Remember This Vote in 2008

Here are the votes on the Military Commissions Bill, which gives the executive the power to cancel a citizen's Bill of Rights protections by fiat, never mind the thumbs-up to torture. When 2008 rolls around, I hope that all potential presidential candidates who voted for this Bill are held accountable - Hagel, Frist, and especially McCain, who one would think would know better. Bush commanded them to wipe their collective asses with the Constitution, and they happily obliged, after a token show of resistance. Way to go, guys!

Battery Powered

I'm not sure what possessed me to tune in to the Baltimore-NY game last night. Masochism? After all, they had lost the night before by the humbling final of 16-5. Loyalty to the team? Maybe, but I haven't watched even parts of 20 games since the All-Star break, and have only been to 3 games this year. How many times have I mentioned them in this space all season? I think this may be the first.

But something made me flip the channel at 9:00, in time to catch Daniel Cabrera overcome a sixth inning error, his no-hitter still intact and nine outs away from reality. Did it happen? Nope. He was unperturbed by two errors and two passed balls in the seventh that gave NY a run, but with two outs to go in the ninth, an opposite-field single by Cano broke it up. What a game to watch though. Ramon "Javy Lopez, isn't he retired?" Hernandez had two homers and drove in four of the seven O's runs (hence this post's title), but it was really all about Cabrera, a pitcher who can be so dominating at times that it makes his inconsistency that much more maddening. A microcosm of the Orioles, a team with plenty of talent and potential, yet to be harnessed en masse.

'Balkinization' Blog

Dan Froomkin linked to this blog during his online chat yesterday; it's called Balkinization, and although I'm not sure who some of these guys are or how they all got together, there's lots of smart, in-depth analysis from a truly wide variety of perspectives. It does have a legal tilt though, since the blog's eponymous founder, Jack Balkin, is the Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School.

Governor Who?

While Charm City Blogger's political reporters usually go after the hard-hitting stories, we are not above having some fun at a candidate's expense, especially if the candidate is a Republican named Chandler Woodcock (his friends call him...Chan).

Danger! High Voltage

While his Shrubberiness is seemingly having his way with Congress when it comes to spying on citizens, he's still having some trouble getting the Senate to come around to his new definition of torture. Here's where it stands now: the Geneva Conventions define torture as "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment", while Schrobbe wants that changed, for the sake of clarity, to treatment that "shocks the conscience".

Let's examine this for a minute. Aside from the clarity issue, which speaks for itself, there are several surprising revelations in this latest language. The first and most obvious: the torture experts at the CIA have not only located the consience, but have figured out how to hook electrodes to it and have incorporated it into their torture techniques! This is big news, although I doubt we'll be getting the details anytime soon. The CIA probably wants to keep these new methods to themselves for a while, before exporting them to Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia. Perhaps in the not-so-distant future, the location of the conscience will be leaked to reporters, along with details on required voltage, and possible variances in conscience size between people of different faiths (my uneducated guess - Hindus have the largest consciences, with Catholics a close second).

Perhaps the more shocking revelation, though, is that the Torturer-in-Chief himself would prohibit these amazing new techniques! Imagine the frustration of the CIA torturers - their boss wants to take away the new toy almost as soon as it comes out of the box.

I'm no political expert, but I think that the Democrats have just had their mid-term election slogan handed to them: Republicans: Soft on the Conscience, Soft on Terror.

Political Losers

Every single candidate that I voted for in the major (competitive) races in yesterday's Democratic primary has lost or is losing! Not a terrible thing in any of the races, but still the results are a bit discouraging in 2 of the 3 races, where the status quo won out.

U.S. Senate: I voted for Mfume, but it looks like Cardin is going to win by 7 or 8 points. I'm not bothered by this at all because I think Cardin will be a fine Senator, however I did like Mfume as a guy who would stir things up a bit; Cardin seemed like more of the same, and I thought Mfume's criticism of Cardin's acceptance of almost $1 million in lobbyist money was quite valid.

Comptroller: Usually not a big race, but any election that could potentially remove crazy (senile?) incumbent Schaefer was an important one. I voted for Janet Owens, since she was polling well ahead of Peter Franchot, the guy I really wanted to vote for, but felt that it was more important for Schaefer to lose. Well, it's close but it looks like Franchot will win after all, so this is actually an ideal result.

MD-3: Long-time Baltimore Helath Commissioner Peter Beilenson was my guy, but unsurprisingly he came in second by 6 points to John, Son of Sarbanes. Sarbanes will likely be perfectly competent in the House, but there are far too many 'hereditary' seats in Congress as it is.

Weekend Fun, Pigtown Style!

On Saturday we had a rather full day; first we headed down to the Inner Harbor - ugh, so many tourists, and NYY fans no less, since the Yanks were in town - to check out the Dragon Boat Races. Kinda disappointing, actual. Basically big canoes being paddled across the harbor.

The afternoon was redeemed though, when we walked over to the Pigtown neighborhood just west of Camden Yards, to take in the annual Pigtown Festival! We arrived just before the Running of the Pigs, which I managed to capture on lo-res video (I had the regular camera with me, not the video camera). But unbelievably, the fun didn't stop there! We also caught the Pigtown Pooch Pageant, possbily the lamest - but still fun! - dog show ever; apparently dressing your dog up in a dress or other costume is the way to go. Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the huge-ass piece of pineapple upside-down cake that we managed to snag for the Baltimore-bargain-basement price of $2.50!!! Look at the size of that brick of cake. We even came close to finishing it!

(Note: I had some additional photos that didn't upload to Flickr due to some problems the site was having yesterday, including a close-up of the cake...)

Bad Fundraiser Idea

I'm not quite sure what's worse, that it's a dove shoot, or that it's on 9/11. Ugh.