Ordo Amoris

2006-06-11T19:01:00.000-04:00

We pray for rain, we look to a star, we sweep.

2005-07-20T09:49:00.000-04:00

So we can look forward to the usual idiocy that accompanies nominations by Republican presidents: either Roberts will be an "extremist" because he has dared at some point to voice the obvious, that Roe v. Wade's Constitutional underpinnings are virtually nonexistent, or he will be derided for not being "forthcoming," for "stonewalling." Men like Senator Kennedy view judicial confirmation proceedings as the proper place to administer a de facto oath of allegiance to abortion on demand.

Ah, well, it couldn't happen to a nicer man. Stuart Buck relates Justice Scalia's comments on Roberts's temperament as a litigator:

For what it's worth: A few years ago, Justice Scalia said to a friend of mine that he and other Justices thought of John Roberts as far and away the best Supreme Court litigator in the country. I asked the friend why Justice Scalia said that, and (paraphrasing from my memory) the answer was something like this: "No matter how intense the questioning, Roberts is never flustered, and is always able to calmly answer any question whatsoever, while skillfully weaving in the substantive points that he wanted to make in the first place."

This is going to be good.

2005-07-18T11:52:00.000-04:00

The New York Times runs with this headline: Reporter Says He First Learned of C.I.A. Operative From Rove:

Matthew Cooper, a reporter for Time magazine, said the White House senior adviser Karl Rove was the first person to tell him that the wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was a C.I.A. officer, according to a first-person account in this week's issue of the magazine.

The lead paragraph gives lefties their red meat: Rove outed a C.I.A. covert agent. Reading down four paragraphs, however, gives us:

Mr. Cooper said in his article that Mr. Rove did not mention the name of Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie Wilson, or say that she was a covert officer. But, he wrote: "Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson's wife worked at the C.I.A. and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes. Did Rove say that she worked at the 'agency' on 'W.M.D.'? Yes.

Here are some facts we never get in the article:

The 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act defines the crime as applying only to "intentionally [disclose] . . . information identifying [a] covert agent . . . , knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States." [emphasis added]
According to Section 426, Paragraph 4 of the U.S. Code, a covert agent for the C.I.A. would have to be stationed outside of the U.S. sometime within the previous 5 years. According to Wilson's own book, Plame has lived in the Washington with Wilson since their marriage in 1997, six years before the revelations to Cooper and Novak.

This isn't semantic quibbling. The law was very specifically drafted to protect undercover agents from being targeted for killing by having their cover blown without restricting important freedoms of speech and the press. It's possible that Plame was a covert agent as defined by the relevant laws; however, that is far from apparent, and if it's far from apparent to us at this late date, it was likely not apparent to Rove, who didn't even know Plame's name.

But lefties who never had any use for the CIA during the Cold War, who routinely claim that the CIA a force of evil around the world, now have the cojones call Rove "treasonous" for possibly, inadvertantly doing what they have applauded when performed by men like Phil Agee intentionally.

2005-05-26T15:43:00.000-04:00

Like the time Shadow and I went swimming at...
I can't think of her name at the moment...
but she warned us; "You better not pee in my pool! My parents put a special dye and it will turn red if you do!"
Shad and I, standing about 30 feet apart, just stared at each other for a bout a minute
and then I said; "I don't see any red, do you?"

2005-05-26T11:57:00.000-04:00

Flying. Two brothers. Who is that man? The father? "Benighted." "How can such a man live?" Abandoned a way of life. The bear of a man. He fought the law (and the law won).

2004-06-04T23:56:00.000-04:00

I commit the fatal modern sin of actually having one, a point of view on the world and man that is not up for negotiation. Better that than a constantly shifting POV that
views that patrimony of the past as superfluous, that opposes same sex marriage one day and enthusiastically supports it the next, that constantly has one finger to the wind and another on the remote control, surfing for the next bit of media distraction, swayed by polls and a constant deluge of useless information and utterly unable to place events in any sort of context not manufactured by the sophists of the day.

For the record, my perspective: man is endowed by his Creator with inherent dignity and rights but burdened by the Fall with a nature that is broken, sinful, and weak and which spreads that burden to the entire world. The political problem is how best to recognize that dignity and those rights and protect them from the violence, chaos, and anarchy that is inherent in such a fallen world. It requires both civic and martial virtues (courage, honesty, honor, integrity, strength, nobility, purity), and, in a health polis, those 2 sets of virtues should reinforce each other rather than contradict each other. It requires a willingness to defend the innocent through strength of arms.
What's your perspective?

