Mets Deadline Deals

We briefly interrupt our workday to bring you this:
*Duaner Sanchez is out, quite likely for the season, after separating his shoulder in a taxi accident (shades of Tom Glavine two years ago).
*The Mets have a number of potential setup men – Heilman is now the key guy – but to fill the hole, they’ve traded Xavier Nady to get back Roberto Hernandez plus Oliver Perez. Hernandez hasn’t been that great this year after pitching great in 2005 – a 2.93 ERA and just 3 HR in 43 IP, but his K rate has dropped in half, he’s allowing more than a hit an inning and he’s walking 5 men per 9 (3.56 per 9 if you exclude intentional passes). You hate to deal an everyday player for a 41-year-old setup man.
*Barring another shoe drop, Lastings Milledge now becomes the everyday RF. I see Milledge as about even with Nady at present, but obviously this leaves the Mets with less depth and no chance (or risk) of dealing Milledge for a stud pitcher.
*Perez isn’t a terrible gamble, since he’s a still-young (24) lefty with a great arm, but he’s obviously hopelessly lost at this point (Peterson presumably won’t promise to fix him in 10 minutes) – 121 BB and 36 HR in 179 IP in 2005-06. I can’t imagine that he’ll pitch any important innings in the majors the next three months.
UPDATES:
*Mad Dog says the Mets might send Perez back to the Padres (who dealt him in the Giles deal) as part of a deal for Scott Linebrink. That, I would like.
*If we don’t get Linebrink, it’s time to get more innings now for Heath Bell and Henry Owens and see what they can do. Ditto Maine and Pelfrey.
*Looks like no help on the way for the rotation.

In-Season Salary Cap

Dan Lewis has some interesting thoughts on market efficiencies and deadline deals for free agents-to-be. I don’t have time to digest this, but a thought on a related matter.
With hue and cry from some quarters over the Abreu deal, I can suggest that – if you think it’s bad for the game for teams like the Yankees to be able to add a star player in season by bulking up payroll without parting for much talent – a debatable proposition – there is a relatively simple solution: an in-season salary cap. As with any cap, there would be some complex rules to make the thing work. But the general design would not involve the same set of skewed incentives provided by year-round caps; you could simply rule that a team needs to set its payroll (both current-season payroll and future committed payroll) by Opening Day, and can’t add more than a limited amount to the payroll (except, perhaps, extensions for guys already on the roster) during the season.

The Abreu Heist

A few very quick thoughts on the Yankees getting Bobby Abreu and Steamboat Cory Lidle for some prospects:
*Man, the Phillies should get a big tax deduction for this donation. Except, of course, that the Yankees are the least needy cause on earth.
*Abreu may be the best mid-season Yankees pickup since Johnny Mize, and at least since David Justice and David Cone. We’re talking a Hall of Fame quality player who’s 32 years old. Yes, his power and batting average have been off the past year or so, but he’s still an on-base machine and a dangerous hitter. The Yankees may be best suited leading him off, except that Damon is comfortable in that role.
*So Abreu doesn’t love the limelight. Neither did Gehrig or DiMaggio; plenty of guys with quiet personalities have thrived in the Bronx. And so he doesn’t like running into walls; big deal, neither does Sheffield. When you have a hitter like Aaron Rowand, you can live with losing him for two weeks because he ran into a fence making a game-saving catch. A guy with Abreu’s kind of bat, you want in the lineup.
*So Abreu makes a load of money. If he plays at his present pace, he’s not really that overpaid; if he plays like he did in 2004, he’s absolutely a $14-15 million player.
*From the Mets’ perspective, the deal is frustrating in one sense: you hate to see them miss a chance when a great player is on the market for peanuts, though even with a big payroll they don’t have the Yankees’ bottomless resources (nobody does) and they don’t need corner outfield help as badly as the Yanks. But it’s also good news; besides Miguel Cabrera, Abreu was the best player on any of the Mets’ four division rivals, and his departure ends the Philllies’ time as a contender.

The King Is Dead

The last stage of every pennant race is Miracle Time: the point at which a replay of 1995 or 1978 or 1964 or 1951 is still possible, but all other avenues to toppling the leader are closed. Entering this weekend, it was still Miracle Time for the perennially defending NL East champs in Atlanta – but the red-hot Braves needed to sweep the staggering Mets at Turner Field to keep that possibility alive. Instead, the Mets turned the tables and did the sweeping (as my son has pointed out, this means the Mets have now swept a series from each of their division rivals this season, which has to be an unusual accomplishment). Now, with the Braves having been swept and the Phillies having given away their best player and one of their few semi-reputable starters, we can finally say definitively: it’s over. The division belongs to the Mets. The Braves will, for the first time since entering the division, finish a season in October out of first place.

