It's pretty typical for bloggers to take weekend breaks, but I have to admit everytime there is a time gap between posts on Where's Raed?, I am going to be concerned. His last post from Baghdad was close to a day and a half ago, just before the "Shock and Awe" campaign started.
UPDATE: He returned to the b-sphere Monday, after his internet connection had been cut off. Check his site out, and check out The Agonist, which is the best up-to-the-minute source of news on the war anywhere in Christendom.

By now, I'm sure many of you have heard that before the President went on the air Wednesday night to announce the onset of hostilities, he pumped his fist and said, "Feels good," before the cameras went on. As much as I have criticized W in the past, I think I'm going to let him off the hook on that one. A speech, particularly an Oval Office speech announcing that the nation is at war, is a high-charged, adrenaline-pumping event. If you're going to do it well, you have to get pumped up beforehand; every actor, football player, and rock star goes through the same process. Oratory is a form of acting, and being able to convince an audience of the truth of what you are saying, and to make them act upon that truth, requires the speaker to get into character. Bush's pre-speech quip is no different than Kevin Spacey shouting "let's kick some ass" before going on stage. [link via CalPundit]

The Lord Haw-Haw of the blogosphere is in fine form, proudly claiming that anyone who opposes the war is in league with the forces of evil.

My latest hangout is a bar about a half-mile from where I live, the Sherman Oaks Lounge. It's one of the best live-music lounges in LA, plus it has enough TV's to show the full NCAA Tournament, including a high-definition set. The beers on tap are extraordinary; all micro-brew or high-end import; it's not a place to go if you just want to suck down a Bud. After a night of hoops (no Laker game, unfortunately), they had all-acoustic bands, highlighted by the incredible Annette Summersett, perhaps the closest thing to Patsy Cline Faith Hill I will hear in my lifetime. She's pretty, too.

"From now on it will be tanks and missiles, but the blogs will be right behind." I've been visiting several of the other blogs on my permalink list, and as you might expect, they are mainly posting about the "war", and what sick and twisted fucks the French are for not being willing to appease George Bush, and that the Saddam tape last night was probably a fake, etc. What I said yesterday about how most of the media coverage of what's going on should be disregarded in the early days, since most of the journalists covering the war are basically getting our propaganda, and the "experts" they are relying on tend to worship at the Church of Moron. That goes doubly true for anything you might read in a blog. If there's anything less trustworthy than the spin you get from a war reporter at this stage of the hostilities, its the second-hand excretions that are coming from the blogosphere.
Well, unless the Homeland is hit, I've said all I'm going to say about the war. Go CAL !!
UPDATE: Well, there are warbloggers, and then there are bloggers who actually have a take on the war that's worth reading. Check out Where's Raed?, by a blogger who actually lives in Baghdad, and Kevin Sites, a CNN correspondent in Northern Iraq who has a personal blog.

D-Hour has passed, and our country is about to go to war. Here are a dozen things we need to keep in mind:
1. Saddam Hussein is bad, and he has bad intentions;
2. Iraq has not attacked us, and is not presently attacking its neighbors;
3. Iraq has not been shown to be involved with the attack on September 11;
4. For the first time in our history, we are attacking a nation that is not engaged in hostilities with us or its neighbors; in fact, we are not even claiming a pretext that they are, as we did with Mexico and Spain in the nineteenth century;
5. There has been no failure in the inspection regime under Resolution 1441 to require that we go to war this instant;
6. The U.S. withheld evidence from the inspectors that might have made discovery of WMD’s possible, but didn’t provide it so as to not minimize the case for going to war;
7. The difference between the relative strength of the US and Iraqi armies is enormous; we are literally going to be tearing the wings off of a fly;
8. Many thousands of civilians will be killed;
9. Most of what we will hear being reported on American television will be untrue, especially in the first few days of conflict; overseas reporting, even Al Jazeera, will be more accurate;
10. No matter how lopsided the battles will be, each soldier and sailor has family back home, who will be worried no end over the fate of their loved ones, EVERY DAY OF THIS WAR;
11. We will discover the full extent of Hussein’s brutality and tyranny when Baghdad is “liberated”;
12. History will not look kindly at us for our prevarications used to justify going to war, for our manipulation of the tragedy of 9/11 to justify these acts, and for the bloody-minded lust that this Administration has pursued this war.

Letters to a Young Grovelarian: If the President were to stop moving, do you suppose Mr. Samgrass' nose would break?

A science fiction great receives the warm valedictory he deserves, from Avedon Carol.

My sister Jennifer is usually very soft-spoken and moderate, so when she does speak out on issues, it has more of an impact. This is the e-mail she sent to MSNBC tonight, regarding their "Countdown to War" gimmick:

I am really offended by the timeclock that counts down to the war. Do you realize that you are basically counting down the hours until we start killing people. This isn't Times Square on New Year's Eve - we are not all going to shout "Happy War Time!" when your little clocks ticks to zero. I truly believe that when your programming people have a little perspective in the next few months/years they will question what type of wartime hysteria led them to make such a crass decision. This truly lacks moral fiber. Think about it and try to have just a little compassion for the innocent people in Iraq that will be the true victims in this ego battle.

I think this is the lowest form of journalism. I will never watch again.

Jennifer A. Smith

Why can't I be that measured when I blog?

FASCISM ALERT: The largest national chain of radio stations in the country, ClearChannel, has pulled the songs of the Dixie Chicks off their playlists, due to the anti-war and anti-Bush statements of Natalie Maines last week. If this bothers you (regardless of your taste in music), give the group your support, and let the corporate pinheads know that it will be more costly for them to silence dissidents than to allow the Nazis to control our music.
UPDATE: Actually, the article mentions two Clear Channel stations in Florida, among hundreds of others across the country, that have joined the blacklisting, not the whole corporate empire. I guess I was too eager to assume that Clear Channel would choose the path of darkness, so I screwed up in alleging that this was part of a corporate-wide policy. Don't harass its executives, and don't dump its stock from your IRA, unless you have other good reasons for doing so.
Elsewhere, in Deliverance Country, Cumulus, Inc., a regional network of 300 music stations has decided to follow the demands of their bedsheet-wearing, Confederate Flag-waving, moonshine-drinking, knuckle-dragging listeners and ban the Chicks. Let these Necks know how you feel !!

QUICKIE TRIVIA QUESTION: Who was the last 16 seed to win a game in the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament? First to correctly answer this question wins a night of pub-hopping with yours truly.

