As for Roberts, I have to say I do not object to his appointment. First, as a former litigator, I know that it is next to impossible to tell what an attorney believes personally by looking at the positions he or she has taken in briefs and memoranda. You make the strongest possible argument for your client, even if you think your client is despicable. It's particularly hard when an attorney works for the government; the chief executive (whether mayor, governor or president) usually has inflexible, publicly-stated positions that an individual attorney can influence only in the most miniscule ways. It makes more sense to look at a sitting judge's opinions, but Roberts hasn't had time to make much of a track record. As the Boston Globe notes:

The record shows him arguing both for and against affirmative action, for and against environment regulations. As a lawyer for Bush I, he wrote that Roe v. Wade should be overruled. As a nominee for the appeals court he called it settled law.

Two other points underlie my lack of objection to Roberts. First, it is simply silly to expect that George W. Bush will choose the same person to appoint to the Court that I would. The question has to be not, "Would I choose this person?" (which seems to be the criterion a lot of groups use), but "Does this person -- although more liberal/conservative" than I am -- represent a reasonable portion of the American mainstream?" By that criterion, Roberts is acceptable. When one of my former law professors, Robert Bork was nominated to the Court, he failed that test. I helped draft the memorandum the Women's Bar Association of the State of NY (WBASNY) sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee opposing Bork's confirmation. In his zeal to secure the nomination, Bork had placed himself way out on the right-wing fringe of American thought, and he was hoist on his own petard. When Anthony Kennedy was nominated in his place, WBASNY asked our committee to reconvene and determine whether it was advisable to take action on this nomination. Kennedy, unlike Bork does represent rational conservative thought, and WBASNY -- whose members represent the entire spectrum of positions likely to reach the Court -- took no formal action. In sum, I look for an intelligent, competent lawyer (although the Constitution does not require that the Justices be lawyers), who is neither an ideologue (like Scalia and Thomas) or a nut, like Bork. One could argue that Roberts is too much not an ideologue (see the Boston Globe article), but it also seems to me that the insistence of so many groups on one-issue "litmus tests" is the cause of that.

The second point ties directly into the first: when a Justice is a competent, intelligent lawyer, and not an ideologue, it is not possible to be certain how he or she will vote. A case in point: Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy were nominated by Reagan, and David Souter by George H. Bush, with an eye to reversing Roe v. Wade. Yet in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992, those three Justices came down firmly in support of a woman's right to choose, among other things striking down "the spousal notification requirement, stating that it gave too much power to husbands over their wives and would worsen situations of spousal abuse." Appropriately, these Justices said,

Men and women of good conscience can disagree, and we suppose some always shall disagree, about the profound moral and spiritual implications of terminating a pregnancy, even in its earliest stage. Some of us as individuals find abortion offensive to our most basic principles of morality, but that cannot control our decision. Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code. (Emphasis added.)

That sentence must have come as a nasty shock to the abortion opponents who thought they had packed the Court.

Similarly, President Eisenhower appointed conservative California governor Earl Warren to be Chief Justice, only to have Warren preside over the most liberal Supreme Court in recent history. As hard as it is for ideologues at either end of the political spectrum to believe, it is possible for judges and lawyers to put their obligation to society above their personal positions. That I believe is the most important quality in Justices, not that they agree with me on any issue, but that I can trust them not to make the Court their own personal sandbox. It happens more often than non-lawyers know, because most non-lawyers only pay attention to bellwether issues, which make up, in fact, a miniscule portion of the work of the Court. This is the quality that makes a good judge or Justice, not whether he or she agrees with me.

First, at 2 pm EDT, is "Failure is not an Option", based on the memoir by former NASA flight director Gene Kranz. Next, at 6 pm, "Apollo 13", the Ron Howard-Tom Hanks effort that received 9 Academy Award nominations. ("Houston, we have a problem.") Finally, "Not an Option 2: Beyond the Moon", also based on Gene Kranz' memoirs, dealing with NASA's efforts from the 1973 launch of SkyLab through the Discovery tragedy.

Stay tuned. Sputnik Child will be glued to her set.

Shefar'am is a little village in the northwest of Israel, near Haifa and the Lebanese border, and most of its residents are Palestinians, some Christian, some Muslim. Almost no one outside of Israel had ever heard of Shefar'am then. Two weeks ago, though, the whole world heard about it; a deserter from the Israeli Defense Forces went to Shefar'am and killed four residents who were riding on a bus, injuring twelve others. That this should happen in Shefar'am is a painful irony.

