As the matter comes to a conclusion, right-to-lifers, people who say they represent the “culture of life,” are showing their true colors:

Some pro-life activists are making ugly threats, making up “Wanted” posters for lawmakers and handing out the home addresses of judges who rejected legal appeals to keep Schiavo alive.

“I am afraid,” said state Sen. Frederica Wilson, D-Miami, who has received numerous death threats by phone and mail because she voted against a measure to reinsert Schiavo’s feeding tube. “We’re talking about the sanctity of life, and (they’re) threatening my life.”

The nine Republican lawmakers who voted against the measure showed up on anonymous “Wanted” posters that appeared in the state capitol in Tallahassee. State Sen. Nancy Argenziano said one of the “un-Christian” voice mails she’s received wished stomach cancer on her.

Guards have been posted outside the politicians’ offices.

Police won’t discuss their security measures, but Michael Schiavo and Judge George Greer, who has consistently upheld Schiavo’s requests to end his wife’s life, are under around-the-clock protection and staying out of sight. Both have been the targets of a flood of fury, branding them corrupt and abusive murderers who are flouting God.

“Various law enforcement agencies are aware of the emotions in this case and have taken appropriate actions,” said Wayne Shelor, spokesman for the police in Clearwater, Fla., where Michael Schiavo lives.

Popular right-wing Web sites have had to post prominent warnings against threats of violence on their discussion boards after calls for the armed “liberation” of Terri Schiavo from her hospice and comments suggesting that if her husband were taken out of the picture, guardianship would revert to her parents, who want to keep her alive.

People on Schiavo’s street in Clearwater have received anonymous postcards saying: “Your neighbor Michael Schiavo is trying to murder his wife.”

In addition, a North Carolina man has been arrested for taking out a $250,000 bounty for the killing of Michael Schiavo, and a $50,000 bounty for the murder of judge Greer.

In addition, nine people so far have been arrested for trying to enter the Hospice where Terri Schiavo is located, carrying bread and water to feed her. Ironically, since Terri Schiavo cannot swallow, such offerings would kill her quickly, causing her to suffocate. But because the RTL movement has been so baldly lying about Terri’s condition, there are many who believe that Terri is sitting up with the nurses and chatting away, swallowing regularly and naturally, but nevertheless being starved and dehydrated to death. Since three of the trespassers were underage (including a ten-year-old boy and 13-year-old twin girls), it demonstrates that RTL’ers are not above using their own children to forward their religious agenda.

So this is the culture of life: using (some might say abusing) children, harassment, slander, religious hatred, vile prayers for disease and death, threats of violence, armed kidnaping and death, and mafioso-style contracts calling for murder. This is supposedly the “culture of life,” and yet clearly betrays itself as a culture of intolerance, hatred, violence, and death. Welcome to modern American Fundamentalist extremism.

Tonight was a good night.

It is an interesting, and perhaps vastly unsatisfying element of the Terri Schiavo case that the manner of letting her die is starvation. If the decision is to let her body die, why take what is arguably one of the most morbid paths to that end? Why not do it quickly by another method?

As I see it, it is the result of what I consider a flawed philosophical viewpoint: that being passive, that by withholding action, we absolve ourselves of responsibility.

There is the belief that if we actively do something, then we are responsible for that action and for the outcome. However, if we are able to act but decide not to, then somehow we have no responsibility for what happens as a result. This belief may seem reasonable at a glance, but a deeper consideration reveals that it is hollow at best, and an excuse for unethical stances at worst.

It is my opinion that we cannot, in most situations, choose what we are and are not responsible for; that determination is made by what we are able to do, not by what we choose to participate in. If you are able to act but decide not to, then you are just as accountable for the result as if you took direct action instead. In short, responsibility does not stem from action, it stems from choice. Both action and inaction are choices, and both result in personal responsibility.

But we fool ourselves by saying that since we did nothing, that we are not involved, and so nothing can be our fault. That’s wrong, and it can easily be proven so. You walk down a street and see a person immobile and bleeding to death. No one else is in sight. You have two options: call for help and save the person’s life, or walk away and let them die. Sure, you weren’t the one to hurt them in the first place, and no, you did not choose to find them. But could you truly walk away with a clear conscience? The answer is, of course, no. Inaction would have consequences just as clearly as action would; your choice determines your responsibility. If you walk away when you could save that person, then you are just as responsible for their death as the person who hurt them in the first place, because your choice caused them to die.

This choice is often mitigated, in the eyes of many, by personal sacrifice. What if saving the person’s life would cost you something? What if you knew that it was a gang killing and there would be retribution against you? In that case, you would have to balance the risk to you and the responsibility of causing that person to die. There is a point at which it might be understandable, if the risk to you were excessive. Few would fault you for not jumping onto the railroad tracks to save someone about to be hit by a train if there were a fifty-fifty chance that you both would get struck and killed.

Less exonerating is the “why me?” factor. I didn’t choose to be put in this situation, so I should be free to leave it. Well, it may suck to have to make a choice like that, but life isn’t fair. If you find yourself with the choice to act or not act, then the responsibility is yours, like it or not. “It’s not my problem” is an excuse, not a reason.

Then there’s the question of how far this idea can be taken. For example, I always have the choice of keeping all my money for myself and buying cool and comfortable stuff to make my life more enjoyable. Or I could get a minimally livable apartment, eat as cheaply as possible, not get myself any goodies and stash away just enough to survive in retirement–and give every other cent I earn to people who need it more than I do, so they can avoid disease, starvation and have enough to survive. The choice is mine. If I am selfish, I keep the money, but by doing so, I let others suffer who could have used that iPod money for food and medicine.

