Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:50 AM

I've never given much thought to my gender when I blog. I'm a woman and I'm a blogger, but I rarely think of myself as a "woman blogger." And, idealistically, I like to think that others look on me the same way. [For more of my thoughts on this, see these two posts from early March.]

But I noticed something interesting in the reaction to the weblogs.com takedown. It seemed like the female critics were being subjected to much more attention and vitriol than male critics.

For example, over on The American Mind, Sean wrote:

From my brief encounters with Winer I've learned he's one of the most thin-skinned and stubborn webloggers around. Everyone else can be wrong, but not him. He can be quite controlling at meetings especially when things aren't going as smoothly as he'd like.

That's no worse and no more personal than anything I wrote about DW. I met Sean at the first BloggerCon (he was seated directly behind me), and I think we both met DW that day. Over at the TTLB Blogosphere Ecosystem, Sean's site gets twice as many visits as mine and three times as many sites link to him. And yet, the comments to his blog are completely devoid of any criticism of what he wrote in this or any other of his posts on DW.

Second observation relates to the nature of the comments I received yesterday. Almost nobody addressed any of the points I was making. Instead, folks got nastily personal, trying to attack (their assumptions of) my appearance, my sexuality, my life...

I don't know whether more women have posted criticism of DW than men (it certainly seems odd, given that outside LJ, more men blog than women), but we certainly seem to be getting flamed on this issue far beyond our numbers or influence or the heat of our posts.

Reading further, I was particularly appalled to see some comments by DW himself which state:

Next time Powers or Suitt or Sessum try to insert hysterics, we can swarm them with love, ask them to stand back until the problem is clear, to stop meddling

Where do I begin in what's wrong with this statement. How effing sexist and condescending can he get? He names only female bloggers and refers to their comments as "hysterics" (people do know the etymology and history of that term, right?). Meddling? There's another disempowering term. And what kind of mental image do you get picturing male bloggers "swarming female bloggers with love"? That almost sounds threatening, though I'm sure he'd be quick to psychoanalyze me for saying so. All that was missing was calling them (us?) "girls" and patting them on the head.

Shelly at Burningbird continues this train of thought much more eloquently than I, and I recommend everybody read her post. And Jeneane has also made numerous excellent comments this week. [I suppose I owe DW thanks for introducing me to some other intelligent female bloggers whom I might not otherwise have met!] And, as I've said before, the LawMeme article is probably the best objective explanation of the situation; if you have any interest in the issue, and you haven't yet read it, please do.

Also, to address a few comments others have made:

• To those who wrote that only individuals with weblogs.com sites have any right to complain, Poppycock! I don't have to have a relative in the armed forces to write about what's going on in Iraq. I don't have to be gay to discuss same-sex marriage, nor a reporter to discuss media bias...
• For everybody going on about DW's selflessness in hosting the blogs in the first place, I think Ray's comment in Akma's blog put it best: "Loss leaders are promotion, not generosity." As the LawMeme article put it, "Dave isn't just a guy doing a favor for the world. He's a self-proclaimed weblog authority." And much of his authority derives from hosting weblogs.com.
• That brings us to the third point, DW as the beleaguered individual. In other words, it's the hypocrisy, stupid.
  Because he's frequently spoken out against divorce, Rush Limbaugh's third divorce is newsworthy, even if Joe Neighbor's divorce wouldn't be.
  The fact that self-proclaimed moralist "Dr." Laura Schlessinger's posed for nudie pix and had adulterous relationships is bigger news than similar actions by any starlet.
  And when blog evangelist mistreats other bloggers, that's news too.

Hopefully, one lesson I think we can all derive from this is that bloggers are only human. I'm not perfect, nor is DW. Only difference is, I'm willing to acknowledge that fact about myself.

At BloggerCon, I watched DW consistently claim that bloggers were somehow better than nonbloggers: bringing out better aspects of human nature, raising consciousness on a global scale, this narrow slice of humanity is utopia. He singlehandedly monopolized the panel of presidential bloggers (for which he was not even a moderator) by trying to badger the candidates to commit to answering a question from a blogger every week. He harped on this issue. [And he wasn't just "rude to me" as one commenter suggested; he was rude to everybody who attended BloggerCon.] The question is, why? Why shouldn't candidates commit to answering a question every week from a school teacher, or a senior citizen, or somebody on public assistance? DW never explained why bloggers should be set above everybody else, but treated that as a given.

