrupted the proceedings first to pray and again to shout out his fears of being attacked by members of the prosecution team; another who started the day shackled to his chair ended it by stripping to the waist to display scars he claims were inflicted by his Guantánamo guards.
Meanwhile, Mohammed, the man at the center of this storm, sat quietly in the front row, leafing through the Quran and sporting a bushy beard, newly dyed henna red. 


Every circus needs its clowns, and Cheryl Bormann, attorney for Walid Bin Attash, apparently decided to be one of them.  As reported by Jan Crawford of CBS:

In the courtroom today, Bormann wore traditional Muslim attire -- a black hijab and abaya. She urged the female military prosecutors, dressed in uniform with knee-length skirts, to consider more "appropriate" attire so the suspects won't have "fear of committing a sin under their faith."


Bormann’s transparent attempt to bootleg the dictates of Sharia law into a secular American military tribunal brings to mind a Facebook post I saw last week:  “Claiming that someone else’s marriage is against your religion is like being angry at someone for eating a doughnut because you’re on a diet.”  Bormann could have easily dealt with her client’s professed fear of sinning with a bit of attorney-client advice that would have been wise in any case:  Don’t look at the prosecutors’ legs.

Andrew Cohen offered this glum assessment of the proceedings in The Atlantic

[T]he arraignment devolved at times into farce. The defendants acted like petulant children. The military judge acted like Lance Ito. The defense attorneys, finally given their opportunity to vent publicly about the restrictions placed upon their clients, made windy speeches instead of answering questions. It's the most important tribunal in American history since Nuremberg, and if this is how it begins I dread to think of how it will end.


On “Now With Alex Wagner,” defense attorney Ron Kuby, a veteran of political trials, opined that the circus-like atmosphere was largely the result of the lack of established procedure for this tribunal, and the consequent need to “make things up as you go along.”

It didn’t have to be this way.  In 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder announced plans to try the defendants in a federal district court in New York City.  In response, opportunistic politicians of both parties howled their outrage and professed to be shocked, shocked that men accused of nearly 3,000 counts of murder would be tried in accordance with Article III of the United States Constitution. 

Had Holder been allowed to proceed as planned, the trial would likely have been completed by now, in accordance with well-established rules of procedure.  Instead we face the likelihood of a farcical trial sometime next year, resulting in a verdict perceived as tainted by questions regarding the legitimacy of the proceedings.  The case may prove to be one of our most painful examples yet of the perils of allowing politics to dictate the workings of justice system.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Romney Super PAC name has long ties to Marxism, socialism

In an article titled "New Obama slogan has long ties to Marxism, socialism," The Washington Times breathlessly revealed to the world that "forward" is a Communist Word.  http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2012/apr/30/new-obama-slogan-has-long-ties-marxism-socialism/.  Distressing as it may be to learn that our President is using Marxist terminology in his re-election campaign, we must also consider the lexicon of his presumptive Republican opponent.  Willard Mitt Romney's super PAC calls itself "Restore Our Future."  A Google search reveals that the word "future" also "has long ties to Marxism, socialism."  On August 8, 1853, the New York Daily Tribute published a letter by Karl Marx himself, titled "The Future Results of British Rule in India." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/07/22.htm

While the Romney campaign can effectively counter Obama's Communist slogan by adopting "backward" as its own, it will doubtless want to reconsider its troubling invocation of Karl Marx's word "future."  Aside from its unsavory connotations, the phrase "Restore Our Future" is also an oxymoron-- we cannot restore that which has never occurred.  Quite clearly the Romney Super PAC needs to be renamed "Restore Our Past."