Snow

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It’s snowing in southern Westchester County. Another setback for the plans to turn my co-op into a tropical beachfront resort.

Speaking of snow jobs, yesterday Condi Rice seemed to deny that the U.S. is building permanent bases in Iraq. Liz Sidoti reports for the Associated Press:

Rice did not say when all U.S. forces would return home and did not directly answer Rep. Steven Rothman (news, bio, voting record), D-N.J., when he asked, “Will the bases be permanent or not?”

“I would think that people would tell you, we’re not seeking permanent bases really pretty much anywhere in the world these days. We are, in fact, in the process of removing base structure from a lot of places,” Rice replied.

Huh? Was that a denial, or not?

Schadenfraude

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Brian J. Doyle, the Deputy Press Secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Public Affairs in Washington, D.C., was caught in an internet pedophile sting operation.

On March 12, 2006, Doyle contacted a 14-year-old girl whose profile was posted on the Internet, and initiated a sexually explicit conversation with her. The girl was actually an undercover Polk County Sheriff s Computer Crimes detective. Doyle knew that the girl was 14 years old, and he told her who he was and that he worked for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. During future online chats, Doyle gave the undercover detective posing as a 14-year-old girl his office phone number and his government-issued cell phone number, so that they could have telephone conversations, in addition to their online chatting. Doyle used the Internet to send hard-core pornographic movie clips to the girl and used the AOL Instant Messenger chat service to have explicit sexual conversations with her. The investigation revealed that the phone numbers given to the detective were in fact Doyle s, and that the AOL account used was registered to Doyle. Doyle also sent photos of himself to the detective, which were not sexually explicit but did serve to further positively identify him.

On many occasions, Doyle instructed the victim, whom he believed to be a 14-year-old girl, to perform a sexual act while thinking of him, and described explicit and perverse sexual acts he wished to have with her, in addition to sending her numerous obscene .mpg files (digital movies). He also had sexually explicit telephone conversations with a detective posing as a child on his office line and cell phone. He attempted to seduce the girl during their online chats, encouraging her to purchase a web cam so that she could send graphic images of herself to him, and promised her that he would likewise send nude photos of himself. Many of the conversations he initiated with the victim are too extraordinary and graphic for public release.

Doyle was arrested and spent last night in a county jail. And I’ll bet the scriptwriters for Law & Order: SVU are already working this little item into a future episode. Not to mention The Daily Show writers …

Here are some reactions from around the blogosphere.

This rightie blogger couldn’t comment without taking a swipe at liberals:

Glad they caught the idiot; he was a security risk as well as a pervert. As was Scott Ritter, not that any of the liberal blogs linking this story will make that connection.

I guess in Rightie World, being right about WMDs makes you a security risk. But Taylor Marsh makes some connections with a congressional hearing also held yesterday.

… when the news hit about a pedophile living and breathing inside our own Homeland Security department, I had a sort of meltdown. I put up the breaking story, then took a moment to think about it all. It’s not a comfortable subject to contemplate when you know the gory details.

Today, Justin Berry told a story of how he had given Bush’s Justice Department the names of over 1,500 people who he’d had sexual experiences with over the time he ran his web porn site. To this day, the Bush Justice Department has done NOTHING. That’s right, nothing. Joe Scarborough covered that tonight on his show. I didn’t watch it all, but he said he was going to give out the phone number for the Justice Department so parents could demand action. I hope they do because no one has been paying attention and this has been going on since 1997.

However, I simply cannot get my head around the fact that the Bush administration has taken no action at all.

“Taken no action at all” seems to be the standard Bushie operating procedure. Next we’ll hear that “no one could have anticipated” that some guy uploading hard-core porn on his DHS computer would have been a pervert.

John Aravosis notes Doyle’s past role in airport security.

Steve Soto:

At the deputy Press Secretary level, Doyle was likely an appointee of the Homeland Security Secretary. So either Tom Ridge or Michael Chertoff get the “credit” for this putz drawing a government check spinning the media on how great DHS is.

Egalia, Tennessee Guerilla Women:

No wonder Republicans don’t believe in evolution. Instead of evolving, they devolve from corruption and cronyism to nauseating creepiness.

Don’t they background check anybody in the Bush Administration? Oh, yeah, I remember, they check to make sure their cronies carry bibles.