For those of you who still respect the law, here's the full text of U.N. Resolution No. 1441, and precedent Resolutions 678 and 687. Since the Coalition of the Willing (or the Axis of the Bribed, depending on your fancy) has now decided that further Security Council action would not be helpful, and might even be counterproductive, the rationale now being offered for going to war immediately is that Resolution 1441 provides enabling language for the use of force that was authorized in both of the earlier U.N. resolutions. Will all due respect to my legal colleagues, in both the U.S. and U.K., who formulated that approach, and without commenting on whether Iraq is, in fact, complying with UN Resolutions, your argument is bunk, and I would say further that you are a disgrace to the profession for putting the lives of soldiers and civilians into harm's way on such a flimsy pretext.

First, some background. Resolution No. 678, passed November 29, 1990, demanded that Iraq comply with an earlier UN Resolution (No. 660) to withdraw from Kuwait by a date certain, or that the member states could "use all necessary means" to make them withdraw. That's all it says. There is no other language extending beyond the liberation of Kuwait.
Resolution No. 687, passed April 3, 1991, was essentially the peace treaty between Iraq and the U.N. Among other things, Iraq had to respect Kuwait's borders (pursuant to a 1932 agreement), unconditionally agree to disarm and to allow U.N. inspections, to disavow terrorism, pay reparations, and do all manner of things to suggest that it was willing to rejoin the civilized world. Well, other than Ramsey Clark, Noam Chomsky and a few benighted souls, I don't think anyone believes that Iraq has fully complied with that resolution. However, there is no language in that particular resolution that authorizes force, in the clear language that Resolution No. 678 did a few months earlier.

So last year, the Security Council again met, and passed Resolution No. 1441. The UN, "deploring" Iraq's non-compliance, again demanded that Iraq disarm, comply with inspections, etc., and required that Iraq submit to a more comprehensive inspection regime. This time, however, the U.N. included an enforcement clause. Paragraph 4 of the resolution states:

(The Security Council) (d)ecides that false statements or omissions in the declaration submitted by Iraq pursuant to this resolution ad failure by Iraq at any time to comply with, and cooperate fully in the implementation of, this resolution shall constitute a further material breach of Iraq's obligations and will be reported to the Council for assessment in accordance with paragraphs 11 and 12 below.

Paragraphs 11 and 12 set out what the consequences would be if Iraq again failed to comply with the resolution: that the head inspector (Mr. Blix) would report any perceived breaches to the Security Council, which would "convene immediately...in order to consider the situation and the need for full compliance with all the relevant Council resolutions in order to secure international peace and security."

In other words, the Security Council reserved to itself the right to determine whether Iraq complied with its resolutions. Nowhere in Resolution 1441 does the Security Council grant any nation the power to unilaterally judge the issue of compliance, much less to punish the Iraqi people. More to the point, the use of Resolution No. 678 as a rationale for war is one of the most staggering instances of intellectual dishonesty I can recall in my lifetime, by an administration that ran for office on a platform of knowing what "is" meant. The only reference to that resolution in 1441 is a statement that it had earlier authorized member states to go to war to liberate Kuwait. No sincere reading of that language gives any nation the power to invade Iraq again, without UN approval.

Maybe an argument can be made that the U.S. does not wish to pay lip service anymore to international law, and to working with other nations to protect the common good. Maybe we should withdraw from the U.N., as many on the right seem to wish. As I've said before, I generally support policies turning the screws up on Saddam Hussein, and would not oppose a war at all costs. But don't use legally tendentious reasoning to rationalize an attack on another country. That's the sort of history we don't need to see repeated.

I don't know what's more pathetic, the fact that the bookburning tactics of Joseph Goebbels are now being directed against those arch-foes of democracy, the Dixie Chicks, or the neck who decided to beat up a spectator at a rodeo because of his refusal to stand and salute while the Lee Greenwood "classic", I'm Proud to Be an American, played over the loudspeaker. Paul Begala was right.
UPDATE: Surprise, surprise, it turns out that the hate campaign against Natalie Maines, et al. didn't simply bubble out of the spontaneous anger of the redstaters, but was instead orchestrated by a white supremacist site, Free Republic, a particular favorite of men who take the song "Goodbye Earl" very personally.[Link via Cursor]

As I see it, Bush has painted himself into a corner. Abandoning even the pretext of adherence to international law, he and our remaining allies (eg., Bulgaria and Angola) are now demanding that Saddam leave Iraq by the start of the first round of the NCAA Tournament, or "suffer the consequences". Our best case scenario would have Saddam go into exile (or killed by his army) before CAL tips off with the Wolfpack Thursday morning. There would be no war, minimal casualties, and Bush would look like a genius, having forced his enemy from power by acting tough and going it alone: kind of like Clinton in Haiti. Of course, if Hussein calls our bluff, then any other result would be horrifying, both from the standpoint of civilian casualties and of American prestige overseas. As even the backers of the war concede, we are picking this fight because the enemy is weak, not because it is strong. Even a quick victory over a wicked foe will damage our national honor, and make America little more than a typical imperial bully.

Well, now that Selection Sunday is over, I can go back to obsessing about war and justice, at least until the play-in game Tuesday. Go Bears !!

Perhaps the easiest thing to do to show your opposition to the President is to buy this. Or this. Send them a message; you don't even have to leave your computer !!

Since the GOP caucus in both houses of Congress is currently whiter than a Jim Ladd playlist, it ill-behooves them to spend a great deal of time speculating on the motives of Senators opposing Miguel Estrada. It's not only unseemly, it looks desperate, and it convinces none of the people they're trying to sway. A much more reasonable defense for their position is that the filibuster is anti-majoritarian; however, because their own hands are bloody in this matter from the practice of "blue-slipping" Clinton's nominees (a practice that only works if the threat of a filibuster is present), it is not totally surprising that they are hesitant to use that argument.

As I noted yesterday, one way to end this predicament is to compromise: renominate (and confirm) a significant number of Clinton nominees to the appeals courts, in exchange for ending the practice of filibustering judicial nominees. In the meantime, this press release, issued by the notorious consigliere for Clarence Thomas, C.Boyden Gray, makes a pathetic effort to argue that the Democrats are motivated by anti-Latino spite, but instead only shows that the President does, on occasion, nominate people with superlative qualifications. In other words, if you have a nominee who has practicing law for six more years, and has a full decade of experience as a law professor, is not being plugged for the Supreme Court by ideologues within the Administration, plus has done everything else the other nominee has done in his professional career, it is not unreasonable to treat that candidate with greater deference.

Now that Elizabeth Smart has been found, do you suppose Samaki Walker might be the next missing person to turn up?

