The Weekender: Baking on Your Gas Grill

Note: It's been my habit to keep from posting serious stuff on the weekends; but when there's something more informal I have to get out, the weekend seems the best time to do it.

The other day it was in the range of 95 degrees in my town, and humid as hell. Since I don't have central air in my home, the best I can do is fight a kind of rearguard action against the heat, shutting blinds and keeping heat-generating activities to a minimum. Since this includes cooking, I often retreat to my backyard grill. But I wanted some bread and had none in the house; and since I had no energy to go out and buy some, I resolved to bake. On the grill.

I checked around the 'net for some tips and found none. None. Was this virgin territory? Had no one thought of this before? I couldn't believe it, but I got to baking anyway (figuring if there was a problem with my idea, there would have been a warning somewhere).

I chose to use my baking stone and an indirect approach: I fired up one of two burners, placed the stone over the unlit one, then closed the lid and waited. I'd hoped to get the stone to about 400 degrees, but my impatience made me throw the loaf on at only about 200. It took about 50% longer to bake (30 minutes vs 20 for this type of loaf), but otherwise was a complete success. Next step: making brick-oven pizza with a liquefied propane grill!

PS: As I was searching for the right image, I found this excellent article on grill-baking!

I hate them, but I can still be an objective observer.

Far be it from me to call anyone an "old bat," but...well, there's no good way to end that sentence; I will therefore start another.

"Veteran" reporter Helen Thomas, once a front-row participant in Presidential press conferences, is back in the news-making business. Having previously called George W. Bush the "worst President in American history" and taken to directing lectures to (instead of asking questions of) White House press secretaries, she's now decided that death is preferable to seeing Dick Cheney run for office.

Really. Here's the relevant quote: "The day I say Dick Cheney is going to run for president, I'll kill myself. All we need is one more liar."

There was some outrage when the Bush administration stripped Thomas of her front-row seat and stuck her in the back of the room, and some journalists' eyebrows rose when the President decided to thank reporters for their questions, rather than letting Thomas do it. But really, can you blame them? Terry Moran is bad enough, but to have someone so violently opposed to the administration still claim to be an objective journalist...well that just takes the cake.

---

Update 8/3/05: The original reporter from The Hill responds to the Helen Thomas frenzy in this item. His conclusion? It's Matt Drudge's fault.

Little did I know, being a creature of the typewriter/telegraph era of journalism, that cybergossip Matt Drudge would pounce on the item and transmit it to the farthest regions of the Internet universe, along with an unflattering photograph of Ms. Thomas. That was all Drudge acolytes needed to unleash a flood of e-mails condemning her — and me, as her unwitting accomplice.

I see now! It's not that you reported something unflattering about a colleague, it's that a lot of people read it! Shame on me for reading an item you reported.

Eisele's theory seems to be that Thomas is reviled by the right because she asks the tough questions, and that "Drudgoids" are lying in wait to "pounce" upon any misstep on her part. It's interesting that the man is so caught up in his own world that he cannot see what's right in front of him: when a person can't set aside her own biases, her impartiality can be--and should be--legitimately called into question.

The Estate-Tax Shuffle

In the midst of a sea of front-burner issues--the war in Iraq, the employment picture, the Roberts confirmation process--something has been smoldering away in the background and now seems ready to jump back to prominence: the issue of whether to permanently repeal the federal estate tax.

The situation is strange: Bush's 2001 tax cut bill will repeal the estate tax altogether in 2010, but it will return in 2011 because of the "sunset" provisions of the original legislation. And now, after many votes in the House favoring outright repeal, pressure is being brought on the Senate to follow through.

I am for repeal, for a number of reasons I will probably go into at another time. But I think the most interesting thing about the discussion is that the numbers the Left is throwing around are completely wacky. I was listening to NPR's Morning Edition today and heard a piece on the subject. Featured in it was Joel Friedman of an outfit called the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, who threw out a number of $1 trillion as the amount that the federal government stands to lose if the estate tax is repealed. They, and other groups, allege that this can only result in massive cuts in Social Security or Medicare benefits.

I say here and for the record, this is hogwash. Estate tax receipts are a very small part of the government's revenue stream, amounting to only about $21 billion in 2003. The CPBB will have you believe a) that the CBO's and JCT's projections are accurate, which is laughable in itself, b) that this money will be squirreled away in coffee cans by the heirs, and never spent in any taxable way (somebody buying a big boat and paying sales and capital-gains taxes in the process) or used in such a way that increases the tax base (say, someone starting a business), and finally c) that because of this, the government will have to borrow enormous sums in order to cover the gap. There is also no mention of what $1 trillion is in today's dollars, but I can tell you that it will be a lot less in 2021, when their examination ends.