DW was talking about blogtopia, and how blogs spelled the "death of the gatekeeper." When I pointed out we merely had different gatekeepers (ISPs and service providers), that notion was pooh-poohed. But guess what. Those 3000 blogs were nearly lost by DW's whim, and were only restored through others' goodwill after people got upset with his initial action. DW became the gatekeeper he said did not exist and abused that very power.

So, I expressed my opinion of DW. I didn't call upon anybody else to attack him nor silence him. Just my personal opinion, which an AP reporter thought to be worth quoting. In fact, I don't recall any critics urging people to take action against DW. In contrast, DW is now calling for "posses" -- not to defend himself, but to go after those who "attack" him. [Read his comments here and here and here.] The man who, at BloggerCon, thought blogs could "bring out aspects of human nature we've buried or suppressed" is now calling on his friends to start a "huge shitfest" on his behalf. Why am I not surprised?

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:55 PM

On May 31st, I wrote:

There's a new product our vet sold us, Pill Pockets -- really stinky cat treats with a hollowed-out center just the right size to conceal a pill. We've been putting the daily pill in the cat treat and she's been gobbling them down. I worried it wouldn't work -- she'd taste the medicine once and refuse hereafter -- but she hasn't got tired of them yet, and even begs for more after she's been pilled. Just FYI.

Three times in the last two days, Boopsie has managed to eat the treat and spit out the pill untouched

Well, it worked for three weeks. too bad she's supposed to be on this medicine for just over 40 days..

Sometimes it's very annoying to have a smart cat.

I guess we'll have to figure out a new trick for the rest of the antibiotics. Maybe we're back to crushing the pill and blending it with tuna juice?

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:25 AM

Yesterday's publicity (with the accompanying traffic spike) has turned my thoughts to some meta-blog issues.

Earlier this week, I saw on Boston Common that a local blogger has been put on administrative leave due to her blog.

Only last month, another area blogger was fired for comments in her blog (why do these stories always seem to involve women?), but she was (a) very open about her employer's identity, and (b) HR apparently cited several venting posts as potential threats.

There have been a few isolated stories in the past, such as here and here. But most of those cases involve people writing about trade secrets or otherwise identifying their employer in some unfavorable manner. But two in one month gets a little closer to home, in more ways than one.

Fortunately for me, I took a class in competitive intelligence before I was hired at my last job. That gave me a good grounding in what not to reveal and how much could be gleaned from even casual remarks. While I'm open about myself, I've very carefully kept a veil of secrecy around my former employer's identity, both while working there and since I was laid off. And that seemed sufficient.

When I was hired, I worked out a personal blog policy to protect the company's secrets, which my manager agreed was acceptable. Rereading it now, everything I wrote still seems logical and sensible to me.

But, if Dee-Rob's account is accurate, even that may not be sufficient for some employers:

Blogs are a bit more mainstream than they were when I started this two years ago. More people are reading them; more employers are aware of them...

Blogging has become part of my self-identity; it's part of how I communicate with the world. I really don't want to give it up.

Hopefully, I'm just preemptively worrying about nothing, and my next employer will be just as supportive as my hiring manager was. But you can't blame a girl for getting nervous...

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:10 PM

Okay, I was rather psyched to read a quite complimentary and fairly accurate bio of Christopher Marlowe in today's Slate. But I can't help wondering what's the occasion. The title of the article is "Marlowe in the Park," but I don't see reference to any new performances. The article mentions "the new Penguin Classics edition of his plays," but as far as I can tell, that was released in January and still doesn't include the newly attributed Edward III. Mind you, I'm not complaining that he's getting the attention, but I am curious.

