New York Medium Tour

I am  running a circuit meeting editors and writers at the big magazines and media outlets here in thecity before I return to DC tomorrow.

So far:

Joseph Button– First Things

Kevin Williamson- National Review

Hendrik Hertzberg- The New Yorker

On the Docket:

Clayton Sizemore- CNN

MTV

The New York Times

Lights Lights Blinding

My friend Kate soaks in the view from the Vogue– just blocks from our(temporary) home in the shadow of the Empire State Building.

Searching for Bobby Fischer

I passed a leisurely Sunday afternoon roving the chess shops of Washington square and observing brilliant homeless me plying a wholly unprofitable trade.

Click here to view more chess photos…

Mendicant Cuisine

“There isn’t usually much funny about the homeless,” says Michael Race, a bicycle messenger smoking cigarettes in a park on Broadway. “But I’ll tell you a funny story about a homeless guy.”

“Wednesday there was this homeless guy in bad, bad shape down in one of those allies,” says Race indicating a labyrinth of narrow streets running off Times Square. “There was a guy down there just eating garbage out of a garbage can—he was just pulling filthy stuff out.”

“I could see him from the deli window where I am eating lunch, so I decide to do my good deed and bring the fellow a sandwich,” says Race.

“I get over there and interrupt the guy and he says, ‘well what kind of sandwich is it?’ in a haughty way as if I had interrupted tea with the Queen,” says Race who starts shaking with laughter in his recounting of the story.

“So I just started laughing then too and I said ‘why would it matter?’” says Race. “You are eating banana peels and eggshells right now, I mean, do you only eat certain kinds of sandwiches?”

Race is losing it now. Tears are dripping out of the corners of his eyes.

From that particular deli, the homeless guy, it turned out, only likes only the turkey and Swiss, says Race. He’s says he tried every kind of sandwich the deli makes and turkey and Swiss is just his flavor.

“Turns out he didn’t take it,” says Race. “It was a freshly made bologna and cheese sandwich and he didn’t want it.”

“So he kept eating garbage, “says Race. “ And even though he was right that the bologna in cheese is not the best sandwich the deli makes, I ended up having that sandwich for dinner.”

Aint No Love in the Heart of the City

A young African American man on the corner of Broadway and 34th dips and sways to the hot winds of his own sermon late Friday night. The fire burning in his eyes dances like a match sticks flare just before it extinguishes.  So I go to ask him about the ‘hope that is within in him.’

“Yes I have hope,” says the man who calls himself Priest Zabach. “America is going to burn up. America is going to go straight to hell. We are going to enslave the white man and the other nations for a thousand years.”
Zabach is talking about me and is wearing a long black robe and a belt coated with gold tin foil. A Star of David swings defiantly across the front of his cloak. He says he is talking to me because he thinks my name sounds Jewish and my expired Capitol Hill press pass looks legitimate to him. Zabach is a member of the radical religion Twelve Tribes of Israel.

Zabach has that passion and hope in his beliefs that you and I always wanted so badly to have for our own.
Hope like that makes winning a presidential election look like a game of pick-up sticks. With hope like that I would move mountains and bring back the long doubted days of miracles.

“We have hope that the so called ‘blacks,’ the Native Americans and the Hispanics are going to wake up, come back to God realize who they are as God chosen people,” says Zabach.

I know plenty of people who would shout amen to that. A dozen or so African Americans gathered around Zabach and his brothers do shout amen.
“There going to get the hell away from American and these other nations,” shouts  Zabach.

But for some reason no one shouts amen to that hopeful part of the sermon.

White House Correspondence Dinner

Chris Matthews

Originally uploaded by maxxx995

Chris Matthews

Statesmanship and Its Betrayal

 http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=1998&month=04

These are extracts from a lecture by Mark Helprin that is well worth reading.

 

“…we have only what we have. Which is a political class that in the main has abandoned the essential qualities of statesmanship, with the excuse that these are inappropriate to our age. They are wrong. Not only do they fail to honor the principles of statesmanship, they fail to recognize them, having failed to learn them, having failed to want to learn them.

In the main, they are in it for themselves. Were they not, they would have a higher rate of attrition, falling with the colors of what they believe rather than landing always on their feet—adroitly, but in dishonor. In light of their vows and responsibilities, this constitutes not merely a failure but a betrayal. And it is a betrayal not only of statesmanship and principle but of country and kin.”

“…America would not have come out of the Civil War as it did had it not been led by Lincoln and Lee. The battles raged for five years, but for a hundred years the country, both North and South, modeled itself on their character. They exemplified almost perfectly Churchill’s statement, “Public men charged with the conduct of the war should live in a continual stress of soul.”

This continual stress of soul is necessary as well in peacetime, because for every good deed in public life there is a counterbalance. Benefits are given only after taxes are taken. That is part of governance. The statesman, who represents the whole nation, sees in the equilibrium for which he strives a continual tension between victory and defeat. If he did not understand this, he would have no stress of soul, he would be merely happy—about money showered upon the orphan, taken from the widow. About children sent to day care, so that they may be long absent from their parents. About merciful parole of criminals, who kill again. Whereas a statesman knows continual stress of soul, a politician is happy, for he knows not what he does.”

“…It is difficult for individuals or nations to recognize that war and peace alternate. But they do. No matter how long peace may last, it will end in war. Though most people cannot believe at this moment that the United States of America will ever again fight for its survival, history guarantees that it will. And, when it does, most people will not know what to do. They will believe of war, as they did of peace, that it is everlasting.