Few people would accept that mantle of responsibility. Partly that is because of the “not my problem” philosophy of passive avoidance, but also partly it is because in order to achieve true parity, we would have to impoverish ourselves to the same extent as the poorest people on Earth so as not to be indirectly responsible for their suffering. Again, we meet up with the question of how much taking action will cost us. Then there are the less satisfactory excuses we hide behind: I can’t save the world by myself, I earned everything I make and those people didn’t, others are in a better position to help, I didn’t do anything to make them poor or sick–or even the compromise of giving a small amount, perhaps even tithing, to salve our conscience and make us feel like we’ve done our part.

In the end, however, I think that we cannot absolve ourselves here. The fact is, we are selfish. We do admire people who are willing to give up everything for others, but let’s face it: most of us are not like that. It doesn’t mean we are not responsible–we are–but we should realize and accept that this is what we are. Let’s not bandy excuses or try to justify ourselves. We’re selfish, plain and simple. It’s a bad trait, but it is what we choose. Accept it.

Now, this is about responsibility, not about social acceptance. Those are two different things. Social mores delineate what we accept as a society and what we do not. We accept that rich people can selfishly keep most of their money, for example, but we also expect some form of contribution from them back to society. Call it a social compromise between what we allow out of our selfish nature, and what we demand from our recognition of responsibility.

This brings me back to the Terri Schiavo case. (Thought I’d forgotten all about that, didn’t you?) The social mores for allowing a person in her situation to choose death are fairly well set, as most people believe that the choice was hers, and she made it. But then there is the question of the method of death. Why starvation, after all? If we are decided that death will be allowed, why do it that way?

The reason lies in our misguided belief that inaction absolves us of responsibility. By removing the feeding tube, we are simply letting nature take its course. That, of course, is wrong. We decided to cause the death. Sure, Terri decided that herself before all this started, but at this moment in time, she’s out of the game, and instead, we have the choice to follow her wishes and allow her body to die, or to not follow her wishes and keep her body alive anyway. Since we have the ability to act, we’re involved, and therefore responsible. And if our choice is to let her die, then shouldn’t that choice be “humane,” which is to say quick and clean?

Two factors could mitigate this: first, the possible wishes of the patient. Terri wanted not to be kept alive by a feeding tube, this the courts have resolved; however, would she have objected to an injection to put her body down instead of simply withholding nutrition and hydration and “letting nature take its course”? We don’t know. Maybe she would have chosen the latter. The second mitigating possibility is the fact that in her present condition, Terri cannot feel any pain. So even though dehydration and/or starvation appears cruel and unusual to us, it makes no difference to Terri–aside from the possibility that it offends her memory.

It could be, in fact, that doing it “quick and clean” would not be for Terri’s sake at all, but rather for ourselves, to make us feel better about it–just the same as people who would let her starve because that would also make us feel better, like we somehow avoided true responsibility for the result.

So perhaps, within the living wills that so many of us are writing these days, we should add the condition that if death is to come, have it come by the manner of our preference. Of course, then we start encroaching on the shores of “mercy killing” and “euthanasia,” which are other sticky issues–but false in this case, as allowing someone to die is allowing them to die. Whether we let it happen by starvation or we make it happen by lethal injection is a pure technicality; the end result is exactly the same, as is the measure of our responsibility for our action or inaction. For our choice.

As expected, the federal courts are ruling exactly as the state courts ruled. It’s no real surprise, as Terri Schiavo’s physical state is clear, and strong evidence of her wishes in the matter were demonstrated in a manner commensurate with legal definitions. The first federal court denied the Schindlers’ request to overturn the decision to remove Terri’s feeding tube. They appealed, and the 11th circuit court rejected the appeal, as well as rejecting a request for the matter to be heard by the entire appellate court. They just don’t have any law behind them, nor do they have any convincing evidence to back up their claims. It certainly doesn’t help that the right-to-lifers came in and tore their credibility to shreds by offering a quack doctor as an expert witness and making a blizzard of fake or extremely skewed claims in the press and in the courtroom.

So now they’re appealing to the Supreme Court, which has already turned down three requests to intervene, and it is highly unlikely that they will change their standing on the issue. The right-to-life movement chose the wrong case to bring: they apparently chose to back the Schindlers because they felt that Terri would provide a sympathetic face to the issue, but in terms of legality, Michael Schiavo’s case is rock-solid. Think about it: not only Schiavo, but also several of Terri’s friends testified that Terri made clear statements that she would not want to be kept on a feeding tube, exactly this situation. To assume Michael Schiavo is lying, you must also believe that several of Terri’s friends are also complicit in the conspiracy. Why do so many people want her dead? The answer is, they dont: they just want her own wishes in the case to be honored, it’s as simple as that.

Meanwhile, the polls are solidifying the fact that the public overwhelmingly supports Schiavo’s and the courts’ decision to remove the feeding tube, but also that politicians are using the case inappropriately to pander to voters. A new CBS poll finds that 74% of the people believe Congress got involved just to advance their political agenda, and fully 82% said that Congress and the president should not be involved in the matter. And that’s the real fear that people have: that the government may take away from us the freedom to decide for ourselves.

One positive result from all this is that Bush and the GOP may see this whole thing backfire on them–in fact, it may already be happening. That CBS poll found that not only does the public disapprove of Congress more than before, but Bush’s own popularity rating–which has remained stuck at around 50% despite countless scandals and misdeeds–has now sunk to 43%, from a February rating of 49%. True, other causes may factor into this, but it certainly is not a good sign for the administration, and might possibly be an indication of a stronger public backlash than anyone imagined.