[Incidentally, the Harvard Book Store has stacks of Shakespeare's Edward III on the remainder tables downstairs. The back cover promises to unequivocably demonstrate that the play was "Shakespeare's own, unaided work." Oh well. I remember when I was looking at college majors. My mother once said that one advantage of history or literature over the hard sciences was that it was so unlikely somebody would make a new discovery in those fields that would undermine all previous teachings.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:35 PM

According to Google News, this morning's AP story mentioning my name has been reproduced in 43 papers, as far away as Australia. I've received nearly seventy-five comments to my blog today alone. I'm trying to decide whether to delete all the duplicates (do I really need 13 repetitions of "blogtopia?? You know - you can go outside once in a while.") but for now I'm trying my best to ignore the trolls and wait for this to blow over.

So in the meantime, (while I'm nibbling on some Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans*) I'll raise something else I've been meaning to post for several days.

Did Bush just blow it badly with Catholic voters?

A quick recap for those not following this story:

• Some Catholic churches have decided to refuse Communion to politicians who go against Church teachings by supporting abortion. Of course, something like that largely targets Democrats (such as, say, John Kerry). Other church teachings church officials have mentioned treating in this manner include gay rights, stem cell research, and right-to-die, which are all closer to the Democratic party platform than the that of the Republicans.
  Interestingly enough, the death penalty and the war in Iraq -- also opposed by the Catholic church, though supported by more Republicans than Democrats -- are not being considered for this kind of condemnation by Communion.
• [For what it's worth, several recent polls have shown that most American Catholics oppose such attempts to politicize Communion. But that's not the issue I wish to address.]
• According to the National Catholic Reporter:

  During his June 4 visit, Bush asked the Vatican to push the American Catholic bishops to be more aggressive politically on family and life issues, especially a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
  A Vatican official told NCR June 9 that in his meeting with Cardinal Angelo Sodano and other Vatican officials, Bush said, "Not all the American bishops are with me" on the cultural issues. The implication was that he hoped the Vatican would nudge them toward more explicit activism.
  Other sources in the meeting said that while they could not recall the president's exact words, he did pledge aggressive efforts on the cultural front, especially the battle against gay marriage, and asked for the Vatican's help in encouraging the U.S. bishops to be more outspoken.

  [via Talking Points Memo]
• Josh Marshall also revealed that this week is the once-every-five-year meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). And guess what's on the agenda? The issue of Communion for pro-choice politicians.

Yet I think Bush's outreach to the pope is going to backfire.

Why?

If Bush hadn't spoken out to the Vatican, then whatever action the bishops took would appear independent (no matter how much behind-the-scenes pressure might be involved -- that probably wouldn't be discovered until later, when it's too late). But now, because of Bush's actions, if the USCCB does take a stand preventing Kerry from receiving Communion, then it will look like they're Bush's tool. That will undercut the bishops' authority and make them prey to further attempts at political manipulation from around the world. By making such a blatant attempt to influence the Church, (Ew. Just got a Sardine flavored jellybean!) Bush effectively prevented them from taking his side. In order to demonstrate that they can't be pushed around by politicians, they will have to remain neutral at best.

And that doesn't begin to touch upon any anger among ordinary Church members at the President trying to manipulate the Church for his own benefit.

This administration normally has a reputation for being incredibly politically astute, but this seemes like a very boneheaded move. Am I missing some secretly clever bit? Or are they getting rattled by being so far down in the polls that they're starting to make stupid mistakes...

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:55 PM

I guess the AP article must be making waves, given the sudden increase in hits and comments my blog has gotten, along with the pleasant anonymous phonecall I received around 2 pm.

I'm particularly amused by those who have chosen to attack me by calling me a cheapskate who neither paid for this weblog nor website.

<laugh>

Look at this URL. Osmond-Riba.org or RibaRambles.org. Not weblogs.com, nor typepad, blogspot, livejournal or any number of other free blog hosting services. [Not that there's anything wrong with using those.] And I was a paying customer of Blogger Pro before they discontinued those premiums and rolled it all into standard service.

So. Calling me a freeloader? That line of attack really doesn't carry much water with me.

If you'd like to discuss the merits of the issue or address what I've actually written, feel free. But such obvious ad hominem attacks only make you look the worse.