Another rightie blames the Left:

First off, why would this guy be so stupid? As you read the article, you’ll learn that he gave the “14-year-old” (an undercover Polk County Detective) his personal phone numbers and name and position in government to this would-be little girl, and even sent photos (not sexually explicit) of himself to her. Again, if the allegations are true, how could someone working for DHS be so stupid, especially when the left says that Bush and Cheney are sitting in their offices spying on all of our calls trying to take away our rights…. don’t you think Doyle would have been more careful?

Yeah, if you’re going to be a pedophile, be a little more discreet about it, OK?

The Talking Dog comments on “restoring honor and integrity to the government.”

Captain Ed on “The Gang That Couldn’t Vet Straight“:

I’m not sure what’s going on at the Department of Homeland Security, but significant background checks certainly are not. The agency first slated to be run by Bernard Kerik until the press performed his background check instead of the White House has another winner on its hands, a deputy press secretary with a late-night hobby.

A couple of issues come to mind. First, it may be that this was Doyle’s first arrest, in which case vetting wouldn’t necessarily have tagged him as being a problem. However, as I understand these matters, it is highly unlikely the 50-something Doyle became a pedophile recently. It’s more likely he’s been one most of his life. If this is his first arrest, a whole lot of people have been looking the other way for a long time.

Remember what I said about Evil not wearing a big E on its T-shirt? Mr. Doyle may be a sweet and charming guy to most of his acquaintances. No doubt he doesn’t fit stereotypes of what a child molester is like. Cognitive dissonance would have brushed away the clues. This is not a political phenomenon. Maybe somewhere there’s a soc-psych study that argues conservatives are more prone to cognitive dissonance than liberals, but absent hard data I wouldn’t make that claim. Liberals are not immune.

However, there must have been clues. Doyle wasn’t even trying to be discreet or hide his identity.

Second, the Bush Administration has a long-established pattern of hiring people based on party or personal loyalty rather than experience. It’s not what you know, but who you know, that counts with Bushies, and not just in DHS.

So no wonder they can’t “vet straight.” No doubt the “vetters” are crony hires who aren’t qualified for their jobs.

Update: See firedoglake.

Irrelevant

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I dimly remember that sometime during the Clinton Administration, pre-Monica, the righties trotted out a “Clinton is irrelevant” talking point to bring him down. I don’t recall why they said he was irrelevant, and I can’t remember any point in his presidency in which Clinton was, in fact, irrelevant, but I do remember the television talking heads droning on about how Clinton was irrelevant.

Well, guess who’s irrelevant now? Dan Froomkin writes,

Is anyone paying attention to the president anymore?

Consider today and tomorrow a test of presidential relevance, as the White House tries to get the nation to turn its attention to the topic of health savings accounts.

At a White House meeting this morning, and then in a so-called “panel on health savings accounts” in Connecticut tomorrow afternoon, President Bush is trumpeting the accounts as a free-market antidote to the nation’s health care crisis.

But with war raging in Iraq and pandemonium breaking out in Congress, Bush is having a harder time than usual making himself heard. And in this particular case, even if people do pay attention, it doesn’t mean they’ll buy his argument. Much like Bush’s failed attempt to restructure Social Security, the argument for health savings accounts is, on its face, problematic.

I’m not up to discussing health care right now; Froomkin wrote about HSAs here.

Given that even the blogosphere mostly ignored Bush’s recent, much-ballyhooed series of Iraq speeches, if the HSA effort goes down like the lead balloon it is, it’ll be official — Bush is irrelevant.

BTW, good quote in yesterday’s Froomkin from blogger Teresa Nielsen Hayden:

Bush is to public discourse as Three Card Monte is to card game. …

…Bush doesn’t really talk to us. When it’s advantageous or required, he’ll go through the motions of talking to us; but that’s all. What it “means” is that he either has to do it, like the State of the Union speech; or he wants something from us, like votes; or he’s tossing out a string of words calculated to endear him to some fraction of the citizenry, like “manned missions to Mars” or “Constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage.” He doesn’t care what he’s saying, and afterward he doesn’t consider himself bound by what he’s said.

