Honoring the Dead

I had the honor of performing this duty twice in my transshipment from Oakland Army Terminal to Japan in 1965.

The bus ride up to Edwards Air Force Base was alway noisy and full of ribald humor. The ride back in the convoy of Graves Registration vehicles was always somber and much less mirthful.

It is my contention that most American men at about 19 or 20 will take on the responsibilities of soldiering if asked. It is also my contention that American GIs are willing to be lead but will balk at being driven. It is now reported that the young officers corps and, formerly eager NCO cadre are avoiding further service in record numbers. They have been used and abused. They have driven hard. They are asked to step back into the line of fire over and over. It is not the way that an American Army has been asked to work in the past. They can be used a bit, but when it comes to being abused, all bets are off.

This era will go down in history as the blackest mark recorded in our brief two hundred and odd numbers of national existence.

How did you support the troops today. Did you fill your tanks with $3.75 gasoline and drag the boat to the lake?

A Strong Smackdown

I don't believe that I have ever seen such a strong rebuke of any political or government official by his "peers". This is serious. This is a strong statement of Government of the People, by the People.

LB

AN OPEN LETTER TO ATTORNEY GENERAL ALBERTO GONZALES

May 15, 2007

Dear Attorney General Gonzales:

Twenty-five years ago we, like you, graduated from Harvard Law School. While we arrived via many
different paths and held many different views, we were united in our deep respect for the Constitution and the
rights it guaranteed. As members of the post-Watergate generation who chose careers in law, we understood
the strong connection between our liberties as Americans and the adherence of public officials to the law
of the land. We knew that the choice to abide by the law was even more critical when public officials were
tempted to take legal shortcuts. Nowhere were we taught that the ends justified the means, or that freedoms
for which Americans had fought and died should be set aside when inconvenient or challenging. To the
contrary: our most precious freedoms, we learned, need defending most in times of crisis.

So it has been with dismay that we have watched your cavalier handling of our freedoms time and
again. When it has been important that legal boundaries hold unbridled government power in check, you
have instead used pretextual rationales and strained readings to justify an ever-expanding executive authority.
Witness your White House memos sweeping aside the Geneva Conventions to justify torture, endangering
our own servicemen and women; witness your advice to the President effectively reading Habeas Corpus
out of our constitutional protections; witness your support of presidential statements claiming inherent
power to wiretap American citizens without warrants (and the Administration’s stepped-up wiretapping
campaign, taking advantage of those statements, which continues on your watch to this day); and witness
your dismissive explanation of the troubling firings of numerous U.S. Attorneys, and their replacement with
others more “loyal” to the President’s politics, as merely “an overblown personnel matter.” In these and other
actions, we see a pattern. As a recent editorial put it, your approach has come to symbolize “disdain for the
separation of powers, civil liberties and the rule of law.”

As lawyers, and as a matter of principle, we can no longer be silent about this Administration’s
consistent disdain for the liberties we hold dear. Your failure to stand for the rule of law, particularly when
faced with a President who makes the aggrandized claim of being a unitary executive, takes this country down
a dangerous path.

Your country and your President are in dire need of an attorney who will do the tough job of
providing independent counsel, especially when the advice runs counter to political expediency. Now more
than ever, our country needs a President, and an Attorney General, who remember the apt observation
attributed to Benjamin Franklin: “Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary
Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” We call on you and the President to relent from this reckless path,
and begin to restore respect for the rule of law we all learned to love many years ago.

