Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader didn’t write a whole bunch o’ posts about Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to the US. But he did, certainly follow along with the news accounts of her visit.

There was one article that many people likely missed, but your Maximum Leader wanted to comment upon. The article was called “The Crowning Touch” and was concerning a luncheon in Richmond for Her Majesty that was catered by Patrick O’Connell. For those of you not in the know, Patrick O’Connell is one of (if not THE) premier chef in the greater Washington DC area. He is the owner/proprietor/chef of the famed Inn at Little Washington. Your Maximum Leader has dined a few times at the Inn at Little Washington. It is a delight.

Anyhoo… Virginia Governor Tim Kaine requested that Chef O’Connell cater a private reception for the Queen during her visit. Here is an excerpt containing some of the dishes:

O’Connell has every right to be a diva, but he is not. Like his food, he is playful but serious, treating his staff at the Monday run-through with kindly paternalism and welcoming all ideas eagerly.

Cook Katie Kopsick, 23, offered O’Connell a tray of homemade chocolates. “I can’t get my fingers between them,” the chef said. “Take some off but connect them in some way.” Moments later, she returned holding a crystal plate with six bonbons dotted along a colorful ribbon. That did the trick.

The pièce de résistance, custard-like scrambled farm eggs with morel mushrooms, local asparagus and creme fraiche, proved problematic. The lidded glass egg that held them required the guest to hold the bottom, remove the top and deal with a spoon. The solution: have a second waiter on hand to facilitate the process.

One by one, each dish was adjusted until all passed muster: tasting spoons of roasted beet mousse, Virginia country ham with mango, baby rock shrimp with guacamole, cucumber sorbet and Maine lobster with grapefruit butter sauce; lacy Parmesan wafers standing between polished stones; delicate cups of sorrel jelly with osetra caviar and rhubarb, blueberry and vanilla panna cotta parfaits; cornets of smoked salmon poked into a loaf of bread to resemble the quills of a porcupine; tempura squash blossoms with Asian dipping sauce; tiny crocks of chocolate creme brulee.

What can be said except “Yumma!”

The most interesting part of the article… The Queens dislikes and likes:

When it came to her [the Queen’s] preferences, though, O’Connell had left nothing to chance. He consulted Michel Roux, a chef favored by the royal family, about likes (eggs, seafood) and dislikes (raw fish, garlic, strawberries).

Humm… Your Maximum Leader loves the three things Her Majesty dislikes. How can someone not like strawberries? Really now? It seems wrong. Very very wrong.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader, when clicking through on a link on Rachel’s site, thought he was going to read about a battle flag captured during the Korean War. But it was not to be. Who knew (and if your Maximum Leader did know, he surely forgot) that US Marines captured a Korean fort on Kanghwa Island in 1871?

It seems that not only did the Marines take the fort (with minimal loss of life to US forces), they took the battle flag depicting the name of the fort’s commander. The flag, in accordance with US law, was taken to the US Naval Academy in Annapolis where it has been displayed ever since.

It also appears as though the Republic of Korea would like the flag back… Or at least one professor at a Korean university, Thomas Duvernay, wants the flag back. (Excursus: Your Maximum Leader will go ahead and speculate that professor Thomas Duvernay is not a native Korean. Just guessing.) This one professor is the only person in Korea who is quoted in the article.

At any rate, it is a fascinating little article that is worth your time to read if you are interested in such stuff. Here is the link to the Baltimore Sun article.

Frankly, your Maximum Leader’s opinion on such matters is well known amongst his friends. It can be summarized as: to the victor go the spoils. The Marines kicked butt, they get to keep the flag.

Although he believes the Marines should keep the flag, the prospect of trading the flag for the USS Pueblo is an interesting one. A more interesting prospect would be that we keep the flag and send a detachment of Marines to blow up the USS Pueblo at port in North Korea thereby depriving the Norks of their trophy.

Then again, your Maximum Leader is a hate-filled war monger.

Carry on.

Loyal readers at Naked Villainy will recall that your humble Smallholder is sympathetic to illegal immigrants. If I was in Mexico and the legal process effetively barred me from leaving my dysfunctional country and making a better life for Emilie, Jack, and Ben, there is no wall that could keep me out.

You will recall that I don’t buy the argument that they are taking jobs from hard-working Americans. If you are a new reader, I’ll explain in a nutshell: Hard-working Americans are working. Unemployment (with a few statistically insignificant exceptions) is the result of personal choices. If an American born and bred in this country did not take advantage of the free educational system AND lacks the personal discipline to keep a low-skill job wants to cry about the fact that he got out-competed by someone who didn’t have a chance to get an education AND doesn’t speak English, I’m not the one to dry his tears.

In the Shenandoah Valley, jobs paying $13 an hour with benefits (poultry processing plants) or $12 an hour with housing (farm work) go unfilled because local American-born people aren’t willing to do that work. Without illegal immigration, a big portion of the local economy would be destroyed. Businesses all over the country make the same argument.