Just Like Home Made

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Regarding this New York Times story about a baby who died during a home birth attended by a midwife — a few observations …

The fact is that most of the time you don’t need a doctor to have a baby. For that matter, you don’t need a midwife, either. The fact of the matter is that most of the time you could have your baby alone on the floor of a gas station restroom, and you and the baby will be OK. I’m not recommending that; I’m just sayin’. High maternal mortality rates of the past were mostly caused by postpartum infection, known as “childbed fever,” which these days can be treated with antibiotics.

My understanding is that most of the time good prenatal care is more important to a good outcome than what happens during the delivery. There are all manner of studies that show a correlation between how early a woman begins prenatal care and her chances of delivering a healthy, full-term baby. But most of the time hospital deliveries are medical overkill, and if you have to ask how much they cost, you can’t afford them.

The big argument in favor of going to hospitals is that the sorts of things that can go wrong often go wrong very suddenly and catastrophically, and the mother’s or baby’s life can hang on how quickly physicians with high-tech medical gizmos can address the problem. And you have to go to hospitals if you want the mostly effective and mostly safe anesthesias they have these days.

The argument against midwives with no medical training is that they might not recognize a serious problem as it develops and know when to call in the experts. Remember, even a midwife with no idea what she’s doing will be successful most of the time, because most of the time babies will be born just fine if nature takes its course. An untrained midwife with a few good deliveries under her belt might not realize how much she doesn’t know. I can’t tell from the article if the midwife in question did anything wrong, however.

Over the years, every now and then, somebody proposes that trained registered nurse-midwives work under the supervision of physicians. If the physician doesn’t believe the delivery will present complications the midwives can attend the births at home if the mother wishes to give birth at home. And they would be able to recognize potential problems and would know when to move the show to the hospital or call 911 for emergency assistance. This seems like the best of all worlds to me. I suspect the biggest reason this plan never seems to be implemented is medical liability.

Full disclosure — I had both of my babies in hospitals, with no regrets, mostly because I didn’t have to be concerned about cleaning up. Childbirth is messy.

Identifying Evil

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Sometimes the worst evil is done by good people who do not know that they are not good. — Reinhold Niebuhr

Via Avedon — David Gerrold has written a post reflecting on the nature of evil. One of his points is that the way evil is usually portrayed on television and in the movies is phony.

People like to pretend — they like to pretend to be vampires and monsters and princesses and Vulcans and whatnots.

And that’s what most Hollywood evocations of evil are — people pretending, because they have no sense of the reality. That’s what was wrong with this particular recreation of the Manson Family; they played it like a bunch of teenagers giddily enjoying their own awfulness. …

… in this show, evil wasn’t portrayed as evil, but as a bunch of Hollywood actors pretending to be evil, chewing the scenery, baring their teeth, flashing their eyes, and practicing their wicked laughs — bwahahahaha. It was pretense.

Real evil looks very different from Hollywood evil.

Hannah Arendt, in her book about the trial of Adolf Eichman, the architect of the Holocaust, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil writes of how she sat there day after day, trying to understand how a mild-looking human being could have authored such monstrousness. Ultimately, she coined the phrase “the banality of evil” to describe the essential thoughtlessness — ie. without thought, without feeling, without compassion — that results in evil deeds. The monsters of the Holocaust weren’t monsters, they were acting without regard, without conscious awareness, without empathy, without connection to the larger spiritual realm of humanity.

For a long time I’ve noticed that when racists are portrayed in films they are nearly always depicted as people who are scowling (or smirking) and disagreeable all the time; think Rod Steiger in The Heat of the Night. Yet in my experience — I grew up in an all-white redneck zone — racists can seem to be lovely people in any other context; they can be soft-spoken, considerate, and reasonableness itself except on the matter of race. It’s as if some part of their conscience were missing. It can be hard to grasp that nice Mr. Smith who voluntarily cuts the grass on the church lawn, or sweet Mrs. Johnson who bakes pies for the old folks’ home, would be capable of evil. Yet history tells us that a whole lot of “ordinary” people have taken part in evil acts in the past.

Gerrold writes, “I think evil occurs as a complex cocktail of forces.” I suspect most people are capable of evil if they get caught up in these forces. This is not an excuse for evil, but a warning to take care to recognize those forces and avoid them. People fall into evil because they don’t recognize evil as evil. They mistake it for justice, or righteousness, or even God’s Will.

