The Friendly Confines

Those in Pittsburgh know that the Post Gazette’s sports columnists, well, what’s left of them, leave a bit to be desired. Gene Collier isn’t bad, but he rarely says anything insightful or relevant. Ron Cook on the other hand makes me wonder how many years of drinking a fifth of Jack a day it would take for me to kill enough brain cells to write his column.

Today, Ron Cook says that this year’s Penguins team has already accomplished more than last year’s team.

“…[T]hese Penguins already have achieved more than the ‘08 team.”

In saying this, he implies that this year’s team is also better than last year’s…

This year’s team still has the chance to do the only thing they could do to accomplish more than last year’s team: win the Stanley Cup. But they haven’t done that yet. And all beating the Washington Capitals in 7 games, in a series that will remain legend amongst the NHL’s most dedicated fans, did was advance the Penguins to the Eastern Conference Finals…which they won last year.

Perhaps in little league, we tell kids that “achievement” is something relative and not related to competitive success. I think that we’re mostly wrong in doing so, but there are reasons for delinking a kid’s sense of achievement and actual achievement…er I mean competitive success. But we aren’t talking about little league, or the Baby…er second trimester Penguins here. We’re talking about professional hockey players. Grown men…even though I can grow a better playoff beard than most of them.

Accomplishment/achievement for professional athletes can and should be measured by only one standard: competitive success.

If you asked anyone on the Penguins if the team has achieved as much as last year’s team, I would think that there is only one answer: Fuck no. This isn’t to downplay what this team has done or the adversity it has overcome…it’s just simply acknowledging that, as of now, last year’s team achieved more than this year’s team has, so far.

But Ron Cook sees it differently. He thinks that the NHL is little league.

“What they did in the past fortnight against a very good Washington Capitals hockey club is better than anything the ‘08 team accomplished.”

This is not true. Why? Because Cook’s premise–that this year’s team might be better than last year’s team is ludicrous.

The debate starts and stops with 2 names: Marian Hossa and Ryan Malone. Bill Guerin is no Hossa, and Chris Kunitz is no Ryan Malone. Last year’s team might have very well swept that “very good” Capitals team…or at least won in five, maybe six. Sure, last year’s team hasn’t had to contend with regular season and post-season injuries to Sergei Gonchar, but “achievement” in professional sports isn’t measured by how tall of a mountain it is that you have to climb (unless you’re talking about professional mountain climbing, if such a thing exists), but instead it is measured by who ends up at the top.

The thing about the Stanley Cup playoffs is that there’s only room for one on the peak, and then each “station” as you go down has room for a few more. Last year’s team battled the Red Wings tooth and nail to stand on the peak, but ultimately lost to the better team.

This year’s team could still reach that peak. But until they beat Carolina and battle either Detroit or Chicago for king of the NHL mountain, last year’s team will have achieved more.

And in one blog post, I’ve already achieved more than Ron Cook: I can tell the difference between standards for professional athletes and standards for nine year olds in a “coach pitch” league.

Maybe the Post Gazette should hire me.

Today’s Washington Post features an op-ed opposing the repeal of legislation precluding gays from serving in the military from four retired military officials: a General who was the first commander of U.S. Special Operations, an Admiral who was vice chief of naval operations, a general who was deputy commandant of the Marines, and a Lt. General who commanded a wing of Strategic Air Command.  All four branches of our armed services are equally represented in one of the most morally clueless–if not subtly reprehensible–arguments for the exclusion of gays ever made.  Lets break it down.

Their argument is made crystal clear in the opening paragraph: Yet if gay rights activists and their allies have their way, grave harm will soon be inflicted on our all-volunteer force.

Let me fix that for you guys: Yet if gay rights activists and their allies people of conscience and decency with a capacity for tolerance, have their way, grave harm will soon be inflicted business as usuall will continue in our all-volunteer force.

These men then go on to argue that homosexuality is “incompatible with military service.”  If you’re laughing at how ridiculous this claim is on face, hold your laughter–it gets better.  If you’re crying because Congress actually passed legislation “finding” that this patently absurd claim was true, stop crying, get indignant, and go ask a Republican teabagger what the hell they were thinking.  But really, how could you justify something this silly–being old, white and conservative wouldn’t have anything to do with it?

Of course not–they have actual “arguments.”

Argument 1: Polling by Military Times of its active-duty subscribers over the past four years indicates that 58 percent have consistently opposed repeal. In its most recent survey, 10 percent said they would not reenlist if [repeal of the prohibition on gays in the military] happened, and 14 percent said they would consider leaving.

It’s reassuring to know that–if this survey is accurate–that 25% of the men and women serving my country would put their intolerance of or discomfort in being around gays above their patriotism.  Because we “need” these 25%, we should let their intolerance drive a blatantly discriminatory policy.  Just imagine if George Wallace and the Alabama legislature would’ve left the Alabama government and simply stopped showing up to work if its schools were integrated.  Wait, that’s too good to imagine.

