I believe in American exceptionalism. That means I believe that our history and values and sacrifices and our learned-from wrongs combine to make something unique and wonderful and worth protecting and celebrating. That exceptionalism is not a function of geography or an accident of birth. It's a result of fidelity — of adherence to shared values that make us mighty. I may disagree with others about what it means when it comes to policy and practice, but I believe firmly that it is true.

Americans can be murdered by terrorists, but shared values cannot be destroyed by guns and bombs and planes. Yet our adversaries in the "War on Terror" can most certainly win. They can win by frightening us into infidelity to our values, into betraying our best selves. Some would argue that they are already winning by that measure.

I can see what they mean. When we allow ourselves to be irrationally frightened into letting upjumped smirking thugs grope us, gape at our nads, and tell us we have to take it, we're losing. We're being unfaithful to what makes us great.

I'm talking, of course, about the Transportation Security Agency.

We've blogged a fair amount about the TSA here, and not in a flattering way. We've talked about how the TSA can't distinguish between a thing and a picture of a thing, thinks that it has authority to investigate illicit cash (and believes that telling them it's none of their business represents suspicious behavior), relies on junk science to "detect" danger, feels entitled to your unquestioning obedience (and tries to earn it not with competence but with, in effect, a also-ran muppet), and is vigilant against pressing dangers like Decepticons. Of course, if you recruit on pizza boxes, you're not going to wind up with Elliot Ness. You're going to get people who use the body scanners to make fun of people's genitals, pretend to find cocaine in passengers' luggage as a prank, steal from carry-ons, and generally act like badged choads. Oh, and sex offenders. Don't forget the sex offenders. A security checkpoint is Walt Disney World for them.

As with so many other Security State measures added since 9/11, in the face of intrusive Security Theater the public has mostly confined its dissent to grumbling about inconvenience and delay. We don't focus enough on those measures being revoltingly intrusive. That's because we're easy to scare and fundamentally innumerate. As Wil Wilkerson points out, we're only cowed into being abused because we were told there would be no math:

I think this is one of those subjects that demands we step back, take a deep breath, and consider with a clear mind just how phenomenally idiotic the government's policy of increasingly invasive degradation really is. Law-abiding travelers, who pose approximately zero risk of terrorism, and offer no ground for reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing, must run this gauntlet of abasement because airplanes were once made the instrument of mass death. The odds of being a victim of terrorism on a flight are approximately 1 in 10,408,947—rather less than the 1 in 500,000 odds of getting killed by lightning.

Would we submit to standing in line and having government workers rifle through our pockets and ask us annoying questions before being allowed to go outside on a stormy day, to reduce the chance of being hit by lightening? No. But we've submitted to far worse from the TSA because we've allowed the government to scare the bejeesus out of us about bin Laden being in every overhead bin, and convinced ourselves that it actually makes good sense to spend an hour of our trip standing in line and being probed by a guy in a polyester shirt, but no sense to spend five more minutes on our trip by driving the speed limit on the way to the airport, even though driving is many orders of magnitude more likely to kill us. We've allowed ourselves to be scared moronic and compliant. Like cows.

Now, however, the TSA might possibly have found a way to startle the herd into genuine anger and defiance. The TSA has rolled out its program requiring you to submit to either a body-revealing scan or a gropefest patdown. Between revealing full-body scanners and the alternative "enhanced pat-downs," Americans are as close as they have been since 9/11 to calling bullshit on the ever-increasing Security Theater. Is the TSA managing that anger well? Of course not. Some of them smirk that we like it. Still others are clearly furious that the cows are no longer, well, cowed. There are increasing reports that the enhanced pat downs are being threatened, and used, in an angry and retaliatory fashion by government employees who are upset that we don't want our practically naked bodies displayed on scanners. Consider this story from a groped rape survivor:

I said I didn’t want them to see me naked and the agent started yelling Opt out- we have an opt here. Another agent took me aside and said they would have to pat me down. He told me he was going to touch my genitals and asked if I wouldn’t rather just go through the scanner, that it would be less humiliating for me. I was in shock. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I kept saying I don’t want any of this to happen. I was whispering please don’t do this, please, please.”