“Evil does not see itself as evil,” writes Gerrold. “Those who commit evil acts do not see those acts as evil or even malicious. They see themselves as justified.” This is exactly right.

Osama bin Laden and his 9/11 flunkies believed their terrorist attack was righteous and justified, as did Tim McVeigh when he blew up the federal building. Even the all-time great evildoers like Hitler and Stalin and Mao no doubt rationalized their actions as serving a greater good.

A couple of years ago I argued that most of us think of evil as an intrinsic quality that some people have and others don’t, or at least have very little of. If you see evil that way, the next step is to assume that “evil” people are so dangerous and corrupted that “good” people are justified in whatever they do to get rid of them. Thus, “evil” and “good” people are different not because of what they do, but because of who they are. But when you start thinking that way, you’re opening the door to evil and inviting it in.

There’s no question that what took place in that prison was horrible, but the Arab world has to realize that the U.S. shouldn’t be judged on the actions of a…well, we shouldn’t be judged on our actions. It’s our principles that matter, our inspiring, abstract notions. Remember: just because torturing prisoners is something we did, doesn’t mean it’s something we would do. — Rob Corddry, The Daily Show

How many times have you heard a rightie say something like this —

The difference between you and me is that, deep down inside, you cannot accept the fact that there are truly evil people in the world. The difference between the liberal and conservative viewpoints boils down to this: you think that, deep down inside, the Islamic nutjobs really only want to have a nice house and a yard, and raise their children in a loving and safe environment, just like all the people you know. Whereas I think that they are truly evil people, like the Nazis, that want more than anything else to destroy all that we hold dear. And they are more than willing to sacrifice their lives, their families, everything in their hatred of all that is good and beautiful.

What most righties don’t understand about evil is how seductive it is. The seduction begins with the notion that “his hatred of me is evil, but my hatred of him is justified.” The fellow who wrote that paragraph may not yet be completely besotted with evil, but he is sure as hell flirting with it.

I say evil is as evil does. It’s not who you are; it’s what you do, that is evil. Or not.

Again, I’m not saying that evil acts should be forgiven, or that people shouldn’t defend themselves from evil or seek to apprehend or even destroy dangerous people before they can harm others. I’m just saying that as we do these things, we must take care not to be seduced by evil ourselves. And that’s hard. It takes a lot of self-honesty and self-discipline.

And it takes recognizing evil as evil. Evil doesn’t wear a big E on its T shirt. Evil can seem to be virtuous. It flatters your ego. And it can feel really good.

See also: Jill at Feministe, “God and Abortion Rights.“

Oh, Wait …

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Dennis Byrne writes in the Chicago Tribune that accusations that news media has a “liberal bias” are valid:

Those of us who haven’t been in a war zone criticize the work of war correspondents at our own peril. Yet, for all the assertions that little or no good news is to be found in Iraq, it is simple to find some on the Internet from, for example, the U.S. Agency for International Development, which is helping rebuild Iraq. (Why is it called “rebuilding” Iraq, when it was a sorry state before the war? Shouldn’t we be talking about “building” Iraq?)

Billions of dollars of highway and other public works projects; new safety nets for the poor and vulnerable, entrepreneurial opportunities, a free press, leadership training–all requisites for successful self-government. For all the stories about power shortages, for example, how many explain that they are partly the result of exploding demand, a good sign of economic progress?

Oddly, some journalists give little credence to such official, attributable reports.

Yeah, if the government says it, it must be true, right?

Well, Dennis, today’s Washington Post carries the good news of Iraq reconstruction! Ellen Knickmeyer writes,

A reconstruction contract for the building of 142 primary health centers across Iraq is running out of money, after two years and roughly $200 million, with no more than 20 clinics now expected to be completed, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says.

Oh, wait …

The contract, awarded to U.S. construction giant Parsons Inc. in the flush, early days of reconstruction in Iraq, was expected to lay the foundation of a modern health care system for the country, putting quality medical care within reach of all Iraqis.

Parsons, according to the Corps, will walk away from more than 120 clinics that on average are two-thirds finished. Auditors say the project serves as a warning for other U.S. reconstruction efforts due to be completed this year.