Going Down, Down, Down, Down Part III

Part III of my look at young or still-establishing-themselves players whose stock has fallen dramatically in 2006 and/or 2005 – the AL West.
Mariners
Jeremy Reed: The guy who inspired this list, a very high-average hitter in the minors for the White Sox who hit .397 in a 58 at bat cup of coffee in 2004, Reed struggled in 2005 (.254) and has struggled even worse this season (.217) after returning early from a wrist injury.
Rangers
Robinson Tejeda: 85.2 IP, 72 K, 67 hits at age 23 in 2005 – Tejeda has always been wild, but he showed promise last year. This season has been a bath of cold water, a 9.78 ERA in 5 starts, and 42 baserunners in 19.1 IP.
Kameron Loe: 3.42 ERA at age 23 in 2005 now looks like a fluke.
Laynce Nix: The 25-year-old outfielder had holes in his game in 2003 and 2004; the past two years, it’s been all holes, as he’s surfaced just for a 3-for-32 slump this season.
Angels
Jeff Mathis: Never a top prospect, opportunity knocked this season when Ben Molina’s departure left the Angels without a regular catcher, but the 23-year-old Mathis wasn’t home. He went 4-for-37 in April and has batted just twice since, while Mike Napoli has seized the catching job. He’s at best now on a train for Backup Catcherville.
Dallas McPherson: McPherson’s a classic guy whose star has dimmed due to injuries; he’s continued to flash decent power when healthy long enough to get into a groove, but he missed April in the minors and has missed July with back spasms, and you can’t establish yourself that way.
Casey Kotchman: With Darin Erstad breaking down and offense in short supply in Anaheim, the 23-year-old Kotchman’s time to shine was now. But he batted .162 in April and .091 in May before the Angels had to DL him with mononucleosis.
A’s
Rich Harden: No questions remain about the 24-year-old Oakland ace’s performance, but the questions about his durability only mount a he’s thrown just 163 innings in 2005 and 2006 combined.
Dan Johnson: Despite a bad late-season slump that marred a fine rookie campaign, the 26-year-old Johnson entered the season with a hammerlock on the A’s first base job but potentially a narrow window of opportunity ahead of super-prospect Daric Barton. The good news, for Johnson: Barton has struggled badly at AAA Sacramento, raising questions about his own prospect status, and the A’s had the patience to sit out a terrible early-season slump (Johnson batted .196 with with 2 HR and 8 RBI as the everyday 1B in April and May) to be rewarded with a hot June in which he batted .321/.543/.406. But Johnson tumbled back into a slump in early July and the A’s finally sent him down, indicating that Billy Beane’s faith in him may be waning.
Joe Blanton: Blanton’s another cold-hot-cold story – he won over some early skeptics in 2005 by raising his K rates as he came down the stretch to a 3.53 ERA in 201.1 innings last year, but regressed and struggled with his command in April and May, and has yet to post an ERA below 4.00 in any month. Blanton projects as a fourth starter now.
Bobby Crosby: An assortment of nagging injuries in 2005 and 2006 and a .231/.343/.298 line this season have taken much of the bloom off the 26-year-old Crosby. I still expect good seasons from him, but a long and smoothly successful career seems much less likely than it did a year or two ago.
Mark Ellis: Ellis looked to have hit his stride with the bat last year with a .314 average to go with a great glove after missing all of 2004. At 29, Ellis could have been entering a nice couple of year run, but his .220/.328/.286 line this season means he’ll be fighting for jobs again in the near future.
Keith Ginter: Having lost out to Ellis, Ginter – who came to Oakland at age 29 in 2005 with a career .257/.448/.344 line – batted .161 part-time last season and has spent most of 2005 and 2006 at Sacramento, despite a major league contract. His .278/.431/.361 line at AAA this season is solid but not enough to attract the suitors he needs to bring him back to the majors.
UPDATE: Of course, this is probably where I disclose that my AL list here includes three members of my 2006 rotisserie team – Dan Johnson, Brian Anderson, and Josh Towers – five if you count the reserve draft (Willie Harris and Kyle Lohse).

Going Down, Down, Down, Down Part II

Part II of my look at young or still-establishing-themselves players whose stock has fallen dramatically in 2006 and/or 2005 – the AL Central.
White Sox
Brian Anderson: A well-thought of prospect, Anderson batted .161 in April, .167 in May and .196 in June, all but frittering away an everyday job he was given every opportunity to keep. He’s batted .308 and slugged .462 in July (though with a weak, if much-improved, .315 OBP), so Anderson’s case isn’t hopeless; as likely as not he’ll be playing regularly into October.
Tigers
Omar Infante: Infante’s only 24 and was the Tigers’ everyday 2B in 2004 & 2005 until Placido Polanco arrived. After batting .264 and slugging .449 in 2004, Infante slumped to .222 last year, and while his batting average has recovered to .263 this year, his power hasn’t and neither had his playing time.
Indians
Jason Michaels: A lifetime .291/.442/.380 hitter entering 2006, Michaels had to be salivating at the chance to finally prove himself as a regular at age 30. But his .270/.397/.331 line won’t give him much job security.
Jhonny Peralta: At age 23 in 2005, Peralta made the sudden step up – as guys that age sometimes do – from non-hitter to “young Nomar”-type slugger. His regression to a .258/.397/.330 line this season has to lower expectations for the future, and the signs are that his glove work hasn’t been quite as stellar either.
Fernando Cabrera: The one-time future Indians closer was passed over for that title in favor of Fausto Carmona when Bob Wickman left town, and for good reason, with a 5.65 ERA inflated by 22 walks and 6 dingers in 36.2 IP. Cabrera’s 42 Ks mark him as a guy who still has potential, but not for today.
Cliff Lee: Lee’s failures haven’t been as dramatic, but there was talk before the season that the 27-year-old lefty was ready to jump to the elite level of starters; a 4.78 ERA says otherwise.
Twins
Kyle Lohse: His long descent from adequacy ended with a 7.12 ERA and a pink slip from the starting rotation. Lohse will be lucky to have a roster spot in 2007.
Scott Baker: Baker got the nod over Francisco Liriano as the fifth starter in spring training, a decision that now seems very long ago. Baker looked like a quality pitcher in 2005 (3.35 ERA in 9 starts) and April (3.47 in 4 starts – a total K/BB ratio of 48-18 in that stretch) but has been pounded unmercifully since, allowing 58 hits and 12 homers in 37 innings. Unlike some of the others on this list, Baker is probably just taking needed lumps as a learning experience, and should have more chances.
Jesse Crain: 15-5 with a 2.53 ERA as a setup man in 2004-05, the 24-year-old Crain has struggled this year (4.31 ERA). Probably in the same boat as Baker: he’s suffering but isn’t losing out on opportunities that he’ll never have again.
Royals
Zack Grienke: You know this story.
Denny Bautista: Major velocity, but like more Royals than we have time to discuss here, no sign of pitching talent shows up in his box scores, as Bautista has started just 7 times with a 5.66 ERA, no wins, and a 22-17 K/BB ratio. (See also: Jeremy Affeldt, Mike Wood)
Andrew Sisco: Perhaps the brightest spot in the 2005 KC wipeout was Sisco, a 6-10 southpaw Rule V pick with blazing heat; 76 K and just 6 HR in 75.1 relief innings gave visions of a future rotation star. But Sisco’s control problems (28 walks in 40.1 IP) have sent him back to “project” land this season (7.14 ERA).

SI Bleg

Apparently I’m mentioned in Sports Illustrated, which is very exciting news, but no longer being a subscriber I don’t have the issue and have yet to be able to view the article online (here) and the newsstands I checked this morning didn’t carry SI. Could someone with access to the online article email me the text? Thanks.
UPDATE: Got it. Cool. Welcome, SI readers! If you want to sample the posts mentioned in the article, the “Least Favorite Mets” list is here and here, and the series on the 2006 Tigers and the great pitching teams is here, here and here. There’s a lot besides baseball here, but if you dislike my politics (or politics in general), you can always just bookmark the baseball-only category.

Proportionality

To my mind, the fact that Hezbollah has bought some folks’ allegiance in southern Lebanon with bread and circuses just means that Israel is right to treat that whole sector of Lebanon as a hostile nation. That doesn’t mean that the Israelis would be justified in targeting civilians, if they chose to do so in imitation of their enemies. But the moral calculus of dealing with civilian casualties does, it seems to me, depend at least partly on whether you see your armed forces as warring with a hostile people as opposed to a hostile non-state actor that has attached itself parasitically to an innocent populace of a peaceable state.
Of course, it bears reminding again that all of our legal and moral rules about war need re-examining in light of the rise of enemies who deliberately structure their operations around the moral and legal limitations we place on our use of force.