Imagine if 25% of teachers across the U.S. would’ve said in a poll that they would stop teaching or would consider quitting teaching if public schools were integrated…and that was the reason given to continue separate but equal.  Or, imagine what this poll would have said, had it asked soldiers pre-Eisenhower whether integrating the armed services would affect their reinlistment…and Eisenhower decided that was enough of a reason to continue a segregated armed forces.

The hard bigotry of a minority of soldiers who love their country until it conflicts with their dislike of or discomfort around gays should not drive U.S. defense policy.  There’s caving to minority interests–and then there’s relying upon the response of a minority to a Military Times poll.

It’s a good thing that being a high-ranking military officer requires neither logical nor moral reasoning.

Argument 2: Team cohesion and concentration on missions would suffer if our troops had to live in close quarters with others who could be sexually attracted to them.

While coming up with an argument worse than the first one would require a Herculean effort, three generals and an admiral were up to the task.  If this is indicative of what our best military leaders are capable of, I will never worry about my safety again.

The argument is this: gays can’t keep it in their pants.  Really.  That’s what they’re saying.  Gay soldiers would let their biological or romantic desires get in the way of accomplishing the mission.  (That is, “romantic desires”, if we’re willing to give them credit of being civilized, and apparently these generals see them as apes or rabbits with the choice of “sexually attracted.”)

Of course, it’s okay for a soldier to have a romantic interest half a world away…with a few kids, a nice house with a garage, and a loyal golden retriever waiting patiently for him to come home.  The romantic desire to return to them surely has never caused a soldier to feel emotions that have jeopardized a mission and a soldier’s brothers in arms.  Nevermind the fact that if you’re boning the dude in the foxhole next to you, you might fight a little harder to save his ass.

Then again, these generals probably think that the “sexual attract[ion]” the two gay guys felt would cause one to leave his foxhole, risk getting shot to get in his gay buddy’s foxhole and have disgusting gay sex while the hetero soldier in the foxhole killed the bad guys in defense of their wife, kids, and normal, hetero America.

If you want to know how gays in the military would actually undermine missions, there’s an episode of M.A.S.H. that I think spells it out…the episode starts out that a black soldier is wounded and taken to the field hospital for Hawkeye and his crew to fix up.  The old bald guy realizes that the black soldier is one of quite a few black soldiers they’ve treated lately, and that they’re all coming from units under a common command.  A bigoted commander was putting black people in harm’s way disproportionately–and presumably not choosing the best soldiers, white or black for the job.  In the episode, it was his response to the integration of his unit.

That could never happen today, not in an armed forces that perpetrated My Lai, the Iran-Contra scandal, or Abu Ghraib?

And of course, what would an awful piece of editorial writing be without the obligatory red herring?

Some suggest that the United States must emulate Denmark, the Netherlands and Canada, which have incorporated homosexuals into their forces. But none of these countries has the institutional culture or worldwide responsibilities of our military. America’s armed forces are models for our allies’ militaries and the envy of our adversaries — not the other way around. 

Why is this argument in the op-ed?  It’s a bad attempt to equate advocates of equality with wanting a military the size or effectiveness of Denmark, Holland or Canada?  I only wish this were the answer–and perhaps it is.  I’m sure the ghost writer for these fine officers felt so clever when he thought of it.  “I’ll show those liberals by equating their arguments with the armies of our NATO allies!”  That my mind hurts in trying to figure out how this argument isn’t a horrible non-sequiter/red herring, is all the proof I need that “conservative populists” would read this and nod their mouthbreathing heads in agreement, with a profound sense of enlightenment.

But if you break the rhetoric down, it reveals something darker and far more chilling…Gays in the military isn’t right for the US, like it is for our NATO allies, because our military has a different “institutional culture.”

Of course–our military is built on an institutional culture of extreme machoism that requires anyone who takes up arms to defend this country to be close-minded bigots, while our NATO Allies have militaries where an institutional culture of tolerance, civility and wussiness prevail.  What other, possible institutional culture could exist, other than one founded on extreme close-mindedness and intolerance, that would lead to the exclusion of gays from the armed forces?

This isn’t a rhetorical question.  If you’re reading this and think that you can sketch out a description of an “institutional culture” that meets basic moral standards of tolerance and decency, but still allows for the exclusion of gays from the military, then please, by all means.

And yes–it makes perfect sense to say that because the size and strength of our military makes us a “model” for our allies and an “envy” of our enemies, that our policies on allowing gays to serve in the military are superior.

Here, we see sad and pathetic limits of these men’s minds: for them, might makes right.