Yours truly,

THE SIGNATORIES ARE ALL MEMBERS OF THE HARVARD LAW SCHOOL CLASS OF 1982
David M. Abromowitz
Boston, MA
Jonathan B. Baker
Bethesda, MD
Valerie D. Bell
St. Louis, MO
Raymond Angelo Belliotti
Fredonia, NY
James S. Berkman
Boston, MA
McKey W. Berkman
Boston, MA
Scott Brown
Hanover, NH
Robert D. Chesler
Roseland, NJ
Armond Cohen
Cambridge, MA
David Currier
Freeport, ME
Stuart W. Davidson
Philadelphia, PA
Daniel M. Elkort
San Francisco, CA
Matthew E. Epstein
Newton, MA
Mary T. Esposito
Cape Elizabeth, ME
Gary M. Fallon
Seattle, WA
William L. Fleming
Seattle, WA
Jonathan A. Funk
San Francisco, CA
Keith Halpern
Cambridge, MA
Matthew M. Horgan
London, UK
Elaine Johnson James
West Palm Beach, FL
Keith A. James
West Palm Beach, FL
Emily Joselson
Middlebury, VT
Cheryl D. Justice
Los Angeles, CA
Meredith J. Kane
New York, NY
Susan Kaplan
New York, NY
David Karnovsky
New York, NY
Gregory F. Keller
Great Neck, NY
David Kelston
Cambridge, MA
Otho E. Kerr III
New York, NY
Marisa Lago
New York, NY
Kathleen Larocque
Santa Rosa, CA
Karen Levinson
New York, NY
Christine A. Littleton
Los Angeles, CA
Nancy R. London
Pacifi c Palisades, CA
Beverly R. Lopez
Dallas, TX
Julian W. Mack
San Francisco, CA
Andy Miller
San Francisco, CA
Barbara Moses
New York, NY
Beth H. Parker
San Francisco, CA
Wendy E. Parmet
Newton, MA
Brendan J. Radigan
Providence, RI
Catherine Redlich
Ridgewood, NJ
Michael B. Reuben
New York, NY
Clifford S. Robbins
San Mateo, CA
James Rosenthal
New York, NY
Rusty Russell
Cambridge, MA
Eric Schneiderman
New York, NY
Eric Seiler
New York, NY
Jeffrey P. Smith
Evanston, IL
Lorna Soroko
Tucson, AZ
Alan M. Spiro
Boston, MA
David S. Steuer
Palo Alto, Califonia
Kelvin R. Westbrook
St. Louis, MO
Mary Whisner
Seattle, WA
Jeannette Anderson Winn
Greenville, SC
Marshall Winn
Greenville, SC

A response to my agrieved . . .

friend.

I am certainly glad to see that I am back on the Billy Net.

About that crate thing; if one is shoved in front of me, I'll jump up on it and speak.

I have become a snarky bastard since turning 62. My phone is red hot with what to turn over next in my IRAs and 401Ks. They are pitifully small but the advice is myriad.

I have put off the Social Security thing so as to maximize that eventual outcome. My right ankle and leg structural integrity have reached a point of constant pain. I can not, however, in good conscience bring myself to tap VA.

It was a scene of utter irony this week to find the Prez'dent sitting down with that brilliant Nancy Pelosi. There was further irony to be found in the scene of "Mommy" and that Austrian fellow, Ahnold entering the Rebup debates. I was completely blind sided by the participation of Mike Gravel. I had completely forgotten about him.

I don't know about the intricacies of your city and county tax and financial structure, but it appears that the merde is going to be much deeper in that area for the immediate future. The cities and county staff reductions here are being made in the worker bee section of those programs. the administrators are staying with bonuses. I had high hopes for our new governor, Charlie Crist, but he has now started the doo-doo rolling down hill again.

Meanwhile: our beach tourist industry is gutted by the loss of a thousand or so rooms for visitors from all over the world. The condos that were to replace them are standing empty and unfinished. The county won a new penny of sales tax and then started closing services that maintain the parks and facilities that went before. There are now clandestine activities going on to sweep clean preserve land that is the last of the natural in our county and building "ball fields" on them.

On the plus side, my garage is unloaded enough to get around in it and do some work with my tools. My yard is now up to specs with the rest of the neighbors. My good friends Jim and Wilma are moving along with their plans to leave the hurricane zone for the tornado zone. My daughter and her boy friend have an apartment in a rual setting. They are the human security for a small horse related supply business, beyond where the sidewalks end. Schlepping them around to school and back to their "accommodation" is a small price to pay. My relief will be complete when they clear "My" spare bedrooms of their stuff.

This response has become so good that I am posting it to my blogs with names changed to protect the . . . aggrieved

Happy Cinco d'Mayo. It is as much a celebration for el Norte as it is for Atzlan. Google it and find out why.

LB