Recently, the Libertarian Party reduced its platform from 60-something to 15 points. Don’t get me wrong. We still love guns and gay sex, but now we’re not so worried what you think about our position on space travel. The idea is to dilute the message a little to get more voters who like government more than we do, but who still don’t want as much as Democrats and Republicans. The idea is that we need to get enough support to weaken government a little before we can ever hope to weaken government a lot.

So far, the idea has backfired, with many passionate libertarians splitting to create the Boston Tea Party. Me? I think it’s all a silly distraction. As if people didn’t see us as a joke when that Libertarian drank enough colloidal silver to turn himself blue…

Hezbollah rocket attack kills at least nine Israelis in the northern port city of Haifa, Israeli police say. Visit CNN for the latest.

TThe United Nations Security Council votes unanimously to demand North Korea suspend its ballistic missile program. Visit CNN for the latest.

According to Israeli’s Ynetnews:

The London-based Arabic language newspaper Al-Hayat reported Saturday that “Washington has information according to which Israel gave Damascus 72 hours to stop Hizbullah’s activity along the Lebanon-Israel border and bring about the release the two kidnapped IDF soldiers or it would launch an offensive with disastrous consequences.�

The Duke-Gonzaga game at Madison Square Garden on December 21 — which I have every intention of attending, if I can ever figure out how to buy tickets — will be part of a doubleheader that will also feature South Carolina vs. Pittsburgh.

In other college basketball news that I’ve been remiss in not previously blogging about, sources say the #1 recruit of the high-school Class of 2007, O.J. Mayo, has decided to attend USC. Er, the real USC, that is. :) If it holds up, this is obviously a huge deal for the Trojans (though it may well be a one-year deal, given Mayo’s likely NBA prospects). As of yet, however, there has been no official announcement.

P.S. Alas, not all the news from Troy is good. Trojan star Gabe Pruitt is academically ineligible for the fall semester, so he’ll miss at least the first third of the season. Coupled with the tragic death of Ryan Francis, Pruitt’s ineligibility means the 2006-07 season may not be quite as promising as it once appeared. At any rate, the Trojans’ schedule has been announced.

With all the scary stuff happening in the world — and all the terrorists, tyrants and thugs trying to make things even worse — sometimes you just have to take a step back and appreciate all the light and high beauty forever beyond the reach of these evil men. For example, this evening’s gorgeous sunset in Phoenix:

They can take our lives, but they’ll never take our sunsets. Or our kittens.

I already showed you Sasha disrupting my lawyering work (again). Now, witness Toby and Butter, not disrupting anything, just being incredibly cute:

And here’s Butter in the window this morning, silhouetted by the morning light on the blinds:

Moments after an attack on his office in Lebanon, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah says his group will wage an “open war” against Israel.

Okay, okay, I couldn’t resist the silly, South Park-based headline… sorry. But the topic is deadly serious. I haven’t blogged about it much, because I’ve been busy with work, but the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah/Lebanon is seemingly widening into an all-out war. And if things continue to escalate, it could get really bad: we all know Syria is deeply involved with Hezbollah and Lebanon, and now Iran is threatening that if Israel attacks Syria, Iran will attack Israel. And heaven knows America will defend Israel if that happens. Plus, this all has massive implications for Iraq. And who knows what implications a wider regional war would have for Afghanistan… and its ever-fragile neightbor, Pakistan… and recently-attacked India… etc. etc. And if America gets sufficiently distracted, Kim Jong Il might throw another temper tantrum, which opens up the possibility of whole ‘nother domino effect (South Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan…). All that’s missing from this volatile mix is an archduke named Ferdinand!

Okay, so maybe I’m getting a bit carried away, but the point is… it could get bad.

Regarding Iran’s threats, Andrew writes: “Well, I guess that’s one way of formalizing the terrorist relationship between Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran.” He then adds:

Sudden thought: What if Israel and the U.S. secretly were deciding to use this latest provocation in Gaza and Lebanon to suck Iran and Syria into attacking Israel, whereby the U.S. would swoop in to protect its ally and take out both the evil Syrian and Iranian regimes. Wishful thinking, maybe… too brilliantly machiavellian. I’m surprised Mad Max or A&A hasn’t leveled that conspiracy accusation against the Bush administration yet!

Heh. Although, I’m not sure how “brilliant” that strategy would really be, from a practical standpoint. While it’s undeniably true that the anti-war crowd has cried wolf repeatedly with its fear-mongering about a draft, it really does seem like our military would get stretched too thin at some point… a point not too far off. Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Iran? I’m no military expert, but eventually we really would need more manpower, wouldn’t we? Here’s hoping and praying it doesn’t get to that point…

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You know, Sasha, it’s very difficult to work on my memo when you do that…

Heh. The perils of working at home. :)

Ex-CIA operative Valerie Plame sues Vice President Cheney, his former aide, Scooter Libby, and presidential adviser Karl Rove. Visit CNN for the latest.

 
[UPDATE, 8/22/06: For the latest, up-to-date commentary on Spike Lee’s film — which I was in — please visit my homepage or my Katrina category.]
 
 
Spike Lee’s documentary on Hurricane Katrina — possibly featuring me — will have its world premiere in a free screening at the New Orleans Arena on Aug. 16, followed by its television premiere on HBO “in two-hour blocks on Aug. 21 and 22,” and then it will be aired in its four-hour entirety on Aug. 29, according to the Chicago Tribune and the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

Actually, only the first half of the film — the Aug. 21 segment — will be screened at the New Orleans Arena (next door to the Superdome) on Aug. 16, according to the Times-Picayune. That half “tracks the storm’s approach and landfall then the mayhem and misery that ensued in the days thereafter.” I’m not sure what the second half contains, but I guess it won’t be seen by anyone until its Aug. 22 television premiere.

