A   STATE OF THE UNION address from a president seeking reelection is always an odd event. Especially in the face of a divided Congress, the president’s proclaimed program stands little chance of enactment. The ambitious agenda of years past gives way to the knowledge, born of painful experience, of how difficult that will be to achieve. Meanwhile, the president’s proposals are made in the context of the race about to be joined, stacked up against the pie-in-the-sky promises of his opponents. The subtext is, inevitably, less a blueprint of the year to come than an explanation of why the president deserves reelection and a sneak preview of a second-term agenda. Read full article > >

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Editorial Board: State of the Union speech is full of soaring rhetoric but skips over some major challenges

As salary increases have gotten smaller in recent years, you might have consoled yourself with the knowledge that at least you were staying ahead of inflation. ¶Now you may not even be able to count on that. ¶ For the first time since 1979, the increase in salaries in the Washington area was less than the rate of inflation. Wages as a whole for metropolitan Washington rose just 0.04 percent in 2011, a new salary survey found. The rate of inflation in the region shot up to 4.1 percent in July (the latest month for which the figure is available) compared to a year ago. Read full article > >

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Inflation swallows raises in the Washington area

LONDON – News Corp. executive James Murdoch will be recalled for a second grilling about his knowledge of widespread phone hacking at the now defunct News of the World tabloid, a British parliamentary select committee announced Tuesday. Murdoch, son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the deputy chief operating officer of News Corp., will face fresh questions about discrepancies in evidence given to the committee investigating phone hacking. Read full article > >

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Murdoch recalled in phone hacking investigation

A parliamentary panel investigating the phone hacking scandal said on Tuesday that it would recall James Murdoch to answer more questions about his knowledge of hacking at his father’s media empire.

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James Murdoch to Be Recalled in British Hacking Inquiry

LONDON — British lawmakers were weighing Tuesday whether to recall James Murdoch for further questioning after two former News International executives suggested the scion of media magnate Rupert Murdoch had misled a committee about his knowledge of widespread phone hacking at the company’s News of the World tabloid. The executives’ comments came on a day that saw the hacking scandal back in the spotlight after a lull of several weeks, with Prime Minister David Cameron also facing lawmakers’ questions. Read full article > >

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Britain’s phone-hacking scandal dogs James Murdoch

Danny Kleinman does not fit the stereotypical persona of a hacker. He appears to shower often. He does not live in his basement. He has a girlfriend. Governments are not, to his knowledge, looking for him.

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Tech mogul? Nope. Any old hack will do.

You remember that boy named Sue? Well, here’s a nun named Schmuck. From my dispatch in the new issue of The Atlantic: IT WAS NOT UNTIL Sister Mary Schmuck left her home state of Kentucky for the Sisters of Mercy convent in Brooklyn, N.Y., a borough that operates under the influence of Yiddish, that she was confronted full force with the knowledge that a person with her family name faces certain regrettable challenges. “People would do double takes on the phone,” she said. “They were deciding whether to laugh or say something or not.” Many New Yorkers were forthright in asking whether she was playing them for fools. “I went to the terminal at LaGuardia one day, and there was a nice-looking ticket agent named Carlos-something–not a Jewish person–and he took my ID and said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’” She said she told Carlos, “Young man, schmuck is German for ‘jewel.’ It is fine that you grew up in a Jewish neighborhood. I live in one, too, near Williamsburg. Please give me my boarding pass.” Please read the whole thing here . Unless you’re busy.

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The Ballad of Sister Mary Schmuck

Question her knowledge of issues, she would clobber you without hesi­ta­tion.

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Don’t mess with Geraldine Ferraro

The fallout comes after the arrest of an American who killed two Pakistanis while working as a C.I.A. contractor without the knowledge of Pakistanis.

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Pakistani Agency Demands Data on C.I.A. Contractors

