MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, who hosts a show that airs on Saturday and Sunday mornings, aroused no small degree of controversy today when, in the midst of a discussion about Memorial Day, he stated that he felt “uncomfortable” calling fallen soldiers heroes:

It’s Memorial Day weekend, and while many may be marking this occasion as a time for barbecuing with the family, it’s also an important time to reflect on the sacrifice of those who lost their lives serving the country. We like to remember them as heroes, men and women who risk everything to protect their fellow citizens, but on MSNBC today, Chris Hayes admitted he feels “uncomfortable” about doing that, suggesting the “hero” label gives us more rhetorical reasons to continue the wars.

Hayes observed that in much casual conversation about war and fallen soldiers, talk of heroism often comes up, and he doesn’t necessarily think that’s a good thing

“I feel… uncomfortable, about the word because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. Um, and, I don’t want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that’s fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism, you know, hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers, and things like that. But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I’m wrong about that.”

Columnist John McWhorter agreed with Hayes’ discomfort because the word “hero” and others like it can be used as “argumentational strategies” whether we are consciously aware of that or not. Hayes did acknowledge the other side of the argument, namely that there is no mandatory conscription and service is purely voluntary, therefore all those who choose to sign up and take heavy risks are heroes in their own right.

Michelle Goldberg, columnist for The Daily Beast, argued that the reason “hero” comes across as a loaded word is that it implies “they died in the pursuit of a worthy endeavor.”

Here’s the video, via Mediaite:

Now, on some level I will admit that there is merit in the argument that the term “hero” is tossed around far too loosely these days. Going back to the Ancient Greeks and the Romans, after all, “hero” has long been a term that was applied sparingly. That’s why the United States awards special honors, ranging from commendations to the Bronze Star, the Silver Star, and the Congressional Medal Of Honor, to those who have distinguished themselves by exceptional action in combat. So, to say that everyone who has died in service to their country, or even just served their country, is a “hero” in the Greek/Roman sense of the word is perhaps a bit of an exaggeration. That is not, by any means, to denigrate the service and the sacrifice of anyone who has served. However, the word “hero” definitely used to mean something special and it has kind of been watered down over the years. After all, is the guy who scores the winning touchdown in the last minute of the Big Game really as much of a “hero”as the firefighter who just saved a child from a burning building? Perhaps we need new words to describe these things, but that’s a question for linguists.

I suppose the problem I have with Hayes’s comments, and with the comments of those who have been defending him online today, is that the objection to describing those who have died in service to their country as heroes isn’t based so much in a concern that it diminishes the true acts of heroism that have occurred, and will continue to occur in wartime as it is in the fear that acknowledging the sacrifices that these men, and women, have made would somehow be a political statement.  That strikes me as a deeply myopic, politically-obsessed, view of the world.  Disagreeing with the political decision to go to war should never, I would submit, be a reason to either denigrate or ignore the sacrifices that those who served in that war have made, which seems to be the clear implication of what Hayes and his fellow panelists were saying in this segment. Individual soldiers are not responsible for the decisions of those who sent them into battle, and it strikes me as incredibly callous to dismiss the sacrifices made by those who died in such endeavors.

I opposed the Iraq War. I think our continued mission in Afghanistan is a big mistake. But, holding those fighting the battle responsible for that would be a tragic mistake. They did not make the decision to go to war, and they have no control over when to end it. We have already dealt in our very recent history with an unpopular war and a group of veterans and war dead who, for far too long, were forgotten by their nation, we should not join the Chris Hayes’s of the world in doing that again.

Conservative columnist George Will criticized Donald Trump with colorful language on Sunday when asked on ABC’s “This Week” whether it helps Mitt Romney to ally with the billionaire real estate mogul.

“I do not understand the cost-benefit here,” Will said. “The costs are clear. The benefits – what voter is going to vote for him because he’s seen with Donald Trump? The cost of appearing with this bloviating ignoramus is obvious, it seems to me. Donald Trump is redundant evidence that if your net worth is high enough, your IQ can be very low, and you can still intrude into American politics.”

“But again – I don’t understand the benefit. What is Romney seeking?” he added.

Trump’s money perhaps? A Trump-funded SuperPAC that savages Obama for the next five months? What exactly would Romney do about such a SuperPAC running birther ads between now and November 6th?

Here’s the video via Mediaite:

Alan Simpson has always been the kind of guy who says what’s on his mind with little regard for what people might think about him, including his fellow Republicans. Quite honestly, that’s one of the reasons I always liked him when he was in the Senate, and why I’ve appreciated his role over the past two years in connection with the Bowles-Simpson Commission and the nation’s ongoing conversation about how to solve our obvious fiscal problems. Over the past two years, Simpson has fought back against those in the GOP who criticized him for suggesting that taxes should be on the table in any conversation about the budget, held his own quite nicely against those on the left who refuse to acknowledge that entitlements need to be on the table as well, taken on the critics of the plan he developed with Erskine Bowles, denounced the anti-gay rhetoric that seems pervasive in the Republican Party, and criticized those on the right who reject the idea of compromise. 