Mr. al-Maliki Goes To Washington

So, let me get this straight: The Democrats can condone the things that elected officials who are also barking moonbats – like Maxine Waters and Pete Stark – tell their far-out constituencies. They can swallow their pride and live with Bob Casey saying he’s pro-life – supposedly an “out of the mainstream” position – to get elected in Pennsylvania. But they can’t understand the things al-Maliki has to say and do to get elected in Iraq?
Let’s make this real simple. The US is never going to get anywhere asking friendly Arab and/or Muslim governments to side with Israel. It is more than enough for them to decline to aid Israel’s enemies, and deny them safe haven within their borders. If every state in the region did that, as Iraq does, Israel’s problems would be few and limited.
Oops, I’ve made the mistake again of treating the Democrats as if they were serious about foreign policy again. They’re actually just trying to triangulate a way to be anti-Iraqi (and thus placate the left-wing anti-war anti-Israel base) while at the same time appearing pro-Israel (to mollify the Jewish liberals who remain faithful Democratic donors and voters in the face of mounting evidence of who Israel’s real friends in Washington are). As usual, the raw calculation at work is obvious.

Going Down, Down, Down, Down Part I

Baseball is an unforgiving game: the flip side of a crop of young players on the rise is that somebody has to be on the way down. And it’s not always just old guys. Let’s take a look at players who are young or still establishing themselves whose stock has tumbled dramatically in 2006 and/or 2005, starting with the AL East:
Yankees
Andy Phillips and Bubba Crosby: Crosby was never really a guy with a bright future, but in both cases the simultaneous injuries to Sheffield and Matsui provided the best opportunities these two guys were ever going to see. Crosby has played poorly and sporadically, underlining the fact that he’ll never be more than a 5th outfielder. Phillips, who is 29, is about out of chances to be a regular, having batted .237/.411/.269 this season in over 200 at bats.
Shawn Chacon and Aaron Small: Two more guys who people like me never thought much of, but a lot of folks expected that their remarkable stretch runs in 2005 would translate into full-season rotation gigs as reliable starters. Didn’t happen. Chacon’s 6.67 ERA and Small’s 8.46 prove that midnight came once again for Cinderella.
Red Sox
Willie Harris: Two years ago, Harris was a 26-year-old first-time everyday player, shutting between second base and center field with a .343 OBP and good speed. Shunted to the bench in 2005 by the arrival of Tadahito Iguchi, Harris had chances to impress this year if Coco Crisp or Mark Loretta was injured or faltered. Loretta hasn’t let go of the 2B job, but Crisp got hurt, and Harris has batted .156 in just 45 at bats.
Coco Crisp: Like Carlos Beltran in 2005, Crisp’s off year may just be a combination of nagging injuries and high expectations; his future isn’t as grim as others on this list. But bigger things than .266 with 4 HR were expected from Crisp coming to Fenway at age 26 after two years of steady progress.
Blue Jays
Josh Towers: 13-12 with a 3.71 ERA in his first 200 IP season last year, Towers seemed to be establishing himself as a rotation mainstay in Toronto, albeit as a third or fourth starter. Instead, his 9.11 ERA has has led to one too many calls to the fire department. Towers’ future is in serious jeopardy.
Jason Frasor: A 3.25 ERA, down almost a run from his rookie year, and good peripheral numbers marked Frasor in 2005 as a quality steup man for BJ Ryan. His K rate is still good, but a 5.18 ERA and a rise in BB and HR rates has moved Frasor down the depth chart. He’s not a bad bet to rebound, though.
Russ Adams: A regular SS at 24 last year, Adams didn’t embarrass himself with the bat, and could have expected plenty of time to establish himself. Instead, John Gibbons’ shuffling of the lineup – and its success with other hitters – has limited Adams to 199 at bats as he has hit just .226/.337/.280 on a team that’s batting .294/.488/.361.
Jason Phillips: Phillips cooled drastically after a hot start as the Dodgers’ #1 catcher in 2005, and ended up in the minors this year, only resurfacing this week with the Jays. Now battling to re-establish himself as a backup catcher.
Orioles
Bruce Chen: The talented Mr. Chen threw nearly 200 innings for Baltimore last season, 50 more than he’d ever managed in one uniform in one year, going 13-10 with a 3.83 ERA. But his home run rate grew alarming as the season went on, while his K/BB rate drifted. This year has been a train wreck, with 22 homers in 71.2 innings leading to a 7.03 ERA, an 0-6 record, a loss of his rotation slot and perhaps the last chance for Chen to find stability in the majors. Who will now look at a guy who couldn’t hack it under Leo Mazzone in two different cities and think they can straighten him out?
David Newhan: .311/.453/.361 in 373 at bats marked Newhan as a possible late-bloomer rookie in 2004 (he was 30), but Newhan batted .202 last year and broke his leg in April, an injury he hasn’t returned from.
John Parrish: Promising young pitcher who has missed most of 2005 and all of 2006 with arm surgery.
Devil Rays
Jae Seo: OK, I was as big a Seo enthusiast as anyone after he rang up a 2.59 ERA in 90.1 innings last year, walking just 16, and I was horrified when he was dealt for a setup man. But Seo has bombed in a big way in LA and now Tampa, a combined 2-9 with a 5.78 ERA, 19 HR and 39 BB in 97.2 IP.
Sean Burroughs: Having at last worn out his welcome in San Diego, Burroughs at least brought a career .340 OBP in more than 1500 plate appearances to Tampa, and he’s just 25. Instead, he lost his job in spring training and has batted .190 in just 21 at bats. A return to a regular job seems unlikely.
Seth McClung: Granted, McClung’s never been any good, but he throws hard and struck out 92 batters in 109.1 IP in 2005; from that you can make something. Except that this year, even the whiffs have deserted him: 38 (to 47 walks) in 80.2 IP on his way to a 6.81 ERA.
Edwin Jackson: Once a hot Dodger pitching prospect and still just 22, Jackson has struggled at all levels for the third year in a row, with a 7.17 ERA in a brief major league trial. Think “Ed Yarnall.”