Must have been something in the water: Trent Lott apologized for past GOP mischief on judicial nominations, following the second unsuccessful cloture vote on Miguel Estrada. Well, it's a start, but actions would speak louder. How about if Bush were to renominate two of Clinton's picks in each judicial circuit. In exchange, the Democrats would agree not to use the filibuster on Bush's other picks, including any future Supreme Court nominee. Giving up two nominees per circuit would gut any attempts to pack the federal courts with ideologues, while allowing otherwise qualified conservative picks a chance to be approved.

Having stalled the momentum of Miguel Estrada's march to the Supreme Court, the Democratic minority now senses blood. Today, filibuster leader Harry Reid of Nevada blocked five more nominees from coming to the floor, pushing aside the view that the Democrats were not going to challenge other ideologues when their time came. Speaking of Estrada, Nat Hentoff has finally found a beneficiary of affirmative action he can support....

When Kirby Puckett made the Baseball Hall of Fame a few years ago, one couldn't help but wonder whether his public relations mojo impacted the voting. He had solid but not spectacular numbers, had a couple of big playoff games (incl. a game-winning homer in Game 6 of the 1991 World Series), and was a perennial All-Star, but the same could be said of many other players who are not in the Hall of Fame. We (the fans) were told about the "intangibles" he brought to the game, and off-field "contributions" to the community. He even won a Roberto Clemente Award one year, given to the baseball player who best exemplifies the Pirate great's service to the public, as well as being enshrined in something called the World Sports Humanitarian Hall of Fame.

Well, as it turns out, he was an even bigger fraud than Joe DiMaggio; a violent misanthropic abuser who couldn't have been more different than his image. According to Sports Illustrated,

Puckett’s ex-wife, Tonya, divorced him in December, barely a year after she told police that he threatened to kill her during a telephone conversation. Over the years, she told SI, Puckett had also tried to strangle her with an electrical cord, locked her in the basement and used a power saw to cut through a door after she had locked herself in a room. Once, she said, he even put a cocked gun to her head while she was holding their young daughter.

His abuse of his family was matched by the contempt he showed for others. According to one of his mistresses,

they were together when Puckett said he had to leave to visit a sick child who was waiting to meet him.
“That’s great, you get to make that kid’s day,” (she) told him. “That must make you feel good.” But she said Puckett just snapped back at her.
“I don’t give a s---,” he said. “It’s just another kid who’s sick.”

Puckett, who declined to be interviewed for the article, currently faces charges that he assaulted a woman in the men's room of a restaurant last year.

The case of Kirby Puckett is as a clear a case as any of the perils of judging people by how they come across in public, rather than their objective accomplishments. When Puckett was elected to Cooperstown, there was much discussion about how his numbers were inferior to those of Albert Belle, who was on the verge of shutting it down, yet no one conceived that a "bad guy" like "Joey" could make the Hall: too abrasive, too vulgar, too mean. Puckett, on the other hand, was practically viewed as a saint, both on and off the field. Ironically, Belle turned out to be less of a lowlife than the man who made the Hall.

It's nice to know that grown-ups are in charge: the person most likely to be appointed our satrap in Baghdad next month was the same incompetent bureaucrat who bungled the USS Cole investigation. [link via SKimble]

I need a "Freedom Kiss"! Our very special leaders in Congress have just ensured that the whole world won't simply hate us, but laugh at us too. If there actually is a fifth column in the decadent enclaves of the Blue States, where can I enlist?

His guest columnist this week exposes the "real" Neal Pollack. What a bastard !!

Sources are now denying that Gwyneth Paltrow will be getting married soon to the poor man's Liam Gallagher, Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin. Damn it; that's a marriage you just know would last forever. I wonder if there's any truth to the rumor that Gwynnie is going to take up acting again.

My long-awaited, oft-delayed article in Off-Wing Opinion is finally up. It's on the St. Bonaventure basketball team, and what I feel has been unfair (and even racist) criticism of the team.

It seems that Senate Democrats were not simply misinformed in their filibuster of Miguel Estrada; according to this commentator, they were positively evil. Oh, well, bring on the next nominee. There's no rest for the wicked.

This weekend I made yet another attempt to include a box for your comments. I really enjoy using the feature on other blogs, and it will be a chance to get your feedback on what I post. Also, the program I'm using, SquawkBox, allows me the option of removing the tag. So, let me have it !!

Cry havoc! and let slip the Dogs of War: Adam Felber takes apart William Safire like a child pulling the wings off a butterfly.

Over at Condredge's Acolytes, I have my takes on the first schools to gain entry to the NCAA Tournament, among other things. If anyone would like to contribute, please feel free to let me know.

Since I started blogging last April, I've tried to keep a diversified blogroll, one that reflected a wide spectrum of opinion. Since I'm an unabashed liberal, most of my links are to like-minded sites, but I have always been on the lookout for good conservative bloggers. What I look for in a conservative site is an ability to raise and present an opinion that I may disagree with, but which still forces me to engage that opinion; to wit, a certain civility of tone. I'm not looking for right wing versions of Smythe's World, or blogs that are obsessed with Howell Raines, Bill Clinton, or the patriotism of anti-war demonstrators.

Anyways, one of the best blogs, liberal or conservative, is Volokh Conspiracy, a collaborative site led by the noted law professor, Eugene Volokh. His legal takes are challenging, and often convincing, and would be a conservative I would whole-heartedly support for a Supreme Court nomination. Everyone who blogs might like to copy this passage and live by its philosophy. If you don't visit his site at least once a day, you're wasting time at the office computer.

I missed the press conference last night, as I had another engagement to attend to, but one critic in particular wasn't following the same obsequious script that the rest of the press corps seemed to have been reading. Tom Shales observes

Have ever a people been led more listlessly into war? It's tempting to speculate how history would have changed if Winston Churchill or FDR had been as lethargic as Bush about rallying their nations in an hour of crisis. There were times when it appeared his train of thought had jumped the tracks.

Occasionally he would stare blankly into space during lengthy pauses between statements -- pauses that once or twice threatened to be endless. There were times when it seemed every sentence Bush spoke was of the same duration and delivered in the same dour monotone, giving his comments a numbing, soporific aura. Watching him was like counting sheep.

Later, he speculates that the President might have been "medicated", whatever that means; I might have taken that same medication myself awhile back. All in all, a disaster.

Comparatively speaking, filibustering Estrada was the hard part. The contemptuous renomination of Priscilla Owen should be handled with the same deliberate speed by Senate Democrats. [link via TalkLeft]

Pity, that we spend so much time in designing the new $20 bill, and have not thought to remove the repugnant slaveholder and war criminal whose face is on it.

On this date, nearly equidistant between 9-11 and Election Day, 2004, George Bush now trails "unnamed Democrat" in this poll.