But all credit to them--there's no better way of galvanizing public support than by frightening them with numbers that don't make sense.

The Derailment Campaign Gathers Steam

After a slow start, the fight over John Roberts' nomination for associate justice on the Supreme Court has heated up (or "hotted up," which they seem to say over in the UK). The past week or so has seen a good deal of attention focused on Roberts' wife, her participation in an anti-abortion organization, and her Catholicism. Now come the requests for documents.

Democrats seem to want the whole shooting match; Republicans want a managed release of information. These stances are entirely understandable from a political point of view, but I must confess that the Left's braying for every last shred of paper (witness John "You'll Get Them After the Campaign" Kerry's ironic demand) makes me uncomfortable. Take the issue of tax returns: I really don't see how these are relevant to Roberts' qualifications for the position. Perhaps he didn't adequately pay his nanny's Social Security taxes, perhaps he over-deducted his charitable contributions...but man, isn't this getting too personal? I imagine there's an interest to see whether Roberts made favorable rulings toward companies in which he had an investment interest, but this can be done away with through a schedule of investments, rather than determining how much he deducted for staples for his home office.

On the question of whether Roberts' records from his two stints at the White House should be released, I confess that I am of mixed mind. The argument against his Solicitor General documents being released makes a good deal of "common" sense to me: these represent what should have been, and what outside of the Executive branch would remain, protected by attorney-client privilege; and the idea that your confidential legal deliberations could be released to the public as soon as the completion of a President's term will surely chill debates. But I find the administration's invocation of the Presidential Records Act a bit confusing. There appears to be nothing in the statute to clearly exempt these documents from release, especially as more than the maximum 12 years have passed since the end of George H.W. Bush's administration. We'll have to see how this one plays out; but I have no doubt that what the opposition is after is not information, but dirt.

My "Man of the Year" for 1991

The nomination of John Roberts to fill O'Connor's seat at the Supreme Court seems to be dominating the news these days, and I think I can understand the media's obsession with the topic. For my own part, I've been giving a lot of thought to how the confirmation hearings will play out, given that the Democrats seem bound and determined to give him the grilling of his life. I mean, consider Chuck Schumer's beef that, during his confirmation to the appellate bench, Roberts declined to answer a question about which Supreme Court cases he disagreed with (a question, by the way, Orrin Hatch called "dumb" on the record). Now he's determined to get an answer, and he's not going to let anyone get in his way.

But to bring myself back from a ramble, the thing that's been occupying my mind lately is not Roberts' judicial opinions or the diversity of the court or anything quite so topical; instead, I've been replaying the Clarence Thomas hearings in my brain. I fear for a repeat.

Anita Hill, interestingly enough, has become something of an icon, a woman who could stand up to the pressure of a Senate inquiry into her personal life without breaking. And, I guess, from this limited standpoint, maybe there's something to that. But it should also be remembered that she was a woman whose flimsy story, contradicted by her own coworkers and supported by nothing other than her word, almost brought the career of an otherwise respected jurist to a disgraceful end. Here was a woman who admitted being told by Senate staffers that all she had to do was make a private allegation, and Thomas's confirmation would be derailed. Once things went public, the Senate did the "noble" thing, putting her on national television so she could tell her story, for story it was.

I still don't know for sure that she was lying, but I'm not sure it matters. There was no evidence for her assertion, no credible supporting witnesses, and a vast bulk of people and exhibits telling the opposite story--and the Senate thought it wise to put her on the national stage and let her go.

And so we come, at length, to the real reason I decided to post today: to say a belated thank you to John Doggett. You may not remember him, but he was the witness who came up late in the hearings and--in addition to contradicting several of her statements on the record--alleged that Hill was a jealous woman, one who'd once pursued him and harbored a grudge when he rejected her. The transcript seems dry now, but I confess that at the time I was riveted by the man's testimony. He was so intense, so sincere, that I could not help but believe him. And if I had any doubt, it was erased when Democratic committee member Howard Metzenbaum tried to destroy Doggett's credibility in a particularly blackguardly way--by using the unsworn testimony of one Amy Grant to raise the possibility that Doggett himself had sexually harrassed women (allegations Doggett vociferously denied)...not, of course, that any of that was relevant to the Thomas matter. I quote from the transcript:

SENATOR BIDEN: Excuse me, let me interrupt for a minute.

MR. DOGGETT: I'm pissed off, sir.

SENATOR BIDEN: It is totally out of line with what the committee had agreed to--

MR. DOGGETT: I'm sorry.

SENATOR BIDEN: --for there to be entered into this record any unsworn statement by any witness who cannot be called before this committee, and I rule any such statement out of order.

