We've got a new "Think Again" column called, believe it or not, "I'll See Your Testicles...' (Catfight on the Right)" and it's here. (though perhaps they changed the title later in the day)

Also, I did an op-ed on the move away from AIPAC-style politics for American Jews for the IHT, which is up on the NYT site, here.

Classified section: I'm selling fifty or so Miles Davis cds--everything on Columbia during the key period--mostly in beautiful box sets, etc, and would love to sell the whole thing as a package. Email if genuinely interested. Also, I have two lousy seats for Bruce on 11/8 and one for 11/7 I need to get rid of. Email below....

Ok, here's Pierce

Charles Pierce
Newton, MA.

Hey Doc:

"Daddy ran whiskey in a big black Dodge/Bought it at an auction at the Masons lodge."

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: "My Mama Told Me So." (The B-3 Organ Summit): Price Waterhouse couldn't fake the numbers to calibrate exactly how much I love New Orleans.

Short Takes:

Part The First: Considering that the money behind the sainted American Football League fifty years ago belonged to the Hunt family in Dallas, the pre-eminent wingnut sugar daddies of the 1950's and '60's, it's pretty rich that, even in the beginnings of what may be a collective-bargaining armageddon, both the labor and management sides of the modern NFL have declined to be associated with the former Jeff Christie. The weeping in the wingnuttosphere leaves me strangely unmoved. It does, however, move me to gales of helpless laughter. Dude, I am not. You are not. You are, however, an idiot.

Part The Second: There is no way I am not buying this. "Here comes Santa Claus/Here comes Santa Claus/Right down Highway 61."

Part The Third: My knowledge of Russian libel law is admittedly limited, but I'm thinking this case is kind of a longshot.

Part The Fourth: Good nominees, I think this is a good list. But, check out the list of judges in the nonfiction category. Apparently, Waldo The Drunk Security Guard at Salon has a brother who works for the National Book Foundation. We're damned lucky Glenn Beck isn't a finalist, I guess.

Part The Penultimate: this was the best treatment of the whole Nobel business that I read anywhere. The Pooka McPhellimey and I will brook no debate on this point.

Part The Ultimate: The ongoing scandal in Texas regarding that state's eminently successful execution of Cameron Willingham has begun to fascinate me, even at a considerable distance. (For those of you who want to get up to speed quickly, Josh's joint has done an exemplary job of aggregating the local reporting.) In brief, it appears that Texas, over the signature of Governor Rick (Goodhair) Perry--pace, Molly I.--executed a fellow who was most likely innocent and did so on the basis of cheesy arson science apparently drawn from the extended research of Professor Otto Yerass. It also appears that Perry signed off on the execution despite his being aware of the fact that the evidence was so full of holes you could use it for a flute. I say these things "appear" to be true because there's an investigation going on down there, but it's being hamstrung because, every time the probe gets too close to his own personal nether regions, Perry fires another couple of the investigators. Perry, it should be recalled, is currently running for re-election in a hot Republican primary against Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-Token.)

What's disturbing--if undeniably compelling--about the case is the self-evident fact that Texas is apparently governed at the moment by a complete fucking barbarian. The evidence suggests quite clearly that Perry didn't give the hindquarters of a rat as to whether or not he was signing the death warrant for an innocent prisoner. And the evidence quite clearly suggests that Perry further will defy any attempt to judge his conduct in the matter. What is even more disturbing is that there is almost no chance that the state-sanctioned murder of Cameron Willingham, an innocent man, will be any kind of an issue in that aforementioned primary hooley. (They're kinda/sorta upset about the cover-up ( but not the crime itself.) The Texas GOP is exclusively the province of the party's knuckle-dragging base--Check out the state party platform sometime. It will curl your hair--and that base doesn't care how many mistakes are made in the death chamber as long as it keeps humming.

In that sense, it was the stormy petrel of what came to pass for the national Republican party once its various deals with various devils came due. For the conservative "movement," the death-penalty never has had anything to do with criminal justice. It was always about boosting your political testosterone count, or denigrating that of your opponents. It's about killing people to make yourself feel strong, or safe, and about bravely hiring people to do the killing for you. (Come to think of it. That's pretty much what the "movement" has for a foreign policy, too.) The governor of Texas likely arranged the death of an innocent man, either through deliberate neglect or through the abject dereliction of his constitutional duties. He is now engaged in a public cover-up that would have embarrassed H.R. Haldeman. That he still has a chance to stay in office is an indictment of our politics far beyond anything else that happened this week.

Name: Ed Tracey
Hometown: Lebanon, New Hampshire

Professor, it's not on-line as near as I can tell -- but Terry Adams once explained why NRBQ hired Lou Albano as a 'manager' of sorts: "Some situations in life are challenging to deal with -- but The Captain knows how to handle things".

I, too, will "stick with the Guiding Light".

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