Fortunately, our armed forces are ultimately lead by a civilian commander in chief, who must understand that “right” is something founded in moral persuasion and not the force of arms.  Whatever qualified these men to command special forces…to give orders to a navy, marines or air foce…clearly has done nothing for their capacity for intellectual or moral reasoning and judgment.

These sad and pathetic men conclude with this contrite and “tolerant” concession:

Everyone can serve America in some way, but there is no constitutional right to serve in the military. The issue is not one of individual desires, or of the norms and mores of civilian society. Rather, the question is one of national security and the discipline, morale, readiness and culture of the U.S. armed forces upon which that security depends. It is a question we cannot afford to answer in a way that breaks our military.

The only way this will “break” our military is if our military’s culture is ultimately one of hetero-dominated macho intolerance and bigotry.  By these authors best account, 75% of our military would not let that culture interfere with their selflessly taken duty to country.

Forget the poorly argued bullshit about national security.  A nation that sanctions gays making the ultimate sacrifice cannot sanction any discrimination against them.  Fortunately, we have a commander in chief who understands this, and a Congress that, hopefully, will soon atone for its authoring one more chapter in what is too long of a book of state-sponsored bigotry, intolerance and discrimination in America.  Even more fortunately, if there are generals and admirals still serving who are like these men who wrote this letter, they must answer to the civilian who gives the orders.

Each game of the Cubs first 2009 series had game-defining firsts: Carlos Zambrano’s first win as an opening day starter; the first “that’s so Cub” moment as Milton Bradley found a way to ground into a 4-6-3 double play with first and second, with nobody out and the RUNNERS MOVING; and the Cubs’ first 10+ run output of the year.

Let’s look at the games and see what we can learn about this ballclub.

Game 1: The biggest news from this game is that Zambrano didn’t get lit up, ejected, or otherwise let his emotions run wild on opening day.  Instead, Big Z blew mid-90’s fastballs past the Astros’ lineup for 6 solid innings and got the win.  Alfonso Soriano instantly reminded Cubs’ fans that it’s nice to have a leadoff hitter that can go yard by taking the second pitch of the season into the left-field stands.  The offense also showed that it can manufacture runs in a nice sequence that saw Cubs 2B Mike Fontenot double to lead off an inning, then C Geovany Soto give himself up by forcing a groundball to first that allowed Fontenot to advance to third, then SS Ryan Theriot hit a sac fly to score Fontenot.

It was pretty, fundamental baseball that instantly made me want to like this team and its chances.

Game 2: Ryan Dempster was his usual, inconsistent self.  At times he pitched well enough to make you wonder how he gave up 2 runs in 6 innings.  Other times, he pitched poorly enough to make you wonder how he gave up ONLY two runs in six innings.  The Cubs had their chance to break the game open–they had the leadoff men aboard in the top of the sixth on back-to-back walks and cleanup hitter Milton Bradley at the plate.  Uncle Lou even sent the runners in a 2-strike count to avoid the double play.

Of course, newcomer Bradley showed he fit right in, in a Cubs uniform by rapping a rocket ground ball up the middle for the 4-6-3 double play that killed what might have been the game-winning rally.  Our first 2009: “That’s so Cub” moment.

Soriano would go on to make the game interesting, tying it at 2 on a solo homer off of LaTroy Hawkins–who should have no trouble finding refineries in Houston to fill up his gas can.  The last time I saw a ball leave Houston and enter into orbit as quickly as Soriano’s homerun was when Albert Pujols hit a hanging Brad Lidge slider to win Game 5 of the 2005 NLCS.  Brad Lidge needed two years of intense psychotherapy before being able to again close out baseball games.  Hawkins pitched really well for the Astros down the stretch last year–we can only hope this gets his career of blowing one-run games back on track.

The Cubs went on to lose in extras, on a bases-loaded, broken-bat, seeing-eye single.  Guh.  At least it’s not having Jason Isringhausen Motte blow a 2-run save to the Pirates on opening day. At home.  (If the Cardinals insist on having a closer named Jason blow games for them, I’m willing to take their millions to cost that club games.)
Game 3: Theodore Roosevelt Lilly (”The Bullmoose”) picked a good night to give up 1/8 of the homeruns he gave up in 2008–four homeruns, but only for five runs.  The Cubs had already staked Lilly to an 8-0 lead before Lilly gave up his first solo shot and eventually won 11-6.

The Cubs’ offense showed both patience and aggressiveness in their at-bats.  They walked 6 times, and Kosuke Fukudome and Aramis Ramirez both had four-hit nights, both in part because they made good contact on meatballs early in the count.  Fontenot also added a clutch 2-out, 3-run homerun in the 2nd, swinging at a good pitch early in an at-bat.