We live in a capitalist society. Businesses hire the best workers they can find - because that is in the business owner’s interest. They make a judgment about hiring not because they are biased against native-born Americans but because they want the best workers. If the immigrant is the better worker her or she will get hired. We actually have NEGATIVE unemployment in this country - our economy demands more (effective) workers then we have.

Immigrants do have some direct social costs - education for their children and medical care when they go to the emergency room without medical insurance. However, those social costs are more than recouped by productivity gains and lower-priced goods and services.

Immigrants do (slightly and not in all areas) bring down average wages. But even lower-class Americans benefit from what economists are calling the Wal-Mart effect: Lowered wages do not mean a lower standard of living because immigrants (and Wal-Mart) reduce the cost of living.

Some folks scream about assimilation issues. This is the only reasonable argument I can see to close the borders and deport ten million people (if this was even possible). Previous waves of immigration have assimilated by the second generation, but there is a legitimate concern that the pressure to assimilate has been attenuated in our 21st Century diversity-celebrating pluralistic society. I have some thoughts on this but they will have to wait for a longer post. One thing is for certain: Anti-Hispanic chuckleheads aren’t encouraging Hispanics to assimilate.

Most of the other issues of the “down with the illegals” crowd are silly.

The law and order crowd who claim that society will break down if we don’t prosecute every little crime aren’t calling for draconian enforcement of laws against oral sex. Folks who claim that breaking any law leads to committing armed robbery can’t explain why speeders or fellaters (is that a word?) aren’t knocking over 7-Elevens. Hell, our our FBI says that illegal immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans.

There are some bad folks coming across the border from Mexico. The existence of a few drug smugglers doesn’t tar the vast majority of immigrants any more than Al Capone tares all Italians, O.J. tars all African-Americans or Tanya Harding tars all blondes. Folks who conflate the drug runners and people who come here to make better lives are either stupid or willfully dishonest in their demogoguery.

The recent attack on Fort Dix has opened the door to an even higher level of assclownery.

Okay, I swear to you. I’m not making the following up. It might seem like I’m creating a phony straw man. But honestly, I have actually seen this:

The Islamic jihadists planning to attack fort Dix included illegal aliens, so… (wait for it…) that proves that illegal aliens aren’t just after jobs and the American dream - they want to kill us!

Jesus wept.

If there are any readers out there who are susceptible to this coflationary canard, I have a picture for you:

Extra Credit: How many members of Al Queda are Catholic?

Anyone? Anyone?

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader thought he would share some thoughts he had while dining today at a Chinese buffet here in Fredericksburg. Thoughts are in no particular order.

1) Is there some ambience to be gained by requiring the pseudo-servers to wear silken (rayon?) blouses reminiscent of a “chinese” style?

2) Your Maximum Leader likes it a lot when the buffet has three separate sections. One for “entrees.” One for “appetizers.” And one for fruits and desserts.

3) Who’da thunk that they would have pretty good sweet tea at a Chinese buffet?

4) Your Maximum Leader loves shrimp toast. Damn. Shrimp toast fresh out of the fryer is good stuff. He’s probably eaten two whole slices (not just portions of slices - but full-sized slices of bread with the shrimp mixture on top.) He’s probably going to regret enjoying that so much.

5) Even considering the place is a buffet at lunch… There are lots and lots of very heavy people eating here. And your Maximum Leader doesn’t mean just a little obese. He’s talking one fortune cookie away from disaster (or a wafer thin mint if one prefers).

6) Doesn’t Kung-Pao chicken have peanuts? He’s searched and searched, but there don’t appear to be peanuts in the Kung-Pao chicken. Bits of zucchini it has, but no peanuts. Odd. It will be avoided.

7) Ah… General Tso… You were a murdering bastard, but you do make a tasty chicken…

8 ) Your Maximum Leader hates fortune cookies that contain pithy sayings, but not fortunes. Actually, he will make an exception for pithy sayings by an actual chinese philosopher. But damnit, he wants fortune cookies with fortunes in them. Such as the one he got today. It read: “You will be traveling and coming into a fortune.” Now your Maximum Leader can hope that he wins the lottery or something this weekend as he travels to his mother-in-law’s house for Mother’s Day.

9) Your Maximum Leader likes it when they bring a sliced orange with your fortune cookies. Indeed, he actually likes the orange more than the cookie.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has been wasting his time away listening to old Metropolitan Opera Performances of Verdi he’s put onto his iPod and playing Rome: Total War. Indeed, if there has been a waster of your Maximum Leader’s free time lately it has been Rome: Total War. The Smallholder and he have been exchanging ideas on strategeries that make for different game-play. Your Maximum Leader hasn’t had the success that Smallholder has had, but he’s learned that the reason for this is that he is playing a different faction (the Scipii not the Brutii) from the Smallholder. (Your Maximum Leader is partial to the Scipii actually. This is probably due to two reasons… The first is your Maximum Leader’s fondness for Scipio Africanus. The second is because he finds that in the game the Scipii family faction crest (a wild dog’s head on a blue field) is more appealing to look at than the Brutii faction crest (a lime green colour with a stylized faces). For those of you who care (which frankly is probably one or two of you at the most - and here your Maximum Leader is thinking Smallholder and the Foreign Minister - and even the Foreign Minister is a stretch) the other playable Roman faction is the Julii faction, who’s family crest is a laurel crown on a red field. (The non-playable faction of Romans, the Senate and People of Rome, is represented by the familiar letters SPQR on a purple field.)