Dennis is right that billions of dollars were allocated for “highway and other public works projects.” We know this is true because senior officials of the Coalition Provisional Authority had so much cash lying around they played football with stacks of $100 bills. Unfortunately the games got a bit rough; contractors managed to piss away about $20 billion in American taxpayer dollars while leaving project unfinished, and $23 billion in Iraqi money set aside for reconstruction seems to have mostly, um, disappeared.

According to Lisa Zagaroli of Scripps Howard News Service (March 13),

… shortfalls in infrastructure were detailed in a recent report by Stuart Bowen Jr., special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.

Of 136 water sector projects, only 49 will be completed, and most of those involving sewerage, irrigation, drainage and dams have been canceled. Of 425 electricity projects, only 300 will be completed and only 2,200 megawatts of additional power will be delivered instead of the 3,400 megawatts that had been planned, Bowen told senators last month.

But this is looking at the glass half empty. Let’s focus on what actually has been accomplished. And here we can turn to no better authority than Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who has a genius for optimism. Sue Pleming reported for Reuters (February 17):

Congress has given more than $20 billion for projects aimed at improving Iraq’s dilapidated infrastructure and winning over Iraqis with better utility services, and Rice told lawmakers that conditions were better.

But in three key areas — access to drinking water, electricity and sewer service — Iraqis are worse off than before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, according to statistics released last week by the U.S. special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. …

… Rice, who had told the committee more Iraqis had access to sewerage and water services than before, argued that what the United States had improved was “capacity” and the United States had made a difference.

“I think this may be an issue of whether we are talking about delivery or capacity. We have increased the capacity for clean water for several million Iraqis,” she said.

Yeah, I know I’ve used that one before, but it’s too good not to repeat.

Still, Dennis might say, we have liberated Iraq. They should be grateful to us for setting them free and making their lives better!

On March 18 Iraqi blogger Riverbend wrote,

I don’t think anyone imagined three years ago that things could be quite this bad today. The last few weeks have been ridden with tension. I’m so tired of it all- we’re all tired.

Three years and the electricity is worse than ever. The security situation has gone from bad to worse. The country feels like it’s on the brink of chaos once more- but a pre-planned, pre-fabricated chaos being led by religious militias and zealots.

School, college and work have been on again, off again affairs. It seems for every two days of work/school, there are five days of sitting at home waiting for the situation to improve. Right now college and school are on hold because the “arba3eeniya” or the “40th Day” is coming up- more black and green flags, mobs of men in black and latmiyas. We were told the children should try going back to school next Wednesday. I say “try” because prior to the much-awaited parliamentary meeting a couple of days ago, schools were out. After the Samarra mosque bombing, schools were out. The children have been at home this year more than they’ve been in school.

Oh, wait …

Actually, the Riverbend post I wanted to link to is this one, which freaked out even me. Riverbend was watching television —

I was reading the little scrolling news headlines on the bottom of the page. The usual — mortar fire on an area in Baghdad, an American soldier killed here, another one wounded there… 12 Iraqi corpses found in an area in Baghdad, etc. Suddenly, one of them caught my attention and I sat up straight on the sofa, wondering if I had read it correctly.

E. was sitting at the other end of the living room, taking apart a radio he later wouldn’t be able to put back together. I called him over with the words, “Come here and read this- I’m sure I misunderstood…” He stood in front of the television and watched the words about corpses and Americans and puppets scroll by and when the news item I was watching for appeared, I jumped up and pointed. E. and I read it in silence and E. looked as confused as I was feeling.

The line said:

وزارة الدفاع تدعو المواطنين الى عدم الانصياع لاوامر دوريات الجيش والشرطة الليلية اذا لم تكن برفقة قوات التحالف العاملة في تلك المنطقة

The translation:

“The Ministry of Defense requests that civilians do not comply with the orders of the army or police on nightly patrols unless they are accompanied by coalition forces working in that area.”

That’s how messed up the country is at this point.

This doesn’t sound good —

They’ve been finding corpses all over Baghdad for weeks now- and it’s always the same: holes drilled in the head, multiple shots or strangulation, like the victims were hung. Execution, militia style. Many of the people were taken from their homes by security forces- police or special army brigades… Some of them were rounded up from mosques.