UPDATE:I was just about to post this when I noticed the news came out in the past hour that the U.S. Supreme Court has, unsurprisingly, rejected the Schindler appeal. Extraordinary due process has been served. The law–and Terri’s wishes–may now finally be carried out despite the outcry from the most vocal minority.

Since I started blogging daily, 600 days have passed without a break (okay, when traveling over date lines I blog ahead, but I don’t count that as a break). The two-year anniversary since the first entry of this blog is coming in just two weeks. An average of 1,400 visitors (most of them repeat visitors, it seems) come to this site every day, most by direct address (bookmark, RSS feed, or typing the URL directly into a browser), and most of the rest through search engines like Google. Go figure….

The major media outlets have not exactly been “fair and balanced,” to coin a phrase, about the whole Schiavo affair. One of the most significant ways this is true lies in the endlessly repeated showing of the infamous tape of Terri–the one shot by family, which was then edited down to give the intentional false impression that Terri was aware of her surroundings and responding to stimulus. Perhaps this can be explained by the fact that the whole, unedited version may not be available, and that a court order has prevented any further footage to be released, and since the media is hungry for any images, it uses what is out there. Nevertheless, it is biased, it is presented without disclaimer, and whatever the reason for airing, it perpetrates a stark falsehood about the case.

But the video is not all that betrays the media bias. CNN and other networks have been airing interviews with Carla Sauer Iyer, a nurse who is making, to say the least, fantastic claims about Terri Schiavo. What the networks leave out is the fact that Iyer was considered by the court to be severely lacking in credibility. According to Iyer, Terri was speaking, communicating ideas, swallowing and taking nutrition orally, and that with “just a little bit of therapy” Terri could be walking around. However, also according to Iyer, Michael Schiavo was a ruthless, frightening man bent on killing his wife: he constantly asked when “that bitch” would die and claimed she was costing him a fortune; that he stole charts Iyer wrote on which showed Terri was making progress; that he repeatedly stopped any therapy, and even injected her with insulin to make her sick; that he was so fierce and threatening, that the entire medical facility was terrified of him, and bowed to his every whim. And that when she notified the police of this, she was immediately terminated.

What CNN and the other news shows that presented her as a credible witness failed to mention was that Iyer was considered an extremely unconvincing witness by the courts, which pointed out that Iyer’s story required a grand conspiracy between medical staff, doctors, the police and even the Schindlers, Terri’s parents. Her testimony starkly contradicts Terri’s medical records, of what is possible for a patient lacking a cerebral cortex.

It also begs the question of why all the others who would have to have been aware of all this have not come forward. Certainly they cannot fear the hellish wrath of Michael Schiavo now? The fact of the matter is that Iyer’s testimony is simple too far removed from reality to be believable. It would require that Michael Schiavo, by threat of lawsuit alone (suing on what grounds?) convinced an entire medical facility and staff of doctors to falsify years of medical reports, and to top it all off, the Schindlers would have had to be in on it as well. Her actual motives in this are a mystery (expecting to sell the story to a movie studio? Or perhaps she’s a right-to-lifer, or has been co-opted by them?), but to believe the story is asking far too much. Unless it happens to jibe with your worldview and you’re willing to gloss over the stark impossibilities involved–which many are able to do in this case.

Fortunately, the public in general seems not to be fooled by any of this. The polls seem to indicate that a very sizable majority is on Michael Schiavo’s side on the matter. CNN’s poll shows approval of the court’s decision to remove the feeding tube leading disapproval almost by a factor of two, 56% to 31%. Among Republicans, a 54% majority approved of the court decision. (Though CNN managed to skew the charts to make approval seem overwhelmingly from Democrats.)

An ABC poll showed an even greater majority, 63%, approved of removing Terri’s feeding tube, and that 70% felt that intervention by the government was inappropriate, almost as many saying that politics, not concern for Terri’s life, was the motive behind the sudden legislation. Furthermore, the poll revealed that while opposition to removing the feeding tube and especially support for political action were lukewarm, support for removing the feeding tube and opposition to political action were both very strong. And while the media has been repeating that Terri was a Catholic, and Catholics are against taking away feeding tubes in such cases, the poll revealed that 63% of Catholics approved of removing Terri’s feeding tube.

As with reproductive rights and gun control, a sizable majority approves of this issue–but as with reproductive rights and gun control, the highly vocal, extremist minority of fundamental “right-to-life” advocates are hijacking the media spotlight and getting the Republicans in government to do whatever they want them to do on this issue.

The law passed by Republicans in Congress yesterday was quickly dismissed by a federal court judge randomly selected to hear the case. The judge said that he would not order Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube re-inserted because “I think you’d be hard-pressed to convince me that you have a substantial likelihood to succeed” in eventually winning a motion.

The law in this case is just too clear: Terri made her wishes known, there is no hope for rehabilitation or recovery of any kind, and the government has no right to force its will, sharply partisan or not, upon the individual rights of an American citizen.

It’s not over yet, though: the case will go up to the 11th circuit in Atlanta–which will just as likely dismiss the claim. Then it will go up to the Supreme Court–for the fourth time–which again will likely refuse to intervene. As I said, the law is just too clear.

But we did get yet another look at the incredible hypocrisy of George W., in that he stated to the nation just yesterday that “it is wise to err on the side of life,” citing the “culture of life” that is such a common keyword with extremist “right-to-life” groups.

