It would not be the first time that I baked a jail-bound chocolate cake. But a saw would be something new. I'll have to look for a recipe. ;~) Any specs?

And if you're (really) going to make cakes as a public service, may I suggest that you not forget cupcakes? Also, they are especially charming when baked in ice cream cones (with flat bottoms). The timing and heat are a little trickier, but the chocolate icing will hide a lot of imperfections, while resembling a scoop of ice cream. Maybe some sprinkles.

But cupcakes in regular paper holders are also a good idea. They are single portions and easily portable and give-away-able. And, if you crowd a bunch of cupcakes together before frosting them, they can resemble a cake, but not require a knife to serve.

Cupcakes make people feel young again, even children, who sometimes forget.

Best of luck tomorrow, bebop-o... I'm going to add you to a month-long, 24/7, prayer line. Can't hurt.

Oh, and don't be remiss. It's "Important scholar!" Not just any ol' run-of-the-mill scholar.

I think you forgot the word "serious."

I'll suggest you be Detrick Bonhoeffer who writes from the jail-cell. He wrote "The Last Step n the Road to Freedom was when they 'cut' off the head with a dull chocolate carver-cake Knife?"

Or, you can personally revise Paul Bunyan's "Pilgrims Progress?" You can start the first page of an allegory and interpret new metaphors and symbols? You can write about bunions on the sore feet?

How about a Ho Chi Minh poem from a county jail about the fleas biting you in the hot sweltering jail cell?

Oh! Ah! If it were not for the Bush Administration, the cool spring would never be? I hope we see another season of change. That, Anonymous (what you said), is not encouraging to me to be a jail bird!

I love seagulls.

A friendliness like that idea is not sounding too courteious to me at the present moment.

I may be a fugitive? And I may find more courteious advice from less mischief anonymously-folk who seem less apart of the conspiracy to lock up all open-minded "liberals?"

I tease.

You know, in respect to what you said, Emily D. could take your head off with a one liner of an idea.

Right now, I say Poobah!

I like the idea of a hack-saw in Karen M's chocolate cake!

O, I need to be serious and I've no attorney. 12 angry men?

I die for a good cause? I die because I got 'screwed' in the courts!

I feel guilty if I eat too much chocolate cake!

"The Verdict." For want of a shoe and a hack-saw,

the horse was dead and the kingdom was lost too!

I need an anesthesiologist, not a lawyer. I been there!

good night. no let fleas bite...

I agree, but Pakistan is really complicated, and we will fight a war there whether we like it or not (not just the U.S.) if something isn't done about it. Their local "foreign policy" towards at least two of their neighbors is to send insurgents over the border to cause havoc. It's the first state sponsor of terror with nuclear weapons, simultaneous with being the first failed state with nuclear weapons. And so far, the only real incubator of terror with a global reach. I would like to see more non-military solutions before all that happens, but our foreign policy establishment has been making mistakes there for almost 30 years -- the record of being wrong in Iraq is only 1/5 as long -- and some of those mistakes came back to haunt us on September 11. There is a lot that can happen before shooting is necessary, but there has to be a clear picture of who and how and what and why that neither the State Department nor the CIA has been able to produce due to institutional prejudices.

But I agree on your main point, about a person with a human rights background talking tough, a chickendove who really wants peace but is too scared to not fight.

Ok. We're dealing with the aftermath of ideological neoconservative policies, rhetoric and adherent results.

Why wouldn't the presidential hopefuls' assertions vary.

We'll forget this in two months.

This transnational terrorism includes discord, and Obama recognizes that.

It's the client state versus the patron state paradigm. I suspect advanced analysis will find the similarities of Senator Clinton and Barack Obama.

I'll call you pumpkin. Cupcakes. Baby cakes. Sweet sprinkles. And you best tell your W.P. hubby to no read this!

Denise Levertov said the lucky don't need luck? I'll call you lady luck?

thanks.

I have no idea what will happen in court. What person would forget to report on the day he was to get off probation? I'll blame the Salon.

Can I say you have sweet breath?

You are a honey? You baby breath?

forgive me, Glenn. Cheers.

Ooly pop a cow flop and bob a loo.

waddywaddy hoke poke wild thing?

no duh. a tutti fruity, aw rooty!

I'm not being naughty or not nice.

I guess I just think that if we had a more open give and take of ideas - a less monopolized community of foreign policy expertise - the odious ideas of "scholars" like Pipes would all the more readily be recognized as such.

Monopolized by whom, exactly? Printing's cheap and Web sites are almost free; anybody who has something to say about anything has every opportunity to do so. There are dozens of journals on everything from general foreign policy to more specialized subjects germane to the field. There is no end of scholarship, seminars, debate, book-floggery, paper-giving, fellowship-fellowing, and think-tank thinkery on the subject. It's a content-rich field.

But nobody is much interested. "Foreign Policy" has a circulation of less than 100,000. "Foreign Affairs" not much more. I doubt that more than 10,000 people ever read SARID Journal or Oxford's Journal of Islamic Studies. Nobody cares.

Outside of a crisis like the Iraq war or the Iran hostages back in the Carter years, foreign affairs rarely have much impact on American elections or American politics. Americans don't give a fig. I don't entirely blame them, but the problem isn't lack of diverse, well-informed academic insights — which are now more widely available than ever before. If Sen. Obama is a naif on foreign policy — and he is — it's because he chooses to be, not because expertise is not available.

If you're willing to explore the great world beyond television, I think you'll find a pretty robust exchange of ideas.