Random Thoughts
On Sunday, I was over at a party that Dave “Orcinus” Neiwert had to celebrate the release of his third book, Strawberry Days, about the impact of the World War II internment camps on a Japanese-American community in Bellevue, Washington, and the subject turned to blog burnout. Dave is justly celebrated in the blogosphere for his rich, meaty posts on the activities of the extreme Right (neo-Nazis, hate groups, militiamen, and their apologists in the mainstream-right media), but for the past year or so, they have no been appearing with the same clockwork regularity. Considering that Dave’s posts pack a payload of facts and research uncommon in most paid journalism, and are delivered in a crisp, literate prose style that make even the epic-length ones worth reading, it’s unsurprising that his output might slow when he’s, oh, writing a book or something.
Dave’s been at this for longer than I have, though, and as I approach the end of my third year minding the EA store, I can’t help wondering if the bug of malaise (or at lease ennui, a related Frenchy-sounding condition) is beginning to attrit the ranks of the first generation of bloggers. Atrios, who preceded me online by four months, has been a snarky clip-and-link factory for months; Kos, Josh Marshall, and the MyDD gang have built their blogs into empires and are rapidly gaining escape velocity toward mainstream acceptance and (no doubt) mainstream money. Several of my Salon blog “class” of 2002 are still at it, but frayed edges are apparent everywhere.
I’m not saying I’m ready to wind up EA. Every time that thought crosses my mind, there always seems to be one more thing to write about, one more point I want to make in some long-running debate. In the spring, I slowed down because I was busy. Now that I’m on a bit of a break, I’m slowing down to enjoy the summer. Come the fall, I will be working on a book, among other things. So on this clearest of clear July days, the future is looking just a little bit murky.
On to other stuff. I enjoyed what this judge had to say in the sentencing of terrorist Ahmed Rassam. Needless to say, for standing up for the principles of the Constitution and the rule of law, he is being mocked and derided by the usual gang of idiots on the Right.
Speaking of judges saying extraordinary things, Bush’s Supreme Court nominee John Roberts apparently made a fairly remarkable response when asked what he would do if the law required a ruling that his church (the Catholic Church in his case) considered immoral. According to George Washington University Law Professor John Turley, in a column in the LA Times on July 25th, Roberts responded that he would have to recuse himself – a quote later disclaimed by Roberts’ interlocutor, Illinois Senator Richard Durbin. Despite the retrenchment on this point, I find it disconcerting that a nominee to the highest judicial position in the country would not immediately and proudly proclaim that the US Constitution is unambiguously the supreme guiding principle of jurisprudence under our system. In 1960, John Kennedy was celebrated for his clarity on this exact point. Have we really degenerated so far in a generation?
Finally, I note with interest this great post by Lance Manion on the moral certitude of the Right, with an additional gloss of interpretation from Shakespeare’s Sister on how the notion of being “born again” supports this insular and exclusionary view of morality and sin.
11:02:28 AM 
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