Our new Chief Justice

John Roberts has been confirmed as Chief Justice of the United States today by a margin of 78 votes to 22.

Let me say again that Roberts is clearly well qualified and I expect him to be an excellent justice. I realize that I'm just about alone among liberals, especially gay liberals, in this regard. But I refuse to be a prisoner of ideology.

Vlad the Impaler

My talented, erudite and always-informative partner Ron has been reading a book which has aroused his interest in Vlad the Impaler (generally taken to be the real-life inspiration for the fictional Dracula).

Today he found an entertaining but dubious family tree—apparently it comes from a different novel—which shows that Vlad was married to a Princess Cneajna the Unpronounceable of Transylvania, and that his son Mihnea was known as "the bad." (Considering what Daddy was like, it's a wonder that ordinary badness is even noted.)

There's lots of other colorful information on the wives and children of the family, an ill-fated lot, prone to suicide, early death and various congenital deficiencies.

Vote Against Prop 2

Good news: the generally conservative Houston Chronicle recommends that we Texans vote against Proposition 2, the odious Texas anti-same-sex-marriage constitutional amendment:

This November, Texans will vote on Proposition 2, a proposed constitutional amendment that would silence further reflection on these important issues. The referendum language defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Texas law already outlaws same-sex marriage. Should voters approve this amendment, it would change nothing in the law. It lacks any purpose other than to enshrine bigotry in the Texas Constitution.

But the amendment also bans the state, or any political subdivision, from creating or recognizing any legal status "identical or similar to marriage." Impeding protections for relationships that are even "identical or similar to marriage" is a crude assault on an existing truth. Throughout the state, same-sex couples are thriving, raising children, volunteering in the community and supporting each other financially. Withholding protections for these family units cruelly jeopardizes their ability to take care of themselves and their children.

(Via Charles Kuffner's excellent Off the Kuff.)

Soon to be a minor motion picture

Over the past few days several news items have appeared that sound like movie plots. This SFGate article on Pat Tillman's death brings to mind military cover-up movies like "A Few Good Men" or "Courage Under Fire":

The files [Tillman's] family received from the Army in March are heavily censored, with nearly every page containing blacked-out sections; most names have been deleted.… At least one volume was withheld altogether from the family, and even an Army press release given to the media has deletions.…

A Chronicle review of more than 2,000 pages of testimony, as well as interviews with Pat Tillman's family members and soldiers who served with him, found contradictions, inaccuracies and what appears to be the military's attempt at self-protection.

For example, the documents contain testimony of the first investigating officer alleging that Army officials allowed witnesses to change key details in their sworn statements so his finding that certain soldiers committed gross negligence could be softened.

If that's a little too real for you, you might prefer this article from the Observer:

It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico.

Experts who have studied the US navy's cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying 'toxic dart' guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet's smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing.

After all that, it seems almost a shame to report that the purported "respected accident investigator" who appears to be the main source for the article is well-regarded among the crop-circles-and-UFOs crowd.

Finally, submarine movie fans can rejoice: there really are giant squid.

Stupid, stupid, stupid...

Andrew Sullivan takes note of an LATimes story:

BUSH VERSUS CONSERVATISM: In general, it's a good idea for the administration not to expand existing entitlements for Katrina victims and to rely on once-only measures. In so far as they are doing that, good for them. Once you create an entitlement, it lives for ever. But this strikes me as bizarre:

Instead of offering $10,000 [rental housing] vouchers, FEMA is paying an average of $16,000 for each trailer in the new parks it is contemplating. Even many Republicans wonder why the government would want to build trailer parks when many evacuees are now living in communities with plenty of vacant, privately owned apartments.

We have a unique chance to fight poverty by dispersing some of New Orleans' underclass across the country in places with empty rental markets. Instead, the Bush administration is creating trailer-ghettoes that cost more. Newt Gingrich is right to be livid. Isn't this a no-brainer?