Since Celeste didn’t agree to go through the scanner, the enhanced pat down began. “He started at one leg and then ran his hand up to my crotch. He cupped and patted my crotch with his palm. Other flyers were watching this happen to me. At that point I closed my eyes and started praying to the Goddess for strength. He also cupped and then squeezed my breasts. That wasn’t the worst part. He touched my face, he touched my hair, stroking me. That’s when I started crying. It was so intimate, so horrible. I feel like I was being raped. There’s no way I can fly again. I can’t do it.”

Think she's alone at being treated like that? Think she's being over-sensitive? Think again. Oh, think again.

Of course TSA agents are angry when you don't herd obligingly through the scanner. They feel entitled to it, as a matter of right, based on what the modern Security State envisions that Americans should be. When the TSA expressed angst that "unquestioning compliance has diminished", it was tipping its hand. The purpose of Security Theater is not only to prevent actual security threats. The purpose of Security Theater is to convince us that the government can do something and is doing something, and most importantly to make us accept "unquestioning compliance" with government as an American value. The purpose of Security Theater is to normalize submission. But "unquestioning compliance" is not an American value. Quite the contrary. In a nation in which we owe fidelity to shared values, accepting unquestioning compliance with government is like sneaking out on the wife and kids and nailing the smeared-lipstick cosmo-addled skank at the sleazy bar in the next town. And don't come crying back to your wife Liberty and your kids Personal Responsibility and deal little Individuality when you pick up a nasty case of authoritarianism oozing from your — ok, I'm going to have to pull this literary device over and walk.

The proponents of the Security State — and the people who make their living from it — think just shut up and obey. Take the blogger Mom vs. the World, a former TSA agent. Even though she questions the value of the scanners, and even though she thinks the enhanced pat-downs are bullshit, she remains captured by the TSA mindset. Her view of the proper relationship between the state and the citizen is typified by her post Shut Up And Get In The Scanner. Aside from asserting, basically, that what should really embarrass us is not being scanned or groped, but the fact that we're a pack of quarreling, vibrator-carrying, trash-dressing, child-abusing trailer trash, she offers this:

Flying is a privilege not a right. As such, it can be and is regulated. Requirements can and are set up to ensure that everyone who flies is safe. If you don’t like it, then don’t fly. You may not be as concerned as the next guy about the safety or you may be more concerned. Point is the job of TSA is to ensure the entire traveling public is safe not just you. TSA officers don’t care what you as an individual want, they can’t, it just isn’t possible. You may be ok with lax security but what about the next passenger who wants thorough security?

Your right to privacy isn’t being violated at all. You always have the option to drive a car, take a train, grab the bus or start rowing a boat. You do not have to fly, you just want to fly. The minute you decide you want to fly then you have to accept that security is involved and you are going to have consent and submit to it period the end.

. . . .

Now if you want to fly, suck it up and accept that you have to submit to the security procedures. Yes you think they are stupid or unnecessary but TSA officers and TSA don’t care what you think. They try to make it all warm and fuzzy but they can’t because it is security not a trip to Disney World. Shut up and get in the scanner or don’t fly.

Well, "Mom", if flying is a "privilege, not a right," it's because over the last century we have gradually accepted the proposition that anything the government tells us it can regulate, it can regulate. Unlike "Mom", Justice Stewart knows a right when he sees it: "The constitutional right to travel from one State to another . . . occupies a position fundamental to the concept of our Federal Union. It is a right that has been firmly established and repeatedly recognized." Of course, rights are subject to limitations. Should the right to travel be limited by forced subservience to groping for purposes of Security Theater?

Now, I'm not saying that Mom is herself a perverted thug, like the people she's saying we should just obey. I'm saying that she's a sneering, entitled apologist for perverted thugs — and for the canine, un-American value of slobbery submission to the state. Even though she concedes that the groping is retaliatory bullshit, and even though she has no basis to assert that Security Theater actually increases real security, she's deeply resentful that people are not putting up with it. Her righteous anger — like the anger of of the TSA thugs groping just a little bit harder to punish you for saying no to the body scanner — is the result we should expect from the small-time thugs whose identity is tied up in their petty authority.

