Looking Around

For the past two weeks I have been engulfed in an intense but satisfying two-week institute with forty-two K-12 teachers. The only news report that I saw was the Colbert Report on Comedy Central. (That’s what living in a dorm will do for you.) I did not even do much web browsing, except for the minimum needed to assure me that the sun still rose in the East and no continents had disappeared.

Now that it’s all over except for the grading (and preparing for next year), I’m able to look around.

There’s a multi-part investigation of Dick Cheney and his role in making policy. I’ve just begun to read it, but this quote from James Baker III may well capture the gist of it:

"He has been pretty damn good at accumulating power, extraordinarily effective and adept at exercising power."

To quote a host of B movies, and at least one Hardy Boy’s novel, “If only he had used his powers for good.”

Walter Dellinger and Dahlia Lithwick have begun their 2007 Supreme Court Conversation at Slate. If it is as good as the 2006 Conversation it will be well worth following.

I get the impression that in the past two weeks nothing happened in the presidential campaign that is worth remembering. If I’m wrong please let me know.

OK, there was one thing that might be worth remembering: Michael Bloomberg may run as an independent candidate.

The history of independent candidates and attempts to form third parties has not been good in the last half-century. Generally speaking, the strongest candidates have not been that interested in truly establishing a political party that would outlast them, and the people who work so hard at forming third parties simply don’t get the press they need if the don’t have a big name to grab the reporters and make the big venues, like Comedy Central.