Quick Links 7/25/06

*Justice Stevens’ opinion in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld took Senators John Kyl and Lindsay Graham to task for inserting a colloquy in the Congressional Record that didn’t actually take place on the Senate floor, instead relying on statements by Harry Reid and Carl Levin; lots of bad press followed, and left-wing blogs tore into Kyl and Graham (see here and here for examples). Well, well, well, Ramesh Ponnuru points out that Levin’s and Reid’s statements were also inserted into the record and didn’t take place on the floor. Which supports both the view that the Republican Senators did nothing unusual and – as Ponnuru notes – the common-sense position of Justice Scalia that legislative history can’t be trusted. Kyl and Graham are owed an apology, big-time.
*Catallarchy uses a useful analogy to demonstrate how badly rate-regulated monopoly energy companies handle demand for their product.
*Megan McArdle meets the moonbat sense of humor.
*The picture on the second page of this article suggests a distracted photographer.
*NY GOP Senate candidate John Spencer’s campaign blog rounds up some of the evidence against Hillary Clinton’s national security credentials.
*IMAO T-Shirt Bride Sarah K. reads the tea leaves from the casting of the fifth Harry Potter film to guess at what storylines will and won’t be pursued (with an 850+ page book to trim into a 2-3 hour movie, a lot will undoubtedly be left behind).
*Tom Maguire notes Duke Law Professor Edwin Chemerinsky’s unfamiliarity with the basic facts of the Wilson/Plame civil suit despite having put his name behind their complaint.
*I’m not sure what’s more characteristically French – that they instituted paid vacations by force of law, or that the Vichy government sent the architect of that law to Buchenwald.
*Allahpundit on Jake Tapper’s interview with Kos: “It’s like the chickenhawk Creation Myth.”
*They found 50? The good news is, apparently our Majority Leader is prettier than theirs.
*Yummy. You just don’t see enough sun dials at baseball stadiums these days. Then there’s the Bleacher Bar.

Getting Back on Track

Sorry for the outage in the site last night (my hosting company was sending bills to an old address and an expired credit card number), and for the general lack of baseball content of late. Should be back to normal here by tomorrow.
Two quick thoughts from last night –
1. Greg Maddux is just done. I had thought before this season that he might be a good mid-season pickup who can dependably take the ball for 6-7 innings every fifth day, throw strikes and let the defense work, but Maddux just looks finished. I assume he’ll keep showing up to cash his paychecks and eat up innings (from the injury-plagued Cubs’ perspective, the innings alone still make him worth the money), but I have to believe that 2006 will be the end.
2. One of the standard arguments of stat-head types vs. old-fogey sportswriters is that blowouts, rather than close games, are the test of a quality team: good teams beat people up and rarely get blown out, while most teams will play much closer to .500 in close games. Last night was a perfect example of why this is true. If the Cubs were a good team, they would have been more likely to bury the Mets once they had them down 3-0 or 8-4. If the Mets were not a good team, they would have been more likely to stay down. Instead, they mounted rallies to tie the game 3-3 and to draw within one, 8-7 (the latter including a fine effort by Bell, Bradford and Sanchez in relief), to give the top of their lineup a chance to win it in the bottom of the ninth.
They didn’t win it, of course, so this one goes down as a failure in a 1-run game. But that obscures their success in making it into a 1-run game in the first place.

Anonymous Lawyer

I’m late to the party here, but I do try to make it a practice to actually read books that are sent to me before reviewing them, and this one actually only hits stores today. So let’s talk about Jeremy Blachman’s new novel Anonymous Lawyer, based on the (fiction) blog of the same name.
The premise is a look at the life (mostly the work life, as that’s all there is) of a lawyer who is the hiring partner at a big LA firm but aches to be Chairman of the firm. The structure of the book is blog form – Anonymous Lawyer posts about his work on his blog, while exchanging emails with his readers and his niece, a Yale Law student. Eventually, as you would expect, the grim picture of his firm that emerges from his writing makes his blog a problem despite its putative anonymity. Consistent with some of the reactions Blachman (then a Harvard Law student who had only summered at a big firm) got, but undoubtedly exaggerated for dramatic effect, Anonymous Lawyer also receives a stream of emails from people at other firms who think he works there.
Now, I should preface my remarks on the “realism” of this book by saying that I probably know as little as it is possible to know about big-firm life after working for a (now very) big firm for ten years; I’m generally the kind of person who is the last to know everything at my firm, being engrossed in my cases, my efforts to stay ahead of the latest developments in the law, and my life outside the job (blog included). And of course, not all firms are alike, notwithstanding the general tendency of large for-profit organizations to have certain basic similarities, about which you need to keep a sense of humor. Still, you don’t have to know that much about the big firms to recognize that, while Blachman has some of the mechanics of law firm life down, several of the incidents in the book have a “all the worst things at all the worst firms in one place at one time” feel to them, and the rest are just pure fantasy, and one filtered through the lens of someone who has never actually worked at a firm except as a summer associate.
On the other hand, one thing Blachman has caught on to, from his law school experience, is the same central insight that made Scott Turow’s One-L work: that many of the pressures faced by big-firm lawyers, just as with law students, come from the internal, self-imposed desire to keep measuring yourself against other people, to the detriment of having perspective about your life and career. The people who are most miserable in law school and in the practice of law are often those who fall into this trap. The best advice you can give law students and lawyers alike is to make sure to have contact with people outside the law, and interests outside the law, to maintain that perspective. Of course, the characters in Blachman’s novel who lack this perspective invariably face crises arising from that flaw.
As long as you’re OK with the fact that the book is more of a broad farce than a deft satire, the first half of the book (which I suspect is truer to Blachman’s blog) is very funny indeed, as Anonymous Lawyer’s gleefully over-the-top misanthropy provides a steady stream of dark humor (such as when he decides to send a summer associate to Belize for no purpose, then calls and tells him that the – nonexistent – case he sent him there for settled). At the halfway point, however, one of the lawyers in the book has a sudden health crisis (I won’t give away more), and the book turns away from the episodic humor and focuses on a more conventional effort at a plot, which unfortunately has a surplus of predictable plot twists as well as incidents that push the reader’s suspension of disbelief beyond the breaking point. The second half of the book took me a lot longer to read, and while there were still a few grim amusements, it wasn’t that much fun.
Anyway, I wish Blachman luck; he’s obviously got a way with words and a dark sense of humor, and depending on your taste for that kind of humor, you may well enjoy “Anonymous Lawyer.” For more, you can visit Blachman’s parody site, “Anonymous Law Firm” here (some parts are actually closer to a dead-on parody of law firm websites than the book is). It’s also complete with a bar exam card/taunt feature.
WARNING: Spoilers may follow in the comment section.

Strong Words

They are only words, and one can argue that the President shouldn’t offer anything but words at this point anyway. But it is a fine day when President Bush can step out a bit from behind the usual conventions of (1) diplomatic doublespeak and (2) non-specific condemnations of “terrorists,” and speak truths that talk directly to who the problem is, and why:

The recent crisis in the region was triggered by the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers by the terrorist group Hezbollah and the launch of rockets against Israeli cities. I believe sovereign nations have the right to defend their people from terrorist attack, and to take the necessary action to prevent those attacks.