Today, he was on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS calling out his fellow Republicans for their adherence to a “no new taxes” orthodoxy that makes governing impossible in Washington:

In remarkably colorful terms, former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-WY) on Sunday lashed out at members of his party for their unyielding opposition to new tax revenues, whom he described as stymieing a debt reduction agreement.

“I guess I’m known as a RINO now, which means a Republican in name only, because, I guess, of social views, perhaps, or common sense would be another one, which seems to escape members of our party,” said Simpson, a co-chair of President Obama’s fiscal commission, on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS.”

“For heaven’s sake, you have Grover Norquist wandering the earth in his white robes saying that if you raise taxes one penny, he’ll defeat you,” he added. “He can’t murder you. He can’t burn your house. The only thing he can do to you, as an elected official, is defeat you for reelection. And if that means more to you than your country when we need patriots to come out in a situation when we’re in extremity, you shouldn’t even be in Congress.”

(…)

“You can’t cut spending your way out of this hole. You can’t grow your way out of this hole. And you can’t tax your way out of this hole. So put that in your pipe and smoke it, we tell these people. This is madness,” Simpson said. “If you want to be a purist, go somewhere on a mountaintop and praise the East or something. But if you want to be in politics, you learn to compromise. And you learn to compromise on the issue without compromising yourself. Show me a guy who won’t compromise and I’ll show you a guy with rock for brains.”

Referring to the criticism that President Obama has received from many observers, including yours truly, for his failure to embrace the Bowles-Simpson plan in 2010, Simpson made this argument:

“If he had embraced our plan, he would have been ripped to shreds,” the former senator said. “[H]e would have been ripped by the Democrats, say, why, you rotten — you’re digging into these precious, precious Medicare. And the Republicans would have rejected — if he’d have embraced it, the Republicans en masse in the House would have rejected it. So either way, he’s going to get hammered. So he is playing the waiting game.”

With regard to the tax issue, Simpson is, of course, completely correct.

Given the size of the Federal Government’s fiscal problems and the fact that the nation still remains closely divided on the whole issue of what the proper role of government ought to be, it is quite simply politically unrealistic to walk into negotiations about a long-term deal on the budget saying that one of the largest contributors to the problem is off the table. That’s true whether we’re talking about taxes, entitlements, or defense spending because without these three items all being part of the conversation, it’s going to be impossible to come up with a package that actually accomplishes anything. For confirmation of that one need only look back in time one year to the largely pointless negotiations that resulted from the need to raise the nation’s debt ceiling. Unwillingness by one side to put taxes on the table, and by the other to put real entitlement reform on the table, meant that we ended up wasting two months on non-negotiations only to end the whole process with a non-deal deal and the creation of a “super committee” that everyone knew would never accomplish anything. And now, we have to deal with not only a debt ceiling increase, but also the expiration of the Bush Tax Cuts, the expiration of the Payroll Tax Cut, the extension of unemployment benefits, and the extension of the Medicare “Doc Fix” by the end of this year. The odds that we’ll just get another round of pointless posturing is enhanced by the fact that we’re already in election season and any deal that a Lame Duck Congress makes will be largely influenced by posturing for the new terms to begin in January 2013.

I’m not sure I agree completely with Simpson essentially letting Obama slide on his failure to do anything in response to the Simpson-Bowles plan. To some extent, it is true, the President’s options were limited by the fact that the report came out just weeks after he and his party had suffered a rather large defeat in the mid-term elections. However, this was a Commission that he created, with members that he appointed, and which he sighted repeatedly as something that he supported in the months during which it was holding its hearings. The manner in which he, and everyone else in Washington, essentially took the plan that had been produced and threw it in the trash before the ink was even dry was an astounding act of political cowardice, especially considering that Obama could have used the plan as political ammunition in the battle with the GOP over the extension of the Bush Tax Cuts at the end of 2010. Perhaps something along the Bowles-Simpson framework will eventually be what all parties agree to in a year or two, but it won’t be because of any profile in political courage out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

I fully expect that Simpson will once again be denounced for speaking the truth. His fellow Republicans, however, would be better off actually listening to what he has to say.

This year marks the first year since Franklin Roosevelt and Thomas Dewey faced off against each other in 1944 that neither major party candidate for President will have served in the military at some point in their life (Democratic VP nominee Harry Truman did serve in World War One, andFDR was Asst. Secretary of the Navy during World War I, but never served in uniform). In The Washington Post, John Nagl takes note of this fact, and wonders if we’ve reached a point where military service is no longer a big deal for Presidential candidates:

[T]oday, the connection between service in war and election to the highest office in the land has been severed.

