Grant Us Peace

I suspect we Americans all have very different emotions. Rather than express mine in my usual verbose way, I’ll simply write two things: my thoughts are with my cousins who lost a father, a brother, and a spouse eight years ago this day. Their grief is only compounded this week with another loss last week. My thoughts are with them. They’re also with my aunt who lost her closest friend, and with my brother and sister who bore witness, and all those suffered losses.

I’ll also just mention some of today’s play list (if you can figure out what most of these songs have to do with this day, you probably are or should be a shrink):

Stockton Gala Days by 10,000 Maniacs
Pictures at an Exhibition as performed by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer
Waiting in Vain as performed by Annie Lennox
Dreamboat Annie by Heart
Midnight Train to Georgia as performed by the Indigo Girls
Used to Bad News by Boston
Do What Have to Do by Sarah McClaughlin
Walk Slow by Chris Isaak
Walk a Thin Line by Fleetwood Mac
The Wheel by The Grateful Dead
Clap Clap by Piccolo coro dell’Antoniano
Kaddish

Please share your songs and thoughts.

Are Employees of the CIA above the law?

Update: CNN’s Peter Bergen points out all the flaws in Dick Cheney’s logic here.

Over the last few days there have been a plethora of conservative commentaries that range in their argument from Dick Cheney accusing the Obama administration of a political vendetta to The Wall Street Journal repeatedly arguing that the prosecutions are just wrong headed (such as this one) to Debra J. Saunders in the SF Chronicle, arguing that the employees in question should be pardoned. There are at least two problems with the arguments now appearing on the street:

In all cases, torturer sympathizers seem to forget that we, the American People, don’t actually know what happened yet. That is what an investigation is for.
In some cases, the argument seems to be that members of the CIA who were acting on orders should be shielded by the fact they were just following orders. We tried people and convicted them, not withstanding that defense, in Nuremberg. They were known as Nazis. We as a society need to send a message that no one is above the law. It may take years to catch up with people who have been politically shielded from their crimes, but they will be brought to justice.
According to the CIA, torture has been shown to be unreliable.

That leaves the argument that the current investigation by the Justice Department is politically motivated. I would have to say that if one’s politics require one to believe that torture is illegal and immoral, then the answer is yes. Our morality throughout the world has been called into question. Do we condone the torturing of human beings? What, then, separates us from those we accuse of being evil?

On the other hand, I do not see any evidence that this is some sort of game of political Gotcha. While Debra Saunders writes that General Holder has in the past been inconsistent in his views when it comes to pardons, that means nothing in the context of a factual investigation.

As to Mr. Cheney, let him speak. He may, at best, be shielded by the fact that the vice president cannot order anyone in the executive branch outside his own staff to do anything. He would be the wrong person to go after, anyway. If President Bush ordered a crime to be committed, let him be held accountable, assuming a crime was committed.

Ground Southwest?

Airplane This Monday’s Wall Street Journal reports that Southwest Airlines has been flying 82 planes for years with parts of unknown quality in potentially critical locations. The report states that the pieces in question are supposed to “protect movable panels on the rear of the wings from hot engine exhaust.” That’s an obfuscated way of saying that the parts protect the aircraft’s flaps. Flaps are deployed at both takeoff and landing. If those fail, several bad things can happen:

If flaps on one wing fail to extend as expected, when the other side deploys, the plane could pitch.
If the flaps on both sides fail to deploy, the plane will not slow to a normal landing speed.
In the most unlikely event that the integrity of the flaps themselves fails, all manner of bad things could happen.

Most failure modes involving flaps are probably recoverable in and of themselves. However, these sorts of failures happen close to ground, leaving little time to react to problems.

The authors write in the article, however, that, “Both Southwest and FAA agree that the parts, some of which have been on the planes for up to three years without causing apparent problems, don’t pose an imminent hazard.”

While it’s good that they’ve not spotted a failure, many failures go undetected for years, during which metal fatigue sets in. Often there are indications of impending failure, such as cracks. Southwest has indicated that they will increase their inspections between now and the time the parts are replaced.

Here’s the rub: because the construction method of these parts is untested, one wonders whether inspections are sufficient to mitigate the problem. This leaves the FAA with a dilemna: make life miseerable for hundreds of thousands of passengers while SWA corrects the problem or take a risk with the lives of a few hundred people.

One way or another, SWA should face a stiff penalty for putting travelers at risk, and forcing the FAA into this situation.

France Eliminates Sunday Work Restrictions

Bureau of Economics The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the French government has relaxed restrictions on requiring retailers to close on Sundays. Americans will find this strange but most European countries are rather quiet places on Sundays, where many retailers are closed. This of course dates back to a time when one was expected to go to church and pray on Sundays, but now it is taken more simply as a day of rest.

Having lived in both the U.S. and Switzerland, I can say that there is something to both having to plan ahead one day so that you’ll have food for Sunday (and breakfast for Monday), as well, as something to be said for not running around one day per week.

Obviously this sounds rather paternalistic on the part of the governments, and it does originate from people who call themselves Fathers, but there is another side to who gets to play daddy. Someone, I think it was George Stephanopoulos, joked early in the Clinton administration, “If you didn’t work 14 hours on Saturday, don’t even bother showing up on Sunday.” The National Sleep Foundation conducted a survey that shows the average American works 46 hours per week, trying to compete with his or her neighbor, and our neighbors to the South, and China, and everyone else. Employers are the new Fathers in this world of globalization. Perhaps such laws pose a limit on employee productivity, and perhaps that’s just as well.

Oil

Gasoline Pump Anyone not under a rock can’t help but notice the price of oil having skyrocketed. $4.00 per gallon prices may seem like a lot, and indeed they are compared to what they were, and so President Bush has decided to wage a war to attempt to get domestic production up. That means drilling off the shores of Florida and California and in the ANWR National Reserve in Alaska.

It’s a smooth political move. He figures now that prices are high he can play this card. However, many economists would disagree that this would do a thing to bring down the cost of oil. First of all, many believe that speculators are stepping in and buying up oil and storing it, thus driving up demand. These guys have a lot of money and might well be able to absorb any increased supply. The proof is what happened when Saudi Arabia announced that it would increase oil production by 200,000 barrels per day. Prices went up. The fact is that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has been asleep at the wheel. These people are responsible for keeping speculators in check, and where they fail, we could sink speculators hard by selling lots futures from the Strategic Petrolium Reserve. That would really stick it to them.

But even if prices had gone down, the increased retrieval of oil doesn’t translate into the increased production of gasoline, as we are driving our refineries to capacity. Building new refineries in the United States is as popular as drilling, because it is a messy business with serious environmental consequences. You can trust me on this: I come from New Jersey, home of toxic waste.

Fortunately the President’s efforts (and by extension those of Senator McCain) to spoil our shores and Alaska are transparent. Unfortunately, our energy dependence problem will not go away any time soon.

In case you’re wondering, yes I am insulated just a bit by the oil increases. A small fraction of those increases have come from the weakened dollar. However, the dollar has stablized but oil prices have not. The way I am more insulated than I was in California is that I now have a commute from upstairs to downstairs instead of a 120 mile round trip commute. This is better than a Prius, but sometimes lack of colleague contact is a problem.

But our house is heated with oil, and many of the products we use require energy to create.