+++

In 2004, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1559, which recognizes the sovereignty of Lebanon, calls for all foreign forces to withdraw from Lebanon, and calls for the disbanding and disarmament of all militias. Hezbollah defied the world’s just demands by maintaining armed units in the southern region of Lebanon and attacking Israel in defiance of the democratically elected Lebanese government.

+++

For many years, Syria has been a primary sponsor of Hezbollah and it has helped provide Hezbollah with shipments of Iranian made weapons. Iran’s regime has also repeatedly defied the international community with its ambition for nuclear weapons and aid to terrorist groups. Their actions threaten the entire Middle East and stand in the way of resolving the current crisis and bringing lasting peace to this troubled region.
We’re also concerned about the impact the current conflict is having on Lebanon’s young democracy. This is a difficult and trying time for the people of Lebanon. Hezbollah’s practice of hiding rockets in civilian neighborhoods, and its efforts to undermine the democratically elected government have shown it to be no friend of Lebanon.

I would have liked a little more connection drawn directly between Iran and Hezbollah, but otherwise President Bush left little doubt whose side we are on here, and why, and why even if Syria and Iran stay on the sidelines of the current crisis, they will have to be dealt with sooner or later.

Mumbai Conspirators Caught

India has caught four suspects in the July 11 Mumbai (Bombay) train bombings, tracking them as far as Kenya. Shockingly, the suspects – Abdul Karim Tunda, “one of India’s most wanted men,” Khaleel Aziz Sheikh, Kamal Ahmed Ansari and Mumtaz Ahmed Chowdhury – are believed to be affiliated with an Islamic jihadist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba. Tension with the Pakistanis runs high, as Pakistan apparently harbors the group, while General Pervez Musharraf denies – well, pretty much everything.

Bad PR

This post by John Scalzi vivisecting a marketing email sent on behalf of Napster is side-splittingly hilarious. (H/t Instapundit) I actually got the same email – verbatim, of course, though my blog and readership are rather different – and just stuck it aside to review later because I couldn’t immediately make sense of what it meant and it left me with a vaguely bad feeling that this was spam or a trick of some sort. Good marketing never makes you think it sounds like a 411 scam.
The postscript: if you believe a comment left on Scalzi’s thread, apparently by the CEO of the marketing firm, Scalzi’s post got the author of the email fired. The comment, by the way, claimed that the email was “specifically developed for outreach to a database of comedic fansites,” which doesn’t explain why it went to Scalzi (a novelist who writes sci-fi) or to me.

Iraqis Taking The Fight To The Enemy

CENTCOM reports on two recent operations:

Iraqi security forces conducted two separate operations in Baghdad on July 20, capturing four insurgents who may be involved in “extra judicial killing,” or EJK cells.
The first operation by Iraqi security forces, a raid on back-to-back objectives in southwest Baghdad, netted three primary targets. The first individual was a key insurgent leader believed to plan and coordinate insurgent operations in Baghdad. The second is allegedly involved in financing operations and supplying weapons to insurgents. And the third is believed to be involved in kidnapping Iraqi citizens, Iraqi police and Iraqi soldiers for ransom to finance insurgent activities. He is also allegedly involved in murdering kidnapping victims and participating in attacks against coalition forces.
Iraqi forces also seized three AK-47 assault rifles and three nine millimeter pistols.
During a second raid in southern Baghdad, Iraqi Army forces captured an individual known to deal improvised explosive devices, or IEDs and small arms to insurgent groups. Coalition force advisers were on hand during both operations, and both occurred without incident.

Time is on our side. Yes it is.

Defeat In Detail

It is well-known that Hezbollah receives major financial support, equipment, and to some extent direction from Iran (in addition to material support and safe harbor from Syria). Bill Kristol makes the case that, this being so, the United States should use the current war between Israel and Hezbollah, triggered by Hezbollah’s rocket attacks on Israel, as casus belli for a U.S. preemptive military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Kristol is right, of course, about the Iranian roots of the Hezbollah problem, he’s right that Israel’s war with Hezbollah is our war too, and he’s most likely right about the Iranian nuclear threat and what we have to contemplate doing about it. But he’s missing a crucial point about military strategy and tactics.

Continue reading Defeat In Detail

Patterico Feeds The Trolls

I would advise Glenn Greenwald not to tangle with Patterico. (More here). The last guy who did that ended up losing his job.
UPDATE: I might have advised Greenwald to not repeat the exact same mistake Hiltzik made. I’d predict that Greenwald would lose his job and end up fleeing the country, but as he apparently has no job and left America for Brazil a couple of years ago, I guess the worst that can happen is to lose still more credibility on the internet . . .
SECOND UPDATE: Greenwald claims that the “sock puppets” must be someone else who lives with him. Also, he notes that he only lives in Brazil half the time. Though he remains, if you’ve read any sampling of his blog posts, remarkably cavalier about American national security. Anyway, the main problem with Greenwald is his persistent hysteria about the Bush Administration and the ways in which that leads him to extremely attenuated factual and legal conclusions and bad policy arguments. But it’s amusing, after his bitter attacks on other bloggers, to see him get called on this.

Just Say No To “Peacekeepers”

There is talk, once again, of using international “peacekeeping” forces (including Americans, but restricted by the need to play by “international” rules of engagement) to enter southern Lebanon and get between the Israelis and Hezbollah. This is a terrible idea, for the reasons I have explained before at length here and herewe should not deploy troops without identifying an enemy and taking sides against that enemy.
Remember the golden rule: the function and animating purpose of the military is to defeat the enemy. That is not to say that soldiers are not capable of doing anything but fighting; certainly the U.S. military has proven adept, in Iraq and elsewhere, at the many peaceable tasks that go into nation-building. But in Iraq and Afghanistan, as tough as the job sometimes is, we know whose side we are on, which among other things enables us to go on the offensive (miliarily and otherwise) and not be bound to a purely reactive sitting-ducks stance. No identified enemy, no sides taken, no soldiers. Period.
If the international community wants to fix the problem – i.e., the inability of Lebanon’s democratic government to stop Hezbollah from making war from its territory – by asking in an international force to assist the Lebanese in liquidating Hezbollah, I’m all for that. It needs to be done, by someone, and it is better done under the cover of the blue helmet and with some sharing of the burden besides just Israel or the United States. But inserting U.S. troops into Lebanon without a mandate to take the battle to the enemy was Ronald Reagan’s worst mistake as president, and cost us 241 Marines, for whose lives Hezbollah has never adequately paid. Let us not repeat that tragic error.
Thankfully, our president seems to understand this.
UPDATE: Ed Morrissey has a similar reaction.
SECOND UPDATE: Of course, there are already UN “peacekeepers” in Southern Lebanon, and have been since 1978. You can tell they are there because of all that peace they’ve been keeping.