For once I agree with Gingrich, who is quoted in the story saying "The idea that — in a community where we could place people in the private housing market to reintegrate them into society — we would put them in [trailer] ghettos with no jobs, no community, no future, strikes me as extraordinarily bad public policy, and violates every conservative principle that I'm aware of."

I also object to the obvious poison pill in this aid: the main thing offering subsidized trailer housing in New Orleans does is to provide these poor people a particularly efficient opportunity to lose everything all over again. It would be cynical and churlish of me to infer that FEMA intends to offer less aid for more money. As Napoleon reputedly said, "Never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity."

Army Contract Official Critical of Halliburton Pact Is Demoted

The NYTimes reports:

A top Army contracting official who criticized a large, noncompetitive contract with the Halliburton Company for work in Iraq was demoted Saturday for what the Army called poor job performance.

Not exactly a surprise, although when you dig down into the article it becomes a lot of he said, she said:

"[The official, Bunnatine H. Greenhouse] is being demoted because of her strict adherence to procurement requirements and the Army's preference to sidestep them when it suits their needs," [her lawyer, Michael Kohn] said Sunday in an interview. He also said the Army had violated a commitment to delay Ms. Greenhouse's dismissal until the completion of an inquiry by the Pentagon's inspector general.

Carol Sanders, spokeswoman for the Army Corps of Engineers, said Sunday that the personnel action against Ms. Greenhouse had been approved by the Department of the Army. And in a memorandum dated June 3, 2005, as the demotion was being arranged, the commander of the corps, Lt. Gen. Carl A. Strock, said the administrative record "clearly demonstrates that Ms. Greenhouse's removal from the S.E.S. is based on her performance and not in retaliation for any disclosures of alleged improprieties that she may have made."

Known as a stickler for the rules on competition, Ms. Greenhouse initially received stellar performance ratings, Mr. Kohn said. But her reviews became negative at roughly the time she began objecting to decisions she saw as improperly favoring Kellogg Brown & Root, he said. Often she hand-wrote her concerns on the contract documents, a practice that corps leaders called unprofessional and confusing.

In October 2004, General Strock, citing two consecutive performance reviews that called Ms. Greenhouse an uncooperative manager, informed her that she would be demoted.

A touching concern for patient privacy

Dad's eye doctor just sent a postcard to remind him that it's time to have his eyes examined. The postcard is considerately stamped PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL.

It's a girl!

Ron's niece Ashley and her husband Philip are the happy and proud parents of Dylan Casey (not sure about the spelling yet), 6 pounds 14 oz. Dylan's great-grandma Jenny says she's just beautiful and her head is perfectly shaped.

Haven't seen any pictures yet, but she's only about two hours old.

Truth in advertising?

A semi-local bank is promoting online banking. "So what?" I hear you scoff, "What bank doesn't?"

Surely not; but this bank signs off all of its advertising "Banking the way it used to be." Apparently that's one of those statements that's not meant to be taken literally.

You sycophantic stooge!

Random Insult Generatorfrom NK News.

Reparative therapy: Dobson's view

A rather lengthy (and somewhat amusing) article by Focus on the Family's Dr. James Dobson is rippling through the portion of the blogosphere I read—Matthew Yglesias, on The American Prospect's TAPPED blog, got to it through Bradford Plumer, who in turn credits two others.

The article, dated June 2002 and titled "Can Homosexuality Be Treated and Prevented?" claims no less than to provide "a definitive explanation…regarding the origins of homosexuality." Dobson explains that homosexuality is a disorder that generally isn't chosen; on the other hand, he dismisses the notion that there's a genetic component. If there were, he claims, no one could ever change their orientation, but in reality "there are eight hundred known former gay and lesbian individuals today who have escaped from the homosexual lifestyle and found wholeness in their newfound heterosexuality."