Throughout my career — both as a prosecutor and as a defense attorney — I've observed a consistent inverse relationship: the more petty a government officer's authority, the more that officer will feel a need to swagger and demand that you RESPECT HIS AUTHORITAH. Your average FBI agent might search your house based on a crappy perjured warrant, invade your attorney-client emails, and flush your life down the toilet by lying on the stand at your mail fraud trial. But he doesn't feel a need to vogue and posture to prove anything in the process. He's the FBI. But God above help you when you run into the guy with a badge from some obscure and puny government agency with a narrow fiefdom. He and his Napoleon syndrome have got something to prove. And he's terrified that you'll not take him very, very seriously. When I call FBI agents on behalf of my clients, they're cool but professional and nonchalant. When I call a small agency — say, state Fish & Game, or one of the minor agency Inspector Generals — they're hostile, belligerent, and so comically suspicious that you'd think I was asking for their permission to let my client smuggle heroin into the country in the anuses of handicapped Christian missionary orphans. They are infuriated, OUTRAGED, when a client asserts rights, when a client fails to genuflect and display unquestioning obedience. They are, in short, the TSA.

The media is trying out the story-of-the-week that the populace is revolting against the TSA, and against Security Theater. It might even be a little bit true.

It's about godammed time.

Hat Tip: Reason.

Edited to add: a guy refuses to stand for it, and encounters various forms of TSA ignorance and aggression.

Another addition: "Heads up, got a cutie for you."

Another: Parody. But only barely.

“We need to do a better job of setting the mood,” Napolitano continued. ”At airport security areas we are going to start dimming the lights a bit. We will also be playing Kenny G music softly. While escorting passengers to the renamed “Happy Area”, TSA security will be required to talk a little bit about themselves. I think it will really be an enjoyable experience.”

And Another: Hate kids? Love kids more than currently legal? Either way, a career at TSA has you covered!

And still more: Really, who am I to criticize the brave men and women of the TSA, who are all that stands between us and the menacing terrorist snowglobes?

More: The hashtag #TSASlogans on Twitter is made of awesome.

More, again: A dissenting view.

More, the revenge: and this is why we seek bromance with Iowahawk.

More: Sure sounds like sexual assault to me.

Been awhile since I did any game reviews, and I have several really good games to cover. Also, I am about to head to BGGcon for the second time, so I have been thinking games even more than usual. I have written previously about how much I enjoy games Jason Matthews and various partners have made. Whether the wonderful Twilight Struggle, the equally great 1960 or the recent Campaign Manager you really can't go wrong. Except for one thing – all those games are only for two players. Here follows a way too long review of their latest game.

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America is full of businesses, big and small. Some are brick-and-mortar, and some exist only as ones and zeroes on this series of tubes we inhabit. One of the main challenges of patronizing businesses is not finding one; it's separating the wheat from the chaff, the fraudsters from the honest businesses, the awful service from the awesome service.

That wheat/chaff thing used to be very inconvenient. The internet has changed it. The internet is choked with sites that accumulate review of stores, restaurants, online services, and everything else that Americans love to spend on. They range from malware sites to abandoned digital ghost towns to online communities so robust that they develop their own cultures and start getting into embarrassing slap-fights with the people they review.

All of this means that the quintessential first-world dilemma — "how do I choose from all of these stores in which I can spend all of my disposable income?" — has been pushed back one level to "how do I choose among all of these online resources that will help me decide what store to go to so I can spend all my disposable income?"

Sensible people know the answer immediately. You don't go to the new, shiny, hipster-intensive, oddly-spelled, trendy websites; you find the online presence of the consumer protection entities that have been serving Americans for generations. You go to the Better Business Bureau, for example.

Well, sensible people, I've got some bad news for you.