Anyhoo…

That paragraph when on much longer than anticpated…

Your Maximum Leader sees on the news wire that King Herod’s tomb may have been discovered at the site of Herod’s city of Herodium. The article says that it was long assumed that Herod was buried at Herodium. For some reason now passing your Maximum Leader’s understanding, he always assumed that Herod was buried outside of Jerusalem. (It seems a likely place.)

Your Maximum Leader always has associated King Herod with a number of different things… The slaughter of the innocents. The building of the wall around the Old City of Jerusalem. The renovation of the Second Temple. And the building of Masada and Ceasarea. Did you know that Masada was besieged by the Roman 10th Legion? That legion was orginally raised by Julius Ceasar and was a key force in Ceasar’s conquest of Gaul and victory in the Civil War? A long and storied history to the 10th Legion. Your Maximum Leader is reading all about it now.

Anyhoo…

Did you also know that a team of scientists and archeologists are trying to trace the decline and fall of Inca civilization by using fossilized mites found in Llama dung? Strange but true…

Carry on.

My classes are in the last stretch before the AP exam. I reviewed the court cases the class covered this morning. I gave them a handout with enough description to trigger their memories. I figured some of our political monkey readers might be interested. The cases we covered are below. If you think there is a court case(s) that I ought to include in a U.S. history course, let me know in the comments.

AP US Court Cases Review

Colonial Period
Zenger case: Truth is a defense against libel. Precedent that criticism of government officials is permissible.

Marshall Court (Increasing Federal Power)
1801 Marbury v. Madison: Judicial Review (SC, NOT states, decides constitutionality. Third branch co-equal)

1810 Fletcher v. Peck: First time a law was struck down using judicial review. States cannot abrogate contracts (rule of law and protection of private property = climate for entrepreneurship) States cannot pass laws “impairing” contracts.

1819 Dartmouth v. Woodward: Stopped New Jersey from seizing Datmouth and making it a public college; strengthens contract power.

1819 McCulloch v. Maryland: Congress has the implied power to establish a bank (“necessary and proper” elastic clause) and states may not tax federal institutions (“power to tax is power to destroy”)

1821 Gibbons v. Ogden: New York’s grant of a steamboat monopoly found to be unconstitutional; only the feds can regulate interstate trade. Expanded fed interstate power.

1831 Cherokee Nation v. Georgia: Court ruled that Cherokees were not a nation with direct access to the federal courts when they sued to block Indian Removal.

1832 Worcester v. Georgia: Said that Cherokees WERE a nation and state laws did not apply them. Marshall messing with Jackson. Jackson ignores supreme court, says “Marshall has made his decision, let him enforce it.”

1856 Dred Scott v. Sanford: Slavery was protected by the federal Constitution and no state government could interfere with slavery (i.e. slavery legal everywhere).

1865 Ex Parte Milligan: People held under the suspension of habeus corpus may not be tried/executed. Lincoln’s tactics challenged.

Gilded Age
1877 Munn v. Illinois: Upheld state regulation of railroads as a matter of public interest. Increased power of states to interfere with private contract and to regulate. Interstate questions unanswered.

1886 Wabash: Struck down Illinois regulation of railroads for violating interstate commerce power of fed government. Re-established feds AND business power over populist legislatures in the west.

1896 Plessy v. Ferguson: Gave federal sanction to the Jim Crow South. The ruling held that “separate but equal” segregated facilities did not violate the 14th Amendment. Overturned by Brown in 1954.

1895 In Re Debs: Upheld Debs’ contempt of court conviction for failing to halt a railroad strike. Use of federal power to suppress labor.

1919 Schenck v. United States: Speech may be limited to avoid “clear and present danger.” Espionage act upheld (also established the “fire!” in a crowded theatre analogy.

1919 Debs v. United States: Speech may be limited to avoid “clear and present danger” – in this case, the danger was Debs was discouraging people from accepting the draft. Applied to political speech.

New Deal
Schecter Poultry v. United States: Invalidated one of FDR’s alphabet agencies, the NIRA, saying that since Schecter’s products were consumed within state boundaries, it was engaged in INTRAstate commerce and not subject to federal regulation requiring it provide certain wages and hours to its employees. Led to the court-packing scheme. This was a limit to federal power.

1944 Korematsu: The Supreme Court upheld the internment of Japanese-Americans, saying that they did present a danger to the United States. America often restricts rights during wartime and then expands rights in the aftermath of the war.

1951 Dennis v. United States and 1957 Yates v. United States: Free speech, even political speech, is not absolute. You may not advocate the overthrow of the government; doing so is a clear and present danger.