How we got here is difficult to ascertain. The sample size of presidential elections is small, and military service is far from the only factor that voters consider. Yet the 2012 White House hopefuls reflect a broader truth: Even in a country waging what seems to be a forever war, military service is increasingly limited to a small swath of volunteers, widely admired but little known.

Early in our nation’s history, Americans fought to claim a continent both from its native inhabitants and from foreign powers that coveted its riches. Fighting for the country was a regular part of the American experience, and excellence in that service was one way to demonstrate leadership to the nation. The pool of citizens who were veterans was broadened by the draft during the Civil War and both World Wars, increasing the number of political candidates with military service and the connection voters felt to contenders with whom they had shared the experience of combat. Everyone respected those who had served — and perhaps even looked down a bit on those who had not been a part of America’s battles.

That relationship broke down during the Vietnam War, when not all segments of society were called upon to fight. When Johnson chose not to mobilize the National Guard for combat duty, it became a refuge for the sons of the elite who were avoiding war.James Fallows has written, movingly and guiltily, of how the most privileged Americans found ways to avoid the draft, sending the less fortunate to war in their place.

The long conflict in Southeast Asia tore the United States in two, destroying an effective consensus about the use of American power abroad. The soldier became the symbol of an unpopular war. Presidential candidates who had answered the nation’s call struggled to connect with voters who often hated the war that had helped form them. Gore played down his service in Vietnam during his bid for the White House, while Kerry’s service became a liability; although he was one of a few candidates to have been wounded in combat, he was “swift boated” by opponents who questioned some details of his service. No American veteran of any earlier war, let alone another recipient of several Purple Heart medals, would have been treated this way.

But this black mark on America’s treatment of its veterans is fading. In the wake of Vietnam, the country chose to meet its national security needs with a force composed entirely of professionals who had volunteered for duty. This force has proved enormously capable — triumphing in Desert Storm, easily defeating both the Taliban rulers and Saddam Hussein’s army, and demonstrating adaptability when performing counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan. No one who has served in today’s military would countenance a return to the draft and a force composed at least in part of Americans compelled to serve. The small size of the military relative to the population — well under 1 percent — makes broadening the service base both unnecessary and unlikely.

But there are costs to this all-volunteer military that are not immediately apparent, even on this weekend dedicated to remembering its sacrifices. The disconnect between those who give the orders and those who have no choice but to follow them has never been wider; all Americans salute the same flag, but only a few carry it forward against enemy fire. The military has become a caste apart from the nation it protects, with many of its fighters the sons and daughters of military leaders — a family business that asks much of a few. Service academy alumni journals are full of photos of multi-generational family reunions in combat zones, while most of us do no more to support the troops than stand, remove our caps and cheer when they present the national colors before a baseball game.

To some degree, the long stretch of time from 1944 to 2008 when at least one candidate had served in uniform is actually something of an historical anomaly. If you go through a list of major party Presidential candidates throughout American history, you find that very few Presidents or losing nominees had any military experience at all. This is, I think, largely a reflection of the fact that the 20th Century saw America involved in two World Wars, the Cold war, Korea, and Vietnam and that during a large part of this period there was a military draft in place that increased the odds that a given person would end up in military service at some point along the way. Now, though, we’re coming to the point where candidates who were born at the tail end of the Vietnam Era are now the men (and women) running for the Presidency. For the most part, they were born too late to be subject to the draft and have grown up in the era of the all-volunteer military. Therefore, one could argue that we are returning to some sense of normalcy in terms of the way things were prior to the end of World War II when military service was not commonly found on the resume of a Presidential candidate.

Nagl seems to think that this is not necessarily a good thing.

There are, perhaps, some down sides to an all-volunteer military notwithstanding the fact that tends to lead to the creation of a smarter, more professional fighting force while at the same time avoiding the ethically questionable idea of forcing people into military service. The cultural divide between those parts of the nation that serve as the major sources of military recruits, such as the South and rural West, and those that do not is rather obvious and apparent. Additionally, there is perhaps some wisdom in the idea that a President who has served in the military may be more judicious about the use of force than one who has not. That doesn’t always apply, of course, since the two President’s who presided over the ill-advised war in Vietnam both served in the military during World War II, and that didn’t seem to prevent either Richard Nixon or Lyndon Johnson from making decision about the war that seem to be quite foolhardy in retrospect.

Furthermore, I have serious questions about the idea that military service, especially during war time, invests someone with qualities that make them uniquely suited to the Presidency. Bob Dole served with distinction and honor in Europe during World War II but, in all honesty, I think he would have made an utterly horrible President not so much because of his policy ideas but because of his personality. Bill Clinton didn’t serve in the military, and indeed was the subject of one of the last serious “draft dodger” arguments from the Vietnam Era during his 1992 campaign, and while I often disagreed with his decisions while President, I think it’s rather obvious that he was a better President than Dole ever would have been. Similarly, Ronald Reagan served stateside in the military during World War II and I don’t know that his time in uniform gave him any special insight that he was able to tap into some 40 years later, that came from some place else.