What this tells me is that the Cubs hitters have a good understanding of the strike zone.  They’re able to identify good pitches early in a sequence, but they aren’t afraid to take pitches, even strikes, and then remain disciplined enough to work a count.  If opposing pitchers know that Cubs hitters will be aggressive with good pitches early in a count, then opposing pitchers will try to throw the perfect strikes early in the count.  Of course, if the opposing pitchers don’t have perfect command, those pitches often end up missing the plate, and they fall behind in the count…forcing them to throw strikes that are sure to catch the plate and that aggressive hitters feast on.  Or, they continue to miss the zone and walk the hitter–and Cubs hitters all through the order aren’t afraid to walk.

This sounds like an offense that is going to score a lot of runs this season.
One last note: a friend showed early frustration with Milton Bradley’s hitless series.  Cubs fans everywhere want to see their big free-agent signing and cleanup hitter get off to a good start.  I would point out that Bradley has very quietly earned a .357 on-base-percentage this season, having walked four times in three games.  He also worked counts and at-bats against Roy Oswalt on opening night, so that he saw 21 of Oswalt’s 93 pitches.

The hits will come for Bradley–he’s posted OPS’s of 1.004 and .999 the last two seasons and on-base percentages of .414 and .436 in his first two years in the league.  We’re seeing that Bradley has a great understanding of the strike zone and tremendous discipline at the plate.  Once the hits come–and they will–we’ll see a cleanup hitter that nobody in the National League wants to face.

I could write a long post on what the Bears’ trade for QB Jay Cutler means.  But, thanks to my friend George, I have a picture that says it all:

Today, the Iowa State Supreme Court UNANIMOUSLY struck down Iowa’s statutory ban on same-sex marriages.  While I’m still looking for the written opinion, the news accounts report that the Iowa Supreme Court took the entirely sensible approach: bans on same-sex marriage deny gays their (state) constitutionally entitled equal protection of the law.

The argument is incredibly simple.  The state uses the institution of marriage to control access to health care, tax benefits, medical decisions, child-rearing decisions and other aspects of fundamental importance to an adult life.  Because some people are attracted to people of the same sex, they will never be able to share in these state-conferred benefits with their romantic partners.  The law then protects heterosexuals with romantic partners in a way that it does not protect homosexuals.  This is a clear cut, prima facie violation of equal protection: heterosexuals are more equal before the law than homosexuals.

In short, the Iowa Supreme Court is 110% right in its legal analysis.

To argue anything else as a matter of constitutional law or values would be incredibly short-sighted, close-minded and bigoted.  The best constitutional argument against this decision would be something like “equal protection” at the time of the enactment of the state constitution wasn’t contemplated to include gays.  Your standard, narrow-minded and incredibly dumb originalist argument–because if there are two things originalism is, it’s narrow-minded and stupid.  (I remain convinced that its intelligent invokers like Justices Scalia and Thomas invoke it disingenuously, as a way to justify reaching decisions that accord with their own values.  Actual belief in originalism, as opposed to a devious instrumental use of it, is just silly.)

Why is the originalist argument so dumb?  By its own logic, the state of Iowa could re-enact the state constitution with the EXACT SAME equal protection language today, yet it would have different meaning.  Same words, different meaning, based upon the time of enactment.  That’s just asinine.  More to the point, with issues like gay marriage–or interracial marriage or civil rights in the 60’s–it would be beyond a court’s competence to decide if, by popular opinion or the intent of the more-recent enactors of the same-worded amendment, gay marriage (or interracial marriage or civil rights) fell within the modern conception of equal protection.  Such a decision would be just as arbitrary as originalists claim today’s decision is.

Yet originalists would be forced into that same arbitrary decision by their own intellectual framework.  Shallow and intellectually bankrupt, it is.  (To channel my inner Yoda.)

The better argument on gay marriage is this: bans on gay marriage are morally speaking no different than bans on interracial marriage.  To originalists: there is no amendment in the Constitution that contemplated interracial marriages as legitimate.  Yet, they were struck down on Constitutional grounds.  Again, your method of constitutional interpretation is shallow and morally and intellectually bankrupt.

To any other reasonable person willing to listen: we ought to consider sexuality and race to be moral equivalents.  Both are (more or less) immutable, biological characteristics.  (More or less ignoring skin pigmentation and sex-change surgeries, and crazy post-modern theories on identity being totally fluid, but I digress.)  We are worse people as a society to deny people the opportunity to have access to state-conferred benefits and status because of a biological characteristic that is beyond the control of an individual.  We recognized that with race, and now we’re recognizing that with sexuality.

The only difference is that you can’t see sexuality.  If sexuality were manifested by a biological marker–say skin pigmentation, or hair color, or a tail…this wouldn’t even be a close debate by the moral standards we laid out in the civil rights movement in the 60’s.  It’d be crystal clear that we were discriminating based upon an immutable biological characteristic, and we’d have stopped the practice by now.