Earl Warren Court (Expand due process rights to protect accused in state courts; advanced civil rights)

1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas: Argued by Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP, the decisions overturned Plessy and said that “separate is inherently unequal.” Local schools were required to desegregate with “all deliberate speed.” Revived the issue of states’ rights as southern states engaged in massive resistance. Also sparked “white flight” from the cities to the suburbs.

1961 Mapp v. Ohio: Illegally seized evidence may not be used. Exclusionary rule/poisoned fruit doctrine.

1962 Baker v. Carr: Feds can force states to redraw districts; Tenessee had not redrawn districts since the turn of the century in order to disenfranchise urban (read: black) voters. 14th Amendment’s protection of due process used to limit state power over elections. Allows feds to oversee state district drawing. Part of the Civil Rights movement.

1962 Engle v. Vitale: Teacher led prayer in schools violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment. Student-led prayer still acceptable.

1963 Gideon v. Wainwright: The state MUST give indigent defendants a court-appointed lawyer.

1965 Griswold v. Connecticut: Recognizes a right to privacy. Threw out birth control restrictions because couples had a right to privacy in sexual relations (leads to Roe).

1966 Miranda v. Arizona: Police may not question a suspect without reading the suspect his rights. Miranda warning.

1969 Tinker v. Des Moines: Protection of “symbolic speech” (black armbands to protest the Vietnam War). Accepts that students do not surrender all rights when they enter the classroom; administration have a reasonable apprehension of school disruption to limit speech. Symbolic speech eventually expanded to flag burning (1949 Texas v. Johnson).

1971 New York Times v. United States: Allowed the New York Times and Washington Post to publish the Pentagon papers. Government may not (really) use prior restraint censorship.

1972 United States v. Nixon: Nixon had to turn over the Watergate tapes. Executive power has limits and Congress does have oversight power. Executive power does not allow the President to shield evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

1973 Roe v. Wade: The right to privacy created a “penumbra” of a right to control one’s reproduction. States may not prohibit abortion until after viability is achieved. Considered by many to be another Dred Scott in that it denied the humanity of a class of persons (slaves and unborn children).

1976 Bakke: Quota-based affirmative action (in this case for medical school applications in California) is unconstitutional. Holistic considerations are still permissible.

2003 Lawrence v. Texas: Struck down anti-homosexuality laws under the penumbra of privacy. Extended the penumbra to non-married couples. Fuel on the fire of the culture wars.

2005 Gonzales v. Raich: Massive increase of interstate regulation: EVERYTHING is interstate commerce, even one pot plant grown in a woman’s backyard for her own medically prescribed doobie consumption.

2005 Kelo v. New London: Allowed the use of eminent domain to transfer property between private parties. Massive increase of government power.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that Robbo has linked to another site and a positively salacious posting concerning the Harris guide to Covent Garden Ladies or Man of Pleasure’s Kalender. On Gail’s site (Scribal Terror) she provides some excerpts from the 1773 edition of the Harris guide.

Waaaaay back in 2003 your Maximum Leader saved an article (the thinks from The Times of London) that he planned on making into a blog post. He never did - until now that is. In late 2003 a copy of the Harris guide from 1790 was sold at auction for £5,170. At the time your Maximum Leader was able to save some published excerpts from the Harris guide of 1790. He now provides them for your reading pleasure (as it were).

MISS BROWN. No 14 Old Compton Street, Soho.

This pretty little bit of luscious stuff is not above 19. She is remarkably full-breasted for her age.

A certain gentleman was so enamoured with her pouting orbs, which before they attained their present extent he compared to two poached eggs, that he desired to cover them with two banknotes of twenty pounds each whenever he regaled himself with such a luxuriant banquet.

MISS NUNN. No 15 Compton Street.

If carroty locks create lewdness (as if believed by some) we need not wonder at this lass’s fire, she is so amply stored with it both above and below.

During your engagement you should be particularly cautious, just at the coming of the heat, not to suffer her teeth to come in contact with any tender part.

We have known a case where a gentleman lost part of his tongue upon the occasion.

MISS LIVEBON. No 32 George Street.

This lady is a daughter of fortune, having a pretty good income left her by an old flagellant whom she literally flogged out of this world.

She is happily constructed for this bizarrerie, as the French call it, being of middle size and well set together.

She never leaves off till her patient (for patient he must be in our opinion) is completely gratified.

MISS BROWN. No 9 John Street.

You have an excellent nymph to while away an hour with.

Here are youth, spirit, figure and blood to the back-bone; a good face and a fine eye!

Her mouth is rather wide; but those who have experience say this is no index, for her abilities in spermatic hydraulics are improved by an able and extensive practice.

MISS CARTFEN. No 31 York Street.

So violent is she in her passions and of so amorous a constitution, that in the arms of an equally lewd partner, she never wishes to fall in the arms of sleep.

We should therefore advise none but the most experienced, none but the truly amorous, none but those furnished with the best parts, to engage in the contest.

Come ye then metallic Hibernians, ye brawny Scots, and ye genuine beef-eating Britons, replete with health, vigour, youth and money.

MISS BETSEY HARTON. No 38 Upper Grosvenor Street.

As amorous as you could wish, five guineas.