The Better Business Bureau, one of the country's best known consumer watchdog groups, is being accused by business owners of running a "pay for play" scheme in which A plus ratings are awarded to those who pay membership fees, and F ratings used to punish those who don't.

Reporters from ABC were able to capture Better Business Bureau representatives telling businesses that their "C" grade could be upgraded to an "A" grade if they paid a membership fee:

Terri Hartman, the manager of a Los Angeles antique fixtures store, Liz's Antique Hardware, was told only a payment could change her grade, based on one old complaint that had already been resolved.

"So, if I don't pay, even though the complaint has been resolved, I still have a C rating?"

Hartman then read off her credit card number and the next business day the C grade was replaced with an A plus, and the one complaint was wiped off the record.

In a second case, Carmen Tellez, the owner of a company that provides clowns for parties was also told she had to pay to fix her C- grade, based on a two-year old complaint that she says had already been resolved.

The C minus became an A plus the very next day after she provided her credit card number for the $395 charge.

Other business owners were able to open BBB accounts for Hamas and the white supremacist website Stormfront with "A" grades by paying membership fees. To be fair, those organizations are top-notch at providing customer service, so long as the service you are looking for is getting murdered or reviled based on your race.

The BBB is going with — altogether, now — the ISOLATED INCIDENT excuse. Which, by the way, is exactly the same excuse that the business it rates customarily use.

Believe it or not, I have a point.

The internet is the world's biggest shitty argument by authority. Kids try to source Wikipedia for their term papers. Politicians cite things their aides saw on sites with seizure-inducing crazy-man graphics. Snarky, self-satisfied bloggers act as if a hyperlink settles a point.

But everything on the internet got there because Some Guy put it there. You wouldn't rush to believe Some Guy if you meet him on the street. He probably dresses badly and has odd diction. You shouldn't believe him just because he's got an upjumped GeoCities account, either. You shouldn't believe him just because he makes $400,000 as the head of the Los Angeles Better Business Bureau. You should exercise critical judgment in a country in which marketing things is increasingly divorced from the nature of the things themelves.

I mean, unless that store got an A plus. They must have earned that.

My father was a veteran also. He was drafted into the Navy and served aboard the U.S.S. Mattaponi, an Auxilliary Oiler, as a Pharmacist First Class during the latter stages of W.W. II.

In his telling, his ship docked in Nagasaki a few weeks after the bomb was dropped – though Wikipedia disagrees – and years later he was glad to have not been allowed off the ship. As far as I know he didn't receive any medals for his wartime service, which wouldn't be a surprise given his distance from combat. He didn't talk about his service much and it didn't even occur to me to ask about it until much later in his life. Even then he didn't seem to find the subject interesting and it had been so long that much had been forgotten. From what I gather, the main thing he did was dispense penicillin to sailors returning from shore leave. Which is to say that he saved countless lives and is an unsung hero.

And now it is too late to really probe the question since he passed away in 2003. Today would have been his 90th birthday, a day that always coincided with a day off from school, which was nice. My son had the day off today too. It pains me that they never met.

Sidney kind of looks like him, though, so at least I've got that.

In response to the recent, astonishing Cook's Source copyright infringement debacle, web style guru Eric Meyer offers some thoughts on the corrective capacity of crowds. Will support for meta-retributive metrics be a feature of Web 3.0?

This is a repeat. I ran it last year. But I think it's worth remembering again.

From a letter my grandfather wrote in the 1960s, describing his wartime experience for my mother's school project. At the time, he was a supply officer on a seaplane tender, stationed at the time off of Okinawa:

One night I took one of our small boats to another seaplane tender that I was responsible for as aviation supply officer. While I was gone, a kamikaze dove into the side of the ship right through my room. My roommate was in the room at the time and very badly hurt. The room was full of sea water and the furniture was upside down. The pictures of Judy [ed: my mother], Mother [ed: my grandmother] and Saucy [ed: the dog] had been on my desk in a red leather portfolio. In my safe were two bottles of whiskey which I used for trading purposes and they were both broken with checks and cash floating in the liquid.

