Perhaps most troubling, the number of people who are confused about Iraq’s non-existent role in the 9/11 attacks has gone up in recent years. When Newsweek asked the same question in the fall of 2004, 36% said Saddam Hussein was “directly involved” with the attacks. Nearly three years later, that number is 41%. Steve Benen

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

[Hat tip to Sherry Chandler for this particular find.]

This is a passage I copied from War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges.

His mother, seated next to him and wearing a black headscarf, slowly shook her head.

“He goes every day,” she said softly. “I sent my older son to bring him home. And he was not home five minutes before he went back. I tell the boys it is useless, throwing stones and becoming a martyr will not make the Israelis leave. My sister has lost a son. My brother has lost a son. One of my uncles was killed and a cousin is dead. I tell them to look at the history of our struggle. All these deaths achieve nothing. pp. 97-8

Recently a Jewish friend who is married to a non-Jewish woman was blessed with the gift of a son. Like many Jewish fathers in mixed marriages, he wrestled with how to find a mohel, a person trained in brit milah, the ritual circumcision. I checked a few contacts and put him in touch with a rabbi. And I didn’t think anything more of it.

I’m part of that segment of the boomer generation where most males, regardless of religious affiliation, were circumcised in the hospital for, at the times, reasons of good hygiene.

But the debate over circumcision has never stopped as evidenced by this response by a reader to a series of post on Daily Dish.

Women fear that giving their children what they want will lead to their own re-entrapment in the kitchen (which would indeed stink). But the alternative is to look at a defenseless being and say “What you want doesn’t matter. My needs come before yours.”

I think we need another civil rights revolution in this country, predicated on the radical idea that babies and young children are people. (And to the extent that mothers might need to make big changes in their priorities to accommodate that revolution, there should be social support for them so they’re not penalized in employment or social status.)

The Jewish mothers I’ve known have never been happy about this. I’ve been present at two brits and the women hung back and cried at the cutting moment. But even among those that I consider to be the most enlightened/liberal/progressive of Jews, the brit may be discussed, but in the end, tradition wins out.

She who Writes Like She Talks has dealt with the decision twice and I hope she adds her voice to this discussion.

Is sex better for those who remain intact? I don’t know. Although it’s pretty hard for me to imagine it being better than my own experiences.

What do you think?

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

BEING THANKFUL

“No sir,” the boy replied. “I ain’t scared in the daytime.”

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

[Hat tip to Sherry Chandler for this particular find.]

This is a passage I copied from War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges.

It was still. The camp waited, as if holding its breath. And then, out of the dry furnace air a disembodied voice crackled over a loudspeaker from the Israeli side of the camp”s perimeter fence.

The boys darted in small packs up the sloping dunes to the electric fence that separated the camp from the Jewish settlement abutting it. They lobbed rocks towards a jeep, mounted with a loudspeaker and protected by bulletproof armor plates and metal grating, that sat parked on the top of a hill known as Gani Tal. The soldier inside the jeep ridiculed and derided them. Three ambulances – which had pulled up in anticipation of what was to come – lined the road below the dunes. p. 93

Photographers’ Guide to Privacy.
The Photographer’s Right.
A Concise Restatement of Torts.
Journalists’ Right of Privacy Primer.]

Last week I posted and updated the story of Monica Emmerson. This morning I found the story of how downtown Silver Spring, Maryland, has decided that public streets are private property and hired goons rent-a-cops to keep people from exercising their First Amendment rights to take photographs in public spaces.

From NowPublic:

“This past Tuesday I went to downtown Silver Spring, had lunch, and then took out my camera and standing on Ellsworth Avenue, I began taking shots of the buildings with the blue sky and clouds as a backdrop. Almost immediately, a security guard approached and told me ‘there was no picture taking allowed in Downtown Silver Spring.’ ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘I am on a city street, in a public place — taking pictures is a right that I have protected by the first amendment.’ The guard told me to report to the management office.

“There, Stacy Horan informed me that Downtown Silver Spring including Ellsworth Avenue is private property, not a public place, and subject to the rules of the Peterson Companies. They have a no photography policy to ‘protect them from people who might want to use the photographs as part of a story in which they could write bad things about us.’ And she told me that many of the chain stores in Downtown Silver Spring don’t what their ‘concepts’ to be photographed for security reasons.”

Photographers are organizing a protest on the 4th of July to walk down Ellsworth Avenue and take as many pictures as they can. There is already a D.C. Photo Rights Flicker Group.

Have any photographers been illegally harrassed in Cleveland?

Part of being a good citizen of the blogosphere is visiting, reading and, most importantly, taking the time to leave a comment on other’s blogs. It’s all about the conversation. In the interest of setting an example I’ve decided to link to those blog posts that have compelled me to leave a comment.

1211 poll

0819 Is the importance of family dinner a myth?

0813 Any tips on how to get more sleep (don’t say go to bed earlier)?

I went around the foot
of the bed and climbed in
and slid toward the side lined
with the warmth and softness
of herself, and we clasped each other
like no birds I know of.

Our cries that night were wild,
unhinged, not from here,
like the common loon’s.

From Field Notes by Galway Kinnell.

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

A little more than a month ago, my friend, blogger and poet Sherry Chandler posted about a book that she had read. She wrote:

I have been very slowly reading my way through Chris Hedges’ War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning (Public Affairs, 2002). I find it very slow going because every page seems to rip my heart out. Hedges is a great writer; the book is riveting. It’s a portrait of humankind at its most brutal.

I picked up the book and found I had the same problem. Hedges’ book is not one I could read quickly. I read and re-read sentances, whole paragraphs, trying to wrap my head around his experiences. A tremendous amount went into my chapbook, but where I wanted to copy out whole pages I forced myself to capture thoughts I could contemplate.

It is unusual for me to make a case for a book, but in the sixth year of the third millenium of our common era, this is a book that all Americans ought to read.

This is a passage I copied from War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges.

[Ka”Tzetnik”s sextet, House Of Dolls, was] reissued in 1994 and handed out by the Israeli Ministry of Education as recommended reading on the Holocaust in high schools.

One of my friends watched the end of The Sopranos and made the comment: It’s got Sopranos: The Movie written all over it. Maybe. Robert Stein at Connecting.The.Dots takes it a step further and offers up his list of spinoffs. Personally, I like: The Melfi Files: Haunted by loss, the therapist embarks on dramatic, dangerous encounters with patients.

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

A little more than a month ago, my friend, blogger and poet Sherry Chandler posted about a book that she had read. She wrote:

I have been very slowly reading my way through Chris Hedges’ War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning (Public Affairs, 2002). I find it very slow going because every page seems to rip my heart out. Hedges is a great writer; the book is riveting. It’s a portrait of humankind at its most brutal.

I picked up the book and found I had the same problem. Hedges’ book is not one I could read quickly. I read and re-read sentances, whole paragraphs, trying to wrap my head around his experiences. A tremendous amount went into my chapbook, but where I wanted to copy out whole pages I forced myself to capture thoughts I could contemplate.

It is unusual for me to make a case for a book, but in the sixth year of the third millenium of our common era, this is a book that all Americans ought to read.

This is a passage I copied from War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges.

But even in this new age of warfare we cling to the outdated notion of the single hero able to carry out daring feats of courage on the battlefield. Such heroism is about as relevant as mounting bayonet or cavalry charges. p. 86

I just fired off an email to Hagen about this, reminding him gently that although my dad”s band used to play his fundraisers in the 1980s and therefore my family”s supported him for a very, very long time, that this is pigheaded stupid… Shannon