This pleasing charmer is a native of Newcastle, and as amorous as the warmest devotee would wish.

Betsey is of a very fair complexion, beautifully formed, very chatty and an agreeable companion; she is elegant in her dress and is very active either in bed or up, and not the least tinge of vulgarity.

MISS POLLY REBFEN. No 35 Union Street, Middlesex Hospital.

Pretty, panting bubbies, one guinea.

If a stranger to Polly wishes to see her in her most engaging capacity he must take her to bed and she will soon convince him that the face is not always a proper index to the state of her parts below.

She will twine and twist, sigh and murmur, pant and glow with unfeigned emotions, and never be tired of love’s game.

MISS HANNAH BUTCHER. No 30 Queen Anne Street.

Captain R fell in the way of this sprightly Amazonian girl and soon learnt her to perform all her manoeuvres in a masterly manner, particularly bush-fighting under cover, which she will do in any position the musket can be placed in.

Her advances and retreats are performed in a very engaging manner.

She possesses in her manner a certain je ne sais quoi that makes her a very desirable piece.

MISS BROMLEY. No 1 Poland Street, Soho.

She is very good natured and is said to be thoroughly experienced in the whole art and mystery of Venus’s tactics.

In plain English she is a delightful bedfellow of about 18 years of age and well worth a couple of guineas.

MISS DIGAM. No 31, Goodge Street.

Miss Digam is rather short and inclined to be lusty.

Her complexion is dark, as are also her eyes and hair, which, added to a good set of teeth, render her an agreeable piece for the winter season to those who are not over-nice about delicacy.

It must be acknowledged that she has a little piece of the vixen in her and when she gives way to passion she can be a dangerous associate.

However, this lady can curb her temper occasionally and become very good company, especially in bed, where George S calls her the feather bed of bliss furnished with two pillows of delight.

According to the original article, Harris’ guide could be purchased at any London bookseller’s for two shillings and sixpence.

One wonders if Deborah Jeane Palfrey provided such a list to her clients….

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader recently enjoyed dinner at a friend’s house. These friends are very well off and have a large lovely home. A few other couples were at dinner as well…

The rest of this post may not be for the faint of heart…

So… After dinner, your Maximum Leader felt the need for a consitutional. He went to the WC and discovered it was lovely smelling. Your Maximum Leader did what needed be done and noticed a small spray bottle of air freshener on the back of the toilet…

Here is the question. Does one:

a) spray, then wash hands?
b) wash hands, then spray?
c) wash hands, then spray, then wash hands again?

Think about it. There are interesting implications to all three answers, not just for oneself, but for the other people using that particular lavatory.

Feel free to discuss…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader, keeping true to his monarchist tendencies, would like to wish Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain to the Commonwealth of Virginia. (As does our friend, the highly esteemed Mr. Cusack.)

Her Majesty should be arriving in Richmond shortly and beginning her whirlwind tour of the States. She will visit the newly renovated state Capitol building. She will visit Jamestown to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the founding of that permanent colony in the new world. She will visit with President Bush in Washington and go to the Goddard Space Flight Center and Children’s Hospital. On Saturday, she will take in the Kentucky Derby.

All in all it is not a bad way to spend a long weekend.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader wanted to make one more comment on the whole Paul Wolfowitz thing that he and Smallholder have been debating over the past few days…

Your Maximum Leader has previously stated that it is likely that someone in this whole mess is lying. Your Maximum Leader has, as stated before, not accepted that it is Wolfowitz that is doing the lying. The key to the whole affair appears to be what the Ethics Committee of the World Bank actually asked Wolfowitz to do concerning his girlfriend, and whether or not the Ethics Committee approved of what he did. From what your Maximum Leader has read, this is the big disconnect that no one seems to be addressing. Your Maximum Leader maintains that if the Ethics Committee asked Wolfowitz to handle the change of status of his own girlfriend, then they are the root cause of the problem. It is unclear, at least from the sources your Maximum Leader has read, what role the Ethics Committee wanted after they may have instructed Wolfowitz to take care of the situation. In a big bureaucracy like the World Bank it is certainly not beyond the realm of possibility that the Ethics Committee did in fact ask Wolfowitz to take care of the situation himself, and not ask to review what was done. It happens.

Your Maximum Leader is not ready to jump all over Wolfowitz at this point, because it is not clear what the Ethics Committee of the Bank expected of whom. It still seems to him that the Ethics Committee told Wolfowitz to take care of Ms Piza’s status (even suggesting a course to Wolfowitz); then they got upset at the outcome of his actions. That hardly seems like a big scandal - even though it is being made into one. The more your Maximum Leader contemplates it, which frankly will not be for much longer, it seems as though lying might actually be too strong a word. He thinks both sides are doing more posturing and are being selective with the facts that they disclose. It will be interesting (but only mildly) to see what the next few days of the news cycle makes of this story.

As for cronyism in the Bush Administration… As far as your Maximum Leader can tell there is a problem in the Bush Administration with getting qualified people to give different opinions in a host of areas. There is a lot of likemindedness within the White House, and your Maximum Leader thinks it is a problem for Bush. But let us face it, with very few acceptions the only way you get a high level political appointee job in this (or any other) White House is to be a crony of the President or Vice-President.