After we secured Okinawa we brought in land based bombers instead of seaplanes. Our mission was to search in case the Japanese counterattacked either by planes or ship and find them before they arrived. We had a small detachment in a tent on the airstrip. Once a week I used to take a plane over and wade ashore and bring them two bottles of whiskey that they would mix with orange powder and water to keep themselves going. I had the only key to a locker on our ship which contained a liquor supply from an officer's club wing when they were land-based. They Navy men were not going to leave that behind for the "dog faces"! [ed: the Army, naturally]

Our next expedition was the Japanese landing. While we were underway, the atomic bombs were dropped in Hiroshima and the Japanese sued for peace. Meanwhile, we were bombing the Japanese cities with our planes and the air force planes. Then they signed the peace agreement. Our admiral was an Annapolis graduate and didn't want to be left out, so we took off for Japan without any orders. We got halfway there when the orders came to "knock it off." So we went to Tsingtao and finally to Shanghai. I remember going ashore there and ordering a martini in a hotel.

Grandpa got the Bronze Star for being a particularly effective supply officer — it wasn't easy keeping everything adequately supplied. With typical humility, he generally said he won it in a beer drinking contest.

Thanks, Grandpa. And thanks to all who have served our country in uniform.

While I'm at it, I spare a thought for everyone who supported our troops in uniform, sometimes in ways that we can now scarcely believe. From my grandmother's writings, describing the birth of my mother while my grandfather was completing Navy supply school at Harvard Business School. She was a young bride, in Boston for the first time, living with in-laws she had just met.

Judy was born at the Chelsea Naval Hospital on January 14, 1943. When labor pains began a week early, I didn't want Paul [ed: my grandfather, staying at school at nearby Harvard] to know, because he had a major test in the morning that would influence his assignment in the Navy. There was a blizzard going on, so I sent Mother D [grandpa's mother] home from the hospital in the taxi we came in. I always prided myself on my independence, but having a baby alone was something else. It was worth the struggle though — Paul got a good assignment, and we named Judy after St. Jude, the patron saint of the impossible.

Hardcore.

News cycles are increasingly compressed, aren't they? The now-infamous story of the Phillip Greaves book "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover's Code of Conduct" turned from obscure issue to raging storm to apparent resolution within 24 hours.

I have some thoughts about it.

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. . . for government reminds me not to drink from the urinal.

Chandler's new City Hall comes with some features that have municipal workers and visitors scratching their heads. Like the restroom signs that tell people not to drink out of the urinals and toilets.

The underlying article implies that the signs are there because the building uses reclaimed wastewater to flush the toilets and urinals (sensible) and that pertinent regulations require all wastewater uses to be accompanied by warning signs (not sensible).

Query:

1. If there are people who want to drink from the toilet, shouldn't we just let them do whatever makes them happy and keep all the good water for ourselves?

2. If a person is inclined to drink from the toilet, is there a rational basis to believe that a sign telling them not to is likely to influence their behavior? (This is a variation on a question that got me disapprovingly hissed during torts class at a certain East Coast diploma mill 20 years ago: if someone sees nothing wrong with pouring perfume onto an open flame to make a nice scent, what are the chances that they will heed a warning not to pour alcohol-based perfumes onto open flames? Aren't we just ruining the aesthetics of our perfume bottles for the benefit of .1% of the population that would probably be better off confined to burn wards anyway?)

With any luck, charismatic thinker John Cole will be here any moment to explain that by asking these questions I am identifying myself as a glibertarian teahaddist Palinite freak.

Let's say I'm tired of carrying around wads of cash.  I consider applying for a credit card, perhaps at a bank, or at at some retail operation, like a department store.  But I'm paranoid.

I'm worried that I might expose myself to identity theft by giving up my name, address, social security number, and other private information.  Mistakes are made, after all.  Someone within the company might misuse my information, or the company might inadvertently expose it to hackers.