As expected, the GOP was unsuccessful in their cloture attempt this morning on the nomination of Miguel Estrada, 44-55. This defeat was completely avoidable for President Bush, who could have easily picked up the five necessary votes had he either released the legal memos Estrada wrote in the Justice Department in an edited form, or prepared summaries of the positions Estrada took in those memos. Asserting a variation of work-product privilege made it seem like they were trying to hide behind a technicality to prevent his opinions from going public, and his wing-nut friends did him no favors.

Some nuggets of crap from America's worst sportswriter...speaking of which, I will have my next article up on Off-Wing Opinion later today, on recent developments in college hoops.

I'm sure most of you have heard about the man who was arrested in an Albany, New York shopping mall this week for wearing a "No War in Iraq" t-shirt, then refusing to leave when asked (there is some dispute as to whether he was aggressively proselytising his views on the issue; see here for the actual complaint [linked via Volokh], and the supporting affidavit, which makes it seem as if the man in question, a 61-year old attorney, was merely defending the views expressed on his shirt in public, as opposed to getting in anyone's face, passing out leaflets, etc.). In any event, the mall owners, while perhaps having a legal right to do so, look like narrow-minded idiots, and I strongly suggest that any visitors to Smythe's World who live in upstate New York (where are you, Danyelle Price?) consider boycotting this mall until its owners are made aware of the fact that "freedom of speech" is not simply a constitutional right.

However, I have a hard time taking MWO seriously when it refers to those events as "fascistic", especially since it was only two weeks ago that it attempted to spread the rumor that Miguel Estrada was gay, without any evidence or proof.

Speaking of Orrin Hatch, it seems that he has a rather cozy relationship with the pharmaceutical industry, particulary with the makers of the diet drug ephedra, linked recently to the deaths of athletes Steve Bechler and Corey Stringer. More to the point, his son Scott Hatch is one of the principal lobbyists for the manufacturers of ephedra, at a time when the Utah Senator is not only the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman but has also played a leading role in sponsoring legislation to make ephedra and other dietary supplements free from regulatory oversight.
According to the Los Angeles Times,

"among other things, the Utah Republican co-wrote the 1994 law that lets supplement makers sell products without the scientific premarket safety testing required for drugs and other food additives. That law has proved a major obstacle to federal control of ephedra. For its part, the supplements industry has not only showered the senator with campaign money but also paid almost $2 million in lobbying fees to firms that employed his son Scott.

From 1998 to 2001, while Scott Hatch worked for a lobbying firm with close ties to his father, clients in the diet supplements industry paid the company more than $1.96 million, more than $1 million of it from clients involved with ephedra.

Since Scott Hatch opened his own lobbying firm last year in partnership with two of his father's close associates, the firm has received at least $30,000 in retainers from a supplements industry trade group and a major manufacturer of ephedra. Both clients came from the old firm.

Sen. Hatch said the new firm, Walker, Martin & Hatch, was formed with his personal encouragement. He said he sees no conflict of interest in championing issues that benefit his son's clients. Neither Senate rules nor federal laws forbid relatives from lobbying members of Congress."

There may be a good reason for ephedra, or other dietary supplements, to be treated differently than other drugs. How anyone can say with a straight face, that having a son or spouse of a Senator directly lobby Congress on legislation does not create a questionable appearance is stupefying.

Like many other opponents of the nomination of Miguel Estrada, I pretty much roll my eyes everytime I hear the standard attacks on my position. There is probably no member of the U.S. Senate, with the possible exceptions of Trent Lott or Jeff Sessions, who has less credibility in calling someone else a racist than Orrin Hatch. If a President is going to use the ideological views of the judge as the sole criterion for nominating him, than of course Senators may critique that position, and if necessary, use any and all means necessary to defeat that nominee. The last thing this country needs is another Lawrence Silberman or David Sentelle. And frankly, I don't care if there is a shortage of judges on the appellate courts. As far as I'm concerned, it's a lifetime position, with a good pension and access to special interest perks that would be the envy of most politicians, so maybe working forty-hour weeks is an acceptable alternative.

But I have to admit, this is good: according to Marvin Olasky, the opposition to Mr. Estrada is not based on partisanship or bigotry, but on the fact that a cadre of "neo-marxists" has captured the Democratic Party. This pundit believes that "Estrada, like Clarence Thomas, infuriates liberal interest groups because he challenges the neo-Marxist ideology that now dominates the campuses that Democrats revere." The "long march through the institutions" having been successful, the forty-odd members of the minority caucus in the Senate are actually a communist front, a real-life "Fifth Column" that threatens to sabotage our society from within by exercising its Constitutional obligation to provide advise and consent on judicial nominations.

My question is, how was our plot compromised? Who told?

This isn't an Onion article, but should be.

I know this is an Onion article, but you just know this will happen at some point.

The Democrats are going to the mattresses Thursday on the Estrada nomination.

This doesn't have much to do with anything, but I came upon this whilst doing a Google search of a high school classmate, Ben Sherwood. It's a particularly nasty review of a book he wrote a couple of years ago, and his response thereto.

Triumph of the Will: I've read this Jim Pinkerton column twice now, and I still don't know whether he's being serious or attempting satire (ie., the references to "Carlyle"). If it's the latter, he's a f*****g genius, comparable to Charles Baudelaire, Neal Pollack, and "Michael Kelly". [link via Atrios]

Dog Bites Man, Part 2: Who'd've thunk that on the same day the Clippers fire their coach, a grand jury would indict half the government of Compton. And those are just the local authorities; the federal government also has a pair of investigations which involve even more serious allegations.

Dog Bites Man, Part 1: Let's see, the Clips have had Paul Silas, Gene Shue, Jim Lynam, Don Chaney, Gene Shue (again), Don Casey, Mike Schuler, Mack Calvin, Larry Brown, Bob Weiss, Bill Fitch, Chris Ford, Jim Todd, and now Alvin Gentry. That's fourteen (14) coaches the Slumlord has run out of town. DJ should get his resume out immediately.

The worst blog posting ever, according to Ted Barlow.

Interesting Times has a different perspective on the arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

One of the guiltier pleasures about the Estrada filibuster has been to see the Washington Post whine about the tactics of the Democratic Party, especially Charles Schumer. Two weeks ago, the now-predictably conservative paper attacked the Democrats for even asking questions about the assumed ideology of Estrada, and had the audacity to quote Lawrence Silberman, one of the more odious of Reagan's appointees to the Federal Court, as its principal source. After the laughter stopped, the Post, perhaps chastened, has now come out with an editorial saying that the Democrats weren't aggressive enough in questioning Estrada the first time, and arguing that

The question at stake in the Democratic filibuster of Mr. Estrada's nomination ultimately has nothing to do with race or with Mr. Estrada's allegedly inadequate answers. It is simply whether a conservative president can reliably place on an appeals court a qualified conservative against whom no serious complaint has been made.