As for standards of proof and finding of guilt… Your Maximum Leader is growing weary of jumping to conclusions about guilt so soon. While the Smallholder is keen to point out such high-profile (but very dissimilar from this case) instances of people finding guilt early on; your Maximum Leader would direct one’s attention to (the equally dissimilar case of) the unfortunate Duke Lacrosse players - wrongfully accused, but now exhonerated.

As he alluded before, just because a bunch of World Bank employees are saying they didn’t approve of Wolfowitz’s actions, doesn’t mean that Wolfowitz didn’t act in the way they guided him to act.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was just reading the latest from Robbo on the meltdown of the Episcopal Church. The first line of the creed Robbo posted reminded your Maximum Leader that there is an image with which Robbo needs to become familiar…

Buddy Christ…

You can get your Buddy Christ dashboard figure here. Or you can upgrade to the Buddy Christ bobblehead here.

Carry on.

The Maximum Leader is my good and respected friend… yadda, yadda, yadda.

(The Maximum Leader and I only prefix our comments with respectful murmerings because we don’t want you readers out there to think we are nasty to one another. When alone, we simply reach across the table and go for the jugular. We’ve been friends now for half our lives so we know that we only mean the best. That said, I now return to the regualrly scheduled smack down).

Your humble Smallholder is well aware of the standard of proof in a criminal trial.

I could be mistaken - and the Maximum Leader seems to think I am - but I don’t believe the inquiry into Wolfowitz’s behavior is occuring in a court of law.

Applying a criminal trial level of proof to this case is a bit disingenuous. And even if it was a criminal case - it might be because the Maximum Leader wants to apply this standard - that doesn’t mean that everyone should refrain from commenting because we have to wait to see how things shake out.

Even in a criminal trial, it is perfectly acceptable for non-jury members to derive and talk about opinions based on the facts presented. I went way out on a limb and said that the Menendez brothers and O.J. were guilty, guilty, guilty. Hell, I’ll say that O.J. killed Nicole AFTER the not guilty verdict.

When someone says that the press and the public should not draw conclusions until after the court case is over (or in this case, if I’m not mistaken, until the board inquiry is over), you can guarantee that the facts are not on their side and they want to ignore those facts.

Most of our readers are to the right of center, so I’ll ask how everyone felt about refraining from judging during the lead up to Clinton’s impeachment trial. Did you all try to shush fellow conservative bloggers because Monica’s claims had not been proven in court beyond a reasonable doubt? Of course not.

Reasonable people can look at two people lying and make a reasoned judgment. But we don’t need to do that in this case. The former general counsel, in the same article I linked, also says that Wolfowitz acted improperly. Addtionally, Bennet, Wolfowitz’s lawyer, doesn’t dispute the actions his client took on his client’s behalf. He simply says that the ethics board approved. On NPR this morning I heard Bennet recast that argument in light of the conflicting stories presented by MORE THAN ONE other bank employee. “We didn’t mean that they approved, we just meant that they weren’t deceived and my client would have explained his actions if they had asked.”

One can’t fault the Maximum Leader for not knowing about Bennet’s “clarification,” but even if the Maximum Leader missed the second person corroborating the ethics story in the article I linked, his dismissive “there is nothing to see here!” doesn’t make sense. The very fact that hearings are being held leads a reasonable person to conclude that something is indeed rotten in Denmark.

If there wasn’t loads of evidence that Wolfowitz acted improperly there wouldn’t even be a discussion. The governing board of the World Bank is in an awkward position. Firing Wolfowitz will bring them into conflict with Bush, so they would like for this whole thing to go away. Unfortunately for the board, the staff of the world bank is so upset about Wolfowitz’s leadership that they won’t let it go away. The next best option would have been for Wolfowitz to leave voluntarily or for Bush to ask for his resignation. That’s not happening either. Wolfowitz is a fighter and Bush has restated his confidence in Wolfowitz.

(Here’s another issue aside from the cronyism that the Maximum Leader doesn’t want to discuss: What exactly does an appointee have to do to lose the confidence of this president? Get caught engaged in homosexual Satanic rituals while drinking the blood of Bald Eagles?)

The cronyism is an issue in this administration, but I didn’t address that point. I did say that cronyism is a problem in third world economies. I then made the link that said that the appearance of cronyism at the World Bank would make it harder to sell reforms to tinpot third world kleptocracies.

That is what makes it newsworthy. There is hardly, as the Maximum Leader purports, a “salacious” angle. No one is particularly titilated by images of Woflowitz and his fiftyish paramour getting on (except perhaps the pugnaciously prurient, persistently priapic Big Hominid*). There is a news story here and it is no less a news story because it makes right wing apologists uncomfortable.

But since the Maximum Leader brings it up: Cronyism is a problem in this administration. Is there anyone left who is so delusional as to believe that Bush gets the best advice available to Americann leadership? Bush’s reliance on an inner circle Praetorian guard and discomfort with conflicting views is a real problem.