I can of course go to a large department store, one that (hopefully) uses modern encryption techniques and has a modicum of data security enshrined as corporate policy and procedure.  I can eschew the department store credit card entirely, and use a card from a bank.  A large bank, in the hope they'll have their act sufficiently together to protect me from the Russian Internet Identity Thieves?

If I'm sufficiently paranoid, I can refuse to get a credit card at all, living "off the grid" and keeping my wad of cash.  If all else fails, and my spotless credit rating is exposed, I can find a new bank, shop at new stores, and I can sue the bastards responsible.

But what if the government exposes my identity to theft and fraud?  Can I refuse to deal with the government?

Or can I at least shift my business to a new government?

The Social Security numbers of dozens of New Hanover County [North Carolina] property owners were mistakenly published on the county website for anyone to see.

The lists containing the numbers were removed from the site Tuesday so county officials could scrub them from the data, said Chairman Jason Thompson, who learned that the numbers were published from a resident. The Social Security numbers were published in two lists containing property owners delinquent on their taxes.

County Manager Bruce Shell said the list contained 9,845 accounts, of which 163 Social Security numbers were included. The Social Security numbers should not have appeared in the data and weren’t caught before they were published. It's unclear how many people were affected because some numbers are linked to more than one account.

It was an isolated incident, Shell said.

Of course it was an isolated incident.

That's precisely what my bank would say if it published my social security number on the web.  "It was an isolated incident, and we've adopted new safeguards to see that this sort of thing doesn't happen in the future.  Although the information was exposed for only a limited time, we're offering free credit monitoring service to customers who are concerned about this isolated incident."

And I'd sure as hell sue them once the Chinese Identity Pirates of Wuhan started buying new cars using my name and credit.

Of course, since this is the government, irritated property owners are out of luck.  So, for that matter, are injured property owners, those whose identities are stolen and who'll start getting "past due" notices from credit card companies they never dealt with, scammed merchants who will have to swallow some of the charges, and the scammed credit card issuers themselves who will have to swallow the rest.

All they're getting is a subscription to freecreditreport.com:

Shell said the county plans to provide these property owners with credit monitoring for a year to prevent fraud issues from developing.

“We’re on top of it,” Shell said. “We’re trying to do the right thing by them.”

Bullshit.

"Doing the right thing by them" would mean indemnifying them for the costs of this fuckup.  But if New Hanover County is sued, you can bet its attorneys will raise the doctrine of sovereign immunity ("The King Can Do No Wrong"), an absolute defense to liability in North Carolina.  The individuals responsible would raise the qualified immunity doctrine as a defense.  And the County would win.

Why shouldn't it?  If damages were awarded, it would be the innocent taxpayers of New Hanover County who would have to pay, not the negligent Barney Fifes of the tax department.

Here's a thought: Our friend TJIC often calls for "Rope" when government employees are caught in this sort of shenanigan.  Others call for "Tar and Feathers."

That seems extreme.  After all, we don't hang taxi cab drivers who paralyze the innocent through negligent driving.  Why should we hang the nasty lady behind the counter at the DMV?

Why not just waive immunity for the negligent who work for the government, making them as responsible for their torts as you or I would be if we started publishing clients' social security numbers for all to see?

If they don't want to be responsible for their actions, perhaps they shouldn't be given sovereign power over others in the first place.

Here's a second thought:  If past performance is any guide, it will be thirty minutes before one of the lickspittle government apologists (I had to stop calling them "willing serfs" because that upset them) who infest our readership shows up to point out that these victims were tax delinquents.  "I have no sympathy!"

On the contrary.  These people weren't tax delinquents at all.  They were doing what any sensible consumer would do to a corporation that misuses customers' private information.  They were boycotting the New Hanover County tax office, just as they'd boycott Wal -Mart if it published social security numbers on the web.  Of course, one difference between Wal-Mart and the government is that the government destroys all competition, not with low low prices but with guns.  The customer has nowhere else to go in a monopoly environment.  Another difference is that Wal-Mart can't throw those who refuse to buy what it's selling in jail.

But given the level of service they've gotten from New Hanover County, can anyone blame these people for refusing to pay their taxes?