Meanwhile, as long as I'm getting this extra attention, I lost my job last month and am looking for work. As you can see, I'm a pretty good writer, or at least I can turn a pithy enough phrase that out of all the blog posts on this topic, the Associated Press chose to quote me (and when I spoke to the reporter, I did mention other people I thought he should contact who might be better informed). I'm also tech savvy, interested in politics (writing about or getting involved in) and a damn good researcher (with a Master's in Library and Information Science). I'm offering. Anybody hiring?

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:00 PM

ConstitutionFacts.com publishes a very inexpensive pocket- or purse-sized copy of the U.S. Constitution (plus the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation). [Both Ian and I have copies; very convenient.] Do you know if anybody does something similar with the Geneva Conventions?

I know they're available online, but print can often be more convenient. And it is (or should be) public domain. Has Dover Press or any other low-cost publisher released an edition? I'd really like to read it. I've heard that the U.S. troops now cleaning up Abu Ghraib have all been given copies. [Why all soldiers don't get one in the first place, I don't know.] Anybody know where I can get one?

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:35 AM

On a different note from my last several posts, this meme has been going around the fanfic communities:

1. Use fanfiction.net's Search >> Story By Summary and look up your name in either Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings.
2. If there are any Mary Sues that share your name, pick the worst-sounding one and post the summary.

Even though it's in French, meaning I can't actually read it, I have to go with:

Elisabeth Bathory n'est pas une sorcière comme les autres. En fait, elle est mi-vampire, mi-mortelle. Un homme saura l'accepter malgré sa différence. C'est homme, c'est Severus Snape  - Warning! Spoilers du Tome 5! NEW Chapitre XXXI
Harry Potter - PG-13 - French - Romance/Action/Adventure - Chapters: 36 - Words: 53287 - Reviews: 82 - Updated: 9-3-03 - Published: 7-23-03

Half-vampire, half-mortal rescued by Snape sounds pretty out there, although Googling (looking for an English translation) shows that there was a historical woman of that name who was reputed to be a vampire, so who knows...

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:55 AM

The end of their article on the whole Dave Winer mess:

Still, bloggers who relied on Weblogs.com were furious, saying they should have been warned about the cutoff. Their anger spread to other bloggers, too, including Elisabeth Riba of Melrose, Mass., who called Winer "an egomaniacal blowhard with his head in the clouds. So much for his vision of blogtopia."

Mind you, I thought he was egomanaical for other reasons, unrelated to this latest tempest (frex, arguing with somebody who says she's an introvert, trying to deny her self-awareness, or setting up general rules for microphone etiquette at BloggerCon then completely ignoring them to monopolize what were supposed to be group discussions), but hey, they spelled my name right and isn't that what counts in reporting? 8)

After following the continuing coverage of the story yesterday in the blogosphere (it finally made it to Slashdot), I think the point is this. Nobody is denying that Winer was within his rights to shut down his service, but the way he did it was incredibly rude. As a ZDNet article put it, "Short of flying the hammer and sickle at a Republican Party convention, it's hard to know how to create more antagonism in such short order." If Winer weren't a self-appointed blog evangelist and authority, the fury wouldn't be anywhere near this great. If Joe's Hosting and Bait Shop pulled a similar stunt, people would be upset, but Dave Winer set him self up as above the masses, and thus expectations for his behavior were that much greater.

I forget who pointed me to this LawMeme article, but that provides one of the best objective overviews of what's going on that I've seen.

If Dave Winer had spoken up in advance that he'd been having problems, people would've come out of the woodwork to help. Heck, even after he pulled the plug, he's been inundated with offers of assistance.

And I can't help contrasting Dave Winer's actions and the response he got to what happened recently at Something Positive. Something Positive is an online comic strip. It's supposed to be daily, but as the cartoonist wrote last month (excerpted):

