I'm guessing DUI? Too much strawberry wine before driving?

Happens to the best of us.

I hope you draw the Get Out of Jail Free card.

bebop-o... you are due some seriously good luck. I have just submitted a purchase order to the Universe for some good luck for you. [Cross your fingers!]

And I love pumpkin! I used to bake at the drop of a hat, but now I spend too much time thinking about something before attempting it. (No wheat/dairy/soy is problematic.) However, you've made me think of baking some pumpkin cupcakes with chocolate frosting. But I'll have to get the blueberry cornbread out of my brain first.

Jane Mayer's article in the current "New Yorker" is very much a continuation of her article from a year ago:

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/07/03/060703fa_fact1?printable=true

The Hidden Power
The legal mind behind the White House’s war on terror.
by Jane Mayer
July 3, 2006

[...] Most Americans, even those who follow politics closely, have probably never heard of Addington. But current and former Administration officials say that he has played a central role in shaping the Administration’s legal strategy for the war on terror. Known as the New Paradigm, this strategy rests on a reading of the Constitution that few legal scholars share—namely, that the President, as Commander-in-Chief, has the authority to disregard virtually all previously known legal boundaries, if national security demands it. Under this framework, statutes prohibiting torture, secret detention, and warrantless surveillance have been set aside. A former high-ranking Administration lawyer who worked extensively on national-security issues said that the Administration’s legal positions were, to a remarkable degree, “all Addington.” Another lawyer, Richard L. Shiffrin, who until 2003 was the Pentagon’s deputy general counsel for intelligence, said that Addington was “an unopposable force.”

The overarching intent of the New Paradigm, which was put in place after the attacks of September 11th, was to allow the Pentagon to bring terrorists to justice as swiftly as possible. Criminal courts and military courts, with their exacting standards of evidence and emphasis on protecting defendants’ rights, were deemed too cumbersome. Instead, the President authorized a system of detention and interrogation that operated outside the international standards for the treatment of prisoners of war established by the 1949 Geneva Conventions. Terror suspects would be tried in a system of military commissions, in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, devised by the executive branch. The Administration designated these suspects not as criminals or as prisoners of war but as “illegal enemy combatants,” whose treatment would be ultimately decided by the President. By emphasizing interrogation over due process, the government intended to preëmpt future attacks before they materialized. In November, 2001, Cheney said of the military commissions, “We think it guarantees that we’ll have the kind of treatment of these individuals that we believe they deserve.”

Yet, almost five years later, this improvised military model, which Addington was instrumental in creating, has achieved very limited results. Not a single terror suspect has been tried before a military commission.

[...] Scott Horton, a professor at Columbia Law School, and the head of the New York Bar Association’s International Law committee, said that Addington and a small group of Administration lawyers who share his views had attempted to “overturn two centuries of jurisprudence defining the limits of the executive branch. They’ve made war a matter of dictatorial power.” The historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who defined Nixon as the extreme example of Presidential overreaching in his book “The Imperial Presidency” (1973), said he believes that Bush “is more grandiose than Nixon.” As for the Administration’s legal defense of torture, which Addington played a central role in formulating, Schlesinger said,

“No position taken has done more damage to the American reputation in the world — ever.”

Bruce Fein, a Republican legal activist, who voted for Bush in both Presidential elections, and who served as associate deputy attorney general in the Reagan Justice Department, said that Addington and other Presidential legal advisers had “staked out powers that are a universe beyond any other Administration. This President has made claims that are really quite alarming. He’s said that there are no restraints on his ability, as he sees it, to collect intelligence, to open mail, to commit torture [...]

- - The New Yorker, July 3, 2006

Tell the judge that you lost track of a day because you were busy teaching kids to respect life by showing them the wonder of a little spider climbing up and down a single thread. Say that if you didn’t take the time to teach children the preciousness of every creature they would believe those who tell them spiders are icky and then these oppressive mothers would show the children how powerful they are by killing something who dared to frighten and surprise them. I’m sure the judge will show you mercy unless you lost his pants and especially if you bring some blueberry pie with you.

Bebop, the best of luck tomorrow. I trust Karen won't need the cake with the saw, but I hope, in the interest of saving you further trips to be judged, that Judge Ambrose has the eyes to see what we see in you. I too will pray that you're restored to freedom once and for all.

Daniel Pipes, knows Arabic (and French, and German), holds a Harvard PhD (with a thesis on Islam and politics) has lived in Egypt, and has written 12 books about the Middle East. Somehow, though, I don't think his scholarship will impress this crowd.

--Anonymous

Maybe this crowd is discerning?

Seen him speak several times and always thought "What a racist bigot"

"The increased stature, and affluence, and enfranchisement of American Muslims...will present true dangers to American Jews."

"The Palestinians are a miserable people...and they deserve to be." Daniel Pipes, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July 2001

"Western European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene...All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most." (National Review, 11/19/90)

"Iranians and Pakistanis, to take two groups of non-Arabs, are at least as widely conspiracy-minded and as anti-Semitic as, say, Tunisians and Kuwaitis." (Commentary, 9/1/99)

"...black converts tend to hold vehemently anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-Semitic attitudes." (Commentary, 6/1/2000)