Friday, March 26, 2004

frm reviews Much, a new downtown restaurant.   I will miss the hell out of frm's local reviews when she deserts us for Chicago (she's accepting donations for moving expenses), but I'm guessing the folks at Much won't.   "I can see where, if you wanted to impress a not-too-bright date or take your country parents out for a good time, Much would be a very appropriate dining choice...Nothing we got tasted bad, but nothing justified a la carte pricing, either." 4:52:24 PM    comment []

Fact-checking David Brooks. 4:27:55 PM    comment []

Big plane to Charlotte. Small plane to Toronto. Lake Ontario out my mom's back window. As Nixon might have said, it is indeed a Great Lake. On a clear day you can see the mist from Niagra Falls, but this is not a clear day. Maybe I'll go smoke a Cuban cigar, they're legal here. Glad I came. 4:24:35 PM    comment []

I'm on my way to see my mom and Andrew. My sister just got back from a few days with them. Things are not good up there. 8:17:37 AM    comment []

Painfully obvious point made by Dick Clarke: there were mistakes and bad breaks pre-9/11 on Bush’s watch, and on Clinton’s.   More important: Why were those mistakes made?   Clarke’s argument is in part that Bush and Co. were too busy thinking about Saddam to focus on Osama. That is consistent with other reports and highly believable, no matter what one thinks of Clarke and his motivations.   Which leads back to questions of when and how Bush went to war in Iraq – questions of credibility, of Bush’s job performance as a war leader. It underscores the overselling of WMD, and the shoddy planning for the post-war period, and the issue of why we are only now devoting the resources to hunting Osama on the Pakistan border.   Accepting the good-thingness of deposing Saddam (no more evil dictator, chance at stable democratic Iraq, message to governments that might support terror, etc.) these questions of priorities, timing, and execution are still troubling.   We were told that Iraq was not just a priority, but the priority – because of 9/11 and the war on terror. That has always been open to debate, and Clarke, whatever his flaws, has called the question.   Kerry needs to show he’s serious about staying the course in Iraq, to leverage the good things about Bush’s policy, and to keep what we've started from turning into a disaster. Then we can focus on the less-good things, where Bush is clearly vulnerable. 8:07:45 AM    comment []

"The godless Constitution." As Kenneth Davis shows in this morning's NYT, not even Ashcroft understands this basic fact.   "The Constitution is the creation of "we, the people" and never mentions a deity aside from the pro forma phrase 'in the year of our Lord.' The men who wrote the Constitution labored for months. There's little chance that they simply forgot to mention a higher power."   I made the same point in an August 2003 column: "The Constitution is a bracingly secular document, ordained and established by We the People, without a single appeal to God or invocation of the traditions and principles of any religion. (It is dated 'in the year of our Lord' 1787.)...The framers of the Constitution did their work deliberately." 7:51:19 AM    comment []