It’s because intolerant and bigoted churches are able to make bullshit claims to “protecting the family” and to God’s alleged moral condemnation of homosexuality that gays can’t marry.  Sure, I believe that for some, denying homosexual marriage is about preserving tradition, values and order.  I believe that those people are morally no different than the defenders of the Jim Crow or antebellum slave south.  In fact, they might even be worse, since we now have a history of rejecting close-minded bigotry, based upon superior legal and moral arguments from which opponents of same-sex marriage are too stuipd, bigoted–or both–to learn.

To be fair, for slave owners in the antebellum south, the Enlightenment was a relatively new thing.  For opponents of same sex marriage today…you’ve learned the history of freeing the slaves…of granting women’s suffrage…of ending Jim Crow…of granting blacks and minorities the right to vote…HOW MANY CENTURIES DO YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND EQUALITY??

Bans on interracial marriage had many purposes–preventing biological pollution of the white race, as well as maintaining a caste system in this country…if blacks could not marry whites, then they could never be equal.

Bans on homosexual marriage have the same purpose, only instead of preserving the biological purity of the white race, it’s preserving the moral purity of a particular, unenlightened, view of the Judeo-Christian tradition that has informed and influenced this country.  Like the ban on interracial marriage, a ban on homosexual marriage creates a caste system, where homosexuals will never be able to avail themselves of the protections of the law in the same way that heterosexuals can.

There are many people who are enjoying Iowa’s ruling today far more than I can.  I wish it could have been the people of the state of Iowa, voting through their elected officials bringing this change.  Hopefully in a relatively short time, the ideas of the homophobic bigots of today will be as old and unmoving as their decaying bones.  But it is not right or fair to homosexual couples today to ask them to continue to wait for that day, just as it was not right to ask blacks to wait for Congress to overturn Plessy vs. Ferguson and expose “separate but equal” for the sham of racism and bigotry that it was.

If the people of any state–or of this country–are unwilling or unable to recognize and do something about the fact that gays are living in a “separate but equal” world right now, then it is the responsibility of our courts to remind us of our legal and moral obligations and what it means to be a nation committed to equality not in word, but in deed.

I hope that as everyone who takes pride in Iowa’s decision today does so, that they remember that the forces of darkness and evil are mobilizing.  The nutjob bigots in rural and Western Iowa will surely be fuming in their pews on Sunday, invoking the name of the Lord to do (what, if anything is) Satan’s bidding and turn our proud constitution into a tool of bigotry and oppression.  A first and important battle was won today–and rightfully so.  Now, Iowa’s agents of evil must be defeated when they try to fight back.

Comments are open and unmoderated (save spam) for a reason.  I invite anyone and everyone reading this page to leave a response agreeing or, even more importantly, disagreeing with me–or just letting me know that they (or Kilroy) were here.

This is one place where we “feed the trolls.”

Nearly five-and-a-half years ago, the Chicago Cubs entered Game 6 of the 2003 NLCS with a 3-0 lead, 6 outs from the World Series.  With one out and a guy on second, Steve Bartman prevented Moises Alou from catching a foul pop-fly off of Luis Castillo’s bat down the left-field line.   Castillo’s at-bat resulted in a walk, and the runner on 2nd advancing to 3rd on a wild pitch.  One might say that Prior was rattled by Alou’s visible frustration at Bartman’s interference.
Two batters later, Cubs’ shortstop Alex Gonzalez (may he rot in the fires of baseball hell for eternity) boots an easy double-play groundball that would have ended the Marlins 8th with a 3-1 Cubs’ lead and only 3 more outs to record in order to go to the World Series.

Instead, the floodgates opened.  An ineffective Cubs’ bullpen turned Bartman’s interference and Gonzalez’s error into 8 runs.  We all know how the story ends…Marlins win Game 7 and the World Series.  Cubs fans are on the wrong end of one of baseball’s most infamous games.

Back to the present…

Pitt leads Villanova by 4, with 3 minutes left.  The winner advances to the Final Four.  Pitt was last in the Final Four so long ago (1941) that even the Cubs have played in a World Series (not won, but played in one) since then.  In 1941, only 8 teams made the NCAA tournament, so Pitt only had to win one game to make the Final Four.  For all practical purposes, Pitt has never been to the Final Four.

It will be at least another year–and probably a few years–before Pitt can dream of making the Final Four again…thanks to a Cubs’-like choke job down the stretch.

Pitt had a 4 point lead and the ball with 3 minutes left.  A good possession would’ve been a 6 or 7 point lead with about 2:30 left in the game.  A perfectly acceptable possession would’ve been a 4 point lead with about 2:30 left in the game.

