J's Cafe Nette

Archive for March 24th, 2007

Captain Ed of Captain’s Quarters has an excellent column up about the US Attorney firings, titled WFB, The Documents, And The Gonzales Problem, WFB being William F. Buckley.

Here’s a taste of the first part of the post:

I had not planned to return to the topic of the firings of the eight federal prosecutors tonight, but a column by William F Buckley and a review of the document dump clarified certain issues in the story. Buckley, I believe, captures the essence of the massive failure seen in the Department of Justice in this instance. He notes the plenary authority of both the President to fire political appointees and of Congress to conduct investigations into the conduct of the executive branch. He warns conservatives to refrain from constraining the latter for momentary political benefit:

It is obvious that there are Democrats in Congress who want an opportunity to forage for crimes in the matter of the discharged U.S. attorneys. Nobody has come up with a description of exactly what crime might have been committed and should be investigated. What is being conjectured is that an industrious investigating committee armed with subpoena powers could come up with malfeasance of some kind.
On the other hand, the investigative function of the legislative branch is of plenary importance, and should not be aborted by hypothetical immunities of the chief executive. Woodrow Wilson wrote in his classic book “Congressional Government” that Congress’ investigative power was more important, even, than its legislative power. …

At present, the investigators want to focus on the question whether one or more U.S. attorneys were discharged simply because they were doing their duty, and that duty included refusing to speed up the prosecution of various Democrats. But in the matter of any one of the fired attorneys, guilt might be found to attach to the attorney himself — he abused his authority by protecting a friend, or by persecuting an enemy — or to the attorney’s superiors, reaching right up to the White House. …

Of one thing Mr. Bush is manifestly guilty. It is the criminal (in the metaphorical sense) mismanagement of the whole business of the U.S. attorneys. The fault is not personal; it was probably the attorney general and other advisers of the president who took so many clumsy steps. But Mr. Bush’s stress on his rights invites a coordinate stress on his responsibilities. “These attorneys,” he said, “serve at my pleasure.” Right. But presidential pleasures have to rest on defensible grounds.

Reading through the document dump from yesterday, Buckley’s analysis looks spot on. It seems clear from the tenor of the e-mails that the instigation for the terminations came from within Justice. Kyle Sampson writes in an e-mail (which I will reproduce farther down) that he had not informed Karl Rove of the plans as of November 15th, 2006. While the White House had started the conversation shortly after the start of the second term, when cleaning house made more sense, the document string seems to support the description of the actual terminations as a DoJ project.

I urge you to visit the Captain’s blog and see the entire article.

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Yesterday I read this article in the New York Times titled A Year Without Toilet Paper.

It’s the story of a successful New York City couple who have gone green to the extreme. They make their own food from food grown within a 250 mile radius of New York City because that’s how far a farmer can go round-trip in a day.

They have a small child and have determined to not purchase anything, but did give in to get the baby a birthday gift at a second-hand store for $1.

They make compost from any waste they create and the article states it smells a bit sour in their home. There was a photo that showed their garbage has worms in it to process it.

They still have a maid but they finally made her give up her vacuum cleaner. They do still go to the basement of their apartment building and use the laundry facilities, but they refuse to take the elevator.

Here’s the explanation:

Welcome to Walden Pond, Fifth Avenue style. Isabella’s parents, Colin Beavan, 43, a writer of historical nonfiction, and Michelle Conlin, 39, a senior writer at Business Week, are four months into a yearlong lifestyle experiment they call No Impact. Its rules are evolving, as Mr. Beavan will tell you, but to date include eating only food (organically) grown within a 250-mile radius of Manhattan; (mostly) no shopping for anything except said food; producing no trash (except compost, see above); using no paper; and, most intriguingly, using no carbon-fueled transportation.

To each his own. But here’s the kicker:

Nothing is a substitute for toilet paper, by the way; think of bowls of water and lots of air drying.

As my daughter would say, TMI.

In a way I admire this couple for doing what they believe. They are walking the walk and not just talking the talk, but I wonder how they will manage in the summer when the humidity gets high and the temperatures soar.

We had a hurricane blow through here unexpectedly about 20 years ago. I live in the muggy South. We were without power for two weeks at the end of September.

Living by candlelight was fun for the first night and then we had to start taking cold showers, cook our food on the gas grill, and finally heat our water on the gas grill to pour into the bathtub to get a lukewarm bath.

I was unable to vacuum the floors and when the power did come back on I was amazed at all the soot that had accumulated on the side of the tub from placing that heavy pan of water on the edge of the tub. This even though I had scrubbed the tub, but couldn’t see everything as it was mostly done at night since I was still working. We did buy a small generator (large ones were unavailable) and could plug in the refrigerator and a lamp or the microwave and lamp, but not anything big with the refrigerator. Even though I did vacuum the floors with the assistance of the generator I was amazed at how not clean they were when the power came back on.

I did not do well living that way. Other people at work had their power back in a short time but I was still without it. My husband worked at a nuclear power plant and was able to shower at work, but all I could do was take lukewarm baths.

My daughter went to her best friend’s house to bathe and basically spent a lot of time with them, while my son was in college.

So I wonder if they can survive a hot, humid summer in NY while trying to live green for a year. And if they do, will anyone want to stand near them?

As I said, to each his own.

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