But it was also pointed out by observers that while governor of Texas, Bush signed a law that would allow hospitals to forcibly remove feeding tubes from patients like Terri Schiavo if the family did not have sufficient money to pay for their care at the facility. Think about it: if the right-to-lifers demand it, Bush feels that it is the place of the Congress and the President to overturn 19 judges’ decisions and force the tubes to stay in; but if the family runs out of money, then let the woman die. At least Bush is staying constant in one respect: in both cases, he went squarely against the wishes of the person on life support. But Bush can hardly claim that he was “erring on the the side of life” when he signed a law that would pull the plug just because the patient was poor. But again, he was consistent in screwing over lower-class citizens when the profits of corporations were at stake. So he’s definitely of mixed minds on this one.

Not that this kind of thing is anything new: as governor of Texas, he also signed a law requiring election recounts if the count was in question at all, while as a presidential candidate he sued all the way up to the Supreme court not only to stop the counting, but also to overturn a state’s decision. In that respect–claiming to be a champion of states’ rights while constantly overturning the states’ decision when he didn’t like them–he is also staying the course.

How comforting.

The Republicans have themselves another winner of a socially charged political affair in Terri Schiavo. The bill they want to pass (the Republican Senate already has, the Republican House is poised to), in the end, won’t change a single thing, of course–it simply seeks to put the dispute back into court. They claim she has not received due process. Now, the courts have ruled on this extensively; it has gone up to and beyond the Florida State Supreme Court and up to the United States Supreme Court–three times–and the answer has always come back the same. Law professor Norman Cantor of Rutgers University has pointed out that Terri Schiavo has “gotten more due process than any patient in medical history.”

Still, the bill proposed by Congress sidesteps the case into lower federal courts, and stacks the odds in favor of one side: it would effectively erase every single standing judgment before it, it would get rid of every scrap of judgment by all 19 judges who have ruled on the case, every legal determination, every finding and decision, and force the federal courts to start over from the start. In other words, since every decision has gone in favor of Terri’s stated wishes as brought forth by her husband, all of those decisions would be wiped out, and things would start all over again. The U.S. Congress, essentially the Republicans who loudly proclaim themselves to be champions of states’ rights, are (once again) wresting a politically charged case out of a state’s hands because they don’t like what the state did, and asserting full federal control over it. In other words, they’re again showing what flaming hypocrites they’re willing to be if a juicy political dessert can be gained from it.

Of course, Republicans are denying this, saying that it is “disgusting to even suggest” that politics plays a part in this–a statement that is so ludicrous as to be laughable. Many Republicans are shamelessly touting the fact that this will be a big winner in next year’s elections, that they can argue they were trying to save a poor woman from being killed, while Democrats wanted to viciously and mercilessly slay her. Don’t believe me? Republicans circulated a talking points memo to their people saying the case would be “an important moral issue and the pro life base will be excited,” and that it is a “great political issue because Sen. Nelson of Florida has already refused to become a co-sponsor and this is a tough issue for Democrats.” Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist denounced the memo publicly, but he very well could have written it privately, seeing from his actions. Conservative segments of society are already calling the Democrats the “party of death,” and pundits are laying the invective on full force.

What is at the center of all this is perhaps the politically charged issue for a long time, abortion. Conservatives have their language already crafted: the culture of life. The other side, they say, is the culture of death. All crap, of course–these same people approve of war, torture, execution, abandoning children in hopeless poverty, and so on. But they want to deny people the freedom to make their own choices on abortion, they want to prohibit terminally ill patients from taking effective medication to alleviate their pain or from ending a pointless existence with no hope for anything but excruciating pain until they die in agony, and they want to keep irreversibly vegetative corpses artificially living–so they’re the “culture of life.”

The same “culture of life” that sends its people off to kill doctors, and which now has forced a prominent judge who did his job as the law demands to have ’round the clock police protection because of all the death threats he’s received from model members of the “culture of life.” The same people who bomb clinics and assault women entering them, shoving bloody photos in their faces and screaming that they are murderers. People who, when they became involved in the case, instantly turned to malicious slander against Terri’s husband, calling him a wife abuser, murderer, out for money and death… yup, these are real sweethearts, these people.

But they bring in the votes, which is why the entire Republican party is in high gear to produce what is almost certainly an unconstitutional law. They know it won’t help. They know it’s all bullshit. But it takes everyone’s attention away from the real issues–from the high-end issues like the shameful anti-voter bankruptcy bill, the dismantling of social security, the war in Iraq and theft of billions of taxpayer dollars, right down to the small-time yet still significant scandals like the Bush administration using tax dollars to produce hundreds of political ads with fake reporters. The subversion of the media, the dismantling of social support systems, the steady transfer of wealth from the middle-class to the rich–none of these is as important, apparently, as keeping a woman’s body alive, even though she herself died years ago, and left behind a breathing corpse with spinal fluid where her brain should be.

But still, Republicans claim that they are fighting this fight only to save Terri’s life. Really? Well, then, what about the other hundreds or thousands of cases just like this, nationwide, which play out every day? Florida’s Republicans made a law just for Terri Schiavo, and the current law in the U.S. Congress is, according to Frist, “a unique bill” that “should not serve as a precedent for future legislation.” They do nothing to stop others from having feeding tubes removed. And as it has been pointed out, if Terri Schiavo had been a minority woman whose brain death were caused by drug use, they would be nowhere near this case.

It could not be more blatant or clear. This is all about politics, and is about nothing else. Terri Schiavo left the building long ago. The “right to lifers” know this, but see her as a sympathetic case upon which they can launch their political agenda. Republicans in Congress know this, but they see her as a sympathetic figure which they can launch their 2006 campaigns off with. And this is nothing new. Bush shamelessly used the dead of 9/11 to start a war and win a few elections. So what’s the memory of one dead woman to stop them from gouging whatever political advantage they can from this?