Be sure to read the whole post; it’s gut-wrenching. How can Iraqis not hate us for bringing this about? And the perps are not always “militia” or “terrorists” or even “insurgents.” This is from A Star from Mosul, March 9:

Uncle S was dad’s only uncle from his mother’s side. … Yesterday, he was shot by Americans on his way back home, and he died. Like many others, he died, left us clueless about the reason, and saddened with this sudden loss. He was shot many times, only three reached him: One in his arm, one in his neck and one in his chest. But they said they’re sorry. They always are.

War supporters seem to think Iraqis should overlook these little episodes and love us anyway, because we’re carrying out whatever it is we’re carrying out for their own good. Yet there are righties who have never been personally wronged by a Middle Easterner, but who feel justified in hating Middle Easterners because, you know, they wear strange clothes and eat falafel. No good comes from that.

Today U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw are on a secret but well-publicized visit to Iraq (let’s hope they brought several cases of bottled water). This dauntless duo is demanding that Iraqis must disband the militias and dump the prime minister and get their government together right now because the “coalition” is losing patience with them.

John Ward Anderson reports for the Washington Post that

At least 50 people were killed Sunday in Iraq in a catalogue of violence that included a mortar attack, military firefights, roadside bombings and other explosions.

In addition, the U.S. military reported the deaths of six soldiers and airmen, including two who were killed when their helicopter apparently was shot down during a combat air patrol southwest of Baghdad on Saturday.

But it’s not fair to report on bad things happening in Iraq without discussing the good things, says Mr. Byrne:

News often is defined as something that didn’t happen before, or rarely happens. So, if indeed little good is happening in Iraq, every piece of (rare) good news ought to be reported with the same fervor as every act of violence–which we’re to believe is an increasingly common occurrence. And, logically, less deserving of reporting. Or does the absence of reporting “good news” in a country the size of Iraq actually mean that reporters can find absolutely nothing good?

If all this is confusing, it’s nothing compared to the confusion shared by the American public about what actually is happening in Iraq. The media’s credibility has become so strained that partisans on both sides have to admit in good conscience that they’re unsure of what’s real. Obviously, this isn’t good for a democracy.

I’d say that Jill Carroll’s release was good news, and it got a lot of attention, but apparently that’s not enough. And the truth is, some journalists in Iraq admit that the images projected on television do not accurately reflect the situation on the ground.

The situation on the ground, they say, is worse.

Going Too Far

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Pity Debbie Schlussel. She thought she was leading a glorious charge, but she charged into a place so dank and unwholesome even the Nice Doggie wouldn’t follow. And when she looked she saw her rightie brethren not following her. Instead, they were staring. At her. With disgust.

Wow.

This means that somewhere in the confused and nebulous world righties seem to inhabit, there are edges. There are parameters and boundaries and signs that warn to stay on the path and be sure to wear clean, dry socks. This is good to know.

You might have seen this Schlussel post, which accused Jill Carroll of having “anti-American views” and implied that both Carroll “and those who are ‘elated’ about her release” are collaborating with terrorists. A newer post reveals that in Schlussel’s mind, “Islamist” (which is bad) and “Arabic” are synonyms. Schlussel found an article in a Jordanian newspaper (no link provided) that said (boldface is Schlussel’s)

From Arabic food to the Arabic language, Jill has always wanted to know and experience as much as possible about Arab identity, and she is keen on absorbing it, learning, understanding and respecting it.

She doesn’t just “like” Arab culture, she loves it. . . . It is simply unconscionable for any Arab to want to harm a person like her.

There is a direct connection between couscous and Osama bin Laden. Be warned.

But by Schlussel’s logic … the President is a terrorist.

Now Schlussel is snarling and snapping at her brother bloggers like a cornered wolverine, and some righties are wondering whether to back away or fetch a tranquilizer dart. Heh.

Last I checked neither Orrin Judd nor Alexandra the Dim had apologized for implying that Carroll was a terrorist collaborator (Judd) or a coward (the Dimwit), but now it seems they are in the minority even among righties. Jonah Goldberg finally issued a limp apology.

Now, I’m going to apologize to Captain Ed, because I took offense at the title of this post — it struck me as being patronizing — but on the whole the Captain has been fair and reasonable about the Carroll episode. So, Captain, I’m sorry I snapped at you.

Update: See Matt Stoller.