We went to Shefar'am to visit "The House of Hope", a center of The Community of the Cross of Nails (CCN). CCN is an organization founded in the ruins of Coventry Cathedral during WWII. They believe that "Truth + Forgiveness = Reconciliation". The House of Hope was run at the time by a man named Elias Jabor, a Palestinian Maronnite Catholic whose family has lived in the region practically since the days of Ur. His mission, in his words, was "to bring Palestinian teenagers and Israeli Jewish teenagers together and let them scream at each other until they get tired enough to listen to each other." Elias' family and staff welcomed us with the boundless hospitality that represents Middle Eastern culture at its best, presenting us with a sheet cake decorated with the U. S. flag, in honor of "America's birthday".

The highlight of the trip, though, was a visit to the synagogue. There are no Jews living in Shefar'am. During the days of Turkish occupation, before WWI, Jews were not allowed to live in Haifa, and there were Jews in Shefar'am. When Britain kicked the Turks out of Palestine, the ban was lifted and virtually all of the Jews in Shefar'am moved to Haifa. The last Jews who left Shefar'am gave the keys of the synagogue to the Muslim family that lived next door, and for more than 90 years, that family has handed down the keys to synagogue -- and the responsibility for maintaining it -- from generation to generation.

The synagogue is beautifully kept: the stucco was freshly whitewashed; inside was swept and dusted; the Torah was properly and respectfully stored in the Ark. The Muslim family considered themselves honor-bound to maintain the building in the condition in which it was turned over to them. And every year, on the High Holy Days, the descendants of the Jews who left Shefar'am return and get the keys to the synagogue from the Muslim family, confident that all will be as it should be.

The powerful reality here, is that in 1915, the Jews who moved to Haifa knew that they could trust and rely on the Muslims of Shefar'am to honor and maintain the synagogue. As that realization dawned on us, we all just started to cry. It's all so simple. For thousands of years, Jews and Muslims and Christians had lived together in Palestine, and it had all been so simple. Why do we make things so hard?

1989 was in the middle of the first intifada, and even then, this town was a model of what all of the Middle East could be (and more or less had been for centuries). And this was the town where, in his rage, 19-year old Natan Eden Zada chose to go to kill Arabs.

This morning, Miles O'Brien on CNN was speaking with an Iraqi diplomat, a Sunni, about the development of the Iraqi Constitution. Showing a map of Iraq, O'Brien pointed out the boundaries drawn by the British when Iraq was created, designating areas of control for Sunnis, Shi'ites and Kurds. The Ambassador commented that these boundaries were really rather arbitrary: "We have all been living here together for hundreds of years."

It used to be very simple. Now, people whose grandparents lived as neighbors now hate each other, just because of who they are and where they are, even though neither of these things has changed. We've made it very hard.

Each year, the nightly newscasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC devote a total of roughly 24,900 minutes to news. That is based on an average of 20 minutes of news in each of these newscasts every night -- the rest of the half-hour is commercials. In 2004 the ABC, CBS, and NBC network nightly newscasts aired a total of only 26 minutes on genocide and fighting in Sudan. ABC devoted 18 minutes to Darfur coverage, NBC five and CBS only three. By contrast, Martha Stewart's woes received 130 minutes of nightly news coverage. Stated differently, only about 1 in every 950 minutes of news coverage in 2004 covered the genocide in Sudan.

See the Tyndall Report at http://www.tyndallreport.com/yearinreview.php3 and American Journalism Review, "Déjà vu", Feb./March 2005 at http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=3813

Data specific to June 2005 shows that

A quantitative monitoring of all news segments aired in the month of June 2005 on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FoxNews, and MSNBC shows that coverage of the genocide in Sudan was overwhelmed by stories of far less consequence including the "runaway bride," the Michael Jackson trial, and Tom Cruise's new movie and relationship with actress Katie Holmes. During a month when new fighting and aerial attacks erupted in Sudan, Americans learned almost nothing about these developments from major television news media.