Especially in a case as publicly distorted as the Terri Schiavo case. Here is a poor woman, who, when suffering from Bulimia (most likely caused by society’s sickeningly skewed view of what a person “should” look like), was misdiagnosed by doctors, leading to a potassium imbalance that caused her to have a heart attack. Her heart stopped for long enough to cause brain damage. Her husband attempted therapy for her for four years, but after that time was informed by experts that his wife’s brain was beyond rehabilitation–her cerebral cortex, the part of the brain where intelligence and personality–in essence, the person–lives, had deteriorated down to almost nothing, leaving little else but spinal fluid in its place. She was in a permanent vegetative state (not “persistent”). No one has recovered from a permanent vegetative state after so many years.

Her husband then placed her in a nursing home, visiting her regularly, until in 1998, he asked a court to decide what should be done. The court determined (from not just her husband but also from the testimony of others) that Terri Schiavo’s wishes were to not be kept alive if she were ever in this state. So the court orders her feeding tube to be removed…

And in comes the clown parade of politics. Her parents–understandably–want to keep her alive, to cling to the false hope that she may recover. But they go beyond ordinary measures–they resort to the right-to-life movement (the same love-of-life of people who want to execute underaged mentally disabled kids), and they drag in the whole right-wing bandwagon.

They take videos of Terri displaying ordinary PVS random movements, then edit the tape carefully to make it seem like she is actually aware of her surroundings and reacting to people and objects around her. The court reviews the unedited tape, and finds that nothing of the sort was happening–her movements on the tape were indeed random, and not in response to any stimulus. If a person in PVS smiles randomly every five or ten minutes, and you position yourself in front of her for that time waving a balloon, at some point she’ll smile. But not because of anything happening in the room, just because it’s an automatic reflex.

People all around the “save Terri” side of things endlessly claim that she can be rehabilitated, that she’ll just pop out of it and I’ve known people who were in comas for twenty years and they came out of it so she can too! Except she’s not in a coma, so she can’t awaken. Her cerebral cortex can’t be rehabilitated, because it’s not there. You can’t re-grow missing parts of your brain.

And then there’s the piranha-like, unbelievably vicious character attack on Michael Schiavo. Her husband, who dedicated years of his life until there was no reasonable hope left, who treated her with aggressive therapy until the doctors confirmed she was beyond help–this man was endlessly vilified by the “right to life” groups, who branded him a murderous thug who abused Terri, made up lies about how he actually viciously beat her to death before she was revived, then abandoned her to waste away without any treatment or therapy, who kept her alive so he could make money off of her and then wanted to kill her off so he could marry another woman. All lies, distortions, and slander, but that didn’t stop them.

And when court after court, Supreme Courts at state and federal level, all sided with the husband, the politicians–ever on the lookout for a way to pander massively so as to distract from their own lies and misadventures–boldly took up the rallying cry to “save” Terri. First the Florida legislature and Jeb Bush, and now the Republicans in Congress and George W. himself.

Get this straight. Terri Schiavo died years ago. Her body has been in a permanent vegetative state. The part of her brain that made her a living human being has vanished. She spoke clearly to her husband and friends that she would not want to be kept alive in such a case. And the only part of the government that doesn’t have to get elected, the part most schooled and expert in law, has judged that her wishes be followed. Terri is dead. Let her body follow her.

But the clown circus that is the political parade we see today will do everything it can to prop up her body without her soul, call her “alive,” and whoop up the cause for their own selfish political motives. And of course, even if they succeed, they will never, ever cure her. And of course they’ll blame her husband for it, in the end, either way.

It is a travesty against the memory of Terri Schiavo.

Take it as a hint. If you don’t want yourself to be made a lifeless puppet for the amusement of the “right to life” groups and vacuous, pandering politicians, make a living will–make it undeniably clear as to when you do an do not want to be kept alive. As for me, if there is an actual hope of recovery, then I’d want hope to be held out only so far as it was reasonable. But for a PVS, where there was no hope at all, I would want my family to remove the feeding tube, because I wouldn’t be there any more. And that is the only saving grace of the Terri Schiavo case: she’s not there to suffer from this. It’s just her body, what she left behind. The only thing the political bozos are harming is her memory. Still bad, and if Terri is looking down at this from somewhere, she must surely be sickened by it all, but at least she can’t be physically hurt by any of it.

It’s still twisted and sick, though.

You want to comment? Fine. But please, at least read up on the case first.

An excellent, non-side-taking legal review of her case is at Abstract Appeal.

It’s a three-day holiday weekend, and the reason is that Monday is the first day of Spring. The weather certainly agreed with the change of season, it being a clear day with a relatively warm temperature in the mid- to high-60’s. I got to sleep early the night before, and woke up relatively early (for me, on a Saturday, before noon is early), and was able to get out the door just as the afternoon started, so I figured it was optimal timing to go out birding. I hit three parks today–Sengenyama, Koganei, and Inogashira.

The first one was one I just stumbled over when looking at a map, it being on the route to Koganei Park–but it turned out that Sengenyama is probably the best birding park I’ve found so far. At least, that’s what other birders seem to think–I found a gaggle of them standing in the center of the park. Very nice guys, they chatted with me for a while.

One of them, pictured above with the camera on the tripod, had set up his digital video camera as a birding device. I had not thought of that–that you could get a zoom lens (in addition to the already very good zoom) and document birds that way. This guy had some excellent footage, too, stuff that I couldn’t match, certainly. The downside to the video approach, of course, is resolution–NTSC video is just 525 lines tall, less than that showing on the screen. My digital camera gets images three times taller, better resolution by almost a factor of ten. But then again, I lack zoom capability, and many of the shots I take I crop down to well below NTSC resolution anyway. Something to think about.