I work forty hours a week at my normal job, and at least as much on Something Positive. See, that's a lot of time, isn't it? And, no, I don't mean forty hours of drawing. I'm talking about site maintenance, responding to emails, ad sales and THEN drawing. By the time I'm able to squeeze doing the comic in, it's usually very, very late. And I'm tired.
<snip>
So, I'm going to make you an offer. If you can lighten my workload, I'll go out of my way to see to it the spelling - and the update schedule - improve. On both S*P and New Gold Dream. How do I want you to do that?
Help me quit my job. Seriously. Click on that donate button and give me a buck... fifty center... five bucks. Whatever. I've more than enough readers that if over half of you did that, I'd have a year's salary and could quit my day job - and that's forty hours freed up for the comics. Go ahead. Do it. If you are really bothered by my lack of updates or my need of extra proofreading, help me quit my day job so I can devote the time to doing it. No, ad sales and merchandising aren't enough to help me do that. They're supplemental. They definately help, but I'm not going to be living off of them (and since S*P is now looking for a new webhost because of some issues with Speakeasy, I'll likely have to be paying twice or triple my monthly hosting costs because this comic pushes about 300 gigs of bandwidth a month).
I would love nothing better to do than spend all my time working on S*P... okay, that's not true. I wouldn't mind having sex once in a while, but I'm trying to be realistic and instead just asking people to hand me money out of the kindness of their hearts (yes, that's more realistic). But I'm serious about this. If you guys REALLY want me to put more time into the comic (and, y'know what, I want to do that), help me quit my job and I will be all too happy to do so. I'll be working for you almost 24-7 (I get lunch breaks and I don't do windows).

And do you know what happened? People did donate. He got one year's salary in under a month, and he's now given notice to his employer to become a full-time cartoonist. I can't help but believe that if Dave Winer preemptively asked for help to keep the blogs on weblogs.com running, he would've gotten a similar response, and neither he nor all the bloggers on weblogs.com would be in this mess.

At any rate, it's been three days now since the story broke, and I think everything that's needed to be said about this whole fiasco probably has been written already. [That's the problemw with newspapers -- by the time the story makes it into print, it's already old hat in the blogosphere.] Unless something really groundbreaking or entertaining happens, I'm washing my hands of it. Winer even says he's got a better transition plan underway, so hopefully the blogs will be restored relatively soon, and we can move on to more interesting matters.

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:30 AM

Today's Free Will Astrology horoscope looks much more promising than last week's:

Until recently, Indonesians thought their country consisted of about 17,000 islands. But in February of 2003, an analysis of satellite images found more than a thousand undiscovered islands, bringing the total to 18,108. I suspect that you're on the verge of making a comparable breakthrough about yourself, Cancerian. There's much more of you than you ever imagined. Many previously unknown territories will soon come into view. It will be as if you have unearthed a new world right in the midst of the old one.

Here's hoping...

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:00 PM

One thing that sticks with me from Bloggercon last October was Dave Winer talking about how democratic blogs are. According to my notes from the conference, Jeff Jarvis heralded blogs as the "death of the gatekeeper" When I pointed out that the Internet just relied upon different gatekeepers, my objections were pooh-poohed by the cognoscenti who "drank the Dave Winer Kool-aid." (Chris Lydon's term)

Well, guess what! Welcome to another lesson on the difference between theory and practice.

Big news around the blogosphere today is that Dave Winer pulled the plug on all the blogs hosted at his website with no advance notice to the bloggers so they could get their archives or put up redirectors. He informed them after the fact using a large audio file. For those few who look at their blogs in time to comment to his post (another blog mentioned many schools host class blogs on the site, which could either leave students stranded right before finals or may not be discovered until September), he will send them a copy of their archives in two weeks (July 1), provided they follow Winer's "[g]roundrules: Personal comments, ad hominems, will be deleted. And no negotiating or whining." In the meantime these blogs and bloggers, and any blog that links to them, are in chaos.

As others have pointed out, if a commercial service like LiveJournal or Blogspot or Typepad suddenly closed up shop, telling all its users to go elsewhere, and saying they could get their archives eventually, would people be so understanding?

Meanwhile, there are lots of great articles online on the subject, with some interesting quotes:

[T]hat's about the most graceless thing I have seen since I've dipped toes into these waters. And I've been out to some pretty nasty political weblogs.

Shelley

[Hosting thousands of sites] *is* a responsibility, not something to be entered into casually.

Dave Winer in response to somebody who offered Dave a space to host the sites. [via Julia]

Blog Murder
Is there a reason Dave Winer just killed 3000 blogs [...] and no one, including Slashdot has the balls to write about it?!
At least he's taken the gloves off -- if you thought he was a cuddly teddy bear friend of all bloggers -- you might want to rethink that.