(Golly, a whole eight hundred? Out of how many? Hmm, a little less than 400 million people in the US and Canada…let's be reeeaal conservative and say no more than two percent are gay or lesbian, giving us 8 million. So that's, um, a hundredth of one percent, if my arithmetic is correct. Not the best odds.)

Anyway, if it's not chosen or genetic, that leaves what? Well, Dobson relies on the word of Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, a clinical psychologist who, Dobson believes, is "the foremost authority on the prevention and treatment of homosexuality today." Dobson quotes from Dr. Nicolosi's book A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality at considerable length. Turns out, it's the old distant father, smothering mother thing:

In 15 years, I have spoken with hundreds of homosexual men. I have never met one who said he had a loving, respectful relationship with his father.

(Not ever? What about the zillions of straight guys who'd say the same thing about their dads? Where do they fit in this?)

Elsewhere, Nicolosi says,

If [a father] wants his son to grow up straight, he has to break the mother-son connection that is proper to infancy but not in the boy's interest after the age of three. In this way, the father has to be a model, demonstrating that it is possible for his son to maintain a loving relationship with this woman, his mom, while maintaining his own independence. In this way, the father is a healthy buffer between mother and son.

Nicolosi errs by conflating masculinity and straightness (lesbians are scarcely mentioned in the material Dobson excerpts). Also, he's awfully, awfully therapy-centric:

Recalling the words of psychologist Robert Stoller, he said, "Masculinity is an achievement." [He] meant that growing up straight isn't something that happens. It requires good parenting. It requires societal support. And it takes time. The crucial years are from one and a half to three years old, but the optimal time is before age twelve. Once mothers and fathers recognize the problems their children face, agree to work together to help resolve them, and seek the guidance and expertise of a psychotherapist who believes change is possible, there is great hope.

That's pretty compressed; maybe Nicolosi doesn't really mean to suggest that your kid's apt to grow up gay unless you really work hard to make him straight, with generous applications of therapy to ensure the desired result.

For a guy who unquestioningly accepts that homosexuality is intrinsically wrong, Dobson is surprisingly sympathetic; I hardly expected him to say that homosexuality isn't chosen: "Homosexuals deeply resent being told that they selected this same-sex inclination in pursuit of sexual excitement or some other motive. It is unfair, and I don't blame them for being irritated by that assumption. "

Nor did I expect Dobson to grasp that gay people often have to deal with common life issues such as "loneliness, rejection, affirmation, intimacy, identity, relationships, parenting, self-hatred, gender confusion, and a search for belonging" in ways that straight people don't (though he's patently wrong to say that those issues are what homosexuality's really all about), and goes on: "This explains why the homosexual experience is so intense—and why there is such anger expressed against those who are perceived as disrespecting gays and lesbians or making their experience more painful. I suppose if we who are straight had walked in the shoes of those in that 'other world,' we would be angry too."

Holy Freudian cliche, Batman!

Via Obsidian Wings, who in turn got it from Pandagon, Men overcompensate when masculinity threatened:

Threaten a man's masculinity and he will assume more macho attitudes, according to a study by a Cornell University researcher.

I found that if you made men more insecure about their masculinity, they displayed more homophobic attitudes, tended to support the Iraq War more and would be more willing to purchase an SUV over another type of vehicle,' said Robb Willer, a sociology doctoral candidate at Cornell. Willer is presenting his findings Aug. 15 at the American Sociological Association's 100th annual meeting in Philadelphia.

I'm not bitter.

Well, I got the word on one of my estimates. The job was to recreate a report consisting almost entirely of financial reports and sales graphs. Despite the fact that I've worked for this client for several years, they have proven almost impervious to any kind of education I've provided about the process, techniques, and cost of graphic design work. In practice this means they have some unrealistic expectations.

Bottom line: I quoted them $1700; they had a quote from somebody else for $150. That is not a typo.

I wrote their general manager this evening as follows:

Dear [name],

I value your business, but I'm afraid I can't consider re-quoting the ops report.

