A clear, bright morning.

In case you didn’t know, I’m very close to buying a motorcycle. Specifically, this one (link expired). And since a man’s love interests anthropomorphized toys need names, I’m thinking about Clara. The reasoning:

• A proper British bike needs a proper (sort of) British name.
• The name comes from the “fem. of clarus ‘bright, shining, clear,’” i.e., the sort of day you’d ride a motorcycle.
• “Clara” rhymes with “claret,” a British term for dark red Bordeaux (And slang for blood–thanks, Guy Ritchie!)

Tangential notes from researching the name:

• “Claret” is sometimes hypercorrected to “kla-RAY.”
• The etymology of country names is fascinating.
• “Clarus” was the site of a famous oracle, “who delivered her prophesies in a dark crypt-like adyton under the Temple of Apollo.”
• An adyton was “a restricted area within the cella of a Greek or Roman temple. Its name meant “inaccessible” or “do not enter”.

I suppose I’ll have to write about the tea parties.

“Foreign press reports are often unreliable.” -Matthew Yglesias

As he (and just about every sane commentator) has noted, some of the domestic press is every bit as alien. As David Frum puts it:

To listen to Fox News and other conservative media, you’d think we were living in Czechoslovakia in the final hours before the 1948 communist coup. Anchors end interviews by solemnly pledging to defend liberty and oppose tyranny. The network’s rising star Glenn Beck has mused about the coming turn to totalitarianism — and warned his audience that he has not been able to ‘debunk’ fears that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is constructing an archipelago of concentration camps for political opponents of the Obama administration.

I never thought I’d live in a world where Bill O’Reilly would be inoffensive by Fox News standards.

Boom!

Bye, John. Enjoy those Bloomin’ Onions.

Looks like PFT called it.

Don’t worry about the government.

Homeland Security’s recent memo about right-wing extremists got a bunch of conservative commentators up in arms–now that Cheney’s not behind the tape recorder, this surveillance state must surely be evil!

The inimitable Malkin declares,

[P]ast reports have always been very specific in identifying the exact groups, causes, and targets of domestic terrorism, i.e., the ALF, ELF, and Stop Huntingdon wackos who have engaged in physical harassment, arson, vandalism, and worse against pharmaceutical companies, farms, labs, and university researchers.

Right. (Though to be fair, she’s talking about the government.) Less than six months ago, she was “spotlight[ing] the silence of the left-wing privacy champions who care more about protecting suspected terrorists than Barack Obama’s critics.”

Glenn Greenwald’s response to this foolishness at Salon:

When you cheer on a Surveillance State, you have no grounds to complain when it turns its eyes on you.  If you create a massive and wildly empowered domestic surveillance apparatus, it’s going to monitor and investigate domestic political activity.  That’s its nature.

Although I fully share the disdain for those on the right who have only discovered their commitment to civil liberty, and I’d prefer intelligent opposition (like, say, the ACLU or EFF), I’ll take any opposition to government surveillance I can find.

Update: So will Thoreau. The Economist wonders, “Shouldn’t conservatives be reacting to this by… distancing themselves from the extremists?”  (HT: Andrew Sullivan)

Update update: “Several intelligence officials, as well as lawyers briefed about the matter, said the N.S.A. had been engaged in “overcollection” of domestic communications of Americans. They described the practice as significant and systemic… And in one previously undisclosed episode, the N.S.A. tried to wiretap a member of Congress without a warrant, an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said.” (NYTimes)

The roar of the crowd.

I don’t really care about any baseball teams. I came up outside the orbits of the Cardinals, Twins, Brewers, Cubs, White Sox, and Royals, and despite playing since before I could swing a wooden bat, I haven’t gravitated to any one team. For a long time, I could barely stand to watch games on television.

That said, I just flipped through to the Orioles-Texans Rangers (I told you, I am bad at this), heard the crack of the bat, and my night got booked solid.