Cry Havoc

No time to give my full thoughts this morning on the accelerating war between Israel and Hezbollah, which controls southern Lebanon. It appears that the Israelis are mobilizing for a full-scale war, calling up the reserves. Most likely, this will mean war between Israel, on one hand, and Hezbollah, Syria, and Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon, on the other. (It may be disastrous for Assad to join in this conflict, but he may feel compelled, or Israel may attack him preemptively). If that’s as far as it goes, the war will be bloody and ugly but could advance the long-term peace of the region by removing Hezboollah from its power base, permitting the full integration of Lebanon into a freestanding democracy, and potentially toppling the brutal and troublesome Assad regime.
Where things get really dicey for the rest of us, however, is what the Iranians do in response – they can’t well take the loss of Hezbollah, a crucial terrorist proxy, sitting down, but as a matter of simple geography anything beyond very low profile support would involve violating the territory and/or airspace of Turkey (a NATO member) and/or Iraq (which, obviously, is the site of some 130,000 U.S. troops, including a number of the world’s best combat units), as well as possibly Jordan and/or Saudi Arabia. Any of these steps would push Iran, ultimately, into war with the U.S., and possibly force the hand of some of our allies who would normally sit on their hands even if Israel was on the brink of extermination. My guess is that the Iranians have to back down and let Olmert clean out their allies in that neighborhood, but smaller things have started bigger wars.

The Plame Complaint

So, Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame have filed suit against Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and Scooter Libby, among others, over Bob Novak’s disclosure that Plame worked for the CIA. I’ve read the complaint, which is posted over at NRO; it alleges various theories of denial of civil rights, essentially on a theory of retaliation against Plame, as a government employee, for Wilson’s exercise of his free speech rights. Thoughts:

1. There’s a good deal of predictable partisan posturing here, and big chunks copied from the Libby indictment and press accounts, but Plame and Wilson cagily allege as few additional facts as they can. Basically, a blogger who had never spoken to Plame or Wilson could have written most of this. In particular, there’s no detail on Plame’s career at the CIA other than that she was “an operations officer in the Directorate of Operations” and “her employment status was classified,” neither of which necessarily implies any covert activities.

2. Fitzgerald’s press conference is quoted as providing a basis for a civil lawsuit against people who were not even indicted, giving a good example of why prosecutors should not give press conferences about topics outside the four corners of their charges.

3. There’s a cause of action for violation of a “Fifth Amendment right to privacy,” and while I’m not familiar with the caselaw on constitutional torts, that sounds like a stretch. The complaint does not reference the Vanity Fair photo shoot or what happened to the profits from the book deal Joe Wilson got out of all this.

4. The complaint provides nothing to connect Cheney or Libby to the actual press disclosure of Plame’s identity.

5. It appears from the “JDB” docket number on the NRO version of the Plame complaint that the case was initially assigned to Judge John D. Bates, a George W. Bush appointee. However, it may be that Judge Bates would recuse himself from a lawsuit naming Cheney and Rove in their personal capacities, and it is possible that the case could be sent to Judge Walton, who is handling the Libby trial.
6. The initial issue in the case, before the legal sufficiency of the allegations and before any discovery is taken, is whether some or all defendants (or other interested parties) will ask for a stay or dismissal of the litigation. There are three bases for doing so. One, the liberal quotation from the indictment underscores the fact that this suit overlaps substantially with the subject of a pending criminal trial. Fitzgerald may well intervene to ask for a stay of all proceedings – he won’t want his trial witnesses deposed in a civil suit. Second, Dick Cheney in particular has duties as the Vice President, including dealing with an unstable and dangerous world potentially lurching into another war on top of the two-front war we’re already fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Under Clinton v Jones, there’s no absolute bar to such a suit but the district court can balance the intrusion of the litigation, among other factors – here, with the case focusing on Administration foreign policy, the level of intrusion could be significant. And third, there’s the state secrets privilege, described extensively in this opinion (later upheld by the DC Circuit) dismissing claims by Sibel Edmonds, who charged retaliation by the FBI relating to her work as a translator of national security documents. Basically, if a civil suit would involve discovery of national security information (such as, for example, details of any covert activities by Plame, to say nothing of discovery directed at Cheney), the court can dismiss it in the greater national interest. The Bush Administration has been loath to press the envelope on the kinds of legal privileges asserted by the Clintons to deflect personal scandals (as opposed to expanding the rights of the Executive Branch more broadly) but the desire to get this lawsuit out of the way may compel them to seek a stay or dismissal on this basis.

Progress in Muthanna

Press release I just received via email from CENTCOM:

Iraq witnessed a historic event today with the transfer of security responsibility in Muthanna Province from the Multi-National Force – Iraq (MNF-I) to the Provincial Governor and civilian-controlled Iraqi Security Forces. The handover represents a milestone in the successful development of Iraq’s capability to govern and protect itself as a sovereign and democratic nation. Muthanna is the first of Iraq’s 18 provinces to be designated for such a transition.
As Prime Minister Maliki announced on June 19, 2006, the joint decision between the Iraqi government and MNF-I to hand over security responsibility is the result of Muthanna’s demonstrated abilities to take the lead in managing its own security and governance duties at the provincial level.

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Australian, Japanese, and the United Kingdom forces have assisted Muthanna authorities as models of international cooperation, providing economic and humanitarian assistance as well as security and stability.

All to the good. More remains to be done, of course, but progress continues to move in our direction and against the enemy.

Quiz Me!

Take this quiz, via John Salmon. I got 49 out of 50, missing only #44; none of the ESPN analysts broke 45 (Rob Neyer got 43). (Kevin Mench got 40, topping the ballplayers who took the quiz, which proves that Mench knows baseball history better than he knows his own feet). Many of these are easy if you know basic history, but a few are quite tough. I got a couple by educated guesses (I would probably have scored around 38-40 if this wasn’t multiple choice), and got #4 & 43 right through more random guesses. I’ll have to try this one out on my son.