Test your knowledge on the surprising world of animal sex

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The birds and the bees

I don’t have much to say about what happened this weekend other than the obvious: it’s a tragedy, and I hope we are making adequate provision to care for victims who may now face decades of disability.  But as to the rest–we still don’t know why he did it.  Many of the people who rushed to blame this on their political opponents made themselves look like first class jerks, an impression that was not improved when we got more information, and they doubled down rather than simply admit that they had perhaps jumped to conclusions.   At this writing, it seems as though the violent rhetoric this guy was listening to came from the voices in his head, not the radio or cable TV.  There is no evidence that his ideas were significantly influenced by anyone, left or right, or that saying mean things about Gifford made his fixations worse; we’re talking about someone whose main grievance seems to have been that she wouldn’t address his concerns about a conspiracy to control the grammar of American Standard English.   This never looked much like an assassination, which usually targets a single politician, not nine-year-old girls who happen to be standing near them.  And after reading his ramblings, it’s pretty clear that he was some kind of crazy, and that his community turned away from his craziness rather than trying to intervene.  But even that judgement may be premature.  And anyway, it’s not enough to say that he was crazy–even paranoid schizophrenia does not elevate the risk of violent behavior by that much.  Most mentally ill people do not attack other people. I’m not sure why it is so necessary that we identify a culprit in all of this.  What good does it do us to know that he is, say, a paranoid schizophrenic?  It may matter in his sentencing, of course.  But it’s far from clear that this knowledge would let us do what we want, which is to prevent this sort of thing from happening again.  We are not going to prophylactically lock people up, and there is no “seems a little, well, off ” list to which we can add people we don’t want to have guns.  Even extended magazine bans wouldn’t have done much good, as he was carrying lots of spares.  As I understand it, he was essentially stopped because one of his spare magazines malfunctioned, something which may be more likely to happen on larger capacity magazines.  Anyone who practices a little can swap magazines faster than others can notice and decide to tackle them. Blame is a way of simulating control: if we can just identify who was at fault, we can stop it.  The problem is, when we can’t identify any very plausible target, we too readily go after implausible ones: Freemasons poisoning the wells, or Federal Reserve bankers plotting to monetize the national debt.  At worst, this tendency is dangerous, corrosive; at best, it leads us to make unproductive policy choices. A terrible thing happened.  We live in a universe in which terrible things happen.  That’s no one’s fault–or maybe, everyone’s fault.  Either way, I don’t see much in the way of solutions coming out of this–only terrible, terrible sadness.

