Category: The Dish

I miss the old Penguin and Pelican imprints in England – those elegant, simple all-type covers that almost scream at you: it’s the text that matters. It didn’t occur to me they could inspire high art. But they have, as well as an artist’s liberties with various authors and invented titles:

Harland Miller’s paintings are unusual in the range of current contemporary art in that they are, first, self-evidently painterly paintings and, second, companionable; they can make you laugh.

I remember the first time I came across the Hemingway painting I’m So Fucking Hard – it was propped against the wall in a studio, an appropriately imposing object, about 6ft by 4ft – I laughed out loud. Ditto its companion painting, Dirty Northern Bastard, attributed to D. H. Lawrence. Also Not Bi-curious by Norman Mailer. I could go on.

And he does. Norman, by the way, has always struck me as very bi-curious.

Orin Kerr poses an interesting 4th amendment question:

If the police want to collect a suspect’s DNA sample, can they mail him a letter under false pretenses, wait for a response, and then analyze the seal on the letter (which the suspect likely sealed with saliva) to collect the DNA, all without a warrant? A divided Washington Supreme Court has just concluded that the answer is "yes" in State v. Athan…

And it happened. More context here.

It’s looking grimmer for Rove and Gonzales:

The Bush administration has withheld a series of e-mails from Congress showing that senior White House and Justice Department officials worked together to conceal the role of Karl Rove in installing Timothy Griffin, a protégé of Rove’s, as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

I use my usual test: is it verboten to talk about at NRO? Yes! Glenn is more forthright and says the following:

I think this is shortsighted and wrong and likely to hurt the country. 

I disagree. In fact, a rightly restive Congress is clearly a major advantage Bush and Cheney now have in grappling with Maliki. They can persuasively say: if you don’t come through, we’re outta here. And we’ll be forced to leave by the Congress. If that leverage combined with the surge does not produce a political breakthrough, we’ll know that such a breakthrough is likely impossible. And we’ll know by September. It’s also true that the United States is a democracy. A president who cannot explain a war, cannot show real progress, and cannot command credibility after four years of fighting has no one to blame but himself.

The former president is going to stir up the usual passions with this initiative:

Christian Zionists can be better friends of Israel by challenging its government’s policies, while accepting Judaism as a legitimate path to God, Carter told a group organized by Rabbi Michael Lerner in California last week, according to the rabbi.

"He said it was a terrible error for Jews to become allied with Christian Zionists who actually desire our conversion or burning in hell," Rabbi Lerner related in an interview Tuesday.

More here.

They all changed Tony Blair, argues Danny Finkelstein.

It’s up 150 percent since 1990. Adult mortality has increased as well – a lot since the invasion.

A new study finds 40 percent of 3-month-old babies now watch television. Maybe that explains the survival of Blake.

Not so alarming in the first place, but now we find this out:

The informer, sent to penetrate a loose group of men who liked to talk about jihad and fire guns in the woods, had come to be seen by the suspects as the person who might actually show them how an act of terror could be carried off.

Indeed, over the months that followed, as the targets of the investigation spoke with a sometimes unfocused zeal about waging holy war, the informer, one of two used in the investigation, would tell them that he could get them the sophisticated weapons they wanted. He would accompany them on surveillance missions to military installations, debating the risks, and when the men looked ready to purchase the weapons, it was the informer who seemed to be pushing the idea of buying the deadliest items, startling at least one of the suspects.

So the main instigator of Jihad was a government informer! It will be interesting to see how this unfolds in court. At least they’ll have access to a court.

As head of the doctrinal watchdog, Joseph Ratzinger wanted to refuse John Kerry communion for being pro-choice. Only some deft footwork from the American bishops avoided a mega-clash. But as Pope, Benedict seems to have ratcheted up the pressure on his way to Brazil:

On the plane from Rome, Benedict appeared to go further than the Vatican had before on the contentious issue of Catholic politicians who favor abortion rights. He seemed to suggest that Mexico City legislators who recently voted to allow abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy had excommunicated themselves.

"Yes, the excommunication isn’t something arbitrary — it’s part of the code" of church law, the pope said in Italian, in response to a question during the first full-fledged news conference of his two-year pontificate. "The killing of an innocent human child is incompatible with going into communion in the body of Christ," …

 

The pope’s spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, quickly issued a clarification that played down his words, but then issued a statement approved by the pope that seemed to confirm a new gravity on politicians who allow abortion. "Legislative action in favor of abortion is incompatible with participation in the Eucharist," the statement said, and politicians who vote that way should "exclude themselves from communion."

This news came on the same day that Rudy Giuliani decided to run an explicitly pro-choice presidential campaign, hoping to withstand early pro-life primary pressure and survive until the bigger, more socially moderate states. Giuliani doesn’t just support abortion rights legislatively, he has done so as an executive and favors public financing of some. By the Pope’s own logic, he has excommunicated himself. I wonder when all those Republican theocons who tried to get Kerry excommunicated will hammer this point home.

(Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty.)