A Cubs’ like possession would’ve been fouling a Villanova shooter in the act of making a 3-point basket, allowing for a 4-point play and a tie game.  Since Pitt had fouled 2 shooters in the act of shooting 3’s (it’s rare that you see this feat of mental retardation replicated in the same game), that possibility was way too likely.  Pitt didn’t go completely “Cub,” but Jermaine Dixon did his best Alex Gonzalez impersonation and handed Villanova the basketball at midcourt, then committed one of the sissiest fouls ever on the Nova shooter as he made a layup to allow Nova a 3-point play.

Up 1 with more than 2:30 to go was not the outcome you wanted.

Like Mark Prior, who was seemingly rattled by Bartman’s incomprehensible interference…or the Cubs’ bullpen that was disheartened by Alex Gonzalez’s error, the Panthers completely fell apart, traveling on their next two possessions, allowing Nova to steal the lead and the Final Four away from them.

Like the ‘03 Cubs, who rallied–and even lead in Game 7–the Panthers didn’t go away entirely.  Thanks to the efforts of Sam Young and Levance Fields…and a gift of stupidity from Nova, the Panthers found a way to tie the game with 5 seconds left…

Then Jermaine Dixon let his guy (Scottie Reynolds) get 15 feet behind him on the ensuing in-bounds play…Reynolds then drove most of the length of the court and made the game-winning shot with .5 seconds left.  Like the ‘03 Cubs, Pitt built up hope–and then allowed their opponent to snatch it away in truly incompetent fashion.

Of course, the Panthers will never be as core of a part of my sports’ identity as the Cubs.  Even if this were the National Championship game, it wouldn’t have hurt like October ‘03 hurt.  Still, it was every bit as big of a choke job, and it’s like having someone reach into my mouth, yank my tongue out and force a thimble-full of that taste from Game 6 onto my tongue.

At least the Penguins had the decency to give everything they had before losing to a better team in last year’s Stanley Cup Finals.  Even if the Bears didn’t play their best in the ‘07 Super Bowl, they still lost to a better Colts team.  As a fan, I can live with losing to the better team.  If only the Panthers would’ve made Nova earn their victory–in the same way I wish the Cubs would’ve made the Marlins earn their trip to the World Series.

Handing your opponents wins in games of that magnitude is choking.  You can love your teams as much as the next crazy fan, but at the end of the day, choking is choking.
Just as I wanted Alex Gonzalez out of a Cubs’ uniform…here’s hoping that Jermaine Dixon transfers.  I’ll root for the jersey, but never for the choke artist.

I’m writing from my hotel in Jackson, Mississippi, where I’m ostensibly providing volunteer legal work for the Mississippi Center for Justice.  The MCJ is a great institution–last year, I worked with their branch office in Biloxi, providing legal relief to Hurricane Katrina victims.  A friend and I interviewed individuals who were victims of “contractor fraud”–people who paid money to “contractors” who promised to rebuild their homes and then never returned.  Our fact-finding served as the basis for pro bono lawsuits on behalf of the victims.

Essentially, we did what we’re trained to do as lawyers–gather facts that support a “cause of action,” a lawsuit.  At the end of the week, I felt like we had provided a service to people who needed it, and, as students, we got good experience.

After two days, I’ve resigned myself to a week of futility and uselessness.  It’s disheartening to know that you’re spending a well-intentioned week providing a service of little or no value and learning nothing in the process.
The big difference between this year’s experience and last year’s is that we aren’t doing anything closely related to legal work this year.  At best, we’re doing glorified social science work that a graduate student, trained in social-science research methods, should be doing.  We’re conducting poorly thought out surveys (because they really weren’t designed by well-trained social scientists) in an even worse thought out way.

The worst has been going door to door, in predominantly black and working class neighborhoods, during business hours, as groups of two white kids with clipboards.  The only people that have been home have been elderly people who are nice and willing to talk–but who aren’t situated to be responsive to any of our survey questions.  It doesn’t take someone admitted to the Supreme Court bar to predict the total failure of that research method, but yet we were politely instructed to give it the Jim Carrey, Dumb and Dumber, “chance.”

Our other project has been conducting surveys of “payday lenders” that are, surprise, surprise, concentrated in the poorest areas of Jackson.  Payday lending works like this: you bring in a bank statement, pay stub, ID, and blank check, and you write a check for $121 for every $100 you want at the moment–up to being able to get $400.  It’s a terrible deal, as it involves something like a 500% (give or take 50%) annual interest rate.  People, to no surprise to the lenders, will borrow on one check, then borrow on their next check to pay back the first loan, then rinse and repeat ad infinitum.  Every fourth or fifth time, they pay the equivalent of a full loan in interest.

That there are tens of locations offering this “service,” within a mile, in the poorest areas of Jackson reveals its inherently predatory (and arguably racist) nature.