Of course, take my opinions with a grain of salt. I’m not the all-knowing Maximum Leader. I’m just an inbred agrarian. Perhaps this really is a criminal trial and my reading skills are too poor to understand that the news articles we linked to are about courtroom procedures.

* The Big Hominid has nothing to do with this. But the alluring alliterative aura of that phrase led me to launch an undeserved ad hominem on the Hominid. I could have chosen someone else, but then I couldn’t have paired ad hominem with Hominid. Small pleasures and all that.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has a deep well of fraternal affection for his good friend the Smallholder. But you know, he is glad that we don’t have to rely on the Smallholder to make judgements concerning matters of justice.

The case in point are two recent posts. In the first, your Maximum Leader expressed his lack of understanding about the whole newsworthiness of the Paul Wolfowitz girlfriend bruhaha. The second is the Smallholder’s post explaining the newsworthiness of the Paul Wolfowitz girlfriend bruhaha.

Apparently, the Smallholder has drawn a conclusion here that your Maximum Leader has not. The Smallholder concludes that because the (now former) head of the World Bank Ethics Committee is calling Wolfowitz a liar; that in fact Wolfowitz is a liar. Your Maximum Leader hasn’t drawn that conclusion yet.

If we are judging this story on the relative truth-telling abilities of the two men (and apparently we are) then we don’t have much of a story right now. Of course, there is a salacious aspect to this story that makes it sort of newsworthy - perhaps. But right now we don’t have anything to base a decision upon other than two conflicting stories. Unlike the on-going US attorney firing story, we don’t have other evidence (yet at least) to support either side. A key point in this dispute seems to be who was told to do what. According to the article the Smallholder linked, the Ethics Committee advised Wolfowitz that his girlfriend needed to be transferred out of his supervision and compensated for the move. According to Wolfowitz he asked someone else to affect this change, and the Ethics Committee advised Wolfowitz to do it himself. If in fact the Ethics Committee acted as Wolfowitz claims they did, then your Maximum Leader would be inclinded to find that the World Bank Ethics Committee is responsible for this bruhaha. If Wolfowitz did lie (something we don’t know now) then there is a story here and Wolfowitz should be dealt with appropriately.

So, yes, at this point there really isn’t anything to see here and we should move along while the appropriate bodies are investigating further. But we aren’t going to move along are we? Because cronyism in the Bush Administration is a good story to push - regardless of what we know. Perhaps reporters ought to exercise a degree of discretion until more is known. One would think that after other high-profile accusations that didn’t pan out in the end, the media might want to hold on for a moment.

And because he wants to get one more jab in… One wonders if Smallholder remembers that the burden of proof in a case like this would be with the accuser and the accused should be presumed innocent until we know otherwise… Then again, it has been warm here lately and it is likely that the sun (which is reddening the Smallholders neck as we speak) is affecting the Smallholder’s memory in these matters.

Carry on.

Recently, the Propaganda Minister called your humble Smallholder a right wing apologist. Lately I’ve also been called a “callous, cold hearted Republican,” by a mom in the playgroup, a “warmonger,” by a fellow parishoner, and “devastatingly handsome” by Evangeline Lilly.

Okay, I made one of those quotes up.

At any rate, I would argue that none of the villains who post at our little bloggy shoppe can be consistently labeled as an apologist for one side or the other. But the Maximum Leader is starting to steer, Turner Joy-like, into North Vietnamese waters.

He says that he does not understand why folks are upset about the Wolfowitz kerfuffle over at the World Bank.

Well.

For those of you who don’t follow Washington arcana, here is the scoop:

Wolfowitz was named head of the World Bank.

One of the World Bank’s primary purposes is to help modernize third world economies by emphasizing efficient capitalism and trying to get third world leaders to abandon nepotism and cronyism.

When Wolfowitz was named to head the World Bank there was a troublesome little problem. He was going to be his girlfriend’s supervisor. His girlfriend, you see, is a career bank employee dealing with the Middle Eastern region.

The ethics board said this was a conflict of interest and the girlfriend would have to be detailed elsewhere during Wolfowitz’s term.

Wolfowitz arranged a deal to transfer her to the State Department during his five year term.

But here’s the crux. He didn’t just transfer her. He promoted her, issued a directive that she be given the highest rating in FUTURE job evalutations over the next five years, a raise that took her annual salary from $133,000 to $190,000, and another automatic promotion when she returns to the bank.

The Maximum Leader can’t comprehend how this might look bad for a guy who is charged with convincing third world leaders to abandon nepotism and cronyism? Great googly-moogly.

Perhaps the Maximum Leader was taken in by Wolfowitz’s claim that he had informed the ethics panel about his actions and was given thumbs up. Of course, Wolfowitz lied:

The former chairman of the World Bank’s ethics committee yesterday accused the institution’s embattled president, Paul D. Wolfowitz, of misleading a panel investigating his role in granting his girlfriend a substantial pay raise.

In a written submission to the investigating committee, the former ethics chairman, Ad Melkert, contradicted Wolfowitz’s assertion that he fully informed bank officers of his handling of his girlfriend’s transfer to the State Department and that his actions had their blessing.

