Flinging shit at the ZBA

When I'm home, there's little that will get me to turn from Keith Olbermann's Countdown (with the exception of the host and a guest discussing some entertainment world tidbit about American Idol or the starlet of the day). Tonight Olbermann was discussing our president's involvement in ordering torture, but something drew me to another channel.

When I turned on the TV I saw a packed room at Middletown's Council Chambers for a Zoning Board of Appeals meeting. Under debate was a cease and desist order issued by the ZBA against the Hill Farm for hosting weekend equine events at their Maromas farm. The Hills were challenging the order. On the other side of the argument was Ron Borelli, and his legal counsel. Borelli, a neighbor of the Hill farm, has argued against the farm as being a commercial operation in a non-commercial zone. This dispute has been before town boards, and in court, for years.

The Borelli counsel argued that horse events at the farm, at which admission was charged, amounted to a commercial enterprise. The Hill counsel, and dozens of people who packed the room argued that farming, is, in essence a commercial endeavor, and that horsing events fit into the definition of agricultural operations.

The debate was impossible to turn from as impassioned horse owners shredded the arguments of the opponents, and the opponents returned to fire volleys back.

And the simple back and forth about piles of horse manure was fascinating, really.

But the meeting was a train wreck, thanks mostly to the ZBA chair Annabel Resnisky who seemed to be having trouble, under the circumstances, running an orderly session. Resnisky, who has apparently been on the board for years, seemed to be very defensive and intimidated by the large turnout, often accusing those giving public testimony of personally challenging her decisions. ("You looked at me when you said that," she accused one of the Hill Farm owners. Where else was he to look? The public podium faces the chairwoman.) She repeatedly warned speakers to cut their remarks short.

After the public session, Resnisky seemed incapable of calling for a simple motion or vote, (in fact Robert's Rules of Order seemed to be a foreign topic) and the commission discussion which began informally, off-the-public-record and barely off-mic as some members discussed making an appeal to the opposing parties for compromise, when the meeting was not actually called to order, degenerated into a confused discussion of the duties of the board, and definitions of agriculture, though the board seemed unclear as to what those duties and defintitions were - frequently turning to Town Planner Bill Warner for advice. Warner often needed to remind Resnisky where they were in the proceedings ("I think we need a motion," he would stage whisper, or "There's a motion on the floor, you need to call a vote.") The discussion by board members was laughable with each sucessive comment suggesting that members had little idea of the real arguments on either side of the issue which had just been placed before them.

The board eventually managed to call a vote on a resolution to uphold the cease and desist order. The resolution was passed 4-3.

I know this is citizen democracy in action, but in a city the size of Middletown, on a board where important decisions need to be made, it's important to have committee members willing to listen and consider all debate, and discuss the matter coherently.

Crybaby Creepy Joe™ Lieberman

Lieberman was interviewed by the Hartford Courant, and the interview reveals that his cries of hyperpartisanship are as a result of his criticism by liberal online bloggers. Maybe Creepy Joe™ is too thin-skinned to remain in politics. It's perfectly clear that he loved his role when he could stand up and lie with impunity and not be questioned by a timid press. Now that his every feeble move is dissected by the dangerous left wing of the Democratic blogosphere (moveon, dailykos), it's too much for him.

The article also reveals that Ruff Tuff™ Harry Reid has already promised Lieberman that he'll retain his Democratic seniority and chairmanships in the Senate even if the balance in the Senate makes Lieberman's 51st vote unnecessary.

I'm sure Reid has to say now whatever will make Lieberman happy. We'll have to see what happens after the election when Reid may no longer have his leadership position.

Sounds vaguely familiar

The New York Times reports on Maliki's charge into Basra:

...interviews with a wide range of American and military officials also suggest that Mr. Maliki overestimated his military’s abilities and underestimated the scale of the resistance. The Iraqi prime minister also displayed an impulsive leadership style that did not give his forces or that of his most powerful allies, the American and British military, time to prepare.

“He went in with a stick and he poked a hornet’s nest, and the resistance he got was a little bit more than he bargained for,” said one official in the multinational force in Baghdad who requested anonymity. “They went in with 70 percent of a plan. Sometimes that’s enough. This time it wasn’t.”

Let's see, an army and a leadership formed by consent of the Bush administration, and trained by a Pentagon under hand-picked Bush generals..."impulsive leadership?" "Underestimated scale of resistance?" "Poked a hornet's nest?" "70% of a plan?"

Sounds like a Bush invasion.

Bush called it "a defining moment."

Hmmm? The definition of "failure" is....

Will John Yoo be prosecuted as a torture lawyer?

And does America care?

It's become very clear in the past few days, with the release of a now notorious memo authored by John Yoo, that he rendered legal opinions which placed insurgents, and their interrogators outside of the rule of law. His memo essentially broadened the power of the president to ignore laws forbidding torture. And of course, the president and his men ignored with impunity.

That flaunting of legal ignorance resulted in torture at abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

Interestingly, the memo simultaneously set-up an argument against prosecution of justice department lawyers and interrogators as war criminals.

