The Pagan Science Monitor

NO WAY! FBI documents show decades of spying on NLG

The only surprise here is that the New York Times is covering it. The NLG Chicago member who called this morning to make sure I would buy the paper agreed with my theory: The Times wants to atone for Judith Miller and swallowing the Bush regime's lies before the war.
Anyway, the story:
In 1977, the New York City chapter of the National Lawyers Guild sued the FBI, seeking relief from the persistent surveillance, infiltration, and disruption.
The case moved speedily along, as these sorts of suits always do, and twelve years later the government settled with the Guild. As part of the settlement, the FBI turned over 400,000 pages (you read that right) of surveillance logs, typed reports and handwritten notes by infiltrators, and dossiers on provocateurs.

Happy Johannestanz day

June 24, 1374, Aachen: An outbreak of dancing mania grips the town.
The citizens hallucinate and experience convulsions until dropping from exhaustion.
The phenomenon was widespread in Medieval Europe and known before the twentieth century as "St. John's Dance."
(Aside: "St. Vitus's dance" is a neurological disorder related to Huntington's Disease and unrelated to manic dancing.)
(Further aside: The pic is a lithograph of the Danse Macabre, also totally unrelated; it's just that I'm listening to The Faint.)
The Skeptical Inquirer has a good breakdown on dancing mania here. (Three fallacies.)

I Disappear
I disappear / I lost control / My body's moving / All on its own / I watch myself / Walk away / A foreign spirit / Took my place....
--The Faint, Wet From Birth, 2004

(Housekeeping: Starry D. & Severn don't blog here anymore. T.P.S.M. is a one-man show.)

Tags: St. John's Dance, dancing mania, Danse Macabre, Skeptical Inquirer, Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, skepticism, The Faint, Zombies.

Quotation du jour: Fri. 6-22-07

"Shut up! Stop laughing! This ain't funny! This is a real gun!"
--Anonymous, un-apprehended bad guy, quoted this afternoon by my friend M., recalling how she got a fit of hysterical giggles while caught up in a convenience-store holdup on the Southwest Side of Chicago about 10 years ago.
Context: This week, M. is returning, for her brother's wedding, to her family's village near Ramallah, West Bank, Palestine. She remembered coming home to Chicago after her last family visit as a teenager: Sadness to leave her extended family, but relief to be back in Chicago, her home town. Especially, M. clung to the thought, "I'll never have to see another gun again."

Quotation du jour: Sat. 6-16-07

The patron had engaged me as kitchen plongeur; that is, my job was to wash up, keep the kitchen clean, prepare vegetables, make tea, coffee, and sandwiches, do the simpler cooking, and run errands.... (Ch. XX)
...And yet the plongeurs, low as they are, also have a kind of pride. It is the pride of the drudge -- the man who is equal to no matter what quantity of work.... (Ch. XIV)

-- Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London, 1933

Because the temperature in my apartment rose with the sun, and sleep became impossible, and I realized I had dreamed I was a dishwasher again. I took the book off the shelf (whoever snagged my copy of Catalonia, bring it back) and found my favorite passages again before the dog woke or I even made coffee.

Quotation du jour, Fri. 6-15-07

My mother called me to her bedside
These words she said to me
If you don't quit your rambling ways
They're gonna get you in the penetentiary
Gonna get you in the penetentiary poor boy
Gonna get you in the penetentiary
If you don't quit your reckless ways
They're gonna get you in the penetentiary

Well the jury said I had to pay
And the clerk he wrote it down
And the judge called out my number
Two sixes upside down
Two sixes upside down poor boy
Two sixes upside down
The judge called out my number
Two sixes upside down

-- Woody Guthrie, "Poor Boy," posthumously released, 1968

Seeya, Scooter.

Tags: politics, law, policy, Scooter Libby, prison, Valerie Plame, Valerie Plame Wilson, Impeachment, Zombies.  

Is Paris burning?

...down there?...And is that why she got out of jail for a minute?
You celebrity-obsessed pinheads, why do you care?!
And if you are a celebrity-obsessed pinhead (who got here by following a link), you may as well hit the BACK button right now, because this is a pure rant.
Rant #1: Do you even care about women in prison unless it's Paris or Martha? Do you have a heart in your chest or a brain in your head? If so, what do you think they're there for? Would you please begin using them sometime, soon?
Rant #2: Letting somebody out of the klink for medical care is called, in corrections-public health jargon, "compassionate release," and it happens approximately never, as in never, ever.

Quotation du jour, Mon. 6-11-07

Them that's got shall get
Them that's not shall lose
So the Bible said and it still is news
Mama may have, Papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own
That's got his own

Knocked up: yes, the nuns CAN fire you, you fornicators, you

Griffin v. Sisters of St. Francis, No. 06-3312, 7th Cir., June 6, 2007.
Sister Anita to plaintiffs: No lap dances on the tractor!
Sometimes, it's not about the torture, or the wiretapping, or the fascist threat. Sometimes, it's just about the giggles.
And the beefalo. And the nuns who raise the beefalo.
And the dude who allegedly couldn't keep his mouth and his hands to himself, so the nuns allegedly had to let all the female interns go (you read that right). And the female intern who liked the dude.
And whether a man can be discriminated against under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act.

Quotation du jour, Tue. 6-5-07

"You know, if you really think about it,
whoever invented music was really
kind of a genius."
-- Gene, my father, baritone saxophonist, and master of the unintentional howler.

NLG president has blawg (law blog)

Marjorie Cohn, president of the National Lawyers Guild, teaches at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, and blawgs about bi-weekly at marjoriecohn.com.
Her most recent post exposes and criticizes the "National Security & Homeland Security Presidential Directive" that Bush issued on May 9, and which you really ought to have a look at. It is a provision for martial law, in which an all-powerful president would consult Congress and the courts but not be bound by them.

Tags: politics, law, policy, National Lawyers Guild, NLG, Marjorie Cohn, Thomas Jefferson School of Law, TJSL, impeachment, "Unitary Executive Theory", Bush, Iraq.