Fifty miles of elbow room
We lawyers have no souls and we have been known to dip our cookies in our vanquished opponent’s tears, but we give credit where it is due especially when said credit is going to other lawyers. Because occasionally a lawyer comes up with such a wonderful piece of acrobatic legalese that you almost weep with joy that we live in a world in which Lewis Carroll appears to have more influence than Voltaire. We cant weep of course, because we don’t have tear ducts, but you get the point.
I’m talking of course about the Bush administration. Now like most of the civilized world I have serious problems with these bozos, but we wont get into the substantial issues now. However I have no choice but to hastily prepare a shipment of kudos to be delivered to the White house in celebration of their contribution to what I can only call Alice-in-Wonderlandism. I can only bow before them and mutter ‘I am not worthy!’ when presented with the kind of legal acrobatics that however somewhere between truly brilliant and completely insane. I spotted this from the Reason magazine blog.
Two months ago a Justice Department lawyer assured U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor that the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance of international communications involving people in the U.S. was perfectly legal. He declined to elaborate, saying "the evidence we need to demonstrate to you that it is lawful cannot be disclosed without that process itself causing grave harm to United States national security"
How brilliant is that? ‘It’s legal, but we cant prove to you that it is legal because if we do so we will endanger National Security’.
But its not their first contribution to the nonsense files- oh, no. There’s this gem from a few years ago at a time when the American people were just beginning to cotton on to the fact that this Iraq war thingy was a little dodgy. One Bush aide said:
It's a success that hasn't occurred yet. I don't know that I view that as a failure.
‘A success that hasn’t occurred yet’! Just bask in the sheer brilliance of that. Marvel at it. Turn the idea over in your mind and hope to God it doesn’t fry your brain cells. It is the war and peace of the nonsense canon, proof that with careful aim, mankind can kick the enlightenment square in the balls.
I must also give honourable mention to England’s disgraced ex-coach Steve Mcclaren whose failed attempts to get England to Euro 2008 enabled the world to better understand the concept of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. He was fired the morning after the Croatia defeat and his typically boring speech had one moment that made me sit up and take notice. He said-and I quote-
"I said right at the start I would live and die by results and results haven't gone my way. In that sense we have failed"
So if he was going to ‘live and die’ by the results and he quite clearly didn’t get the results, in what sense exactly did he not fail? Notice also the ‘results havent gone my way’ line as if it wasn’t really his fault- the results just went another way. As a non-apology, it takes some beating.
***
“Have you been drinking son?
You don’t look old enough to drink to me.”
“I’m sorry officer, is there a certain age you’re supposed to be?
‘cause nobody told me”
Riot Van: The Arctic Monkeys
I’m talking of course about the Bush administration. Now like most of the civilized world I have serious problems with these bozos, but we wont get into the substantial issues now. However I have no choice but to hastily prepare a shipment of kudos to be delivered to the White house in celebration of their contribution to what I can only call Alice-in-Wonderlandism. I can only bow before them and mutter ‘I am not worthy!’ when presented with the kind of legal acrobatics that however somewhere between truly brilliant and completely insane. I spotted this from the Reason magazine blog.
Two months ago a Justice Department lawyer assured U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor that the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance of international communications involving people in the U.S. was perfectly legal. He declined to elaborate, saying "the evidence we need to demonstrate to you that it is lawful cannot be disclosed without that process itself causing grave harm to United States national security"
How brilliant is that? ‘It’s legal, but we cant prove to you that it is legal because if we do so we will endanger National Security’.
But its not their first contribution to the nonsense files- oh, no. There’s this gem from a few years ago at a time when the American people were just beginning to cotton on to the fact that this Iraq war thingy was a little dodgy. One Bush aide said:
It's a success that hasn't occurred yet. I don't know that I view that as a failure.
‘A success that hasn’t occurred yet’! Just bask in the sheer brilliance of that. Marvel at it. Turn the idea over in your mind and hope to God it doesn’t fry your brain cells. It is the war and peace of the nonsense canon, proof that with careful aim, mankind can kick the enlightenment square in the balls.
I must also give honourable mention to England’s disgraced ex-coach Steve Mcclaren whose failed attempts to get England to Euro 2008 enabled the world to better understand the concept of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. He was fired the morning after the Croatia defeat and his typically boring speech had one moment that made me sit up and take notice. He said-and I quote-
"I said right at the start I would live and die by results and results haven't gone my way. In that sense we have failed"
So if he was going to ‘live and die’ by the results and he quite clearly didn’t get the results, in what sense exactly did he not fail? Notice also the ‘results havent gone my way’ line as if it wasn’t really his fault- the results just went another way. As a non-apology, it takes some beating.
***
“Have you been drinking son?
You don’t look old enough to drink to me.”
“I’m sorry officer, is there a certain age you’re supposed to be?
‘cause nobody told me”
Riot Van: The Arctic Monkeys
posted by Minzo at 4:13 AM
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