Scott Horton of Harper's thinks that Yoo and his companions may not be able to escape their eventual prosecution:

They also missed the established precedent I have cited repeatedly here, namely United States v. Altstoetter, under the rule of which the conduct of the torture lawyers is a criminal act not shielded by any notions of government immunity. Sands discusses the history of that case which is, lamentably, known by so few American lawyers. And then he turns to the prosecution of Generalissimo Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean strong man whose life ended in a swarm of indictments and criminal proceedings. Americans seem also to forget exactly what the crime was that plagued Pinochet to his deathbed. The answer is fairly simple: he was accused on the basis of convincing evidence of having authorized a regime of torture in connection with the interrogation of insurgents, who were removed from the rule of law. The precise techniques used included a number of those subsequently authorized by President Bush’s torture team and incorporated into his “Program.” Sands recounts a prophetic moment in the course of the proceedings surrounding Pinochet’s case in London.

“It’s a matter of time,” the judge observed. “These things take time.” As I gathered my papers, he looked up and said, “And then something unexpected happens, when one of these lawyers travels to the wrong place.”

Those are words for members of the torture team to contemplate. In the meantime, they should think twice before traveling abroad. Around the world, and increasingly within the United States itself they are regarded as criminals whose day of reckoning is drawing closer on the horizon.

In the meantime it seems reasonable to ask the regents of the University of California to demand Yoo's resignation from his job as law professor at UC Berkeley.

And the question remains, after the initial reporting on this memo, on this very serious issue, will the press, the American people and the candidates for president conveniently ignore this issue because it's distasteful, complex and a horrible black eye for the country

The Greenwich Post gets caught with a pointless pencil in hand

Seems like some journalists don't like to do their job. Seems moreso that when some journalists get called on it, they create a way to avoid it.

The Greenwich Post won't print a legitimate letter questioning Chris Shay's status as a conscientious objector during the Viet Nam war. But it did print a letter filled with lies about Barack Obama.

I've never read the Post, and I won't again.

Let your Connecticut friends know that the Greenwich Post isn't worth reading.

BTW, I agree with Thomas Hooker, it's bullshit, plain and simple.

Just because we can, doesn't mean we should

Once upon a time in an America that never really existed, some of the most respected members of our community were doctors and lawyers. They were professionals to be envied and trusted. To be emulated. These were careers to aspire to.

But as Glenn Greenwald pointed out yesterday, one of our country's most brilliant lawyers, John Yoo, is also one of our country's most diabolical. He used legal language and argument to justify torture, and to circumvent the power of the constitution. Greenwald concludes that Yoo is one of several war criminals in the Bush administration, and should be treated as such.

Perhaps more shocking to me are doctors who allow themselves to be drawn into the process of torture. I heard it again in the interview with Murat Kurnaz on 60 Minutes. Kurnaz recalled how he was strung from the ceiling, and when he seemed to be failing, a doctor came in, examined him, and declared he was fit for more torture. Who are these doctors? How do they justify their actions? Didn't we all grow up with the horror of torture and cruel experimentation by German doctors in Nazi death camps? And yet they still exist.

Should these torture doctors and lawyers ever be able to practice in the United States again. Would you want them treating or representing you?

They are the real monsters who make the ogres and beasts of fairy tales pale in comparison.

This fish stinks from the head

Vanity Fair is out today with an article about the use of torture methods in Guantanamo that implicates the current administration at the highest levels.

Not that it's a surprise to anyone, but the method seems to pin bad behavior on the lower ranking interrogators to protect the higher-ups from prosecution for war crimes.

Feingold catches McConnell lying

It seems like the "trustworthy" and "non-partisan" labels Mike McConnell has been trying to hang on himself are as silly as they are untrue. McConnell is nothing more and nothing less than one more Bush henchman willing to abandon the truth to propagandize for his president.

And Russ Feingold has caught him redhanded.

Boys will be boys on the dark side

Trevor Paglen has managed to ferret out some of the secrets of the black budget.

This is the secret military budget into which billions of our tax dollars are poured for secret operations which are so secret that they are beyond accountability.

So, how did he figure out these secrets? Because the people running these programs are no better than frat boys who need to advertise their brand of machismo with some greek letters emblazoned on their ragged sweat shirts and unimaginative tattoos.

It seems that many of the people in these secret programs insist on wearing patches and insignias which advertise the very programs they're trying to keep secret. And all it took was an artist and photographer to figure it out. Now he'll be publishing a book about these secrets - I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have To Be Destroyed By Me.

Let me off at the bridge

I'll admit that one of the reasons I'd rather go to a small club or coffeehouse, is that there's more of a likelihood that the singer/songwriter will talk between songs - about themselves, about what the songs are about, about life and the world.

And in interviews with musicians, I have definitely asked the question, "How did you write that song?" and even the dreaded, and more general "How do you write songs?" But those questions are usually reserved for a moment in the interview when I've run out of more interesting questions like, "Where did you grow up?" and "Who gave you your first guitar?" and "What are you reading?"

So, it's with a bit of perverse curiousity that I've begun to read the new songwriters blog series in the New York Times called Measure for Measure which features, and will feature, the thoughts of Andrew Bird, Suzanne Vega, Roseanne Cash and Darrell Brown about the songs they write. It's a little like one of those "Building Your Dream House" shows on cable. There are only so many ways to hit a nail straight.

I'm afraid that while I sometimes crave to understand what a song means, I rarely, really want to know how it was built. That's a magical process, like making sausage and laws, which ought to remain in the realm of magic.

And it's not that these individuals are not good writers, and good songwriters, it's just that I'd prefer to hear the song than to understand how the couplets became coupled.