kth's journal

This is pretty funny. A little risque, say PG-13.

Here's a truly galvanic video from Chan Marshall, aka Cat Power. You guys (my friends and relations, who are probably most if not all of my readers) might not have heard of her, but she's fairly well-known among music fans. She's been on Letterman, and if that doesn't convince you of her fame, I once heard one of her songs on the PA system at KFC. For some reason, this video comes and goes from YouTube, so enjoy it while it's here:

Steve Benen, writing at Talking Points Memo, points to an item in the conservative blog Powerline defending Fred Thompson's lobbying for a family planning group. For people who don't read blogs, Powerline is famous for its exposé of the uncertain provenance of documents used in CBS News' report on Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard.

The post is curious on a couple of counts. First, Hindrocket (the handle of the post's author) asserts:

The fact that a pro-abortion group would do this tells us something about how seriously we should take the story as an indication that Thompson has pro-abortion sympathies.

But surely no one is arguing that Thompson is a crypto-pro-choicer. Rather, the argument would be that Thompson is an opportunist who lacks real conviction on the issue. That may actually be OK from the standpoint of a voter whose first priority is to make abortion illegal; more below.

Hindrocket further defends the honorable profession of lobbying by way of comparison: A lawyer needs to be able to represent, for example, a man accused of homicide without being labeled pro-murder.

First of all, I humbly submit that a defender of murderers would in fact have quite a difficult time securing the nomination of the Republican Party for President, especially if he routinely defended murderers whose innocence he was uncertain of. But that's not even the worst flaw in Hindrocket's argument. A lawyer defending a murderer is never arguing that murder is OK or should be legalized, only that his client didn't commit murder (either that he didn't do the deed, or the deed wasn't murder). So there would only be a conflict between the lawyer's heart and his professional duties, analagous to Thompson's situation, if he in fact knew (not just believed) that his client was guilty. No doubt this is occasionally true, though probably far less often than people imagine, but again, for any candidate, especially a Republican, to confess to such a conflict would almost certainly be fatal to his campaign, and legitimately so.

No doubt someone who is against abortion can vote for Thompson secure in the belief that he will do whatever he can to curtail the legality of abortion: nominate anti-abortion judges, champion anti-abortion legislation, etc. But surely they would have more enthusiasm for someone who had genuine convictions on the issue (several other examples of Thompson's apostasy on abortion are cited in the LA Times story reporting his pro-choice lobbying). Moreover, voters in general may wonder whether Thompson actually has beliefs at all, rather than a pressing need to be President and a set of positions with no other rationale than to give him the best odds of that happening.

My ambitions for this weblog are modest and few, the blog craze having already played out for the most part. Mostly these pages will be for the amusement of my family and acquaintances. It is a public blog, though, so if you stumbled here more or less by accident, you are as welcome as anyone. Topics will include music, movies, books, sports, modern manners and morals, plus personal anecdotes if anything interesting should ever happen to me. Occasionally I will comment on the news of the day, but I'm really not interested in rancor or partisan food-fighting. (That's not even to criticize food-fight sites, which I enjoy probably more than the next person, it's just not what I want to do here.) It is my earnest aim to be respectful of views that are different from mine. If I fall short of that aim, friends and readers, don't hesitate to call me on it.

Labels: intro, kth