One of the good things, and also one of the bad things, about working at home is that I can watch tv if I feel like it. So yesterday I decided that Richard Clarke's testimony would be sufficiently important that I would work it into my busy schedule. Well worth it.

First of all, he apologized. You rarely hear anyone, let alone terrorism czars, apologize for anything without saying they were sorry you got mad at them, so that was cool. It was also cool that later on CNN a widow of someone who died in the Twin Towers said that she wasn't interested in an apology and figured that the government should have been better at protecting us. The cool part came when she said that our terrorism efforts and the subsequent apology were "just lame." Lame is now a real word? Teriffic.

The commission seems to benefit, like many instituitions would, from the leadership of a person from New Jersey. Why can't more Republicans be like Tom Kean? I could get into lower taxes if people weren't such jerks about it. Everyone else could use a little of Tom's disciplining - the questioning was very partisan.

Democrats began by praising Clarke for his apology and his service and then - especially Bob Kerrey, who all but offered Clarke a new job at the New School - gave long speeches about how GWB and his lackeys had screwed up. Fine, but, isn't that Clarke's job? The Commission asks questions, no? Former Congressman Tim Roemer was the lone Dem who didn't flatter Clarke with effusive praise before asking his question, and he did ask what I thought was the most interesting question: If everyone had listened to you, could you have prevented the attack on the World Trade Center?

On the other end of the spectrum was former Illinois Governor James Thompson, who tried to insist that Clarke was joining the Kerry Campaign. This led to the highlight of the afternoon, Clarke's under-oath pledge to never serve in a Kerry administration. Though I can bet he'll be voting for him.

I hear that Spanish voters have ruined it for the rest of us. Namely, they had the gall to vote for the Socialists after they decided that not being involved with us would get fewer trains blown up in their country. Perhaps this is the first time that a bunch of people voting for something they want, and then getting it, is labeled as a threat to democracies everywhere.

Here's the logic that showed up in the New York Times today: Regardless of the policy, doing anything related to what David Brooks imagines terrorists might want sounds the death knell for Mom and apple pie. Spaniards are "appeasing" terrorists because they decided, on the eve of the election, that the war was a bigger issue than prosperity. (The previous ruling party, The Popular Party, had been credited with raising the standard of living in Spain over the past 10 years. They also supported the Iraq war against the wishes of 90 percent of Spaniards.)

Brooks goes on to say that this illustrates the differences between Americans and Europeans - namely, we like to fight terrorists and they like to knock off work around 1 and treat Al Qaeda to a nice three-course lunch. "If a terrorist group attacked the U.S. three days before an election, does anyone doubt that the American electorate would rally behind the president or at least the most aggressively antiterror party?," he writes. Gee, Dave, my picture's not on the New York Times' web site, but couldn't someone say that if Americans responded to a November attack by voting a certain way that we had had our votes influenced by terrorists? Does anyone remember Rudy G's request to be mayor for an extra month? What about campaign ads with pictures of Sen. Max Cleland next to Osama and Saddham? Could these ideas have had anything to do with using terrorism to influence voting? Never. That's downright antidemocratic.

If we use Brooks' logic, we need to figure out what terrorists want on a whole bunch of issues - single payer health care, school vouchers, wars and stuff, privatizing social security, saving whales - and then compare all that to whatever the candidates say. I don't care if we wind up with a Lyndon Larouche / George Lincoln Rockwell team in the White House, as long as they make terrorists angry then we'd need to vote for them. Or something. Maybe if we only vote for people who terrorists have never heard of. We could take some of the better behaved ones from Gitmo and put them in a focus group.

Because, see, otherwise terrorists can influence elections. And the next thing you know, people will be using footage of the Twin Towers coming down in campaign ads.

This is the state that the rest of the country thinks is full of liberal weirdos?

"The typical Massachusetts legislator is a 50-year-old, white, male, Roman Catholic, Massachusetts-born, married Democrat with two children and a graduate degree (about half are law degrees) who ran unopposed in the last election, according to Boston Globe research and analysis."

- from Boston.com


...and, from the 'Nice Try, But Please Hire a Speechwriter' Department we have Representative Paul J.P. Loscocco, Republican of Holliston:

Why are we here today? In large part because this legislative body thwarted the referendum project two years ago. We refused to act; we dodged the question. If we're here to honor the referendum process, who are we kidding? Why would we want to amend our Constitution in such a way? . . . "We need to consider this carefully, that this is an ill-conceived attempt to split the difference and make no one happy. . . . I remind you all of another constitutional convention in 1789, where many members were told `let's compromise' . . . [a] three-fifths compromise.

So what if some group of people are considered to be less than others? Much to our shame, it's the one black spot on our Constitution, and it had to be changed. If we feel that it should be marriage for everyone, let's do that.

I'm sorry, did he really just call the 3/5 compromise the 'one black spot on our Constitution'? That's a shame.

I just completed a 36-hour work day, and all the charter applications have been fedexed to NYC. It almost didn't happen, because, after I stayed awake all night to finish the damn thing, I fell asleep immediately after dropping it at the printer's and nearly missed the afternoon fedex pickup.

Which is why I had to drive to Harvard Business School, where there is a mailroom that has a six o'clock pickup. When you go into Harvard Business School, the first thing you encounter, other than very wealthy students wearing sweatpants in public, are sets of huge doors. Ten, twelve feet tall. When you pull them open, they have this funny little mechanism that just sort of helps you out ever so slightly. You still need to pull the door - it isn't like the supermarket - but after opening it about a third of the way it kind of goes by itself.

Now, this gadget does not change the way one opens a door, since it still takes a little effort to get a twelve-foot door going. But what it does change is your follow-through. The door takes over and then stays open a second before closing very slowly. It only took my going in and out a couple of times to realize that using a door like this all the time would very quickly make the habit of holding the door for anyone obselete. You'd just sort of be touching a door that was really staying open by itself.

That can't be good.