 

The statesman, who is different from everyone else, will, in the midst of common despair, see the end of war, just as during the peace he was alive to the inevitability of war, and saw it coming in the far distance, as if it were a gray wave moving quietly across a dark sea.”

“…Would that we in America come once again to understand that statesmanship is not the appetite for power but—because things matter—a holy calling of self-abnegation and self-sacrifice. We have made it something else. Nonetheless, after and despite its betrayal, statesmanship remains the manifestation, in political terms, of beauty, and balance, and truth. It is the courage to tell the truth, and thus discern what is ahead. It is a mastery of the symmetry of forces, illuminated by the genius of speaking to the heart of things.”

Eunoia

Shortest word in English with all 5 vowels. Means “beautiful thinking.” Check out Christian Bok’s book by same title. It’s fiction in which each chapter uses only one vowel. BBC has extracts.

“Hiking in British districts, I picnic in virgin firths, grinning in mirth with misfit whims, smiling if I find birch twigs, smirking it I find mint sprigs.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7697000/7697762.stm

Throwing Stones at Mt. Olympus…& Sipping Black Label

 

The Honorable Robert Bork delivered Heritage’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies inaugural Joseph Story Lecture last night titled “A Republic – If You Can Keep It.”

 

I attended the lecture, and enjoyed it very much. Bork’s wit surprised me. He is not a stodgy old man. He is good humored and carries the gracious compensation of age as though a tired body and a wise mind were light things.

 

Bork’s lecture dealt with the state of our current judicial system and the way in which it is now an institution that undermines our republican form of government.

 

One significant problem is what he called “Olympianism.” This is a reference to the mountain of the gods in Greek myth from which the gods descend to interact with mortals.* Intellectual elites are like this, said Bork, “they are willing to share their superior knowledge or they will impose it on us.” He explained that in courts all over the globe, not just in America, courts rule for themselves the authority of judicial review and then start making laws instead of judging questions of the law. In America, these Olympians prefer to pack the courts with imperialistic judges rather than abide by the Constitution.

 

The scene grows darker because the Supreme Court is the only institution in our country that claims finality. There are certain court decisions that cannot be reversed because they are too deeply set into the American mind and system. Bork cited court cases involving entitlements – Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid – as example. Conservatives can try to make certain liberal things more conservative, but they cannot replace them with conservative things.

 

In Federalist 78, Alexander Hamilton said that the judiciary will always be the least dangerous branch of government because it has neither the sword nor the purse, nor force or will, just judgment. To contrast this, Bork quoted Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy who is on record saying, “a Justice has the opportunity to shape the destiny of a country.”

 

Justice Kennedy had in mind his status as the swing vote on the Supreme Court. Justices Thomas, Scalia, Roberts, and Alito are Originalists in their interpretations of the Constitution whereas Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsberg, and Breyer have an organic view of the Constitution which, said Bork, boils down to little more than a subjective moral philosophy. They believe that the Constitution’s original sense has expired and is now obsolete. Between these two voting blocks, Kennedy casts the deciding ninth vote. This instance of one man rising above the supreme law of the land, the Constitution, and making laws according to his personal moral philosophy, should be shocking and dismaying, said Bork.

 

Bork said there is no legal rationale for Roe v. Wade, and that the Supreme Court’s opinion in the case that legalized abortion is simply Justice Blackmun’s personal moral philosophy and has no bearing under the Constitution that could withstand rigorous scrutiny. An Originalist interpretation of the Constitution, Bork followed, is the only way to have constitutionalism that doesn’t slip into the rule by judges.

 

Joseph Story, after whom the lecture series is named, was a Supreme Court Justice from 1811 to 1842. He is remembered for being the youngest Justice appointed at 32 years of age and for his original-intent fidelity to the Constitution. Bork pointed out that Story was a man who would change his mind if a good enough argument warranted. When Story became a Justice, he was a Teetotaler, a position he later relinquished.

 

Not coincidentally, when the Heritage lawyers host an event, they don’t mess around. Wine and beer is served at an open bar after most evening events, but rarely is liquor served as well. I relished a couple thumbs of Black Label then hopped the metro for home. 

 

* In Q&A, someone asked Judge Bork what he thought about being verbed. After his Supreme Court nomination hearings in which the Senate rejected him, someone coined the phrase “to be Borked” which means something like “to have foes distort your record.” Bork’s reply was, “It is a sort of immortality.”

General Petraeus at Heritage

The bottom line in Iraq is that U.S. forces made substantial progress, the progress is still fragile and reversible, but much less fragile than in May, said General David Petraeus at Heritage today. General Petreaus is the architect of the successful surge in Iraq and the soon-to-be commander of U.S. Central Command.

 

He discussed the military’s comprehensive strategy for building widespread security and order in Iraq.

The Iraqis are investing their money into their infrastructure, he said; as well as contracting with major U.S. businesses to stimulate economic growth. Furthermore, efforts to instill political unity through reconciliation have started to pay off.

 

In June 2007, before the surge, there were 180 counterinsurgent attacks per day in Iraq. Today, there are less than 25. This statistic is demonstrative of the surge’s overall success and the remarkable leadership of General Petraeus.   

 

After receiving extended welcome applause, General Petraeus insisted he accept the show of respect only on behalf or his Iraq veterans who he called “The New Greatest Generation.”

 

Allison Auditorium was packed with Heritage members and guests and members of the press for the General’s brief on the state of Iraq. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was in attendance. 

 

Plus: he made good jokes and moved at a good pace. Minus: he used lots of boozy political and military jargon (which made me wonder what he talks like when he is not on show).

You can watch the speech online.