Halley Suitt

Some bloggers contacted for comments for this story said they didn't want to make disparaging comments about Winer's actions, for fear he wouldn't provide them copies of their blogs.
"People have been really afraid to discuss this," said a New York blogger who asked that his name be withheld. "There's a lot of concern that any nasty comments will result in Dave not getting around to making a copy of your blog. I think a lot of the politeness and 'We love you, Dave!' sentiments that you're seeing in some Web posts is just pure paranoia."

Wired

There are so many great posts commenting upon this that I wish I could post them all.

I never knew that much about Dave Winer before I met him at Bloggercon. I wasn't terribly impressed by what I saw and heard from him while there, and everything I've heard since has confirmed that opinion of him as an egomanaical blowhard with his head in the clouds. So much for his vision of blogtopia. Maybe now bloggers can focus on real issues instead of his utopian fantasylands?

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:30 PM

While driving back from dropping Ian at the T station, I counted approximately 44 U.S. flags being flown at private residences not one of which was half-staff!

I may not have liked Reagan, but as a former President he is entitled to the respect accorded to that office, which means that flags "shall be flown at half-staff thirty days from [his] death."

I was so irate that I was tempted to pull the flags down and leave the owners with a note that if they aren't capable of displaying the flag responsibly, then maybe they shouldn't display a flag at all.

Honestly, I don't mind if somebody knows the Flag Code and chooses to disobey in order to make a statement. [Burning a flag is a recognized form of political protest, and one of the reasons it's so shocking is because of the respect with which a flag is normally supposed to be treated.] But this kind of mindless ignorance drives me up a wall!

That's one of the reasons I was so upset by the sudden rush to display flags after 9/11. People thought it was an easy way to buy a visible demonstration of their love for America. But, by remaining ignorant of what the symbol entails, they really showed their disdain for the country and its values. After only a few months, I regularly saw cars with faded, shredded flags barely clinging to car antennae. Like today, I was sorely tempted to take them down with an explanation of how they violated the flag code. I actually saw an American flag blowing down Route 93, being run over by passing cars. Unfortunately, I was in no position to stop and rescue it, though I was sorely tempted to double back.

I don't support any constitutional amendment barring flag desecration, but I do wish that anyone purchasing a flag was required to read the flag code and sign that they understand it. If they knowingly choose to disregard it, that's fine, but the key word there is knowingly.

<shakes head>

Maybe it's just me.

Maybe all the car dealerships and politicians wrapping themselves in the flag have inured most people to these kinds of self-serving disrespectful displays. Mindless repetition of the Pledge of Allegiance without really thinking about what the words truly mean is no substitute for actual civics classes in the schools. Does attention to these details make me unusual? A pedant rather than a patriot?

But while I dislike elevation of symbols above the principles for which they stand, I have a greater dislike for ignorance. And I worry about where such blind jingoism may lead...

"If Fascism ever comes to America, it will come wrapped in an American flag"
                  -- Huey Long

Added later: Heartening news: when picking Ian up from the train (a slightly different route, due to one-way streets) I was pleased to discover one residential flag that was at half-staff. On the other hand, Demagogue has discovered yet another way Bush supporters are degrading the flag by wrapping themselves in it.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:45 AM

Just found a job listing with the instructions:

Please send cover letter and resume to contact named above.

and no name or address is given. I have the company name, but their own page of job openings doesn't mention this position. Two thoughts: (1) since it's a library position, maybe this is intended as a test of applicants' research skills, and (2) maybe the difficulty of finding the information will knock out much of the competition.

Have I mentioned recently how much I hate writing cover letters? :) No bites on anything yet, but I'm plugging away...

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:10 PM

As you may have heard, the Supreme Court has ruled on Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow -- the Pledge of Allegiance case. I just noticed a headline on Yahoo which read:

"Supreme Court Rules Against Atheist in Pledge Case"

which is true, but somewhat misleading. So, for those who aren't as big a Supreme Court geek as I am, let me quickly 'splain.

