Friday links! Disintegration of ethics edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 7 Comments
Marcus Aurelius, 121—180 AD

Marcus Aurelius, 121—180 AD

You don’t need ethics to survive. By “you” I mean you personally; a society totally needs ethics to survive, in the same way a body needs hemoglobin. Yet the most materially successful societies are not always the most ethical. When it comes to food and shelter and high-resolution video, our society is kicking ass, but it’s hard to argue that we are individually or collectively more ethical than certain of our forebears. Is that an illusion? Can one age be more ethical than another, the way we think of imperial Rome as generally conniving and WWII America as generally good?*Screen Shot 2013-07-26 at 9.09.35 AM Today is Friday, and America is either per capita less concerned with doing the right thing or less uptight about appearing so. Won’t you excuse yourself with me?

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Close Readings: Republicans will shut down gov’t unless Obamacare defunded

By Dan Brooks in Close Reading 7 Comments
Senator Mike Lee (R–UT) describes the big city shortly before breaking into song.

Senator Mike Lee (R–UT) describes how a filibuster works, shortly before breaking into song.

A group of Republican senators led by Mike Lee have signed an open letter promising to vote down any continuing resolution that contains funding to implement the Affordable Care Act. Essentially, they’ve threatened to shut down the federal government unless Obamacare is repealed, or at least defunded. Besides Lee, Marco Rubio (R–FL) and John Thune (R–SD) have signed the letter, along with an undisclosed but ostensibly large number of fellow conservatives in the Senate. The putative reason for this scorched-earth opposition is the delay of the employer mandate, which Lee et al see as proof that the Affordable Care Act cannot work as written. That delay in enforcing Obamacare was too much for the senators who are committed to repealing Obamacare, apparently. Full text of the letter after the jump.

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Strange days for Mr. Weiner

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 1 Comment

anthony-weiner-press-conference

It is possible that the New York Times’ exhaustive coverage of Anthony Weiner’s renewed sex scandal is due to his candidacy for mayor. It’s also possible that they like constructing headlines around the phrase “Mr. Weiner.”  For those who do not know, a 22 year-old woman has told quasi-news site The Dirty that she and Mr. Weiner exchanged sexually explicit communications in the summer of 2012, not long after he resigned from Congress for doing same. According to the Times, their exchange began when the woman “reached out to express her disappointment in him.” Say what you will about Anthony Weiner; he is really good at convincing women to exchange sexually explicit messages. Also he used the pseudonym “Carlos Danger.” Also he is destroying his life.

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A reasonable idea for the FISA court

By Dan Brooks in War on Terror 1 Comment
The FISA Court reviews a federal warrant request, for all we know.

The FISA Court reviews a federal warrant request, for all we know.

Is that Ted Turner next to Skeletor in this artist’s rendering of the Illuminati? It doesn’t matter; when a convocation of power is secret, we from whom the secret is kept can let our imaginations run wild. Even if you don’t think the secret courts that approve NSA and FBI wiretapping requests allow the federal government abuse its power, you have to admit that they encourage mistrust. Secrecy is a double-edged sword. When you tell the American people that what you’re doing is completely legitimate and you can’t say why, a segment of the population*Screen Shot 2013-07-23 at 9.55.59 AM assumes the worst. In today’s Times, former FISA court judge James Carr proposes a simple solution: appoint pro bono publico attorneys to argue against the government when its requests raise new legal issues.

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Read “The Stench of Honolulu” by Jack Handey

By Dan Brooks in books 1 Comment

b5zo-square-400

You probably know Jack Handey from the “Deep Thoughts” series of sketches on Saturday Night Live, which, along with PJ O’Rourke and Carolyn Jacobson, were probably the most significant influences on my writing before age 21. If you don’t think Deep Thoughts is funny, you can safely disregard the rest of this post. You and I will meet at Grown-Ups 3 someday, each of us wiping away a type of tear. Everyone else can read this excellent profile of Handey in the New York Times, in which we learn that A) he is in fact a real person who used to live next door to Steve Martin, and B) he has recently published The Stench of Honolulu, a comic adventure novel. I bought that novel and read it last week, and it is very funny. Excerpt after the jump.

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