However, the state of Mississippi, big believers in racist and predatory “free enterprise,” they are, won’t be severely regulating this industry anytime soon.  (Of course, the state will try to divert Housing and Urban Development money earmarked for rebuilding “affordable housing” on the Gulf Coast for “economic development” - building a $600 million inland port in the middle of a poor black neighborhood  in Gulfport Mississippi…but of course, state-sponsored corporate welfare is the institutional racism that passes for capitalism and “free enterprise” down here.)  So it comes as no surprise that making any progress on the payday lending issue is considered impossible in the short-term.

Yet, we’re asking poorly crafted questions that provide no real insight into the industry as our volunteer work.  The only insight we’ve actually gotten into the industry have come from our ability to generate a rapport with some of the employees at the shops, who mentioned something outside of the survey contents and then responded well to our on-the-fly follow-up questions.  You know, the sort of interactions in which you’d expect a lawyer to do well.

Yet, our best finished work product is going to be a compilation of survey results that will yield no statistical or empirical insight into an industry that is obviously insidious, predatory, and sorely in need of a beatdown from the muscular fist of paternalism.  If only we were providing that fist with a Wheatie for strength–or a filed nail, with which to claw that awful industry…or to sharpen my quickly dulling brain.

My frustrations are best summed up by paraphrasing Dr. Leonard J. McCoy: Damnit Jim, I’m a law student, not a trained social-scientist.

For whatever reason, a non-profit law firm has no interest in using a group of 5 exceptional law students and me in ways that are remotely consistent with our training and potential.  It’s surely not why justice is so backwards in this state, but it certainly can’t help advance the cause.

I have a confession to make: I was wrong about the appropriateness of the Penguins firing former-head coach Michelle Therrien.  Since making the change from Therrien to new head coach Dan Bylsma, the Penguins are 11-1-3 in 15 games.

That’s 25 of 30 possible points.

The Penguins are “tied” with the Philadelphia Flyers for 4th place in the Eastern conference with 85 points.  When Dan Bylsma took over, the team was on the outside of the playoff race, looking in.  To say that the Penguins’ recent winning streak has been “miraculous” would be something of an understatement.

Bylsma deserves credit for making the Penguins fun to watch again.  Bylsma has encouraged a very talented team to use its talent and speed to get down the ice fast, where the Penguins’ best players can use their creativity and talent to create scoring opportunities.  The new system is surely less disciplined than the system that Therrien asked his players to play–but Therrien’s greatest strength, being a stickler for discipline, probably ended up being his biggest weakness: excessive discipline, in any context, stifles talent and creativity.

At the time of Therrien’s firing, it was easy for anyone watching this team–including me–to forget what the talent on the team could do when given a license to fly through the neutral zone and play an up-tempo, offensively oriented game, rather than Therrien’s patient, defensive game.

Therrien’s belief is that the best defense is a good defense.  Bylsma seems to believe that the best defense is a good offense.  Bylsma emphasizes the amount of time the Penguins possess the puck in the opposing team’s defensive zone–while hockey isn’t wrestling, where points are awarded for “riding time,” the metaphor seems apt.  All it takes is one mistake by an opponent, and the Penguins’ speed and talent can strike so fast that the opposing team is pinned before they even realize they’re on their back.

Also deserving of credit is Penguins’ GM Ray Shero.  To be fair, Shero’s signing of Ruslan Fedotenk and Miroslav Satan last summer were something on the wrong side of “big mistake.”  Therrien might never have been fired had Shero found wingers who were capable of being productive with Sidney Crosby.  Therrien might also have not been fired had Sergei Gonchar been healthy all season, contributing the offense he’s brought since rejoining the team.

To be fair to Therrien, the Penguins’ revival dovetails not just with his firing, but with Shero’s acquisition of winger Chris Kunitz from Anaheim.  Kunitz is a gritty power forward with a scoring touch.  He’s unafraid to go to the net or take a hit in the corners to make a play, creating space for Crosby to use his speed and talent.  Kunitz replaces what the Penguins lost in Ryan Malone–he may even be an overall offensive improvement, although I don’t think that Kunitz kills penalties quite the same as Malone.

Shero also, finally, acquired a winger from the New York Islanders worth acquiring–Billy Guerin.  While Guerin is no Marian Hossa, he has a quick shot and a lot of experience finding open areas of ice from which to score.  His ability to finish makes Crosby so much more dangerous–rather than relying upon the very inconsistent Satan, or Pascal Dupuis, a speedy winger with no touch who couldn’t hit the ocean for falling off a cruise ship at sea–Crosby has someone who can score immediately after taking a pass from Sidney.  Anytime a defense has their eyes fixated on Crosby, Guerin and Kunitz will be lurking, and capable of scoring.