• During the entire month of June 2005, the major network and cable news station -- broadcasting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week -- aired only 126 segments on Sudan.
• In contrast, these same stations aired a combined 8303 segments on the "runaway bride", the Michael Jackson trial, and Tom Cruise.
• Major news media aired 65 times as many segments on these trivial matters as it did on the fighting and genocide in Sudan.

Overview of Research and Methodology

This, by itself is inexcusable, but the networks have gone further. NBC, CBS, NBC-4, CBS-9, and Gannett (the parent corporation of CBS-9) have refused to air a commercial prepared by BeAWitness, purchased by the American Progress Action Fund and the Genocide Intervention Fund. The networks haven't given a reason for the refusal. Please add your voice to the request for a reason and a reconsideration of the decision.

No one who is passionate about food can ignore the issues arising from the way food is produced in this country. We produce huge quantities of food -- which, undeniably, allows us to help feed people beyond our own borders -- but the cost of that is abused animals in factory farms, irradiated and genetically engineered foods, hormone-ridden beef, antibiotic resistant bacteria and, certainly not least, tasteless food.

PBS is preparing a series on American agriculture called American Heartland. This would be interesting in itself, but, surprisingly, the Union of Concerned Scientists has reason to believe that the program "will portray an entirely positive portrait of U.S. agriculture . . . Despite an in-depth approach spanning 20 episodes, the series producers appear unwilling to give time to any concerns about agribusiness, from the impact of pesticides on human health, to pollution and foodborne illness caused by industrialized meat production, to the debate over genetically engineered crops". That the series is sponsored by Monsanto and the Farm Bureau lends support to their concern. UCS is asking that viewers urge PBS to ensure that American Heartland presents a fair and complete (thought I was going to say "balanced, didn't you?) picture of the state of American Agriculture.

I urge you to join UCS in urging PBS to tell the full story.

It has always difficult to watch the situation in the Middle East detachedly; the suffering of the people is universal and apolitical. And it is difficult to write or speak about the situation without stepping on the deeply-held beliefs of sincere people. But as I watch the forced evacuations of Israeli Jews from the Gaza Strip, and trying to consider it in an historic context, I am struck by how short-sighted nationalist leaders can be, and how long the mistakes of government rulers outlive them, and cause suffering well into the second and third and fourth generations (and beyond)

I used to think about this a lot when I was much younger, when the Arab states still believed they could "push Israel into the Sea." It always seemed to me that, just as the roots of WWII can be found in the Treaty of Versailles that ended WWI, the last 60 years of pain and death in the Middle East flow directly from decisions made by those in power at the end of the 1948. During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, between 520,000 and 900,000 Palestinians became refugees, some expelled, some leaving the newly created State of Israel voluntarily, expecting that, in short order, the combined Arab nations would overcome the fledgling Israel Defenses Forces, and they could return home. (In fact, Field Marshall Montgomery, the British hero of El Alamein) predicted that Israel would be defeated within two weeks.) They were wrong. The War dragged on and ultimately, the Arab States had to accept that they had failed to destroy Israel. Ralph Bunche negotiated the 1949 Armistice Agreements, officially ending a War that actually continues to this day.

During the Lausanne Conferences which led to that Armistice:

Israel proposed to allow 100,000 refugees to return, this number including an alleged 25,000 who had returned already surreptitiously and 10,000 projected family-reunion cases. The offer was conditional on a full peace treaty that allowed Israel to keep all the territory it had captured and on the Arab states agreeing to absorb the remaining refugees. The offer was rejected by the Arab states. Wikipedia, "The Palestinian Exodus"

These people -- and their decendants -- have remained refugees for more than 50 years, because, with the exception of Jordan, the Arab states refused to absorbed them, convinced that Israel could be forced to accept them, even after the Six Day War which was really the last time it was viable for an Arab leader to pretend that Israel could be destroyed.

That's half the equation. The other half is the belief of Israeli leaders that Israel could truly become the home for all the world's Jews, and once more occupy and control "Eretz Israel" -- the geographic biblical homeland of the Jews. As pointed out in this article in last week's New York Times Week in Review, Why 'Greater Israel' Never Came to Be, (free registration required) similar unfulfilled assumptions about the likelihood that Israel would become the center of the world's Jewish population have led to the suffering we see on the news today.

David Kimche, who was director general of Israel's foreign ministry in the 1980's, noted: "The old Zionist nationalists' anthem was a state on 'the two banks of the River Jordan.' When that became impractical, we talked about 'greater Israel,' from the Jordan to the sea. But people now realize that this, too, is something we won't be able to achieve."