Of course, the ultimate rejoinder to that silly argument, is "TOUGH S***". Or perhaps it would be useful for Democrats to remember that the conservative President in question wasn't elected by the American people. For that reason alone, opposition to his efforts to impose his ideological views on the federal judiciary is not only appropriate, but a patriotic duty.

I knew Irina was up to no good !!

Anyone interested in a spoiler for tomorrow's episode of Six Feet Under can go here. Frankly, the show slipped last season, and having heard from my sister that the jerks who run the show are sexist a-holes didn't help. I'm watching Alias.

C-SPAN 2 is airing the Eric Alterman book-signing I attended last Friday at 1:30 p.m. PST. I'm the follically-impaired near-sighted gent who asks him about "working the ref". It will be replayed at 4:00 a.m. Monday, so set your alarm clock and your VCR's.

For someone who is actively lobbying for a highly coveted Begala Award nomination (I wouldn't even dare dream of winning a Sontag), being in agreeance with Andrew Sullivan is probably not the wisest course of action, but on the issue of Sandy Koufax' right to a private life, I have to admit he's correct. I was astonished to see a number of supposedly progressive writers attack Koufax for his refusal to have further dealings with Rupert the Mad, on the grounds that it reinforced the insecurity that gay athletes possess; if a legend like Koufax won't come out of the closet, than the world of sports is truly homophobic.

Such a willfully blind opinion ignores the fact that in most of the articles covering this story, the issue hasn't been whether the New York Post falsely accused Koufax of being gay, but on Koufax' dignified assertion of his right to privacy (and also whether Koufax extorted his biographer to keep such information out of the book). The tone of these stories has not been of outrage that a baseball legend was defamed, but that a public figure was not able to keep some aspects of his life to himself. I have yet to see a column ridicule the notion that Koufax might be gay, nor a current or former member of the Dodgers quoted as laughing at the very idea. The more common reaction has been that even if the story is true, it shouldn't have published in the manner it was: as a blind, unsourced gossip item in a tabloid. Much like last year's story about Mike Piazza, the critics had already written the story about the unkind homophobia of SportsWorld, even if it didn't exactly reflect the reality of how the story was actually covered.

To be honest, for a variety of reasons I'm not opposed to outing public figures. If a sportswriter wants to take the time to interview Koufax' friends and associates and check into the rumors (and yes, there are rumors; one of the more disappointing aspects of Leavy's biography was the fact that those rumors were never commented on, if only to knock them down if they were false), then an article about a gay Hall-of-Famer would be perfectly appropriate. This was a blind item in a tabloid, referring to someone who was obviously Koufax as threatening to withhold his cooperation from a biography if his sexual preference was investigated by the author. Like the snarky reference in MWO last week to Miguel Estrada's sexual preference (which, btw, hypocritcally attacked the NY Post on this subject), in which the judicial nominee was listed with four other gay conservatives under a heading asking what each of these men had in common, this is a cowardly, and, perhaps more importantly, unreliable journalistic technique, one that must be condemned no matter who is its subject.

Instapundit reveals a very weird fetish !!

Some interesting takes on the pending war, by Michael Kinsley, Mickey Kaus, and Neal Pollack. Let these tide you over for the day, as I am the recipient of a dreadful hangover. Ruiz, in the fourth round Jones, by decision.

Of all the discredited arguments used to support the nomination of Miguel Estrada, perhaps the stalest is the one that it is unprecedented for the Senate to attempt to filibuster an appellate nominee. In fact, as Daily Kos points out here and here, you have to go back almost three years to find the last attempted filibuster of a Latino judicial nominee, by the Republicans.

Alias has been renewed for a third season, which probably means it will live on for years afterward in syndication. O Happy Day !!

With spring training beginning in some quarters, here are a couple of good baseball blogs to check out: Baseball Musings, by David Pinto, and Braves Journal, by my occasional co-contributor to Condredge's Acolytes, Mac Thomason.

Back when it was Bill Clinton who was being investigated for every silly thing, one particular writer, Stuart Taylor, went out of his way to publish a distorted brief in American Lawyer magazine supporting Paula Jones' tall tale. While other wack-jobs were similarly impressed by the veracity of the Arkansan Temptress, Taylor tried to give his argument a certain credibility by "claiming" that he voted for Clinton in 1992, and that he had liberal views on other issues. Since that article, of course, Taylor became an almost fanatical supporter of the Ken Starr witch hunt, sanctimoniously proclaiming at one time that "I'd like to be able to tell my children, 'You should tell the truth'. I'd like to be able to tell them, 'You should respect the President.' And I'd like to be able to tell them both things at the same time." Needless to say, he was, like most "liberals", a fervent supporter of impeachment.

He was obsequious in his praise of the Supreme Court's ruling in Bush v. Gore, even going so far as to claim that seven Supreme Court justices supported the ruling. He has attacked affirmative action, while at the same time saying it's o.k. for Republican Presidents to name unqualified minority candidates to the federal judiciary. Just in case there was anyone out there who was still ignorant of the hard-right views of this ubiquitous legal talking head, comes this little gem, claiming that the real threat to America in the "war" on terrorism comes from "civil liberties hysteria". That's right, the only thing we have to fear is the ACLU, and those other commie organizations that support free speech and due process.

A good rule of thumb: if someone begins an argument by saying: "I'm a bleeding heart liberal, I voted for Clinton in 1992, I support gun control and abortion rights, but...", you can be certain that the speaker is somewhere to the right of Pat Buchanan, and probably objects to Al Qaeda only because their means aren't justified by their ends.

On the day the all-time leading rusher in NFL history was released by the Dallas Cowboys, Terrell Davis moved this much closer to coming out of exile and returning to the Denver Broncos. Since it was clear that Emmit Smith was not washed up from the way he played last season, I hope that he gets a chance to play somewhere (the Raiders?)

Soapbox Canyon has an interesting review of a possible primary challenge to John McCain next year. It's important to remember that in spite of McCain's occasional forays into decency, he's still one of the most hawkish members of the Senate, and his record on civil libertarianism is dreadful.

The great thing about the Estrada filibuster is that it has shown the Democratic minority in the Senate that they have a backbone. Two more judges face significant opposition, including the Scalia clone mentioned earlier in the week, and that doesn't count the likely filibuster of Judge Pickering. Keep those cards and letters coming.