There are still 11 games left.  Keeping up a 25/30 points pace is probably unrealistic.  That would translate to something like 18 or 19 points in the last 11 games…or an 8-1-2, or 9-1-1 record.  That would make the Penguins an unfathomable 19-2-5 or 20-2-4 under Bylsma.  It would almost assuredly leave the Penguins as the #4 seed with home ice in the first round of the playoffs.

Still, there is reason to think that the Penguins will continue to win.  They’re in the midst of an 8-game homestand, where the Penguins have only one regulation and one shootout loss since the start of February.  The Penguins play Los Angeles tomorrow night, and the Kings are likely to be tired after playing in Boston tonight.   The Penguins still have games against Philadelphia, the Rangers, Carolina, Florida and Montreal, who are all teams that are in the playoff race.  While all of those teams, except for Carolina, have at least one game in hand on the Penguins, a win against each team would effectively eliminate one (or a half) of those games in hand.

The Penguins also have a 6 point cushion on Florida, who is in 9th place.  A win against the Panthers–provided it’s not one of a very small handful of wins for the Penguins down the stretch–would go a long ways towards cementing the Pens’ playoff hopes.

So, here I am, cautiously optimistic about the Penguins’ playoff chances, when, 15 games ago, I was pretty sure that the firing of Therrien was akin to pulling the plug.  Hopefully there isn’t an equal–and opposite–surprise waiting in store these last eleven games.

It isn’t clear if a democratic consensus in this country supports torture, even in the most limited instance of having an uncooperative “high value” detainee that almost surely has useful information.

It is far more clear that a majority of people in this country favor capital punishment in some limited instances.  For me, one of the most memorable moments of the 2000 Presidential election was listening to Al Gore pander to southern voters, arguing that capital punishment can “deter crime.”  While a majority–or sizeable plurality–of Americans are stupid enough to believe this fiction,  the important thing is that the fiction has (rather unsophisticated) readers.

Bernard Madoff has pled guilty to perpetrating a Ponzi scheme that robbed unwitting “investors” of $65 billion.  His declared, but disputed assets (some purportedly belong to his wife) are estimated to amount to $827 million–a fraction of the fraud.  As one individual on CNN put it, “there has to be more.”  This seems pretty reasonable to me.  It also seems pretty reasonable that Madoff would know where that “more” is.

It also seems reasonable that the amount of that “more” could be pretty sizable–enough that it could be equivalent to the impact of, say, the USS Cole bombing.  Assuming the actuarial value of human life (around $2 million) and 17 casualties, as well as damage to the Cole, the amount of money that one could reasonably believe Madoff is hiding is equivalent–or greater–than the damages done in the Cole bombing.

Those who favor a very limited torturing of high value suspects would almost certainly say that intelligence to stop an attack like the one on the USS Cole would be worth the moral and physical “harms” of torture.  So–if Madoff is reasonably likely to have equivalent information, why not strap him down in jail and waterboard him until he breaks or the interrogator is convinced that he’s revealed every last penny about which he knows?

I would also contend that Bernie Madoff has perpetrated more harm on American society than many–if not every–individual sitting on a death row in the United States.  No murderer–or even serial killer–could dream of doing $65 billion in damages.  More importantly, a black guy who shoots a resistant victim in an armed robbery, or the DC Sniper, aren’t deterrable.  Yet, both would be prime examples cited by those in favor of the death penalty.  Of course, the American people buy “deterrence” as an argument for the death penalty without any serious thought.

I would argue that in the case of Bernie Madoff (or Ken Lay or Jeff Skilling…or the Worldcom CEO, etc.) that you have an individual that is far more likely to be deterrable than anyone on death row right now.  It may be that the death penalty will never deter anyone.  But if it is going to deter someone, I would contend that rich white guys with families and prestige are far more likely to be deterred by the death penalty than poor black guys who kill someone in a turf war, drug deal, or while knocking off a store.

Yet, we execute the latter, under the moral fiction of deterrence.  We won’t execute the worst white collar criminals.

If we want to have a death penalty that actually has a snowball’s chance in hell of deterring a criminal in the next century, shouldn’t we let every one of the investors robbed of a collective $65 billion form Bernie Madoff get the pleasure of seeing that awful man be shot, hung, electrocuted or lethally injected?  In doing so–would we not be sending a strong message that if you acquire wealth through fraud, you will not only lose all of it, but your family will be forced to cope with your mandatory departure from this earth?  For Bernie Madoff, there’s “losing everything,” and then there’s losing everything…for not just him, but for people that he presumably cares a lot about…and who care a lot about him.

Executing a rich white guy may come as a shock to this country, but if the death penalty is to deter, then isn’t that the whole point?

Or is the point that executing anyone–especially under the fiction of deterrence–isn’t right?

If we’re going to let the south get away with legalized, state-sponsored lynchings, what’s to stop us northerners from getting in on the action–only against our white-collared felons?