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Tragedy in Arizona

In his hilarious autobiography, My Life and Hard Times , humorist James Thurber recounted his four-year struggle to pass Biology at Ohio State. Thurber was legally blind; but in those days before the Americans with Disabilities Act, the university made no adjustments to its curriculum for his condition. Biology was required; and to pass Biology, Thurber had to peer through the microscope and produce a sketch of living cells. The problem was, he couldn’t. For three straight years he saw only blankness. Then one day during his senior year, he suddenly began to sketch, producing “a variegated constellation of fleck, specks, and dots.” When he proudly turned in his work, the professor lost his composure. “That’s your eye!” he screamed. “You’ve fixed the lens so it reflects! You’ve drawn your eye!” The Thurber story leapt to mind when I read recently that the new Tea Party-inspired members of Congress are arriving in the Capitol with pocket copies of a document they apparently believe no one else has ever heard of. Their newly adopted House rules require that every bill be introduced with a statement of its “specific Constitutional Authority.” The new House majority will underline its “the Constitution is back, and it’s badass” approach by requiring (for apparently only the third time in history) that the entire document be read this Thursday in the chamber. That’s actually a good idea, and it would be especially nice if it could be read aloud by one of America’s great actors–Sam Waterston, say, or Meryl Streep, or Denzel Washington. There is a kind of quiet music to the Constitution, not only in the exuberance of the Preamble but in the epic list of Congressional powers in Article I § 8, the surfer-dude vagueness of Article II, and the tight-lipped sobriety of the Bill of Rights. There certainly would be no imaginable harm in our lawmakers listening to the Constitution; when it comes to the document, I draw my motto from Dean Wormer of Animal House : Knowledge is good. … House members don’t gather to listen to non-politicians, or to each other; or, in fact, to listen at all. They come to the chamber to fulfill their primary duty, getting on television. But we all know that House members don’t gather to listen to non-politicians, or to each other; or, in fact, to listen at all. They come to the chamber to fulfill their primary duty, getting on television. So they won’t be listening to a clear, coherent reading of the Constitution; instead, they are parceling it out among themselves clause by clause. No one is likely to listen to the Constitution as a whole during this solemn pageant; and more’s the pity. The “specific authority” rule is apt to spark some debates later in the session, as members challenge other members’ constitutional interpretations. That in the abstract is all to the good (and actually a good deal less of a change from current practice than the new majority pretends). But it helps in such a debate if the participants actually have read the Constitution–read it as a whole, and with an open mind. So far the right wing of the new majority seems to have read the Constitution much the way Thurber read his microscope; it has produced a drawing that by a bizarre coincidence looks much like its own policy agenda. Of course, this reading will not be the only opportunity for constitutional study on the part of the new members. We can all be heartened by the news that Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is going to hold a Constitution School for them. Rep. Bachmann’s qualifications as a constitutionalist are suggested by the statement she issued last September for Constitution Day, which says (not making this up): “It was in the Constitution that our founding fathers penned the infamous words, ‘We the People’.” Even I am not going to pretend to believe that Rep. Bachmann regards the Preamble as containing words “of ill fame or repute; famed or notorious for badness of any kind; notoriously evil, wicked, or vile; held in infamy or public disgrace.” I’m quite sure that she reveres the Constitution as much as I do; but her statement does suggest that she may have a slight problem understanding the meaning of ordinary words. Alas, understanding is essential to reading the Constitution. As for teaching it, we are told by our books of wisdom that if the blind lead the blind, the result may be suboptimal. I’ve spent the past two years reading the Constitution carefully, with no legislative duties to distract me, and what I see in the Constitution is not something that should give comfort to small-government, state’s rights, hard-money, no-internal-improvement conservatives. Conservative Republicans tend to go on and on about how the Constitution puts shackles on Congress. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) recently explained that “although the Constitution does give some defined powers to the federal government, it is overwhelmingly a document of limits, and those limits must be respected.” DeMint has, usually, a very clear view of his own eye. The intention to limit Congress is, to me at least, pretty hard to actually find in the Constitution itself. Article I, which sets up the House and Senate and lays out their powers, is the longest Article in the document. Its 2500 words amount to fully one-third of the Constitution, even today after 27 amendments. In Article I, about 450 words are devoted to specific powers of Congress; about half that many to things Congress can’t do. And in case you begin, Ron Paul-style, to claim that Congress can do only what is in Article I § 8, please look carefully at Article I § 8 cl. 18, which gives Congress the power “to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof .” (Italics mine.) If in fact you are Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), please volunteer to read the specific text that gives Congress the power to conduct the kind of investigation of the Federal Reserve you plan. You can take the day off, Dr. Paul; it isn’t there. To most readers, though, it is clearly implied–as are a lot of other powers Rep. Paul claims to find illegitimate, including the power to issue federal reserve notes instead of gold or silver certificates. New members: Please don’t leave the floor after George Washington’s name is read either, because the Constitution has actually been changed since 1787. The following amendments all add to Congress’s power: 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 19th, 20th, 23rd, and 24th. To the extent that you really care about the text, it’s hard to discern Sen. DeMint’s “overwhelming” list of limits. There really are significant limits in the Constitution, of course–but the majority of them are limits placed on the states. The Constitution’s text forbids the states from conducting their own foreign policy, printing their own money, taxing goods shipped in or out of their borders, or engaging in military operations. Many things they can only do by asking Congress’s permission; states can’t even negotiate among themselves unless Congress consents. In fact, the federal government retains veto power over each state’s constitution, which must create a “republican form of government.” The idea that states have “rights,” or that they are “sovereign,” appears nowhere in the text of the Constitution. I hope the members will listen carefully when their favorite amendment, the 10th, is read aloud. Conservatives like to sneak the word “expressly” into the amendment’s statement that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” It’s not there. That’s not an accident; the Articles of Confederation did have a similar provision including “expressly.” Madison, a nationalist in 1789, pointedly omitted the word in his proposal for what became the 10th Amendment. And note that the amendment doesn’t even “reserve” anything directly for state governments. The words “or to the people” mean something–they are not just another word for “state governments.” Listen carefully to these words as well, which are in the Constitution: “treaties . . . the law of nations . . . admiralty and maritime jurisdiction.” These words refer to something called “i nternational law ,” which was recently banned in Oklahoma but was a subject of much study for the Framers. Perhaps attempts to interpret the Constitution without it won’t be accurate. If the Members actually listen, they may notice that the document they are hearing is nationalistic, not state-oriented; concerned with giving Congress power, not taking it away; forward-looking, not nostalgic for the past; aimed creating a new government that can solve new problems, not freezing in place an old one that must fold its hands while the nation declines. Of course, others may not read the Constitution precisely as I do; fair enough. But surely it will be all to the good if debates about its meaning begin with the actual text, rather than with faintly remembered folklore relayed by a long-dead civics teacher. Perhaps textualism will inspire the new majority to actually try to solve our nation’s problems using the Constitution, instead of waving it about like great-grandpa’s Confederate cavalry sword to demonstrate that we can’t have health care, or environmental protection, or whatever other policy they oppose today. I doubt that will happen, but it can’t be ruled out; for in the books of wisdom we are also told that now we see through a glass darkly but will one day see face to face. The constitutional glass the Tea Party has peered through is dark indeed, and so far to me seems to reflect only their own angry eyes.

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The New House Majority and the Constitution: Through a Glass Darkly or Face to Face?

Pilots will now be able to move through airports safe in the knowledge that no one will be gawking at their privates. The Transportation Security Administration agreed Friday to exempt them from stepped-up security procedures that include aggressive…

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No Intrusive Screens for Pilots

Passengers can brush up on their knowledge of cinema with a newly created Tube map showing films shot in London.

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Films mapped on Underground route

Monopoly is 75 – test your knowledge of board games in out mid-week quiz.

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7 questions on board games