the guy by the door …

The Senate Judiciary Committee released a letter Thursday indicating that the Department of Justice will investigate whether DOJ head Alberto Gonzales tried to bias the testimony of his former aide Monica Goodling’s testimony before Congress about the firing of U.S. Attorneys.

Monica Goodling, Gonzales’s former White House liaison, told Congress last month that the attorney general “made me a little uncomfortable” when he asked about her recollection of events leading up to some of the dismissals.

James Rowley, Bloomberg News.

Harvard Alum (’79, HLS ’82) Glenn A. Fine, the DOJ Inspector General, joined Head of the DOJ Office of Professional Repsponsibility H. Marshall Jarrett in a reply to the Judiciary Committee that this would be investigated.

Earlier this year the OPR attempted to investigate the role of DOJ lawyers in crafting the National Security Agency warrantless wiretapping program. The investigation was closed when OPR was denied the necessary security clearances. According to Torture Alum, the President personally made the decision.
Tearing up the pea patch?

My thesis advisor grew up in Opelousas, Louisiana¹. They had a saying about achievement. Does it apply to the Senate Judiciary Committee?

On Wednesday, the Judiciary Committees of both the Senate and House issued subpoenas for the testimony of two former White House staff – former White House Counsel Harriet Miers, who was nominated for the Supreme Court and Sara Taylor, the former political director at the White House.

¹To the charge of Yankee chauvinism, I must plead gulity as charged. Earlier I said Tuscaloosa, which is in Alabama. This is particularly serious in the light of Hurricane Katrina. The Gulf Coast, which was in many ways neglected before, has been profoundly neglected since. A small bit of light – Tulane Law has been working with area residents to get some of the promised government relief. Points on the posterity book for the Late Larry for taking some of their folks in. The hard question, as always, how many?

Thomas Becker in class 1A Gitmo drag seems to have the right idea. He confronts Harvard Law School Alums because

Torture Alum Alberto Gonzales was there.

Ok. I’m being just a bit melodramatic. I discovered that Harvard Law School is not totally a branch office of the Federalist Society, when the Legal Left took me to dinner¹, again when Unbound had their Resistance and the Law conference, and again on the 4th anniversary of the invasion. But I am still getting over the Milgram reception given to Chertoff.

Actually, I picked a bad week to be home taking care of domestic matters. The Harvard Coalition to End Torture [great pictures! including the two above] demonstrated for a full week and I missed it. I don’t watch mainstream media much, but Yahoo doesn’t show anything until Torture Alum showed up. The guy in orange has the right idea. What’s wrong with all those other people? Maybe Dean Elena [endearingly Brooklyn²] is right, a single required course in the third year isn’t quite enough to set folks’ moral compass straight.

Missed it by that much!

The reunion was on Saturday in Austin Hall [next to the Littauer building]. i went a little bit, but had to go guard the library. Sounds like the demonstration occurred during my shift.
I watched Dean Elena on the overflow. Aside from straightening out folks’ moral compass, she’s gonna build a lot of really, really, big stuff. What is it with law types and big furniture? Judges and their big desks? Some kind of compensation thing goin’ on? The wavefunction of the universe will fit in the pencil drawer of a regular desk.³
But I gotta go with Professor Janet, them big Hauser windows are glorious.

¹It was heartening that they took care to feed the help who were on duty. I’m sorry I didn’t quite get the recycling regime. I can tell you from years in the library – there’s no sign everyone will understand; you need a guy by the sign to explain it. And it helps if you’ve thought about it in advance.

²On beginning grad school, I lived just west of Park Slope on the ‘transition’ block. A coupla three days there, we heard a popping noise outside. Some guy had a gun. At least that’s what Gil said. I was hugging the floor boards. My first experience of buying dirt in a plastic bag was there.

³Of course, all the “human degrees of freedom” are “integrated out.”

These days, public discussion of economic policy and related laws (e.g. bankruptcy) tacitly assumes that property is something predetermined by laws of God or Nnature.* But an apartment which can be rented, cannot be sold as a condominium until and unless a master deed is filed on the building. And in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts “the condominium” did not exist at all until The Great and General Court [the real name of the Legislature] added it as a “form of ownership.” Property is a creation of Man Person. [:)] Perhaps it’s no accident that Harvard’s Economics building is adjacent to the Law School.

Knowing how to resolve conflicts over “property rights” means knowing what property is. French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon posed his answer under the title, “What is Property?” There is a course at Harvard in the Government Department by the same name. Or you can find some views of Harvard’s Legal Left in their Journal Unbound.

*When I first published this, I had the unqualified deitistic ‘N’. My bad. I do be after all, an empiricist, experimentalist, a bit of a nominalist, and just may be a crit although as of this posting we Wikipedians got some ‘splaining to do. The homorphism with this is not obvious. I met a bunch of Foucauldians**. Am I? [Am I truculent?] “I don’t know what that is, but if that’s good, I’m that!”

** People who respect Michel Foucault, but not consonants.

To sidestep the issue of whether one can acquire “ownership” of a holiday merely by registering a domain name, I offer links to events not listed on the official website and local to the Boston area:

An Electronic Vigil in Solidarity with Women’s Rights Activists in Iran
Online and ongoing. [Thanks to Kaveri Rajamaran of Harvard Initiative for Peace and Justice.]

__(‘Read the rest of this entry »’)

International Women’s Day is today.* [click logo for “Official site,”**] I wouldn’t have known, if Amy Goodman hadn’t told me.

Featuring an interview with Sargent Eli Painted Crow USAR a woman soldier for 22 years and mother of 4, two of whom also served. Also Professor Helen Benedict about her salon.com article, “The Private War of Women Soldiers.”[Salon server is temporarily slashdotted]. Clip of Colonel Janice Carpinsski, former Brigadier General and commander of Abu Gharib prison. Phone interview with Specialist Mickiela Montoya, “there are only three things they let a woman be in the military, a bitch, a ho, or a dyke.”

Geena Davis, actor and founder of the See Jane Foundation, speaking at the National Conference for Media Reform on the paucity and stereotypes of female characters in children’s media.
Web rebroadcast, headlines and transcripts available at noon.

*There’s currently a minor edit scirmish on Wikipedia. The IWD 2006 logo has been replaced with an “unofficial” logo. It is more provocative than the official logo, but the “Quick Delete” banner says only that it is a licensing matter.

**The “Official Site” has corporate sponsors including Big Four accounting firm Deloitte. This must truly thrill the Marxist crowd or any remaining Marxians who founded the day.