Nagl’s argument is somewhat academic anyway. As I noted above, we are entering an era where the odds of a candidate for political office having served in the military are going to be significantly lower than they have been in the past 60-odd years. I don’t know that you can say that this is either a good or a bad thing, it’s just a fact of life.

In a column in today’s New York Times that touches on broader issues, Ross Douthat joins the chorus of those called Facebook’s Initial Public Offering a “disaster.” It’s easy to see on the surface why people would say this, and indeed it’s a premise that I largely accepted myself in the two posts I’ve written on this topic (here and here). Just take a look at the difference between the I.P.O. price of $38 per share, and the current share price, which closed at $31.91 on Friday afternoon. That’s a decline of $6.09, or 16.03%, in just about a week of trading, though it’s worth noting that the majority of that decline came very early on in trading and the the share price was relatively stable for much of last week. Clearly, that’s an indication that the market as a whole has made a judgment that Facebook is not worth the $38.00/share that it was initially priced at, as well as the fact that investors have most likely soured on the idea of putting money on the company at the moment.

If you judge the success of the I.P.O. by whether the stock has gone up or down in just 5 1/2 days of trading, then I suppose you’d have an argument that the Facebook I.P.O. has been a disaster. However, unless you’re a day trader or someone looking to make a quick buck on a stock, what has happened to the share price of Facebook in the past week isn’t necessarily relevant. The real question is the company’s long-term prospects for growth, and how that will impact the share price six months, a year, or five years from now. There’s simply no way to know the answer to that question today, and such a short period of trading history doesn’t really give us sufficient evidence to make a judgment on that issue. So, calling the I.P.O. a disaster as Douthat does is either being incredibly short-sighted, or it’s a rather simplistic concentration on very short-term results while completely ignoring the future over the long term.

Douthat’s argument misses another point, though, and it’s one that his own New York Times colleague Joe Nocera made on Friday:

[L]et’s be honest. Were there really any long-term investors in Facebook that first day? Judging by the torrent of criticism that has rained on Facebook and Morgan Stanley, it sure doesn’t appear that way. Instead, what the Facebook aftermath suggests is that we’ve all become brainwashed into believing that, when it comes to I.P.O.s, up is down and down is up. A successful I.P.O. is one where the company gets hosed by Wall Street. A failed I.P.O. is one where the company’s interests, not those of Wall Street speculators, are served. It’s Alice in Wonderland goes to Wall Street.

This is perhaps the most important point about an I.P.O. that people seem to forget. The entire purpose of an Initial Public Offering, after all, is to bring cash into the company by offering ownership shares in the company for sale on the open market. Since these I.P.O.’s are all done through investment banks and brokerage houses, though, there are parties with conflicting interests at the table prior to the day the stock goes public. It’s in the best interest of the banks and brokerage houses that the stock be priced somewhere below what the market might pay for it, because they are the ones who buy the stock from the corporation in order to either sell it to their clients or keep it in their own portfolio in the hope that it will gain value. It’s in the best interest of the corporation that the initial offering price be as near to the top of market value as possible so that they maximize the value of the shares of ownership that they’re selling. Remember, after I.P.O. day a corporation reaps almost no benefit from what happens to its share price unless it holds what are called “Treasury Shares” in its own name, or it decides to issue additional shares at some point in the future. Who benefits if the stock goes up sharply on I.P.O. Day or immediately thereafter? The banks and brokerage houses. As Nocera notes, we’ve somehow gotten to a point where an I.P.O. is considered successful only if it results in more money ending up in the hands of the investment community than in the hands of the issuing company. That seems like an odd perversion given the act that the entire purpose of the I.P.O was to raise cash for the company.

Nocera contrasts the Facebook I.P.O. with another recent offering for another, smaller, Tech company:

 I am referring to Splunk, an 8-year-old, money-losing data analytics company that went public five weeks ago. Splunk’s investment bankers priced the stock at $17 a share. But it closed its first day of trading at $35.48 — a gain of 109 percent — before declining over the next month. (It has rebounded in the last week.)

The offering raised $229.5 million for the company. But if the bankers had done a better job of pricing the shares — and had come closer to the $35 a share that investors were willing to pay — the company would have reaped twice as much. Putting cash in a company’s coffers is supposed to be the whole purpose of an I.P.O. Isn’t it?

Who got all that extra money? The hedge fund managers and Wall Street insiders who were allocated shares — and who immediately flipped those shares for a quick, easy profit. That’s how I.P.O.s work nowadays: It is assumed that the offering will be underpriced, and anybody who can get shares at the I.P.O. price is guaranteed a killing. This pattern has become the very definition of a successful public offering.