2004-04-28T21:39:00.000-04:00

Invite

What's singing inside me? I do not know.
No more floating, no more suspense, please.
Something says, "Not so, not so, not so,"
You've left me hanging on your stage whispers,

Your promises of breaking and entering,
That you would burst into this room and find me
Hiding, alone in my narrow shame,
Deadbolted and hole blocked by a skeleton key

Perhaps I should play the Spartan,
Mastering myself, closed mouth, no syllables,
But I am no match for all my fears,
Writhing and breeding in sawdust and cables.

2004-04-28T21:36:00.000-04:00

Finding Something

"Before you were, I am."

You sing this inside me, you let me know.
I'm begging for an end to Floating Ophelia.
Something says, "Not so, not so, not so,"
Leaving me hanging on your stage whispers.

All the promises of breaking and entering,
That you would burst into this room and find
A thousand dead and dying Spartans,
And me hiding, alone in my narrow shame.

None of them opened up their mouths to cry,
But I was no match for all my fears,
Writhing and breeding in sawdust and cables
And overwhelmed by the wolf.

Perhaps I should play the Spartan,
Mastering myself, closed mouth, no syllables,
But I am no match for all my fears,
Writhing and breeding in sawdust and cables.

2004-04-28T21:32:00.000-04:00

Let Me Ruin Your Life
Let me ruin your life by showing you one color at a time.
I'll tantalize you, drive you to despair.
Let me take your hands and touch them so softly,
Kiss away into the creases, into the places where you think
You used to be.

Your life, your life -- what were you going to do with it, anyway?
Let me damage it, just a little bit, dust you up a bit.
Don't be the tiresome boy who hoards his Halloween candy. Let me give you a welt to remember me by

Look at all the things you'll miss -- Miss Mary Anne,
Good friends at the beach house, your son taking his first steps.
These are the precious things that can be lost,
The fine threads of your suit coming apart.

Nights that should be spent in dreamless sleep, I come to you,
Cracking open the door a space, I squeeze in,
Looking down beside the bedframe and say,
"Let me ruin your life."

2004-04-07T23:02:00.000-04:00

Dear Mike,

A letter (formerly on real paper) out of nowhere.

Remember how I used to be so desperate to get a letter out to you that I would grab anything at hand (pizza box, lunch bag), fold it, address it, and stick a stamp on it, to get a message to you?

Having a hard time right now. Work is a joyless treadmill, and my days are filled with anxiety. I was browsing the book Waiting With Gabriel, and it really moved me. It's about a woman whose unborn child is diagnosed with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome. That's what my brother John's son Dominic died of, shortly after birth.

2003-03-04T00:30:00.000-05:00

What about the walkman?

The soundtrack that follows you?

Why do we love music that is loveless. The ballad, that is one thing -- or is that the difficult thing to understand? To sing about a quest, to listen to a song about something romantic, something worth dying for -- that requires an intense belief. Act of faith, commitment. Is that the unusual, unnatural thing?

Think of all those old Bowie songs. Is there the sound of love in Aimee Mann? Mebbe, or mebbe it's just crabby, pinched bitterness and cynicism wrapped in pop.

2003-02-24T22:49:00.000-05:00

Television in the far room, dead light upon
My mother's face, dull, colors washed and drained,
Hearing aid shut off, she soaks into the downstairs bed,
In wordless flight from everyday harpies.

Blight and worms have feasted
On the unsprayed peachtree in my father's yard.
He's lost the taste of peaches, wandering, misted
In damp days that have the demeanor of night.

Look out and await the Christmas sun,
Remember the clear days, they did happen.
Amnesiac night is here, some of us are awake.

I read the story of St. Francis to my son, your grandson
The stories break my heart to read
I wish I was an actor, rather than writing this tragedy,
or parody, that's more what it seems like.

Yes, I need to see it as something other than tragedy.
But all I have now is hope -- not conviction, not vision.
I'm lost in stacks of books and alternate routes,
ambiguous directions, half remembered things

The things that always save me, or salve me,
are things like Hamlet's "too solid flesh"
Am I to stand witness by reporting what I see
peripherally? It blinds to see it straight on.

There's too much happening here -- my lack of steady work,
being a forty year old man, wondering where my sense of singing is,
music, those soaring sensations.

2002-08-03T10:44:00.000-04:00

What on earth was it that William Safire called these doodads? "Commonplace books."

2002-07-30T16:12:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the order of my loves. Translating to English as "the order of loves," "Ordo Amoris" takes part of its inspiration from St. Augustine. In a sense it represents my attempt to publicly put find a proper order in my enthusiasms, whims, and interests. In no particular order:

Technology
Literature
Economics
U.S. and World Politics
Film
Culture
Religion, Belief, and Practice