The term, “Lame Duck,” is being mentioned frequently in the news about Congress. The term is used to describe elected officials still serving in office, but are not slated to continue. It is frequently believed that the officials are in a weaker position, but there is another contention that a politician can make stronger decisions because they are no longer posturing for the next election. According to blurtit, the term was coined in the early 18th century to describe a broker on the London stock exchange who defaulted on his debts. “Horace Walpole is said to be the first man to have originally used the words in writing about the broker.in 1761, and the line was…”Do you know what a Bull and a Bear and Lame Duck are?”
Out of Sorts
I’ve heard this expression many times, and understood it to mean someone was frustrated or not feeling well. However, I asked myself “what is a sort, and why would someone find themselves out of them?” I found a detailed explanation in World Wide Words.
“The most common story about this phrase refers to the printer’s word sorts for the individual metal characters in his boxes of type, so called because they have been arranged, each into its own compartment, with all of one kind together. It would obviously be a substantial inconvenience if a printer were to run out of a sort during composition. The problem with this story is that the figurative expression out of sorts is recorded much earlier than the printers’ term.” A second idea is that the saying came from saying that a pack of playing cards hadn’t been shuffled. The author isn’t convinced about this origin, and instead thinks the origin derives from Latin. “The Latin original of our word sort was applied to a piece of wood that was used for drawing lots…it developed into the idea of one’s fate, fortune or condition…It survived until shortly after Shakespeare’s time, until about the point that out of sorts is first found.
Out of Bondage: The Story of Elizabeth Bentley
Published by The Devin-Adair Company, New York, 1951
(Buy this book on Amazon.com.)
Elizabeth Terrill Bentley was an American who served as a courier for Soviet espionage cells who became disillusioned, and like Whitaker Chambers (see the “Witness” review), went to the FBI. Bentley was a well educated liberal who became concerned about Fascism during a year in Italy and became a Communist when she had trouble finding work after she returned to the United States. Her intelligence and dedication attracted the attention of members of the Russian Secret Police. One was a woman named Juliet Glazer (actual name Juliet Poyntz) who scared her. Glazer was liquidated by her Soviet handlers not long after meeting Bentley. Over the next few years Bentley would work with others who would suffer the same fate as Glazer (Poyntz).
Elizabeth called herself a “steeled Bolshevik” by the time she went to work for a man called “Timmy,” and she was told to cut off contact with all her Communist friends to go deep under cover. “Timmy,” who she later called “Yasha,” was Jacob Golos, chief of Soviet espionage operations in the United States. Elizabeth, whose Venona code name was “Clever Girl,” served as courier for Golos, and the two became lovers against orders from the Soviets and despite the fact he had a wife in Lithuania and a mistress in Manhattan.
Germany attacked the Soviet Union, and orders came to Golos to get as many comrades as possible into the U.S. government. Bentley assumed the name of “Miss Wise,” and she found a job in the United States Services and Shipping Corporation. Bentley was surprised at how easy it was for hard core Communists to be hired into sensitive U.S. government jobs. There were so many agents that she and Golos worried that American intelligence would “trip over one of them.” So much information was stolen that it was difficult to keep up with the microfilming. The information included plane production data, planned destinations, and performance data. “Besides this purely military information, we had a steady flow of political reports from the Treasury…the Office of Strategic services, the Navy, the Army, and…the Department of Justice. We knew what was going on in the inner chambers of the United States Government.” Continue reading
Dream Act Revisions
I searched the Immigration Policy Center web site after the Dream Act failed to pass to consider the opinions of supporters. That helped me understand why there is a wish to provide a path to citizenship for young people brought to this country illegally who have grown up as Americans. There are several revisions that could be made to the Act that would make it something I could support. The primary flaw with the Act as proposed was, in my opinion, including mere attendance of college as a path to citizenship. I would support citizenship for those who serve honorably in the military.
One criticism of the Act is that it would encourage others to come into the country illegally. Probably the best way to gather support for the Act is to include it in immigration reform legislation that proves we are serious about addressing the total problem, including border security. Of course there would have to be solid proof that the applicants did grow up in this country. There also must be a sunset clause to eliminate incentives for more illegal immigration. However, I have no objection to a young person earning citizenship by honorably serving in the military. To those who might say having only one path to citizenship through military service is too limiting, there is a GI Bill which provides substantial college benefits. The link also provides information on Federal and State grants available to veterans.
President Obama would undoubtedly disagree with my suggestion about the need to consider the Dream Act as part of immigration reform. He said in a recent press conference that border security has been improved under his administration, and that issue shouldn’t deter a vote for the Act. The same day I read a New York Times article by James C. Mckinley Jr. in the Denver Post (December 22, 2010, page 7A) titled “Audit: Millions entering U.S. minus proper ID.” The article included the observation that “A year and a half after the federal government strengthened rules on the documents needed to enter the country, millions of people are still being allowed through without passports or…other identification cards…The Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security estimated…about 3.6 million people a year were still passing through customs without the required documentation, and that half of those were coming through the border crossing in Texas.”
Hans Rosling’s 200 Countries, 200 Years
This post provides a link to a four minute You Tube presentation about the connection between life expectancy and income. I originally didn’t think of adding this post to the blog, and then I realized it could be a light companion to the video about nuclear explosions.
From the description I received, “Hans Rosling’s famous lectures combine enormous quantities of public data with a sport’s commentator’s style to reveal the story of the world’s past, present and future development. Now he explores stats in a way he has never done before – using augmented reality animation. In this spectacular section of ‘The Joy of Stats’ he tells the story of the world in 200 countries over 200 years using 120,000 numbers – in just four minutes. Plotting life expectancy against income for every country since 1810, Hans shows how the world we live in is radically different from the world most of us imagine.”
I don’t know how famous Hans Rosling is, but his video will challenge those who have the opinion math can never be fun.
The Classified Documents in the Pants Mystery
The mystery of how the Justice Department operates becomes more baffling the more I read. “Scooter” Libby was found guilty of failing to remember events correctly, or failing to correctly tell investigators what he knew. He was sentenced to 30-37 months in jail followed by two years of probation and fined $250,000. Sandy Berger stole classified documents from the National Archives, and was sentenced to two years of probation and fined $50,000 after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor. Berger was supposed to be finding information that would be important to the 9/11 Commission. I speculate that he instead took the opportunity to remove documents that might be embarrassing to him or perhaps the Clinton legacy. One would think that stealing documents from the National Archives would be a serious crime, and that the crime would be even more serious if the purpose was to obstruct the work of the 9/11 Commission. It apparently was a mere misdemeanor.
Clinton had asked Berger, who had been his National Security Advisor, to testify to the Commission. Berger was allowed access to classified documents in a secure reading room during four visits to the National Archives to prepare for his testimony. He was caught in the act of stealing documents. The incident was reported to the Justice Department by Paul Brachfield, the Inspector General of the National Archives. Brachfield became concerned about a lack of action from DOJ, and arranged a meeting with a DOJ trial attorney to emphasize he was concerned Berger was obstructing the Commission’s investigation. An article sent to me by my Sister-in-law observed that DOJ began to investigate after Brachfield persisted.
There is no way of knowing how many classified documents Berger cleaned out of the National Archives during the visits before he was caught. DOJ apparently wasn’t curious about what he removed, because they decided there was no need for the lie detector test that was a condition of Berger’s plea bargain. They conducted a multi-million dollar investigation about “who outed Valerie Plame” (even after they learned whodunit early in the investigation and didn’t prosecute that person), but apparently weren’t curious about what Berger was up to. It’s a mystery. I’d be interested if there is a reader who can explain this to me and/or can set me straight.