Should cotton be grown in the United States, even if it's more expensive to grow it here and less expensive to grow it elsewhere? Should cotton be grown through muscular terraforming in places naturally unsuited to it, like, say, the desert in Arizona?

Congress thinks so. Congress thinks that life would be much more rewarding for America, and for American cotton growers, and for people employed by American cotton growers, if we keep growing cotton here, even if other growers can grow it cheaper elsewhere. Congress is so convinced of this that they are willing to spend a very large amount of your tax dollars in subsidies to cotton growers. Call it what it is — the softer side of welfare.

Congress pays cotton growers $3 billion a year to grow cotton in America. In fact, we pay them to grow cotton in odd places where cotton has not traditionally been grown, like the Arizona desert. It may be strategic: in an event of a war with cotton-producing nations, we wouldn't want our supply of ironic t-shirts to be depleted. Naturally the countries that produce cotton think this is bullshit, and complain, and threaten a trade war. But Congress has an answer for that, too. They just pay off the cotton growers in the complaining countries with your tax dollars: for instance, they pay $147 million to Brazilians.

So. To sum up, Congress uses $3 billion per year of your tax dollars to pay cotton growers to grow cotton, most of which goes to large corporate growers, because those growers can't compete on the open market. Then Congress pays $147 million a year of your tax dollars to Brazilian cotton growers because they can't compete in the market now distorted by the $3 billion Congress already handed out. It's only a matter of time before the American cotton growers insist that Congress pay them more in subsidies because the money given to the Brazilians has made it too hard to compete again.

I don't want to go out on a limb here, but this strikes me as potentially somewhat inefficient. Perhaps we should just take a more modest amount of tax dollars — say, $10 million — and pay it directly to the members of Congress who have cotton growers in their districts, and cut out the middlemen. Or maybe there's a non-cotton answer that's even cheaper. For instance, to steal a theme from our friend TJIC, let me point this out to members of Congress: Nylon rope is only about fifteen bucks for 50 feet.

Edit: Patrick points out that I forgot that he already ridiculed this, and I even commented on it, months ago. In my defense, my memory is fading as I age. Also, I like to think that my NPR link will draw a more hip, affluent, urban audience than Patrick's country-music-themed post.

Derek Jeter won a Gold Glove award. At shortstop. Arrrrggggh!

Derek Jeter is not even the best shortstop on his own team, much less in the AL. His range is nothing, and he actually demonstrably costs his team runs defensively.

Now, I know that Gold Gloves have as much to do with offensive stats as they do defensive ones (especially since defense is one area where advanced metrics have lagged a little) but even taking into account his offense, Jeter should not be in the top 5.

We all know that Jeter won this award (for the 5th time!) because he plays for the most famous team. But (as Bill James has pointed out) it's entirely possible that he is "the least effective defensive player at any position." His choice as the best fielding shortstop in the AL is a joke. He does not deserve it.

So after getting all nauseatingly emo about the ethics of avoiding confrontation with assholes, I promptly got into a confrontation with an asshole today after court.

Said asshole, a plaintiff's lawyer, who has subpoenaed a bizarre array of irrelevant witnesses in the case, expressed skepticism about my qualifications to enter into the case on behalf of the defendant. "It's true," says I, "that I have never represented a defendant in a case in which the plaintiff has inexplicably subpoenaed [high city official] to testify. However, I once prosecuted a tax protester who attempted to subpoena Oliver Wendell Holmes. So I was hoping to extrapolate."

In my defense, I never said I'm perfect. Also, it was a lawyer, so it wasn't the same as being nasty to a person.

It's strictly one day at a time around here in Ken's moral gymnasium.

One of the candidates for the chairperson of the House Energy Committee believes that global warming is not a problem, because God promised he wouldn't destroy the earth. He goes on to quote the Bible as if it were some sort of scientific record, and not the made up scribblings of someone telling us what some invisible allmighty being told them.