As you probably know, Fred Rogers died last night. A beautiful tribute can be found at Jeanne d'Arc's blog, Body & Soul.

The good news for Ernie Els, Retief Goosen, Sergio Garcia and Colin Montgomerie is, there is still enough time to play in the Phoenix Open.

According to the Washington Post, an Arab-American should now be presumed a terrorist until proven innocent.

Looks like Dennis Kucinich may have a distinctly more interesting background than previously thought....

One of the few forms of bigotry that is still socially acceptable is Francophobia (well, anti-black and anti-gay bigotry are also considered socially acceptable, if you are a Bush judicial nominee). Right now, the government in France is not allowing President Bush to use it as his bitch, so demagogues of all stripes are piling on. When they are not being attacked for being pretentious snobs (btw, how is it that it's ok to ridicule the French for liking Jerry Lewis back in the 60's, but not praise them for being ahead of the curve on John Ford or Clint Eastwood), they are ripped for lacking courage. Some of the kinder terms now being used are "weasels" and "cheese-eating surrender monkeys". I think it's safe to say that if those same generalizations were to be used describing Israel, there would be a firestorm of criticism.

The notion that the French are cowards, frankly, is bullshit. France basically carried the load for the Allies in World War I; almost the entire war was fought on their soil, and a large part of a generation was killed on its battlefields defending it. Napoleon came this close to conquering all of Europe; although he was a despot, his rule would have almost certainly been preferable to the other petty tyrants of Central and Eastern Europe at the time. And of course, without the French, we don't win the Revolutionary War. But of course, to the Francophobes all of that gets trumped by the fact that the French stupidly relied on the Maginot Line to defend it before WWII, and were unprepared for the German tank divisions invading through Holland and Belgium.

To put French "cowardice" into perspective, consider this passage from a recent Molly Ivins column:

George Will saw fit to include in his latest Newsweek column this joke: "How many Frenchmen does it take to defend Paris? No one knows, it's never been tried."

That was certainly amusing.

One million, four hundred thousand French soldiers were killed during World War I. As a result, there weren't many Frenchmen left to fight in World War II. Nevertheless, 100,000 French soldiers lost their lives trying to stop Adolf Hitler.

On behalf of every one of those 100,000 men, I would like to thank Mr. Will for his clever joke. They were out-manned, out-gunned, out-generaled and, above all, out-tanked. They got slaughtered, but they stood and they fought. Ha-ha, how funny.

In the few places where they had tanks, they held splendidly.

Relying on the Maginot Line was one of the great military follies of modern history, but it does not reflect on the courage of those who died for France in 1940. For 18 months after that execrable defeat, the United States of America continued to have cordial diplomatic relations with Nazi Germany.

France was burned once in the last century following a policy of appeasement in response to an aggressive bully. Perhaps Chirac's position on Bush's little war is to not let such a thing happen again. [link via Doc Searls.]

Who says MoDo is washed up? A delicious column, with the focus on America's new "Warsaw Pact" alliance.

Left Wing Wackjob Alert: Noam Chomsky, in his own words, on one of the most evil men of the last century. If Lyndon LaRouche had a teaching gig at MIT, he'd be Chomsky.

Well, spring training can really begin, now that Jose Offerman has signed with the Expos.

I haven't blogged much about the upcoming war on Iraq, in large part because in spite of the fact that I dread the fact that my country might purposely start a war (or, at least, acknowledging same), I genuinely believe Iraq is a very real threat. The fact that North Korea is a similar threat, or that Saudi Arabia is a stronger supporter of terrorism, or that such a war is supported largely by a collection of chickenhawks both inside and outside the Administration, is interesting, but do not justify doing nothing about Saddam Hussein. If Clinton was still President, or if the will of the people had not been thwarted by the Supreme Court, I would have no difficulty supporting a preemptive war to "disarm" Saddam.

Nevertheless, I have great difficulty mustering any enthusiasm for the Administration's goals in this instance. As this typically excellent column by Paul Krugman makes clear, the shifting rationales and slippery reasoning used by W. and the likudniks to manuever the international community into a war have backfired terribly. It's not just "old Europe", to use the term which has earned our Defense Secretary such ridicule; it's countries like Russia and Mexico, that rely a great deal on American aid and trade, where we are having difficulty mustering support. The fact of the matter is, the only countries that support our plans are those countries that have never had a tradition of independence in their foreign policies.

What I guess I'm saying is, I don't like being lied to. I didn't like it when Clinton denied having sexual relations with "that woman", even though it wasn't any of my business; he should have just offered a pithy "no comment" and left it at that. Lying debases democracy, and makes the ability to freely choose between candidates and policy impossible. But Clinton was just lying about his personal life, and as David Brock so accurately wrote, the people who pursued the charges were infinitely more malevolent. In the end, the only people who were really hurt were the members of his family.

Bush, and the rest of his Administration, lie about policy. And that hurts all of us. We are now being told (for example, here and here) that because Bush has backed us into a corner with his stupid games, we might have to go to war now or risk losing face, a setback that would encourage Saddam, and other despots, to develop nukes of their own. I look at Iraq, and see an oppressed people, and a dictator who brutalizes them, and a region that is destablized by his presence. There are plenty of good reasons to fight, but all I see is a President who is more interested in starting a war to bolster his reelection chances, or to get cheap oil for his backers, or to divert attention from an economic mess he created. Or all three. I don't trust him, so I can't give him the benefit of the doubt on this one.

Once we get done with Estrada, this fascist should be the next filibuster target.

Apparently, the Democrats have lost one vote for the Estrada filibuster in the past week (Nelson of Florida) but still hold an impressive 44 votes in favor. It looks good, but it's not over yet.

The Rittenhouse Review and Bob Somerby make it official: the Washington Post sucks !!

I attended my first blogger meeting, or convention, or seminar, or whatever you want to call it. Officially, it was the American Cinema Foundation's Web Logs: Technology and Freedom in the 21st Century, held at the A.F.I. school in the Hollywood Hills. The seminar itself was pretty dull, with bloggers ranging from the right-of-center to the far right, and only Matt Welch standing up for the rest of the human race. The most interesting panelists, Emmanuelle Richard and Heather Havrilesky, discussed their largely non-political blogs, giving a good sense of where this technology might actually be heading, particularly the vast artistic potential of this new medium.

The exciting news, for me at least, concerns the new L.A. Examiner, which its publisher, Ken Layne, assured me will be available at your nearest bar or convenience store in June. The prototype brought to the seminar looks to be a combination of the late New Times, the National sports paper from the early 90's, and your typical tabloid weekly. The backgrounds of Messrs. Layne and Welch give me hope that their new venture will go beyond the stale, cliched format of other newspapers and tabloids and provide some interactivity between publisher, writer, and reader via the Internet. Anyways, check for it sometime around the start of the NBA championships.