Tickets to the New Orleans Arena screening are free, and are available starting today on Ticketmaster and at the Arena box office. Do I have any New Orleans-area readers who would be interested in attending the screening and reporting on it for the blog?

The documentary, which I had previously heard referred to only as “When the Levees Broke,” has apparently had its title expanded to “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts.” The Aug. 21-22 television premiere is also a change; previously, Aug. 29 had been set as the premiere date, and that’s what my “upcoming events” sidebar has been counting down to for several weeks. (I have now changed it to Aug. 21, which happens to be the same day that my 3L year starts.)

I have no idea whether I’ll actually be in the movie, and if so, what portions of our hour-plus interview he’ll use. But the Times-Picayune article has some information about the film, via interview with Lee, including:

What happened to the levees, or at least Lee’s understanding of that man-made catastrophe, has been the chief local concern about this project since Lee’s October appearance on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.”

On that show, Lee verbally sparred with panelist Tucker Carlson over the belief held by some that the levees had been dynamited to flood poor sectors of the city.

Not to worry (too much): Based on Lee’s meeting with the critics, as well as an earlier one-on-one interview with yours truly, the villain of the levee tale will be the Army Corps of Engineers.

“I think somebody has to go to jail, somehow, for what was committed down there,” he said.

There are interviews in the film with people who believe the flooding was the result of a conspiracy, Lee said, but they’re balanced by refutations by independent experts.

“We let people say what they think,” he said. “We have people from the Lower 9th Ward who swear on a stack of Bibles they heard explosions. We have scientists say that it wasn’t explosions, that they heard water going through a levee.”

Lee suggests that the government is equally at fault either way: “Take your pick! We blew it up or we built it so flimsy that the (thing) broke. Take your pick!”

Anyway, his mantra “we let people say what they think” is exactly what I was told when I initially expressed my reservations about the project to Lee’s producer. I just hope he holds true to it, and doesn’t distort what I said. We’ll all find out soon enough.

UPDATE: The L.A. Times reports that Lee “felt that HBO would be the right venue for the documentary because ‘when people are mad, they curse. And I didn’t want to censor anything these people had to say.’” Heh. He certainly held true to that philosophy with me, asking me to read this post aloud and telling me I could say it with or without the asterisks, depending on how I felt it should be read. I eliminated the asterisks and said the f-word, because that’s how it reads in my head.

UPDATE 2: Cinematical has more about the movie, and the Washington Post reports that “an audience of 10,000″ will watch the premiere at the New Orleans Arena.

UPDATE 3: Still more from the Houston Chronicle and KLFY, which reports:

H-B-O says Lee interviewed more than 100 people — from diverse backgrounds — who gave a wide-range of opinions about the disaster, including Governor Kathleen Blanco, Mayor Ray Nagin, Doctor Michael Eric Dyson, Harry Belafonte, musicians Wynton Marsalis and Terence Blanchard, the Reverend Al Sharpton, actors Wendell Pierce and Sean Penn, rapper Kanye West and local residents.

And Brendan Loy! :)

UPDATE 4: Lee’s production company must have put out a major press release or something, because everybody is publishing articles about this movie. See, for instance, the Kansas City Star’s TV Barn and the Toledo Blade (scroll about halfway down the page). And the San Jose Mercury News reports:

Lee uses news footage from when Katrina slammed ashore and the days after. He also conducted dozens of interviews with government officials, historians, journalists and average citizens. “We let the individuals tell and guide the story,” he said. “That’s what filmmakers, good filmmakers, do. I wanted to record the raw feelings of these people.” …

The director admitted that some people may feel “Katrina fatigue” after all the coverage of the disaster. But, he contended, “people may think they know” everything there is to know, “but they don’t know.”

UPDATE 5: Here’s another Times-Picayune article.

Israeli officials say a rocket has hit Haifa, a major port city in northern Israel, The Associated Press reports. Visit CNN for the latest.

And No, it’s not a Ploy in tacit Republican support of Joe Lieberman. / Rather it’s that our scandal-spooked Governor and her party Chairman feel that Their candidate, Alan Schlesinger, should Know When To Fold ‘Em ~ which in their ethics-issues-Freaked opinion, is Now. / Alan, on the other Hand, always one to Take a Chance, allows as how he’ll Hold ‘em ~

Gov. M. Jodi Rell and GOP State Chairman George Gallo publicly urged fellow Republican Alan Schlesinger to reconsider his candidacy for U.S. Senate after learning Wednesday that he gambled at the Foxwoods Resorts Casino under an assumed name while an elected official in the 1990s.

Schlesinger said Rell and Gallo were overreacting to an innocent act: giving a fake name to obtain a Foxwoods “wampum card” that rewards casino patrons with meals, rooms and merchandise based on how much they gamble.

“I am not going to let this bother me,” said Schlesinger, who described himself as a recreational blackjack player. “I am going to continue in the race.”

Bradley Beecher, a former state police officer once assigned to the casino enforcement unit, told Rell by letter Wednesday that Schlesinger gambled under the name Alan Gold to avoid detection as a card counter, a player who improves the odds by counting the cards as they are played. Card counting is not cheating, but casinos often ban counters.

Which, btw, I’ve long thought is Outrageous. There oughta be a Law. :> (Yes, it’s the Liberal Answer to Everything. :) If you’re playing with assistance from Naught but your Braincells, you May Play. (Hm? Well sure the casinos would go out of business, so what, I don’t gamble anyways, got a Mental Block against learning Cardgames ~ no really, I do ~ so therefore, what’s the Publicpolicy Problem? :)

(Good Stuff Continued, after the Break…)

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…lightning struck. Pretty cool.