Why is it that Splunk’s I.P.O. is viewed as a success, while Facebook’s is viewed as a failure? It strikes me that you can only accept that argument if you hold a very short-term view of success in the business world. As Nocera notes, we don’t know where Facebook will be in five or ten years, and how it will fend in the years to come against companies like Google, Microsoft, and even Twitter. However, thanks to that “disaster” of an I.P.O., they have something like $16 billion in the bank, a CEO who has had a remarkable run of success for someone so young, and a user base of nearly a billion people worldwide. It strikes me that this I.P.O. was far more of a success than the short-term people are willing to admit.

VATICAN CITY — An already sordid scandal over leaked Vatican documents took a Hollywood-like turn Saturday with confirmation that the pope’s own butler had been arrested after documents he had no business having were found in his Vatican City apartment.

The detention of butler Paolo Gabriele, one of the few members of the papal household, capped one of the most convulsive weeks in recent Vatican history and threw the Holy See into chaos as it enters a critical phase in its efforts to show the world it’s serious about complying with international norms on financial transparency.

The tumult began with the publication last weekend of a book of leaked Vatican documents detailing power struggles, political intrigue and corruption in the highest levels of Catholic Church governance. It peaked with the inglorious ouster on Thursday of the president of the Vatican bank. And it concluded with confirmation Saturday that Pope Benedict XVI’s own butler was the alleged mole feeding documents to Italian journalists in an apparent bid to discredit the pontiff’s No. 2.

“If you wrote this in fiction you wouldn’t believe it,” said Carl Anderson, a member of the board of the Vatican bank which contributed to the tumult with its no-confidence vote in its president, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi. “No editor would let you put it in a novel.”

The bank, known as the Institute for Religious Works, issued a scathing denunciation of Gotti Tedeschi in a memorandum obtained Saturday by The Associated Press. In it the bank, or IOR by its Italian initials, explained its reasons for ousting Gotti Tedeschi: he routinely missed board meetings, failed to do his job, failed to defend the bank, polarized its personnel and displayed “progressively erratic personal behavior.”

Gotti Tedeschi was also accused by the board of leaking documents himself: The memorandum from the Institute for Religious Works, as the bank is known, said he “failed to provide any formal explanation for the dissemination of documents last known” to be in his possession.

In an interview with the AP, Anderson stressed that the latter accusation was independent of the broader “Vatileaks” scandal that has rocked the Vatican for months. But he stressed: “It is not an insignificant issue.”

Gotti Tedeschi hasn’t commented publicly about his ouster or the reasons behind it, saying he has too much admiration for the pope to do so. He also hasn’t been arrested, avoiding the fate that befell Gabriele.

The 46-year-old father of three has been in Vatican detention since Wednesday after Vatican investigators discovered Holy See documents in his apartment. The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Gabriele had met with his lawyers and that the investigation was taking its course through the Vatican’s judicial system.

Gabriele, the pope’s personal butler since 2006, has often been seen by Benedict’s side in public, riding in the front seat of the pope’s open-air jeep during Wednesday general audiences or shielding the pontiff from the rain. In private, he is a member of the small papal household that also includes the pontiff’s private secretaries and four consecrated women who care for the papal apartment.

Lombardi said Gabriele’s detention marked a sad development for all Vatican staff. “Everyone knows him in the Vatican, and there’s certainly surprise and pain, and great affection for his beloved family,” the spokesman said.

The “Vatileaks” scandal has seriously embarrassed the Vatican at a time when it is trying to show the world financial community that it has turned a page and shed its reputation as a scandal plagued tax haven.

Vatican documents leaked to the press in recent months have undermined that effort, alleging corruption in Vatican finance as well as internal bickering over the Holy See’s efforts to comply with international norms to fight money laundering and terror financing.

The Vatican in July will learn if it has complied with the financial transparency criteria of a Council of Europe committee, Moneyval — a key step in its efforts to get on the so-called “white list” of countries that share financial information to fight tax evasion.

Anderson acknowleged that the events of the last week certainly haven’t cast the Holy See in the best light. And he said the bank’s board appreciated that the ouster of its president just weeks before the expected Moneyval decision could give the committee pause.

“The board considered that concern and decided that all things considered it was best to take the action at this time,” Anderson said. “These steps were taken to increase the IOR’s position vis-a-vis Moneyval.”

As for Gabriele, it’s worth noting that he could end up spending up to 30 years in prison, although I presume that any sentence would be served in an Italian prison since I’m not aware of any jail facilities of any kind on Vatican territory.

If one knows anything about scientific surveys, it is the randomness of the sample that makes them scientific.

To quote Mr. Gumby:  my brain hurts.