These guys claimed, by the way, that they had spotted a White-bellied Green Pigeon in that park just a week before, and that they could only be seen once every three years or so. But then, a few elderly ladies who engaged me in conversation elsewhere in the park claimed that many such Green Pigeons were often seen in the park, and they had spotted a couple just a few minutes before. I would tend to take the birders more seriously, but then, I didn’t know their credentials, and they did seem rooted in only one location. One of them certainly had a big enough camera….

Anyway, the first moment I walked into the park, right on the periphery, I spotted two, maybe three new species (the third I couldn’t identify and it flew off too quickly). One of the ones I caught on film was the Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker, which it turns out was all over the park. Not especially loud, nor big for that matter, it still had the distinctive woodpecker back-stripes and bark-clinging stance.

Also in that area was the Long-tailed Tit, a very small, distinctive bird. It was hard as hell to catch one on film, because they just would sit still for more than five seconds. Finally, I got into the swing of things and got what should have been six or seven perfect shots–only to find out that my autofocus had failed me. As it has in the past, the danged camera focuses on the farthest thing away in the field of view, and so my great shots were of branches with a blurry bird in the foreground. Since manual focus on this camera is even more dicey than the autofocus, there may be no way to fix it. But I did get at least one halfway-decent shot:

Okay, a less-than-halfway-decent shot. The Long-tailed’s cousin, the Great Tit, was all over the place; and though it also has a tendency to bounce around, I was able, finally, to get one clear, unobstructed shot of one.

There was also one bird I thought was a Dusky Thrush when I snapped it, but it seems to be something else–but even in the detail of the full photo on my computer, I can’t ID it. It seems to have a completely black head, which would seem to rule out a Gray Starling (though it’s white cheeks may be just hidden by its wing…). But I can’t figure out what it might be if not that. Anyone got an idea?

I’ll have to go back to Sengenyama Park, at least in late April and Early May, when apparently it’s peak season for migrational birds there. Today, however, I wanted to get moving, so off I went to Koganei Park.

This has the second of three bird sanctuaries I’d found on the map, and though I’m still disappointed that there is little done at these places to facilitate birdwatching, I was able to find a few new species. The first is one that I’m fairly sure that I saw at Meiji Shrine but couldn’t get close to: the Black-faced Bunting. I was surprised when I noted a pair on the ground just inside the chain-link fence that surrounded the sanctuary; I was able to get within a few feet of the little guys, and get this shot:

Just as I was finishing up with the bunting, I heard some “oohs” and “ahhs” from a group of people on the same path, looking over a pond opposite from the sanctuary. It turns out that they had spotted a Common Kingfisher, the same bird that I had spotted flashing by at Inogashira weeks ago; this time, the bird was sitting still. First, I got a less-than-perfect shot of its back, and from this you can see what I’m talking about with the green flash:

Then it changed position, and again I had the same problem as before: I couldn’t focus on the danged bird. It was perched halfway between me and the closest background I could catch. Finally, I figured out what should have been obvious: focus on the base of the tree on which it was perched, then hold the focus while shifting the shot to the bird. That netted this shot before the Kingfisher flew off:

That was pretty much it for Koganei. Next was Inogashira Park. Now, only one new species presented itself there: the Eurasian Coot. I was kind of surprised by it just at the end of my walkaround. It’s a black waterbird, but with a white normal-shaped bill (as opposed to a duck’s or goose’s large distinctive bill), and a white dallop of feathers just above the beak:

I was also able to get some shots of other birds which I’ve already found, better shots than I’ve posted before. But in the interest of keeping the main page of this blog only humongously heavy in terms of kilobytes, I’ll put the extras in the “Continue reading” area of this post. Click the link if you’d like to see.
Read more…

It’s going on at Talking Points Memo. I like to read TPM, but Josh Marshall can, at times, go almost too deeply into a subject. If you need any and all information on the Social Security situation, that’s the place to go for single-minded coverage. But even then, it’s one of the better political blogs to read.

But now, apparently, Josh is off to get married, and so he has a guest blogger. When I saw the name, I thought, “hey, that’s the same name as that other guy. Whaddaya know.” But then I realized, from the intro at the top which I’d missed before, that it was him–Harry Shearer, cast member of The Simpsons and into a few hundred other things, is guest blogging on TPM. Subjects include his being called to jury duty with Christina Applegate for the Robert Blake trial.

Ehhhhhhhhxcellent.

Oh, and by the way, they now think that they’re creating black holes in labs, which quickly explode in fireballs 300 times hotter than the sun. The black holes explode, that is, and not the labs. Well, not yet, anyway. And I’m not kidding. And they reassure us that the experiment “is not thought to pose a threat.” Oh, well, so long as your that certain.

No, the number of troops in Iraq is not really dropping, not by that much. It rose for a while, and now they’re ‘cutting back’ to numbers which are higher than the number of troops before the ‘election.’ They’re making it sound like a major reduction, like ‘we’re bringing the troops home’–but a closer look reveals that they’re just coming back to a troop force very similar to what it was before. The numbers rose to 150,000 troops, but were already under 138,000 before the Iraqi ‘vote.’ Yet another fake-out PR stunt.

Oil is now at a record-high $57 per barrel. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Bush campaign originally on the concept that he was an oilman and therefore could talk prices down? After criticizing Clinton for making gas prices skyrocket. Yeah. Well, that turned out real good, didn’t it? The only thing is, I actually approve–I think gas should cost higher, forcing us to re-think our wanton use of the resource. That doesn’t mean that Bush did not–again–fail miserably.