It looks to me as if whoever created that 19 pages of financial/statistical tables and graphs gave you an extreme low-ball quote. There's no way I can get anywhere near matching it.

I hope that, regardless of the 90+ percent difference between the figure you're looking for and the figure I quoted, we'll be able to work together on future projects.

If I've lost this guy on price, it's business well lost. At his price I'd be better off working at Wal-Mart for minimum wage.

My life, in a nutshell

Today is the first time in many weeks that I've managed to get up at a reasonable hour to devote a full day to work.

Yesterday I spent most of the day doing estimates for a couple of semi-large jobs. Fun. Today, assuming at least one of them gets approved, I'll start work. I feel better when I'm really working, and the resulting checks, though possibly a long way off, are pleasant to contemplate.

Ron's off to Maryland for a presentation today; he'll be back tomorrow. Dad is in good spirits, though as always very tired and short of breath. I'm taking him out tomorrow to run a couple of errands and then we'll have lunch somewhere.

Friday we're leaving for a week at Ron's sister's beach house (yay!). Somewhere along the way I need to assemble a week's worth of junk-food reading and develop a playlist in iTunes. I also need to call the cat-sitter, buy litter, and start reassuring the kitties.

Life is good.

Uncommon indecency

I'm no fan of Michelle Malkin, but she's dead-on right in her outrage at the antics of Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor Catherine Knoll, who appeared at the funeral of a Marine killed in Iraq and used the event as a platform to declare her anti-war views.

Now that's just low. I don't care what you think about the war--intruding on a family's grief for political gain is beyond the pale.

I don't care what they say: sometimes a flint-knapper is only a flint-knapper

From BBC News: Ancient phallus unearthed in cave

John G. Roberts

What with all the hoo-haw of the past few weeks on who the President would appoint to the Supreme Court, my immediate off-the-cuff reaction is that Judge Roberts is an excellent choice.

Okay, so he's a conservative. That doesn't make him a bad person, and it's hardly reasonable to expect Bush to nominate anyone who's not a conservative.

Roberts' credentials appear to be as solid as anyone could hope for: his judicial career has been brief but he's appeared before the Supreme Court as an advocate almost 40 times and he appears to have earned the respect of the court's members.

If he's opposed by partisan hacks, who cares?

Oh, for gosh sake...

Res ipsa loquitur, from The Smoking Gun.

7/7

Of course the terror attacks in London are unprovoked and barbarous. My heart goes out to the victims and their families.

Nancy S. Detty; October 23, 1918–May 30, 2005

My mother, Nancy B. Syphrett Detty, passed away on Memorial Day at the age of 86. Her health and mobility had been generally good—she was often described as spry—until she began suffering chest pains in April. This led to valve replacement surgery, after which she remained weak; she never fully recovered.

On May 23, her heart abruptly stopped, and while EMTs were able to resuscitate her almost immediately, she apparently aspirated some stomach contents when she passed out and contracted pneumonia. From that point on, she was on a breathing machine and never woke up. After a week during which her initial improvement was worn away and her condition began to deteriorate slowly, then more quickly, my father and I gradually accepted that it was time to let her go. This was in accord with her wishes as expressed to both of us and affirmed in her advance directives to physicians.

This has been a severe blow to my father, the more so for being unexpected, and compounded by his generally poor health. He was only able to make very short visits to Mom in the hospital once a day; then his strength would fade and I’d have to take him home and put him to bed. He’s much better now, but very lonely. I see him almost daily now. We talk about news or politics or sports; we’ve grown closer. Sometimes we watch baseball or golf on TV; sometimes we run errands connected with Mom’s estate. Today we selected a headstone. The finality of having the date of your mother’s death engraved in stone is a terrible thing.

I’m better, too, but I still have trouble sleeping. Sometimes I lie awake and try to remember her as she was when I was a young child; sometimes I just lie awake.

I wrote about my mom at some length last year, in this post.