The Supreme Court did not rule against Mr. Newdow by affirming the acceptability of "under Gd" in the Pledge of Allegiance. Instead, they sidestepped that issue, ruling instead that as a noncustodial parent whose rights are currently under litigation, Mr. Newdow did not have standing to file the suit on behalf of his daughter. [His ex-wife, who has custody, opposed the case.] So, the case has been thrown out without actually addressing the constitutionality of "under Gd" one way or the other.

Now three of the Justices -- Renquist, O'Connor and Thomas -- wrote supplemental opinions on the issue of "under Gd", and those three pretty much felt that the Pledge is fine as it. Now keep in mind, O'Connor is generally one of the swing judges -- often pivotal in which way the 5-4 rulings are decided. Scalia has already recused himself on this issue because he's spoken publically in favor of keeping "under Gd." So that's four out of nine justices who favor keeping "under Gd" in the Pledge. Even though Scalia won't be involved in any future decision, that's pretty tough odds. Another blogger (I forget who. Sorry!) wrote that the best we could hope for is a 4-4 tie which resolves nothing. And there are other cases wending their way through the lower court, so this issue will likely come up again.

All-in-all, I think I'm pleased with how this turned out. Today is Flag Day, so certain elements in Congress are using this as their annual excuse to try to push a Constitutional amendment removing free speech protections from flag desecration. A decision either way on the merits of "under Gd" would've been incredibly divisive, and I'm sure it would be used to (metaphorically) club dissenting viewponts with the spectre of patriotism, and as a smokescreen to avoid discussing other more serious issues that need to be raised this election year. We're better off without this particular shouting match at this time.

And if you're interested in the Supreme Court, SCOTUSblog is one of the best sources. Decisions are usually announced at 10 am, and they are generally the first place I see them posted online. Apparently further opinions won't be released until next Monday.

Added later: A Washington Post online chat suggests that Scalia recused himself because he commented on this case before it came before the Court. He won't necessarily have to recuse himself from future Pledge cases if he's more prudent about his public statements.

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:35 PM

The years have done a lot to clarify the strengths of this man. As a candidate for any office, whether it be the state attorney general or the President, Bill Clinton showed incredible energy and great personal appeal. As chief executive, he showed a deep and far-ranging knowledge of public policy, a great compassion for people in need, and the forward-looking spirit the Americans like in a President. Bill Clinton could always see a better day ahead -- and Americans knew he was working hard to bring that day closer.

Over eight years, it was clear that Bill Clinton loved the job of the presidency. He filled this house with energy and joy. He's a man of enthusiasm and warmth, who could make a compelling case and effectively advance the causes that drew him to public service.

-- George W. Bush

He also compliments Hillary Clinton in the same speech. Bush praised the Clintons at a White House ceremony for the unveiling of their official portraits.

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:00 AM

I meant it when I said it to you five years ago under the chuppah.

It still holds true today.

Happy anniversary, love.

For everybody else reading this, yes, today is our fifth wedding anniversary. Apparently the traditional gift is "wood" but the only wood objects I can think of that we might need are bookcases, and (a) we'd kinda need to pick them out ourselves to fit in the available space, and (b) we actually may have an in to getting some cheap from Ian's grandparents. So I'm really not looking for anything (except for a job).

Those who were invited to our wedding may recall we created an informational website a few months beforehand. To those who weren't invited; we created an informational website a few months before the wedding to inform guests about various matters.
At any rate, for nostalgia's sake, I've copied the site to www.osmond-riba.org/wedding.

Anyway, as I've mentioned earlier, we're celebrating the day of our actual anniversary together, attending the BGMC's British Invasion, followed by the "Chef's Choice" at Craigie Street Bistrot. ["Enjoy Chef Tony's $29.95 four-course tasting menu on Sunday evenings after 9pm. Tony cooks impromptu dishes that may not be on the regular menu, and is at his most inventive, spontaneous, and generous. It's never the same meal twice"] My deepest gratitude to Ian's uncle for his early gift of $60 with orders we were only to spend it on a nice dinner together. Thanks also to the denizens of the Chowhound Boston board for pointing us towards the Bistro. The prix fixe dinner costs $29.95 per person, so it works out perfectly.

Here's looking forward to the next half-decade!