Youth Will Be Served

There are few bigger stories this season than the massive youth movement sweeping baseball. I leave it to the reader to judge whether the ability of young players to supplant the older generation has been accelerated by the (presumed) reduction in steroid use resulting from the institution of drug testing. Either way, the youngsters are dominating the game as they haven’t in some time. Look at the under-24 age groups:
20-Year-Olds
Felix Hernandez is the only one in this age group, and he’s taken his lumps to the tune of a 4.95 ERA. But Hernandez is 4-2 with a 3.70 ERA since June 1, and his 98/31 K/BB ratio suggests future growth.
21-Year-Olds
*Ryan Zimmerman, the Nationals’ 3B, is batting .287/.478/.349 with 59 RBI. [Note: I added Zimmerman as an update – I unaccountably forgot him despite having added him to one of my rotisserie teams over the weekend]
*Flamethrower Jole Zumaya has a 2.08 ERA and 54 K in 43.1 IP and has been a key contributor to the Tigers’ hot first half.
*Mariners SS Yuniesky Betancourt is playing everyday and batting .288.
*Matt Kemp is batting .281 and slugging .504 for the Dodgers.
*Melky Cabrera has a .358 OBP in 200 at bats for the Yankees.
*Others are still learning, like Matt Cain (80 K in 91.1 IP but a 5.12 ERA), or haven’t had a complete shot yet, like Lastings Milledge, Fabio Castro, and Yusmeiro Petit.
22-Year-Olds
*Francisco Liriano is 10-1 with a 1.83 ERA and 102 K in 88.1 IP.
*Brian McCann is batting .343/.506/.406 and has all but established himself as the best catcher in the National League.
*Marlins starter Josh Johnson is just short of the innings for the NL ERA lead but would be out in front with a 2.21 mark and 74 K in 85.2 IP.
*Scott Kazmir is 10-6 with a 3.27 ERA and 125 K.
*Hanley Ramirez’ batting average has dropped off to .271, but he’s scored 69 runs and stolen 26 bases playing everyday as the Marlins’ SS.
*Huston Street has 19 saves and a 37-8 K/BB ratio. Street’s ERA is 1.74 since June 1.
*Jose Lopez is batting .280, slugging .454 and has 58 RBI as the Mariners’ everyday 2B.
*Prince Fielder is slugging .479 and has 16 HR and 46 RBI.
*Jeff Francouer has come down from last year’s rookie sensation, but is at least a reliable RBI man, with 17 HR and 63 RBI in the first half.
*Jeremy Hermida has been injured, but when healthy the Marlins’ OF has posted a .378 OBP.
*The Marlins’ Scott Olsen’s 4.24 ERA is 20th in the NL.
*Jon Lester is 4-0 with a 3.06 ERA and 30 K in 32.1 IP in six starts with the Red Sox.
*Matt Capps has a 3.21 ERA and a 35-5 K/BB ratio in the Pirates’ bullpen.
*Ambiorix Burgos has reclaimed the Royals’ closer job and now has 14 saves and 43 K in 40.2 IP. With a 5.98 ERA and 8 blown saves it would be hard to call Burgos a success, but he shows promise.
Other 22-year-olds with more mixed or incomplete results so far: Cole Hamels, Nick Markakis, Dioner Navarro, Brandon McCarthy, Craig Hansen, Mike Pelfrey, Kyle Davies, James Loney, Howie Kendrick, Rene Rivera, Zack Greinke.
23-Year-Olds
*Joe Mauer is a leading candidate for the AL MVP, batting .378/.535/.446 with good defense behind the plate.
*David Wright, of course, is batting .316/.575/.386, has 74 RBI, and has been arguably the best player on the best team in the National League.
*Miguel Cabrera has been even better, at least with the bat: .334/.566/.432, with 25 doubles and 51 walks.
*Jose Reyes leads the majors in runs, steals and triples and the NL in hits.
*The AL leader in runs is Grady Sizemore, .291/.516/.363, with 46 extra base hits.
*At 10-4 with a 3.01 ERA, Justin Verlander has been a crucial contributor to the Tigers’ improvement.
*So has Jeremy Bonderman, with a 3.46 ERA and 111 K and just 6 HR allowed.
*Rickie Weeks has scored 65 runs, stolen 17 bases and posted a .361 OBP (due largely to leading the majors in being hit by pitches) while playing second for the Brewers.
*Ervin Santana is 10-3 with a 3.96 ERA for the Angels.
*Jered Weaver is 6-0 in six starts, with a 1.12 ERA and a 36-7 K/BB ratio and just 23 hits allowed in 40.1 IP.
*Robinson Cano was batting .325 before he got hurt.
*Josh Barfield is batting .289 with 15 doubles and 12 steals as the Padres’ everyday 2B.
Other less successful 23-year-olds: Zach Duke, JJ Hardy, Ronny Cedeno, Yadier Molina, Chris Resop, Ricky Nolasco, Anderson Hernandez, Casey Kotchman, Andrew Sisco, Jeff Mathis, Gavin Floyd.
24-Year-Olds
*Carl Crawford is batting .319/.521/.359 with 32 steals and 55 runs scored for Tampa.
*Francisco Rodriguez has 21 saves, a 2.89 ERA and a 47-10 K/BB ratio in 37.1 IP as the Angels’ closer.
*Chris Ray has 22 saves and a 3.19 ERA as the O’s closer.
*Mike Napoli is batting .286/.579/.412 in 140 at bats as the Angels’ catcher.
*Ian Kinsler, when healthy, is batting .320/.553/.379 as the Rangers’ SS.
*Rocco Baldelli, when healthy, is batting .315/.537/.373.
*Aaron Hill is batting .297 with a .344 OBP alternating between second and short for the Blue Jays.
*Wily Mo Pena, when healthy, has batted .321/.482/.370.
*Dontrelle Willis has a 3.94 ERA but should remain one of the NL’s premier pitchers after winning 22 games in 2005.
*Zach Miner has added to the Tigers’ wealth of young arms with a 6-1 record and 2.57 ERA in 7 starts.
*Chad Cordero has 13 saves and 43 K in 42 IP, coming off a tremendous season in 2005.
*Conor Jackson has a .370 OBP and 15 doubles as the D-Backs’ 1B.
*Adrian Gonzalez is slugging .457 as the Padres’ 1B.
*Manny Delcarmen has a 3.52 ERA and a 21-7 K/BB ratio and just 1 HR allowed in 23 IP for the Red Sox.
Other less successful 24-year-olds: the effective but injury-plagued Rich Harden, Jhonny Peralta (60 runs, but a comedown year with the bat), Willy Taveras, Oscar Villereal (8-1 but not that effective for the Braves), Ian Snell, Nate McLouth, Paul Maholm, Oliver Perez, Brian Anderson, Jesse Crain, Fernando Cabrera, Matt Murton, Kameron Loe, Brad Thompson, Brandon Watson, Corey Hart, Victor Diaz, Jerome Williams, Mark Teahen, Franquelis Osoria.
(This is before we get to the 25-year-olds, like Jonathan Papelbon, Curtis Granderson, Justin Morneau and Dan Uggla.) The next few years should be a great time to be a baseball fan.