Does anyone think that using the Bible (which has had more ghost writing done to it over the ages than an athlete's "autobiography") as any sort of factual record is a good idea? The Bible is only slightly more historically accurate than the Book of Mormon (which I remind posits that a really lost tribe of Jews was in South America, despite any archaeological evidence to the contrary) or anything from Scientology.

Can I enter Ragnarok into the Congressional record, since it is as well sourced and historically likely as anything God said? We are so screwed.

Occasionally life gives you pop quizzes, which you fail.

This weekend, life's pop quiz was "Hey, Ken, since it's National Adoption Month, do you think you could model how to react positively and constructively to challenging or uncomfortable adoption-related social situations?"

My answer: KEN SMASH KEN SMASH KEN SMASH.

That wasn't the right answer. Not even partial credit.

Many timeson this blog, I've talked about the social challenge that adoptive parents face in responding to rude questions in public, and how uncomfortable those situations can make us. I've admitted fantasies about telling rude people off, but maintained that adoptive parents should generally opt for education or avoidance over confrontation in order to avoid conveying to our children that there is something upsetting or shameful about adoption. It's much better for our kids to say "Actually, that's personal" or "whyever do you ask" than to say "go screw yourself, you nosy twit", however viscerally satisfying the latter is.

Yeah, well. About that.

When it came to it, on a sunny November Saturday watching my son play soccer, I blew it.

Now, I was provoked. But like I said earlier today, provocation is not an excuse.

I was sitting there in the sun when a father watching a game on the next field started up with me. He was an aging jock type, Al Bundy in sweats and a smirk. "Is that your son?" Yes. "Really?" Yes. "I mean — that kid there. He's really your son?" [smirk] Uh-huh. "Yeah, that kid?" [smirk] "Because he's — you know." Huh. [More smirks.] Then, "Hey, I'm just askin'. Am I not being PC?" No, you're fine.

If I had left it at "no, you're fine," he would have lost interest at my lack of response and wandered off. But I added ". . . I mean, considering." And he picked up on it, and followed up, and asked what I meant, and it went downhill from there. I won't describe it at length, because it would defeat the purpose of advocating against smacking down rude people about adoption in public near our kids and in favor of either educating or avoiding. Suffice it to say: (1) I said he was fine, considering his capacities, and that I supported people like him being mainstreamed, and did they bring him on a bus from his group home, and so on [I was thinking of crazy people, but in retrospect it sounds like a joke about the mentally handicapped, which is embarrassing to me], (2) he blustered and threatened and got red in the face, (3) I said a number of things that were cutting and a number of things that were merely angry or incoherent, among them "that depends on the color of your ear," [very sure I said it, seemed very a propos at the time, no idea what it means], and (4) people started to notice and look concerned and there was the possibility of getting into a fistfight for the first time in decades, and (5) eventually something happened on his son's game and he cussed at me and pointed at me and threatened some more and went off to look after his son.

So. Not my brightest hour. The saving grace: Evan was on the field and didn't notice.

Did it feel good at the time, to confront him and cut at him and score points off of him? God, yes. It felt great. But I sure as Hell didn't impress any of the parents or kids in earshot about adoption being a normal, positive thing. I made them think of this adoptive parent as being angry and out of control. And I helped solidify in their mind the idea that cross-racial adoption is somehow upsetting and Other. Plus, had my son been there, and observed it, he would have picked up that there was something very upsetting, and maybe shameful, and controversial, about me being his father.

The guy was trying to get my goat. He got it. I'll try to do better next time. But I can't promise anything.

When I think of White House Press Secretaries I normally think of evasive banter with reporters or the dreamy C.J. Craig. I don't think of forceful advocate for the Fourth Estate. Enter Robert Gibbs. He loudly and forcefully threatened to pull President Obama out of a negotiating session with the Indian Prime Minister unless the full compliment of US reporters were allowed in. The Indians wanted to limit the access to 5, after initially agreeing to 8.

It's nice to see the White House relationship to the press in a non-negative sense for once. And, cheers to Mr. Gibbs for standing up for the White House Press Corps. My favorite part is that he jammed his foot in the door to keep it open.