The failure has two main sources. First, contrary to the expectations of the early Zionists, . . . most of the world's Jews have not joined their brethren to live in Israel. Of the world's 13 million to 14 million Jews, a minority - 5.26 million - make their home in Israel, and immigration has largely dried up. Last year, a record low 21,000 Jews immigrated to Israel.

Old dreams die hard, and the cost is paid in the misery and pain of individual people's lies. For more than 50 years, Palestinians have lived in camps, because the Arab leaders led them to believe that Israel would vanish and they could go home in triumph. Today, Israel settlers are losing their homes, being carried onto buses by Israel settlers, because Israeli leaders encouraged them to settle in occupied areas.
And (with due respect to Spider Robinson) "God is an iron, which is why irony is the ruling principle of the Universe": It is not Shimon Peres, or some other Labour Party liberal who orders the evacuations. It is unwavering hawk Ariel Sharon. It may be that this is part of a bid to keep more of the West Bank (part of Eretz Israel) by giving up Gaza (which is not). BeliefNet presents an interesting discussion of this perspective by "an Orthodox Jew, [who believes] God gave [the Jews] the land of Israel" and says, "That's why I know we must pull out of the occupied territories."

Still, it was sobering to hear an Israeli woman saying that Sharon's actions will be written into the lamentations of Tisha Bav, the three weeks during which Jews mourn the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the "resultant physical and spiritual displacement" of the Jewish people.

[Wikipedia is a good starting point for reading more on the history of the conflict in the Middle East, with references to external sources reflecting varying views.]

Sent to Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky by senior State Dept. officials, the memo

noted CENTCOM's "focus on its primary military objectives and its reluctance to take on 'policing' roles," but warned that "a failure to address short-term public security and humanitarian assistance concerns could result in serious human rights abuses which would undermine an otherwise successful military campaign, and our reputation internationally." The memo adds "We have raised these issues with top CENTCOM officials." National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 163, posted 17 August 2005

We all know how much attention was paid to those warning. The GWU report reviews this and other relevant memoranda in more detail.

In fact, I think the sun will turn purple before Bush speaks with her. Even if he did, we all know that nothing he says to her will begin to resemble what we now know that is the truth about the War in Iraq. That's not the point (or I think the real goal). His refusal to speak with her, his inability to face a bereaved mother and risk be asked pointed questions about the War, is the real point here.

I say I am surprised to hear this nonsense "again" is because it sounds just like the nonsense people like Bull Connors used to say about Civil Rights demonstrations in the 60's. And, I admit, the man's southern accent made me wonder if I was having a nasty flashback. No such luck. As Mark Twain might say, this country will never run out of flatheads.

But my problems are just fallout from the Tech Gods main tantrum.

If you've been living in an underground cavern, perhaps you don't know that the Shuttle Discovery has been plagued by the same crumbling insulating foam that led to Columbia's destruction and the death of seven astronauts. The only answer to the frustration I feel is that it must pale before that of the people who work at NASA. Two years of work were fruitless; the Discovery astronauts may (we fervently pray) be saved the fate of their predecessors only by the fact that the insulation on Discovery broke loose a few seconds later in its launch sequence than on Columbia's, and that we were watching for the problem, and could try to repair the damage. The live footage of Stephen Robinson's extravehicular repairs to the Discovery was stunning. Now we just wait with our hearts in our mouths for the re-entry, already delayed for 24 hours.

I think it's time for NASA to face facts and retire the shuttle fleet. They've been in service for more than 20 years. We have new technologies, and we need a new approach. Infinite reusablity may not be the best design objective for spacecraft.

Reusability was a response to people's complaints that the Space Program cost money that could be better used on Earth. My response is that that view blinks the kinds of advances in science and technology that are a direct result of the Space Program. Medical advances, technology to assist the disabled, diagnostic technology have all been boosted by knowledge gained through the Space Program.

Money will always be an issue, of course. There will never be so much money that there won't be people who want more for their projects and less for yours. Unfortunately, we now have to measure the cost of the Shuttle Program in lives as well as dollars, and that calculus is not attractive.

What we need now is some sensible Space Advocacy. For some excellent ideas, try this article from ad Astra, the magazine of the National Space Society