In the News

Ten or twelve of us tax types were sitting around one side of a conference table this afternoon in a classroom that for the past three years I had assumed was a broom closet but that turned out to be more of a sanitarium cell, waiting for our prof (who was lost somewhere in the building) talking about the day's top news items - specifically, Coke Plus and Harry Potter's nude role in Equus (because really, how else could you follow an act like Harry Potter?) (I'm serious, I think this was a good move)
when one of my classmates laid down the thinly veiled accusation that the world is paying insufficient attention to the recent wave of US attorney firings. I agree, but things seem to be at a stalemate. So far, the response from the justice department has been, predictably, a nonresponse:

A Justice Department official acknowledged to the House Judiciary Committee that the dismissals could have been handled better. The official, William E. Moschella, a top aide in the deputy attorney general’s office, told the committee: “These U.S. attorneys could have been informed at the time that they were asked to resign about the reasons for the decision. Unfortunately, our failure to provide reasons to these individual U.S. attorneys has only served to fuel wild and inaccurate speculation about our motives, and that is unfortunate because faith and confidence in our justice system is more important than any one individual.”

The department said recently that the prosecutors had been fired for performance problems or for failure to carry out department policies. But some Democrats have charged that the dismissals were intended to squelch corruption investigations or replace independent-minded prosecutors.

Notice how slick Moschella is, all this talk about the importance of faith and confidence in our justice system almost made me not notice that he's not only blaming his victims, but also calling them selfish.

In other news...

This photo, taken by Erik S. Lesser, was under the headline: Clinton & Obama Unite in Pleas to Blacks. Fake smiles all. This reminds me of one of those West Side-esque musicals where the two gangs group up on both sides of the stage and do some singing and dancing just before the fight. This is the singing part. Why is Obama refusing to hold hands like everyone else? I think it shows lack of commitment. Or maybe it's some subliminal hands-dirty confession about his investing habits.

This bird, thought to be extinct for 130 years, was recently found in a sewage treatment plant in Thailand.
The bird goes by the stunningly inappropriate name, Large-billed Reed Warbler. As it turns out, my mother, a bird watcher, is in Thailand right now. On a bird watching trip. And I would not put it past this group to brave a sewage treatment facility for this kind of find. I hear developers partying in the streets - new mitigation plan under the ESA: forget old growth and wetlands, just make sure your subdivision has an open-air sewage treatment facility.