Infospigot: The Chronicles

Just this, from Monday’s New York Times (you need to be registered to read it online): The FBI is going around the country questioning dissidents — now there’s a precise term — about possible violence planned during anti-Bush demonstrations at the Republican Convention in New York City later this month. Of course, the FBI is the first to reassure us that it would never act like … like, well, the FBI.

F.B.I. officials, mindful of the bureau’s abuses in the 1960’s and 1970’s monitoring political dissidents like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., say they are confident their agents have not crossed that line in the lead-up to the conventions.

“The F.B.I. isn’t in the business of chilling anyone’s First Amendment rights,” said Joe Parris, a bureau spokesman in Washington. “But criminal behavior isn’t covered by the First Amendment. What we’re concerned about are injuries to convention participants, injuries to citizens, injuries to police and first responders.”

Watching out for threats is swell. I don’t know anyone who’s a fan of seeing other people getting blown to pieces. But here, the FBI is putting Americans fulfilling their responsibility to protest the government’s lapses on the same side of the fence as real enemies of the state.

Over- and underappreciated San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll had a decent piece today on the Bush administration’s war rhetoric. For contrast, he used Winston Churchill’s stirring yet reflective account of a British assault on Sudanese forces outside Khartoum in 1898:

“The Dervish host was scattered and destroyed. Their end, however, only anticipates that of the victors, for Time, which laughs at Science, as Science laughs at Valor, will in due course contemptuously brush both combatants away.”

In big type, Carroll asks: Is there anyone in politics today who could construct sentences like that?” Fair question, in that Churchill shows here and elsewhere it’s possible to write beautifully while in the service of abominable causes like our misbegotten Iraq campout. Unfair question, because we’re talking about one of the language’s finest prose stylists ever.

But whether the question’s ridiculous or not, I had an answer: Yes, James McGreevy. His address yesterday announcing he’s “a gay American” and resigning as governor of New Jersey because of an extramarital affair with another man was uncommonly courageous and, at moments, beautifully wrought:

In this, the 47th year of my life, it is arguably too late to have this discussion. But it is here, and it is now. At a point in every person’s life, one has to look deeply into the mirror of one’s soul and decide one’s unique truth in the world, not as we may want to see it or hope to see it, but as it is.

The whole speech is well above the usual political doggerel. He attempts to lift the whole affaiir above politics and into the realm of deep personal quest. Of course, this might be another example of someone offering nice phrases in an abominable cause.

Yesterday, it was clear McGreevy wasn’t explaining one significant detail: What had driven him to make his announcement now? Late last night and today we got the answer: He was about to be exposed in a sexual harassment lawsuit that is either a) the action brought by a former aide seeking justice or b) the handiwork of a spurned aide who hoped to blackmail his former lover. That’ll all be sorted out, maybe even in public.

What’s interesting today, though, is looking back at past stories concerning McGreevy’s special friend, Golan Cipel. McGreevy hired him as a homeland security adviser, moved him out of that job into an undefined position of “counselor” when questions arose about his security qualifications, then got rid of him altogether when questions about what he was doing to merit a $110,000 a year salary wouldn’t go away.

But even a cursory glance at Cipel’s past is bound to raise more questions about his relationship with McGreevy after he left his state job. Here’s what a real quick Google search — not investigative reporting — turns up.

A Web site called New Jersey Capital Report (it’s produced by a rather Republican-sounding PR/lobbying firm called Capital Public Affairs, so yeah, have your grain of salt ready) ran a column (called McGreevy Watch) the day Cipel left state employment two years ago that reported Cipel had landed a job with a lobbying firm that apparently had close ties to the governor. About six weeks, later, McGreevy Watch reported that Cipel continued to be McGreevy’s (unpaid) adviser on Jewish affairs and that he had already moved from his first lobbyist’s job to another, having been hired into another firm by a man described as McGreevy’s best friend.

With that and other details floating around, McGreevy’s not going to come out of this looking as noble as he did yesterday.

The Weather Channel is in the midst of its always-odd storm coverage as Hurricane Charley approaches Florida’s Gulf Coast. TWC is famous for sending its people out onto the beaches and showing them getting whipped by rain and blowing sand and tossed around by gusting winds. The effect is so familiar that it’s kind of campy and makes the whole scene seem like a damp but wondrous carnival, not some potentially deadly blast of nature. (My favorite place for storm information, which is pretty straightforward but very complete: The Weather Underground’s Tropical Weather page.)

Meantime, how has blogging changed storm reporting? Well, through Technorati I did find a Florida meteorologist who’s making a game attempt to keep up with the storm online: “Heavy rain is now falling into southwest Florida as bands of Charley move through the area. There are still many people out and about, but traffic continues to decrease. Most businesses including grocery stores and restaurants are now closed. So far, winds are not too gusty but they are expected to increase shortly.”