(h/t:  LGM)

The head of the Democratic National Committee doesn’t really seem all that concerned with the outcome of the Wisconsin Recall Elections:

The chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee said Friday that if Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett (D) doesn’t prevail over Gov. Scott Walker (R) in next month’s Wisconsin recall election, there won’t be any ramifications for Democrats nationally.

“I think, honestly, there aren’t going to be any repercussions,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said in a broad-ranging interview on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers.”

“It’s an election that’s based in Wisconsin. It’s an election that I think is important nationally because Scott Walker is an example of how extreme the tea party has been when it comes to the policies that they have pushed the Republicans to adopt,” Wasserman Schultz said. “But I think it’ll be, at the end of the day, a Wisconsin-based election, and like I said, across the rest of the country and including in Wisconsin, President Obama is ahead.”

Given the recent polling, it’s not really a surprise that the DNC would try to down play the repercussions of an unsuccessful recall. In fact, it’s been clear for weeks now that national Democrats aren’t nearly as enthusiastic about this election as they appeared to be during the height of the protests in Madison last year. One sign of that can be seen in the general reluctance that the DNC has shown to put money behind the recall effort. If they thought they had a chance of winning the recall, one doubts they’d be nearly so reluctant. As I’ve noted, Wisconsin voters seem to be sick of the recalls at this point and, with the economy improving, Walker’s approval ratings have been rising. People I’ve talked to who are on the ground in Wisconsin say that the momentum now is clearly on the GOP’s side, and it would likely take a major event to change that. At this point, I’d be surprised if Walker was defeated.

The word salads above are composed using DHS’ deeply creepy list of “keywords and phrases it uses to monitor social networking sites and online media for signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S.”:

Released under a freedom of information request, the information sheds new light on how government analysts are instructed to patrol the internet searching for domestic and external threats. The words are included in the department’s 2011 ‘Analyst’s Desktop Binder’ used by workers at their National Operations Center which instructs workers to identify ‘media reports that reflect adversely on DHS and response activities’….

The list has been posted online by the Electronic Privacy Information Center – a privacy watchdog group who filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act before suing to obtain the release of the documents.

In a letter to the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counter-terrorism and Intelligence, the centre described the choice of words as ‘broad, vague and ambiguous’. They point out that it includes ‘vast amounts of First Amendment protected speech that is entirely unrelated to the Department of Homeland Security mission to protect the public against terrorism and disasters.’

A senior Homeland Security official told the Huffington Post that the manual ‘is a starting point, not the endgame’ in maintaining situational awareness of natural and man-made threats and denied that the government was monitoring signs of dissent. However the agency admitted that the language used was vague and in need of updating.

Sorry, James. I may have just gotten us added to a watchlist.

Endnote: If you review the entire document, you’ll discover that the “obviously partisan or agenda-driven site[]” MoveOn.org is accorded a higher base reliability status than “blogs, even if they are of a serious, political nature.” Thus, OTB is categorized on the same level as a tabloid while MoveOn is considered the equivalent of AllAfrica.com and GlobalSecurity.org. That’s downright insulting. And profoundly stupid.

It was thirty-five years ago yesterday that Star Wars first hit movie screens:

Where were you 35 years ago today? Wherever you were, just about now you were probably starting to hear stirrings about a certain movie that was zooming into theaters and about to change everything.

“Star Wars” hit theaters for the very first time 35 years ago today, on May 25, 1977.

When that day dawned, not only did we have no idea who Luke and Leia were, but we hadn’t heard of Admiral “It’s a TRAP!” Ackbar, no one cared whether or not Greedo shot first, and thankfully, weesa no hearda of Jar Jar Binks.

Maybe you weren’t among those first to discover the film and see it early. But if you went near a movietheater at all that May and June, you probably saw the lines winding around your local multiplex, and very soon you likely wanted to know what was going on in a galaxy far, far away.

If you were a kid, “Star Wars” merchandise soon filled your room, and your school. Action figures, pajamas, wastebaskets, bedsheets — nothing existed that George Lucas couldn’t put a Wookiee face on.

Indeed, you did. I wasn’t even seven years old when the movie came out and, while I don’t think I went to see it that first weekend, I know it wasn’t too long after that. And of course you had to go see at least one more time, right? And then there was all the merchandise, perfectly marketed for kids to beg their parents for just in time for birthdays and Christmas. It was really the first mass-marketed movie blockbuster, which is kind of interesting only because, going into the deal the studio was so unsure that it would succeed that they signed over the merchandising rights to Lucas himself, foolishly one would think.