Talk about “Sore Loserman”–Dino Rossi, the Republican who lost the election for Washington State governor, is not only still vainly attempting to win the election (Gore didn’t last this long!), but he is pulling a Katherine Harris, trying to invalidate Democrat voters by falsely accusing hundreds of them of having lost their voting rights.

And finally, here’s another GOP bonehead who Just Doesn’t Get It: Ted Stevens, chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation, is trying to censor cable and satellite broadcasts, in addition to the entire Internet. Any owner of broadcasts on these media would be subject to fines if they violated “decency rules.” I suppose that, fresh off of the whole Janet Jackson Nipple Debacle (which destroyed the morality of millions of children who really didn’t see anything but were traumatized by the over-reaction afterwards), they’re flush with their newfound ability to massively fine anything on TV that offends them, no matter how innocuous it is to everyone else.

But fining cable and satellite? They can be fined for delivering paid content? Doesn’t that step just a wee bit over the free speech provision? And the Internet–when will these fundie nutjobs get it through their heads that “censoring” the Internet is impossible? For better or for worse, we have a medium which can carry just about any and every message people want to send.

And what it all comes down to is failed responsibility, and the joy that the GOP takes in pandering to parents who blame everyone but themselves for how their kids are raised. If you don’t want your kids to see crap, then control it or help them deal with it; they’re your kids, you have the ability if you really feel its necessary. As for the Internet, put the damned computer in the living room to the screen is visible to everyone. And with both the TV and the Internet, filtering technology is also available. Sheesh.

I found this while rummaging through old files. It’s a 3:16-long sound file, one I got from somewhere years and years ago. Essentially, it is a spoof on Star Trek (the original series), in which some enterprising sound editor spliced together bits and pieces of dialog and sound effects from several episodes of the show to make it appear that Kirk, Spock and Scotty are having a torrid homosexual affair. Keep in mind that though the dialog is straight from the show, the newly-crafted context makes it rather X-rated in tone. Nevertheless, it is quite hilarious, especially if you are familiar with the old show.

The download here is in WAV form, and should be playable with most audio apps; the file size is just above 2MB. Not for the young or weak of heart.

I first commented on the story here, almost exactly a year ago, when it was being reported that the Bush administration had used federal tax dollars to pay for “informational” video “reports” which were nothing more than thinly veiled vote-for-Bush commercials. The segments used fake reporters, really PR hacks pretending to be news correspondents, hailing Bush’s policies; these segments were then distributed to local news shows nationwide, suggesting that they use them as if they were real stories (complete with scripts showing how to do so). Often they were used to exactly that end.

At first, we thought it was just the commercials made for Bush’s Medicare plan. Then came to light the fact that the administration had been paying off a stable of reporters to push their agendas. And now we come back to the videos, finding out that they were far more pervasive than at first thought.

It turns out that it was not just the few spots for Medicare. It was not just a few agencies, though Bush & Co. have long been suggesting that this was an independent act by somehow over-reaching bureaucrats in just one agency.

No, it was actually a practice carried out in at least twenty different agencies of the federal government, producing hundreds of fake video segments with “reporters” using false names, over the span of four years. They include showers of praise for Bush, including an Iraqi-American crying out, “Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.”; reports of administration “successes” and gave accolades for a variety of Bush policies.

As I said a year ago, it is illegal for the administration to use federal money for “publicity or propaganda purposes,” and these video segments clearly violate that law. And since the practice is so widespread throughout the administration, it could not be more crystal clear that it was the administration itself, and not simply some eager-beaver underling that was behind it all.

But, like so many other scandals that would have made Republicans go nuclear and demand a dozen different investigations, it looks like this one will continue to be ignored. More on that in an upcoming post.

Okay, one more addendum to the prior writing on this year’s television: Lost. My brother pointed it out to me, and so I figured, why not give it a try. I’ve seen four episodes, and I have to say, I’m hooked. The story is about forty-eight people (thirteen, maybe fourteen are main characters in an ensemble cast) who survive a crash landing on an island in the South Pacific when their flight from Australia to the U.S. loses communications, runs off course and then hits turbulence which tears the plane into three pieces. the main fuselage lands on the beach of a largish, apparently uninhabited island–one which harbors some pretty strange mysteries.

One would think that the show could not last longer than a season, but apparently they are set up to do just that. The first season is set to cover the first 40 days of the survivors on the island, each episode covering about two days. So far, each episode has been from a certain character’s POV, complete with flashbacks to both what they were doing on the plane just before the crash, as well as their lives weeks and months before the crash.

Reportedly, the pilot episode cost $10 million–the highest price for a pilot yet–and was filmed in Hawaii. Michael Keaton was offered the lead role, at least for the pilot (when his character was supposed to get killed), but he passed, and Matthew Fox took the lead–and recurring–role.

So I decided to try out one of the three major parks in the West Tokyo area with a bird sanctuary. First, I stopped by the ever-reliable Tama River, and got to see a few new species. The first was a gull, hard to identify since so many of them appear identical; nevertheless, I think this one is a Herring gull.

I caught it first in the water, and then later on a concrete ledge near a dam, about ten meters away from a cormorant sitting on the same ledge. As a side note, by the way, I first identified the cormorants I saw as Great Cormorants, and then later as Japanese Cormorants, noting my first ID as an error–but now I believe that I did indeed see both. More on that later, perhaps.

Next, I caught some wagtails. I thought they were the usual White Wagtails, but as is often the case, when I get home and take a closer look at the photos, more details become apparent. I didn’t get a really good look, but this one is unmistakably a Japanese Wagtail, from the mostly black feathers about the head.