“I am deeply hurt by efforts to manipulate information,” Melkert said in his statement, maintaining that his committee was never consulted on the details of a promotion-and-raise package for Wolfowitz’s girlfriend. His comments to the committee were an elaboration on a statement he released late Monday.

and:

Melkert is now a top administrator at the U.N. Development Program but worked at the World Bank and chaired its ethics committee when Wolfowitz took over as president in 2005. According to Melkert, Wolfowitz had been advised by the ethics committee that Riza, a Middle East expert, needed to be transferred to a job beyond his supervision and that she was entitled to compensation for the disruption to her career. But Melkert said his committee was never told the details of the raise Wolfowitz then approved — a jump from about $133,000 a year to more than $190,000, with guaranteed promotions in later years.

“It is completely incomprehensible that subsequently Mr. Wolfowitz did exactly what he originally had proposed not to do: to engage directly in personnel matters concerning his partner,” Melkert said.

Bennett said Riza came up with the salary numbers herself, basing them on the middle range for someone who had attained her status at the bank. An attorney for Riza declined to comment.

Melkert’s words came a day after Roberto Da?ino, a former general counsel for the bank, told the investigating committee that Wolfowitz had acted “incorrectly” in instructing the bank’s vice president for human resources to extend “an extraordinary salary increase,” according to his written submission.

Da?ino excoriated Wolfowitz, saying he subsequently withheld information about the raise, “apparently trying to deceive the board, the staff, and the general public” and adding that Wolfowitz had “damaged the reputation of the bank and eroded his moral authority to lead.”

Yep. Nothing to see here. Move along…

* My wife caught this stat on the evening news. She exclaimed that she would sleep with Wolfowitz for a $60,000 raise. I of course replied with the Churchillian “Would you sleep with him for a dollar? No? Well, we’ve already established what you are and now we are just dickering over price.” You know, our couch is pretty comfortable…

I frequently see complaints that the mainstream media is to blame for declining American support for the Iraq War. This isn’t new - the same complaints were made during Vietnam.

In both cases, the complaints are wrong. Obviously so.

Folks who scream that the mainstream media ought to do more stories on distributing notebooks to Iraqi schoolchildren and less on the ongoing unrest. Ignoring the insurgency doesn’t make the insurgency vanish, reduce casualties, or make the people of Iraq believe in secular democracy.

If the insurgency was vanishing, casualty rates are falling, and the inner American inside every Iraqi was popping out, there wouldn’t be unrest to report.

If the administration’s statements to the public had been accurate, the war would be over and we would all rejoice.

What statements, you ask?

Mission accomplished.
Bitter enders.
Last throes of the insurgency.
Violence is increasing because the insurgents think we are winning.
Suicide attacks have increased because the surge is working.

Okay, that last one was from Lieberman, who is not (technically) a member of the administration.

When the American public has been told for four years that victory is at hand and that there is light at the end of the tunnel, they start to suspect that their leaders are not being straight with them.

If the leaders have been wrong every time they prematurely claimed victory, then perhaps we ought to view their future judgments skeptically.

If the leaders have understood that the occupation is going to be a long haul and lied about it, then people ought to be free to make new judgments about the worthiness of the cause and whether the sacrifices we are asking of the soldiers and their families are justified if they are going to continue indefinitely.

If the leaders have been lying all along, it also brings their judgment into question. To martial support for a long war in a democracy, you have to build public support. One way to do that is through shared sacrifice. What sacrifice have middle-class American made in this war?

Compare, for example, the wartime leadership of Lyndon Baines Johnson and Winston Churchill. Johnson kept reassuring the American people that THIS escalation would win the war in Vietnam. Churchill promised nothing but “blood, sweat, toil, and tears.” Churchill didn’t label defeats as examples of how we were winning - There is no late 1940 quotes to the effect that “The desperate Nazi terror attacks over London show that the German regime is afraid that we are winning the war.” Even when things started going well for the allies, he didn’t go overboard: “This is not the end. This is not the beginning of the end. It is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

But I digress.

Can we please call and end to the dissembling about the MSM? The war will be won or lost by convincing Iraqis to support a secular democracy and killing the “bitter enders.”

I’ll leave you with some historical perspective from today’s Washington Post:

When we met in Saigon in May 1963, David Halberstam was only 29, but he was already the dominant figure among an influential group of journalists who reported what they observed even when it contradicted the version of the war put out by the military. This was daring stuff; only 18 years after World War II, reporters were not supposed to question senior American military commanders. It was such a serious matter that President John Kennedy asked New York Times Publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger to reassign Halberstam, a request Sulzberger rejected.

In the decades since, Halberstam and his colleagues often have been blamed by right-wing commentators and some military officers for the loss in Vietnam, on the grounds that their reporting undermined domestic support for the war. This is, of course, nonsense; in war, success speaks for itself. Spin may delude the public for a while, but not indefinitely — and meanwhile people die. The basic truth is simple: Halberstam’s reporting was right, and the official version was not.