Traffic continues to decrease. Can you say “drama in real life”? (Non-snide point of curiosity: What happens when he loses his Net connectivity?)

But what does the great blogging public, the non-weather-expert types, make of the approaching menace? We take you now to the tale of an apparent teenager chased all the way across the state by the storm:

“I was having a great time in Marco Island till’ we had to evacuate [Hurricane Charlie] I absolutley it here in Ft. Lauderdale [thats wer i had to evacuate to] But there is pretty good shopping l0l0l…..i miz mii h.h.h.h. sisters at home l0l0l deb nd jen well gotta go shopping!”

The terror is palpable.

Two delightful items, both by way of Gaper’s Block:

First, Alan Keyes sings. “Somewhere over the Rainbow.” In front of other people. On TV, actually. Channel 2, the CBS channel that I always used to call WBBM.

Second, a funny account of a campaign encounter with John Edwards and Barack Obama in Chicago:

“… Continuing in my stilted voice, I greeted Mr. Obama with a cheery, “I AM SO GLAD THAT YOU ARE RUNNING. I HAVE BEEN VOLUNTEERING FOR YOU.” He thanked me, and honestly, I know this sounds naive and cheesy, but it felt genuine. I love that guy.”

I admit I’m shallow and given to knee-jerk responses. So here’s a shallow, knee-jerk response to Alan “I’m Movin’ to Peoria” Keyes and one sentence in his speech acceding to Illiinois Republican pleas that he run for the Senate: “I have confidence because the victory is for God.” Come on. Which God? In which persona? Has he compared notes with that Sadr fellow over in Najaf (also invited to run for electoral office over the weekend), who is also fighting for a God-related victory? I mean, right there he’s lost me. Not because of the religious implications per se, but because of the hateful, ungodly divisiveness of the rhetoric. Lest one think I’m reading too much into what Keyes said, here’s a quote from one of the GOP brain trust that pretty much spells out the message: “Republican Jim Oberweis, who flanked Keyes onstage along with other GOP candidates who lost in the primary to Ryan, called the race with [Barack] Obama no less than ‘a debate between good on the right and evil on the left.’ ” (And if there’s a mystery about the title: Allahu Akbar.)

Berkeley election news: Maudelle Shirek, who’s 93 and one of the oldest elected officials in the United States (maybe the oldest in the post-Strom Thurmond era), intended to run again for the Berkeley City Council this year. But the San Franicsco Chronicle her chief aide de camp neglected to gather the required signatures on a nominating petition, and now Maudelle’s elective career is apparently history. (I’m not really shedding any tears: She doesn’t represent our district, and the rumors around town were that she was no longer up to the job and it was time for her to hang it up).

By way of my brother John: New York magazine has a great conversation between Norman Mailer and his son John Buffalo Mailer (I wonder if my kids would have liked to be called Buffalo?). The main topic is how the expected massive protests at the Republican National Convention will play out now and over the long term. But there’s plenty more about where we’re headed in our history and our world:

“A good many people of the right, not flag conservatives but true conservatives, can feel in accord with men and women on the left concerning one deep feeling. It is that the corporations are stifling our lives. Not only economically, where corporations can claim, arguably, that they bring prosperity (and frankly, I’m certainly not schooled enough in economics to argue that point pro or con), but I can say the corporation is bad for us aesthetically speaking, culturally speaking, spiritually speaking. Just contemplate their massive empty architecture, their massive emphasis on TV commercials, which are a seedbed for interrupting one’s conversation, and their massive complacency about their virtues. They tend to flatten everything. They are the Big Empty.”

The Trib cites “Republican sources” as saying Marylander Alan Keyes has agreed to run for the U.S. Senate in far-off Illinois (state fact for the Keyes campaign: It’s called the “Land of Lincoln” on the license plates, but some people call it “the Prairie State,” too, so remember to sprinkle that into your speeches).

Support from GOP heavyweights has no doubt swayed Keyes to jump into the race. The Trib quotes two enthusiastic backers:

“No comment,” former Gov. Jim Edgar, a moderate, said of the offer to Keyes, a line that may speak volumes considering Edgar’s role as chairman of an already uphill battle to win Illinois for President Bush’s re-election.

Former Gov. James Thompson said he had “no idea” whether he was going to endorse Keyes. “I’ll wait and see what he has to say.”

That’s lusty stuff, right up there with Eisenhower’s 1960 comment on the big contributions Nixon made to his administration: “If you give me a week, I might think of one.”