Heretics' almanac

Rove 'raus

Texas, as it turns out, is one of the states with the most Norwegian-Americans. This is strange to most Norwegians - they'd be hard pressed to think of any place more unlike Norway than Texas, and a people more unlike Norwegians than Texans. A person more unlike the Norwegian ideal than Karl Rove.

Christopher Hitchens doesn't think that there's much to the Karl Rove scandal. Look, he says, Rove was right in leaking that Wilson was a weenie. And the law that prohibits someone from blowing a CIA operative's cover is silly. The administration had a weak case for going to war, perhaps, but this whole Karl Rove thing is much ado about nothing.

The Bush administration is now spinning the whole matter around criminal culpability. As if the presidential administration owes the public nothing more than staying on the right side of the law.

Everyone knows that Bush without Rove is like, well, the space shuttle without a single computer on board. It's hardly in the public interest to sever the administration's spinal cord. On the other hand, Bush, the Republicans, and Rove himself deserve to be punished severely for their moral decay.

I mean, what the fuck? Blowing the cover of a spy to get back at her husband?

Karl Rove, it should be remembered, is neither elected nor appointed with the approval of Congress. He's a civil servant serving at the pleasure of the president. He did nothing to earn the public trust; it was granted to him at the discretion of president Bush. The president not only has the right but the obligation to fire and disgrace anyone who abuses that privilege. That is, if “honor” means something at all. It doesn't matter whether Wilson was the biggest loser, his wife a third-rate paper pusher, and that Rove broke no law. What Rove did was inexcusable.

Sent wirelessly from my Blackberry.

What to call Bloody Thursday and why

Seven near-simultaneous bomb attacks in London is a formidable feat for Al-Qaeda and its partners-in-murder. 

Letters are now flowing to the BBC, challenging them to characterize the carnage as anything but terrorism, seeing that the news organization tends to soft-pedal terrorism that happens to others.  So far, they've avoided using the term in anything but attributed quotes, e.g., Blair's.  They also write that the victims "died."  We'll see if the British public notices.

A scan of the British press finds the following:

• The Telegraph characterizes it as terror bombs... that "killed" people.
• The Financial Times writes of a "series of terrorist attacks" that "killed"
• The Guardian headlines "terror blasts" that "killed"
• The Times (of London) noted that the "blasts" "brought" terror to London, "killing" people.
• The Scotsman is most unvarnished: "More than 33 killed in ... terror attacks"

Meanwhile, there are lots of heavily armed security troops visible at Grand Central (where I had my lunch today), and I suspect Penn Station will be fortified as well. 

Most newspapers believe that the attacks were intended to coincide with the G8 summit in Scotland, but I find it curious that nobody sees the connection with the announcement of the venue for the 2012 Olympic Games.

That would seem a plausible explanation, since it would create the impression in the public mind that Al Qaeda has the capability to launch a large-scale attack in any one of several cities on a day's notice.