Afterwards, all of us (panelists and audience) got together and shared a single bottle of wine, reinforcing my belief that journalists are congenitally incapable of throwing a good party. Still, I had a good time, met some of the most decent people in town, and was able to get a number of right-of-center sites for my blogroll. As a favor to me, check out the site for Howard Owens; not knowing me from Adam, he offered me a ride back to the subway stop at Hollywood and Western around 11 p.m. last night, enabling me to avoid walking through a rather nasty four-block section of Los Angeles in the process.

As you might expect from someone whose expertise on the internet is limited to skimming Andrew Sullivan and Instapundit, "Michael Kelly" chimes in on the "diversity" of debate within the punditocracy, particularly as it pertains to blogs. You know you're dealing with a serious argument when the occasional columns of Molly Ivins, Alexander Cockburn and, of course, noted radical (and Moonie Times writer) Nat Hentoff are equated, in terms of access and influence, with Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. Only Kelly could make the opinions of John le Carre and Harold Pinter seem rational.

Bizarre Google Fetishes: "But I want to do an Oompa-Loompa NOW, Daddy !!"

Someone reached this site this morning searching for "Julie Dawn Cole" and "porn".

Last night I attended a blogging conference at the A.F.I. in Hollywood. I will definitely have more on this later, but one thing it has led me to do is compile a section of local bloggers on the roll. Check 'em out.

My long-anticipated rebuttal to Charles Kuffner regarding Michigan basketball is up at Off-Wing Opinion. I really hope I don't have to explain who Sam Gilbert was.

Keith Olbermann writes a column decrying the invasion of Sandy Koufax' privacy, then returns a substantial sum of money from the publishing wing of the News Corp. Reich, and what does he get for it: a nomination for the coveted Begala Award !! Why can't I win one of those? Who do I have to f *** ?

A good essay on the topic of depression, and the use of anti-depressants, such as Prozac, here. I think it's safe to say that taking Prozac constituted a turning point in my own life, mostly for the better. I feel more confident, and do things now that I would avoid, or procrastinate before doing (one example is what you are reading: there is no way I would have freely published my thoughts six years ago, even if the technology had been available, and if I had, I would have quit after the first week, horrified that something I wrote might not please everybody). Where I differ from the writer is how I recall the emotional extremes; what I lost when I began taking medication was the intensity of the feelings, of the highs and the lows. I still think of those feelings as the times I felt most human.

My active social calendar brought me to Los Feliz tonight, for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet Eric Alterman, The Nation columnist and author of the bestselling What Liberal Media? For those of you who haven't read it yet, the thesis of the book is that the notion of the "liberal media" is a myth, manufactured by conservatives in order to influence more favorable coverage of their agenda; as one former GOP chairman put it, to "work the ref" in the same manner that a Bobby Knight or a Gary Williams might. Although his book doesn't really go into detail about blogs, or the role they played in the fall of Trent Lott, he did note that this was a way in which progressive voices could similarly influence the coverage of the news.

Also, I found out that although this site has been on his list of favored links for the better part of the last six months, he's not sure if he's ever visited. Since I get about a quarter of my traffic from Altercation, and was admittedly thrilled and honored to have been linked there, I have to admit feeling humbled knowing that. Still, his lecture tonight will be on C-SPAN next week, with yours truly making a cameo appearance. Also, he told a great variation of the joke about the comedian's convention, which I will happily pass along to any who are interested.

Finally, a Michael Jackson interview you can trust....

Since The News Corp. purchased the L.A. Dodgers back in 1998, fans have had to swallow boneheaded trades, classless midnight firings of long-time personnel, front office policy that seems to be dictated more toward appeasing the sensitivities of white sportswriters than winning games, and of course, zero playoff appearances. Murdoch's thugs have traded away a certain Hall-of-Famer (Piazza) because they didn't like his contract demands, then signed a lesser player (K. Brown) for more money than what Piazza was demanding. They treated the player obtained for Piazza, Gary Sheffield, with contempt, even though the numbers he put up were, by and large, better than Piazza's, and he played with greater commitment and intensity.

All of that was well and good, since Murdoch has been trying to dump the team for the last year, so at least there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Just when it seemed Dodger fans might be able to breathe a little easier, Fox has apparently decided to drop yet another turd in our chili. The team's greatest pitcher, and arguably the greatest southpaw in the history of baseball, Sandy Koufax, has disassociated himself from the team because the N.Y. Post, a newspaper that holds the distinction of being the least redeeming and least profitable of all of Rupert the Mad's holdings, published an item in its gossip column claiming that the female writer of a best-selling biography of a Hall of Fame baseball player had to agree not to mention rumors of his homosexuality. Although Koufax wasn't named in the article, it was clear the allusion was to him; there just weren't that many best-selling bios written by female authors about closeted Hall of Fame players that were published in the past year.

Good for Sandy. The most disreputable form of journalism is the blind gossip item; there is no accountability for the writer, and the information usually turns out to be wrong (or significantly out of context) anyways. If you're going to out someone, than do so, straightforwardly. As you might recall, it was the N.Y. Post that spent the better part of last summer trying to spread rumors about the sexual preferences of Mssrs. Piazza and Alomar. Before Fox manages to do further damage by alluding to Jackie Robinson's "bizarre" fetish for cats, or to Duke Snider's "interesting" friendship with Don Newcombe, lets just hope they get out of baseball altogether.

Took in the CAL-UCLA game at Pauley last night with the lovely Miss Deborah Siemer (btw, we're just friends). Although my beloved Bears ended up losing in overtime, I did have the satisfaction of seeing a complete reversal in the positions of the schools during the course of my lifetime. When I was going to CAL, the UCLA game was the big draw on our home schedule, even bigger than Stanford, and was the one game guaranteed to sell out Harmon Gym. Still, about a quarter of the fans would be for the Bruins; at the time CAL did not have a very good team, KJ not withstanding, and UCLA was, well, UCLA.

Last night, CAL was actually favored to win at Pauley, which might be unprecedented. The Bears were ranked 18th going into last night's game, while the Bruins had lost ten straight in conference, and had not won at home since mid-December. At least a third of the fans, including the majority of the fans sitting outside the student and alum sections, were for the mighty Bears. And those chokers still got beat.