Star Wars was also the beginning of something we’ve become very used to from Hollywood, the summer action blockbuster. To some degree, Jaws had started the phenomenon when it was released two years earlier, but with Star Wars, and the merchandising that came with it, Hollywood learned a lesson about how to make the really big money making movies, and every summer since then it seems like one studio or the other tries to out-do what’s been done before. Just this year, for example, we have The Avengers, which has been a massive success in the theaters and, in a few weeks, The Dark Knight Rises. For nearly every summer for the past 35 years, these kinds of movies have brought millions of people theaters, put millions of dollars in studio’s pockets, and changed the way movies are made and marketed.

The other thing that the success heralded was the return of science fiction to Hollywood. The last real Sci-Fi epic to hit the big screen had been 2001 back in 1969, and that’s still a movie that some people have problems wrapping their brain around. After Star Wars, Hollywood picked up on the idea that this was a genre that would succeed on the big screen, so before long we saw Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Blade Runner, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, and the return of the Star Trek franchise ten years after the television show had gone off the air.

Looking back, one can find things to criticize about Star Wars, and the many changes that Lucas had made over the years are frustrating to those of us who fell in love with the story the way it was supposed to be told (Han shot first!). Some would argue that the movie was surpassed when its sequel was released four years later, and they’d have a pretty good argument to make there. However, even after 35 years there are few things more fun than sitting down and watching Episode IV again and remembering what it was like to see it for the first time.

It started out, you’ll remember, like this:

Apparently, the latest revelation to be leaked out of David Marinass’s upcoming book about the President that, shockingly, a student who was in High School and College in the late 70s and early 80s smoked marijuana:

Bill Clinton he was not. When it came to smoking pot, the teenage Barack Obama had rules. You had to embrace “total absorption” or face a penalty. When you smoked in the car, “the windows had to be rolled up.” And he could horn his way in, calling out “Intercepted!” and grab the joint out of turn.

Best-selling author David Maraniss’”Barack Obama: The Story” describes the future president’s teenage antics, notably his copious marijuana smoking, details of which were published early Friday by Buzzfeed. While the book won’t be released until June 19, vast sections of it were already available Friday on Google Books.

Starting on page 293, the reader begins to get the dope on high school-age Obama’s group of basketball- and fun-loving buds, who dubbed themselves the “Choom Gang,” from a verb meaning “to smoke marijuana.”

“As a member of the Choom Gang, Barry Obama was known for starting a few pot-smoking  trends. The first was called ‘TA,’ short for ‘total absorption.’ To place this in the physical and political context of another young man who would grow up to be president, TA was the antithesis of Bill Clinton’s claim that as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford he smoked dope but never inhaled,” writes Maraniss, author of a biography of the 42^nd president.

“When you were with Barry and his pals, if you exhaled precious pakalolo (Hawaiian slang from marijuana, meaning “numbing tobacco”) instead of absorbing it fully into your lungs, you were assessed a penalty and your turn was skipped the next time the joint came around. “‘Wasting good bud smoke was not tolerated,’ explained one member of the Choom Gang, Tom Topolinski, the Chinese-looking kid with a Polish name who answered to Topo.”

Obama also made popular a pot-smoking practice that the future president and his pals called “roof hits.” When they smoked in the car, they rolled up the windows, and “when the pot was gone, they tilted their heads back and sucked in the last bit of smoke from the ceiling,” Maraniss writes.

Obama “also had a knack for interceptions. When a joint was making the rounds, he often elbowed his way in, out of turn, shouted ‘Intercepted’ and took an extra hit. No one seemed to mind,” according to the text.

Maraniss details how the Choom Gang relaxed at a spot they called “Pumping Stations” partway up Mount Tantalus on Oahu.

“They parked single file on the grassy edge, turned up their stereos playing Aerosmith, Blue Öyster Cult, and Stevie Wonder, lit up some ‘sweet-sticky Hawaiian buds,’ and washed it down with ‘green bottled beer’ (the Choom Gang preferred Heineken, Beck’s, and St. Pauli Girl),” according to Maraniss.

Rod Dreher, certainly no fan of the President’s, finds this much ado about nothing:

I’m a social and religious conservative, don’t smoke pot, never have smoked pot, don’t have any close friends who smoke pot (around me, at least), and as far as I can remember, haven’t been around people smoking pot since my twenties (I’m 45). I’m pretty sure I don’t think pot should be legalized, but I don’t have strong feelings about it.

And I sure don’t care that President Obama was a teenage pothead.

Why not? Because I knew so many people in college who smoked pot recreationally, and turned out okay. If I concluded that anybody who smoked pot as a young person was therefore unfit for high public office, I wouldn’t be able to vote for many of the smartest and most capable people I know. And I wouldn’t be able to explain why in any way that made sense, even to myself.