Novak Shows A Little More

Via Drudge, Bob Novak has now come forward with a fuller – but not yet complete – account of his column on Valerie Plame. What’s frustrating – in the purest sense of wanting all the facts out – is that he doesn’t identify his main source or give a detailed account of his conversation with Karl Rove, who apparently was a confirming source for the information. Key quotes:

[O]n Jan. 12, [2004], two days before my meeting with Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor informed Hamilton that he would be bringing to the Swidler Berlin offices only two waivers. One was by my principal source in the Valerie Wilson column, a source whose name has not yet been revealed. The other was by presidential adviser Karl Rove, whom I interpret as confirming my primary source’s information. In other words, the special prosecutor knew the names of my sources.

When Fitzgerald arrived, he had a third waiver in hand — from Bill Harlow, the CIA public information officer who was my CIA source for the column confirming Mrs. Wilson’s identity. I answered questions using the names of Rove, Harlow and my primary source.


Note that this means that Fitzgerald had the names two and a half years ago; the rest of his investigation has been about figuring out who said what and when, and who knew what and when. And, of course, it confirms the role of the CIA’s press office, which in retrospect was at least severely negligent if this was information at all worth protecting.

I have revealed Rove’s name because his attorney has divulged the substance of our conversation, though in a form different from my recollection. I have revealed Harlow’s name because he has publicly disclosed his version of our conversation, which also differs from my recollection. My primary source has not come forward to identify himself.

Bob, could ya tell us what your recollection is?

In my sworn testimony, I said what I have contended in my columns and on television: Joe Wilson’s wife’s role in instituting her husband’s mission was revealed to me in the middle of a long interview with an official who I have previously said was not a political gunslinger. After the federal investigation was announced, he told me through a third party that the disclosure was inadvertent on his part.

Following my interview with the primary source, I sought out the second administration official [Rove] and the CIA spokesman [Harlow] for confirmation. I learned Valerie Plame’s name from Joe Wilson’s entry in “Who’s Who in America.”

More grist for the mill, but we’re not yet all that close for any of the people involved to line up (1) what they said, (2) what they knew, and (3) what the truth was about Plame’s status. Which is what matters. Also, note the very un-Clinton-Administration-like extent of the cooperation with Fitzgerald’s investigation.
I still tentatively think there’s much to recommend Tom Maguire’s thesis that source #1 was Richard Armitage, a Powell deputy at the State Department who is pretty much the antithesis of a Cheney-supporting neocon and who is unlikely to have been taking marching orders from the White House or the Veep. The facts may yet bear out the conclusion that Rove said things he shouldn’t have, but assuming Novak’s account is accurate, there’s not much evidence to support the claim that there was some sort of organized campaign to disclose Plame’s status as a CIA analyst, nor any sign that anyone involved in the disclosure knew that she had ever been a covert agent. (That conclusion can be revisited if we ever do see evidence pointing in that direction, but it’s still not there).

You Think Your Judge Is Hostile?

The DC Circuit has removed US District Judge Royce Lamberth from the longstanding (to put it mildly) litigation over the Interior Department’s management of Indian trust funds, after reversing one of his orders for the eighth time. (Via Bashman). Even if you’ve followed this dispute as it has grown progressively nastier since the mid-1990s (when it was already quite nasty indeed), you have to read the opinion to believe it – while the DC Circuit acknowledged that the Interior Department’s conduct in the litigation and the underlying dispute has been deplorable, it agreed that a judge who viewed the Department and its counsel at Justice as irredeemably “villainous racists” (in the government’s phrase) “could contribute to a reasonable observer’s belief that Interior stands
no chance of prevailing whatever the merits of its position.”

Long Memories

While we remain on the subject of our least favorites, Metstradamus is taking votes for his Hall of Hate. What I found amusing is that Dick Young is running fourth in the voting with 118 votes at last check, despite having been dead for something like two decades. Not that this is uncalled-for. It’s never too late to hate Dick Young.
And also, while we’re at it:
FACT: If the NL wins the All-Star Game, the NL team gets home field advantage in the 2006 World Series.
FACT: As the team with the NL’s best record, the Mets are as likely as anyone to benefit from this.
FACT: Kenny Rogers is starting the All-Star Game for the AL.
Life is good. Now, an entire league of fans has a chance to be let down by Rogers all at once.

The Rule of Law Applies to Congress

Judge Thomas Hogan of the US District Court of DC upholds the search of Democratic Congressman William Jefferson’s office in the Rayburn building, over the objections of Jefferson and – among others – Speaker Hastert. The opinion is here. Key quotes:

The purpose of the Speech or Debate Clause is not to promote or maintain secrecy in legislative activity.

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Congress’ capacity to function effectively is not threatened by permitting congressional offices to be searched pursuant to validly issued search warrants, which are only available in relation to criminal investigations, are subject to the rigors of the Fourth Amendment, and require prior approval by the neutral third branch of government.

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Finally, the Court finds no support for the proposition that a Member of Congress must be given advance notice of a search, with an opportunity to screen out and remove materials the Member believes to be privileged. Indeed, the Court is aware of no case in which such a procedure is mandated by any other recognized privilege.
Contrary to the arguments of amicus, legislators do not have the right to determine the scope of their own privilege under the Speech or Debate Clause. The Founders expressly rejected a constitutional proposal that would have permitted Members collectively to be the exclusive judges of their own privileges. 2 Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 503 (Max Ferrand ed., 1966). In opposition to the proposal, Madison explained that it would be preferable “to make provision for ascertaining by law” the extent of privileges “previously & duly established” rather than to “give a discretion to each House as to the extent of its own privileges.”

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The power to determine the scope of one’s own privilege is not available to any other person, including members of the co-equal branches of government: federal judges, . . or the President of the United States, . . .

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If there is any threat to the separation of powers here, it is not from the execution of a search warrant by one co-equal branch of government upon another, after the independent approval of the third separate, and co-equal branch. Rather, the principle of the separation of powers is threatened by the position that the Legislative Branch enjoys the unilateral and unreviewable power to invoke an absolute privilege, thus making it immune from the ordinary criminal process of a validly issued search warrant. This theory would allow Members of Congress to frustrate investigations into non-legislative criminal activities for which the Speech or Debate Clause clearly provides no protection from prosecution.

The rule of law should prevail over the lawmakers.

He Actually Can’t Win

“David [Wright] should get Jose [Lima] to throw to him. He’d win for sure.”

An unnamed Met, on how teammate David Wright could win the Home Run Derby.
Via Dales.
UPDATE: With Paul Lo Duca pitching to him, Wright finishes as the runner-up to Ryan Howard.
SECOND UPDATE: For those of you who get the reference, the third comment on this post is a classic.