Now, I apologize for being out of the room. Was there any--

SENATOR METZENBAUM: I was only reading from Mr. Doggett's own statement.

MR. DOGGETT: My statement was not under oath, sir. That was a telephone conversation and they said we staffers would like to talk with you, we have a court reporter there. I'm a lawyer, sir, it was no deposition, it was not under oath, as Ms. Graham's comments were not under oath. And since you have brought this up, I demand the right to clear my name, sir.

SENATOR METZENBAUM: I was only reading from his statement, not from--

MR. DOGGETT: I demand the right to clear my name, sir. I have been trashed for no reason by somebody who does not even have the basic facts right. This is what is going on with Clarence Thomas, and now I, another person coming up, has had a "witness" fabricated at the last moment to try to keep me from testifying.

SENATOR METZENBAUM: Well, Mr. Doggett--

MR. DOGGETT: I am here, I don't care, she is wrong, and I would like to be able to clear my name, sir.

So I wish today, belatedly, to take my hat off to Mr. John Doggett, J.D., for standing his ground before a hostile Senate committee, for having the courage to come forward in the first place (when he had nothing to gain and very much to lose), and for displaying to the world what a sham those hearings really were. I pray that, when the time comes and the inevitable old bandmate of John Roberts surfaces to air some dirty laundry, we will at least take a considered whiff before hanging it on the national line.

Let the games begin!

Well, now we have it: the nomination of U.S. Circuit Judge John Roberts Jr. for associate justice of the Supreme Court. That was the easy part. I think this is a shrewd choice on the part of Bush, the kind of pick I'd been expecting: conservative, but not flamingly so; young, but not newly hatched. Bush simply doesn't have the juice at the moment to push through someone further to the right, and Roberts seems unlikely to trigger the "extraordinary circumstances" the Democrats will need to justify a filibuster.

Of course, this is only a first impression. My prediction, however, is significantly more cynical. As the Democrats have made clear, they will grill Roberts on a wide variety of issues unrelated to his actual judicial expertise. This is, of course, their right, but it seems to me that asking "Do you think Roe v Wade should be overturned" is a ridiculous question in the context of the Supreme Court, since the Court will be dealing only with the facts of specific cases before it. I suspect a strong reason behind this line of questions is to develop ammunition for later: should Roberts give some hint that he feels case X should be overturned, and then in a later ruling supports X on some narrow grounds, Democrats will be able to cry bad faith and use it as a weapon in future confirmation processes.

To carry my predictions further, I think the hearings will drag on and on. The Left will pound him on issue-related questions while backroom staffs look for that one bit of dirt (for Bork, all it took was the evidence that he'd once rented a porn video) that will allow them to claim "extraordinary circumstances" and pull out the big guns. In short, it will be ugly.

I hope I'm wrong. But I doubt it.

Returning From Vacation

You'd think that two weeks of vacation would leave me bursting with ideas for posting. To some degree, this is true; but what I feel most as I look over the events of the past few weeks is, frankly, exhaustion. A good deal has happened, of course: some items of great significance (such as the 7/7 London bombings), and quite a few others which have been expanded out of all proportion to their import (the Karl Rove issue strikes me as one of these). To deal with the big ones is a daunting prospect, and to deal with the small fry in some ways would be a waste. But in order for this blog to fulfill its primary functions--as a tool to help put my views into focus, but also as something of a political diary--I will post a couple of quick takes, perhaps to be expanded later.

• The Retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor I'm gratified that the initial posturing on this has receded for the moment, though it be only a few weeks' respite. I'm steeling myself for a replay of the Clarence Thomas hearings, since voices such as Chuck Schumer's and Ted Kennedy's have made it clear that it will be anything but professional and businesslike.
  
• The London Bombings I think it will be a while before the full impact of these on the Iraq war will be felt. Clearly, Britain is not rushing to judgment as Spain did in the wake of their 3/3, though they may well trend that way over time. Yet I am hopeful that Britain, for years scarred by IRA terrorism, will not fall into the trap of appeasing the terrorists.
  
• Karl Rove and Valerie Plame I've been following this story from the very beginning, and I still can't see where what Karl Rove did was so heinous or motivated by revenge. He did not "peddle" the story; a reporter called him. Wilson himself lied about who recommended him for the Niger job; it was not Dick Cheney (Rove was right to point out), but his wife at CIA that talked up his "qualifications." She was not an undercover operative; she'd been domestically desk-bound for something like six years. Her identity wasn't secret; it was common knowledge in Washington that Wilson was married to a CIA agent. Perhaps Rove would have done better to say nothing, but I'm not sure how telling the truth should get him fired.