That’s largely, I think, because it wouldn’t. Surely, there are some things that a person may do in their younger years that would be potentially disqualifying if the ran for office later in life. Multiple serious, especially violent, crimes come to mind for example, potentially involvement in large-scale drug trafficking would fall into that category as well. The same really can’t be said of youthful drug use, especially a drug as relatively harmless as marijuana. So Barack Obama inhaled, so what? It’s really not that big a deal when you get right down to it, and it’s a good thing that we’ve come to the point in our society where condemning a man for something he did in his youth that harmed nobody is considered silly. Of course, it wasn’t always that way. Douglas Ginsburg, a man who was more than well-qualified to sit on the Supreme Court, was forced to withdraw his name from nomination over revelations that he smoked pot during his time as a student at the University of Chicago in the 60s and as a young Professor at Harvard in the 70s. Bill Clinton was put through the ringer for the same activity and ended up coming up with the ridiculous wink-and-nod of “I didn’t inhale.” I’m sure both men would have prefered to live in an era where such youthful “indiscretions” were recognized for the irrelevancies that they are.

Of course, there is one aspect of the President’s youthful adventures with marijuana and it’s relationship with his Presidency that deserves to be talked about. After initially promising that his Justice Department would not pursue cases against medical marijuana dispensaries in states that have legalized marijuana for medical use, Obama and his Administration have done precisely the opposite:

On its own, stories like these about a young adult are actually kind of funny, even humanizing — like something straight out of a stoner comedy. But when you realize it’s about President Obama, it becomes a little less humurous.

Less humorous because President Obama has repeatedly laughed off and dismissed serious discussion about drug policy, like in that 2009 virtual town hall where the president mocked online voters for picking a question about marijuana legalization.

Less humorous because the president shuts down medical marijuana dispensaries with a frequency that would have made Richard Nixon stand up and cheer. He presides over a DOJ, IRS, and DEA that have threatened, audited, and shut down legal pot sellers in California, Colorado, Montana, and Washington. All this despite once promising to respect state laws regarding medical marijuana.

Federal agents have also staged a record number of crackdowns at stores that sell hemp or so-called “drug paraphernalia,” making Barack Obama and Eric Holder just two more in a long line of Generals in America’s mostly failed War On (Some) Drugs. One wonders what young Barack Obama would think about that.

AP Photo

✰ THE WINNERS ✰

First: grizzlybare – “I scream, you scream, we ALL scream for…….higher taxes on the RICH!!!”

Second: al-Ameda – “Vice Cream”

Third: J-Dub – “With liberty and frogurt for all!”

HONORABLE MENTION

John Burgess – “What? You want jobs? Well, I’ve got ice cream, nyah, nyah!”

Phillip – To keep Biden happy (and quiet in front of the microphones) President Obama has added soft-serve ice cream to the Executive Branch’s health-care plan.

James H – Joe Biden has accepted the Obama campaign’s suggestion that he speak only in zen cones.

G.A. – Sing?!?!?!?!?!?!? Me?!?!?!?!?!? No!!!!!!!!!!But I can juggle!!!!!!!!F*ck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Drew – Obama may be off at some stupid summit, but look at my important work, dammit!

MaggieMama – Anyone want to lick my cone? Anyone?

ℛODNEY’S BOTTOM OF THE BARREL

Occupy DQ

Double dipped, and soft Served.

These Pentagon cones only cost $119.36 each of taxpayer monies.

Another job created or saved

“…and don’t forget the Waffle cone for President Obama.”

The Thursday Contest only serves as an appetizer.

Apparently, the TSA doesn’t care much about previous work history in its hiring process:

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - The CBS 3 I-Team has learned that a Catholic priest who was removed from the ministry over sex abuse allegations now holds a sensitive security post at Philadelphia International Airport.

The security checkpoint between Terminals D and E is a busy place where thousands of people – including lots of kids – pass through every day. But you might not believe who the I-Team observed working as a TSA supervisor at that checkpoint this week: Thomas Harkins.

Until 2002, Harkins was a Catholic priest working at churches across South Jersey. But the Diocese of Camden removed him from ministry because it found he sexually abused two young girls. Now, in a new lawsuit, a third woman is claiming she also is one of Harkins’ victims.

The I-Team asked Harkins about the suit as he was leaving his shift at the airport.

“I have nothing to say,” was Harkins’ reply.

The new lawsuit, filed in federal court against the Camden Diocese says quite a bit. It accuses Harkins of sexually abusing an 11-year-old girl 10 to 15 times in 1980 and 1981. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the alleged victim, claims the abuse occurred while Harkins was a priest at Saint Anthony of Padua parish in Hammonton, NJ, with one assault even occurring in Harkins’ bedroom at the rectory.

The I-Team asked Harkins if the traveling public should be worried

“No, they shouldn’t be,” he said.

Since the allegations against Harkins were so old and the Statute of Limitations had expired, there were no criminal charges filed in these cases so nothing would have shown up on a criminal background check. Nonetheless, one would think the question “Why did you leave your previous job?” would have come up at some point.