Gee, who could have seen this one coming? I mean, Prof. al-Arian had only taken on Gov. Jeb Bush and the entire state of Florida for his wrongful termination, so it's a bit of shock that the normally moderate and cautious A.G., John Ashcroft, would aim both barrels at him. The charges against him read like a McCarthy-era indictment of a Hollywood screenwriter, or a Red Scare persecution of a Wobbly cell: conspiracy to provide material support to the group, conspiracy to violate emergency economic sanctions, extortion, perjury, obstructing justice and immigration fraud. How the hell do you take part in a "conspiracy to provide material support" to an alleged terrorist group, or "to violate emergency economic sanctions?" Aren't such activities better known by their technical term, "speech"?

I assume there might be a few of you out there who still haven't already purchased What Liberal Media? If you haven't, you might like to join me tomorrow night at Skylight Books in Los Feliz, where the illustrious author might even autograph the book, if you're nice to him.

He was due for a letdown after his marvelous ten-game run, and especially after the previous night's 52-point effort in their double-OT win over Houston. Desperately battling fatigue and attempting to carry a Shaq-less team on his shoulders, Kobe Bryant was held to only 40 points in last night's 93-87 win in Utah. Sometimes, even the great ones slump.

Did you know that gay men are having consensual sex at the University of California? Well, one right-wing affirmative action diva didn't, so she writes this column. [link via Pandagon]

In case any of you missed The Shield last night, my new favorite actress, Melanie Lynskey, once again lit up the screen with her presence, portraying a gorgeous young woman with a dismemberment fetish. She's awfully young to keep getting typecast as a psycho killer, though.

The most important thing to come out of Arizona since Mo Udall and Byron Scott, "Them Durn Librals", is back, with a name change ("Soapbox Canyon") and a shiny new haircut.

The perils of publishing: yours truly gets taken to the woodshed by Charles Kuffner over my recent piece about Michigan basketball at Off-Wing Opinion. Doesn't he understand that if the Wolverines are banned from the tournament this year, the terrorists win? My response to follow....

Memo to the Washington Post: if you really want to convince Democratic Senators to end the filibuster against Miguel Estrada, do not use one of the most corrupt judges in the federal judiciary, Lawrence Silberman, as your key witness.

Having seen Magic and Michael at their peaks, I can say without qualification that Kobe Bryant's last ten games have been the greatest exhibitions of pure basketball I've ever seen. Tonight's performance (52 points, including all 9 in the first OT) in the Lakers' 106-99 double-overtime win over Houston made him the first player since Jordan to score 35 points in ten consecutive game, and may have been the most impressive game of his career.

John Kerry is being set up to be the Al Gore of this election, attacked not for the substance of his views but for trivial personality quirks. Apparently, Kerry, who recently discovered that a grandfather of his was Jewish, is being attacked because the Boston Globe referred to him several times over a twenty-year period as "Irish", and he supposedly didn't demand a retraction. A grave sin, to be sure; I mean, do you want someone facing down Saddam, cutting the federal deficit, or aiding the underclass if he doesn't write irate letters to the hometown newspaper everytime it gets his ethnicity wrong. In any event, it's like George Bush not demanding a correction from a newspaper everytime he's referred to as a "successful businessman".

In any event, there is an undercurrent of anti-Semitic/Our Crowd snobbishness in the attack on Senator Kerry, and after what happened in the last Presidential campaign and in the Whitewater "investigation", it is safe to say that the Washington press corps is neither a very good judge of character nor a reliable barometer of truthfulness. I have no preference in the 2004 campaign as of yet, but Senator Kerry has already chosen the right enemies: if the Media Heathers don't like you, you might have what it takes to be a great President !!!

An interesting column here takes the media to task for enabling the anti-Asian bigotry of Howard Coble, Shaquille O'Neal, et al. Much of the stereotyping resembles that of classic anti-Semitism, in which evidence of academic or financial success is indicative of the group's duplicity, with no less poisonous a result.

The stunning death of Baltimore Oriole rookie Steve Bechler has once again raised the issue of whether sports teams adequately monitor heatstroke. Bechler is the third athlete in two years to die of heatstroke: Corey Stringer and Rashidi Wheeler, two football players, died in 2000 following lengthy practices. As with Stringer and Wheeler, Bechler was seriously overweight, and the use of the weight-loss drug ephedrine is suspected as having been a contributing factor. He was 23 years old.

Obesity seems to be a distinguishing characteristic of the modern athlete. As Sports Illustrated noted several weeks ago, Warren Sapp has become a role model for other football linemen, weighing in at a not-so-slender 303 lbs (the Raider he bested in the Super Bowl, Frank Middleton, tips the scales at an even more corpulent 360 lbs !) On the other hand, Mo Vaughn has seen a certain Hall of Fame career go into the proverbial toilet as his weight has ballooned, and the Lakers' chances of winning a fourth straight title were shattered when Shaq was unable to get himself into shape at the start of the season.

Fat athletes usually are the subject of good-natured ridicule; George Foreman has practically built a second career out of his love for food. Not too long ago, the LA Clippers had two 300 pound centers, Stanley Roberts and John "Hot Plate" Williams, neither of whom could last more than five minutes out on the court. Local basketball fans always got a good laugh out of that, ignoring the fact that both men were taking severe health risks by playing an arduous sport while out of shape. It may take the death of a young athlete to force teams to view this problem more seriously.

Another blogger has nailed the social and cultural phenomenon that is J-Garn. But remember, I saw her first !!

Every Sunday, readers of the Los Angeles Times are treated to vanity ads featuring some philanthropic achievement by Donald Sterling. Usually, its something along the lines of the Police Protective League granting the uber-landlord and Clippers owner their "Humanitarian of the Year" award at a dinner next week, where he will be feted by the likes of Norm Crosby, Billy Crystal, Al Davis, and other similar worthies. I can't believe anyone actually contributes money to those charities after seeing these pathetic cries for help; basically, the ads exist to justify the continued existence of Mr. Sterling, who otherwise could not provide a reason to the basketball fans of the city to not publicly stone him.

I attended my first (and last) Clippers game of the season Saturday night. Lord, what an awful franchise. In terms of raw talent, they probably have more good players right now than the Lakers; if Shaq and Kobe were injured, the difference wouldn't even be close. Elton Brand and Andre Miller are good young players, and Lamar Odom and Michael Olowakandi have shown flashes of brilliance. But even though the Lakers have just completed a dreadful first half, barely rising above the .500 mark, the Clippers are even worse, 7 games behind their co-tenants at the Staples Center. The team plays with no heart, no spirit, and it is evident that the players view their current predicament with no concern; as Ron Harper said years ago, he's just serving out his prison sentence. Sterling will not spend the money to keep good players, or do anything to indicate that he is serious about winning. But when it comes to hyping his philanthropy with cheesy ads, he has a deep pocket.