In the same area, I caught sight of what I might from here on out call a “brown bird,” that is to say, a bird with a brown back and pale breast of medium or indeterminate size, which could be any one of many possible birds–unidentifiable because it was too far away to get the details. This one looks like it might be some sort of Pipit, maybe a Tree Pipit. Anyone have an ID on this one?

When I got to the sanctuary, I was a bit let down–as is with most places in Tokyo, the Jungle Crows absolutely dominated the place–and other species were quite a bit harder to spot. I did get lucky, though, and after seeing a Dusky Thrush (turns out that’s a pretty common bird), I spotted another bird nearby–which I thought might be a female Dusky, but turned out to be a different species–a Pale Thrush.

I did get to see some other birds I’ve snapped before, including some Great Tits (still elusive, though–no clear photos of them yet), but I did spot one bird that I haven’t cataloged a photo of yet–the Oriental Turtle Dove. I’d photographed one before, long ago, that had perched at my window, but couldn’t find the photo I’d saved. But there were several at the park. I was trying to get close enough to the one I had spotted in the brush to take a halfway decent photo when I heard a rustling behind me just off the jogging path. Oh no, I thought–some kid who’ll make noise and scare the bird away. But then I noted the quality of the sound, which was less human-like, and turned to see another dove right behind me.

So, not a bad day of birding, though the sanctuary was not exactly a treasure trove of birds. The gull, the new wagtail, the new thrush, and the dove, not counting the “brown bird” I couldn’t identify. Nevertheless, the coming spring will hopefully bring more species to the area.

That’s what Bush and the Republicans seem to be testing these days. A good deal of the equation lies with how good your publicity is. If you have a really good hard sell, if the opposition party fails to make a big deal about opposing you and showing up your faults, if the media is on your side or is otherwise disinterested, and if you carry out most of your screw-the-people legislation just after elections so a few years pass before people can vote their anger, then the answer seems to be that you can screw the people pretty damned royally and still get away with it. It also helps to be able to have a terrorist attack or foreign war going on while you wave the flag and say that any criticism against you is actually a vicious, seditious attack against the troops, America, and apple pie faux-morality.

But even now, Congressional Republicans must be in the early stages of looking really closely at the grape Kool-aid that Bush is serving them, and wondering what exactly is it laced with. Even the Bush Administration, at full steam and volume, is not winning over the people on the Social Security plan. Too many people have heard of the trillions we’ll go into debt, about the inevitability of cutting benefits, and (gasp) of the fact that SS could be saved by simply eliminating the tax cap that keeps wealthy people from paying into the system.

But we can’t have that. I mean, really–tax the rich? Get real! Certainly the government hasn’t been doing anything close to that for the past four years–quite the opposite, in fact. Taxes have shifted increasingly on the poor and the middle class, and far, far less on the wealthy. Almost every other way outside of taxes which can balance the nation’s wealth has also shifted for the rich and against everyone else, from slashed local budgets for services that the poor and middle class depend on, to financial law which allows wealthy people to shift money out of the country to avoid tax liability altogether.

And then there’s the bankruptcy bill that seems destined to pass, a bill that will utterly crush middle-American families whose savings are wiped out by medical emergencies or by divorce, forcing them to become virtual peons to credit card companies. The administration claims that there are provisions to shield against such cases, but like so many other “feel good” programs that Bush & Co. claim mitigate their draconian anti-non-rich policy, it is without any funding at all, and people who are bankrupt will of course be unable to pay for it. (The only saving grace for the right wing on this is that corruption in general is lending a strong hand in getting it done–enough Democrats have been bought off in addition to all the Republicans to get the votes, and Clinton is no longer on hand to veto the mess like he did before.)

Meanwhile, the same bankruptcy bill, while forcing the poor and middle class into lifelong servitude to credit institutions, at the same time–almost incomprehensibly–allows rich people to avoid paying off debts even more than they are repulsively able to do at present, via shelters and other high-end loopholes. While Republicans are claiming that “This bill is about fairness and accountability,” they are at the same time failing to include any provision in the bill that would hold rich people accountable–in fact, the bill makes it easier to shelter personal wealth from bankruptcy, such as by investing in real estate.

This bill has been called “a law without a constituency,” meaning that it works against the majority of the people–but then again, what’s new? I’m almost to the point of becoming cold-hearted and saying to myself, if the people are so stupid as to elect these people to office, then they deserve to get screwed. But the fact is, these politicians win by 51% of the vote, often by cheating, always by lying; too many Americans are smart and honest but are screwed by that foolish slim majority.

But even that slim majority of fools is starting to sit up and take notice: faced with a government which is stealing its money, burning its future and running off with the bank, maybe enough will begin to miss the days when there was a party that gave a good goddamn about them. Or maybe they’re more foolish than I give them credit for; after all, we practically have legalized loan-sharking as it is, and I wonder how far off debtor’s prisons are, and whether or not that would start changing minds.

And by the way, it wouldn’t hurt for the Democrats in office to actually give them something to vote for.

As I’ve mentioned before, I use Google News as my news source, having left CNN and other news web sites far behind. Google offers far more data, far more variety–and now the main page is customizable. You can choose which sections (World, National, Entertainment, Business, Science/Tech, Business, Sports, Health, and More Top Stories) you want visible, and for each section, which national focus (U.S., Spain, Chile, Germany, China, Japan, etc.). You can add sections and change their positions to anywhere under the Top Stories banner, and then decide how many stories each section will display.

I know that other sites are customizable as well, but as with many other things Google, the whole package is better than what’s being offered elsewhere. I tried Yahoo for a while, but for some reason it stopped recognizing my cookies and would simply not accept any new settings–probably a result of Yahoo deciding to focus their setup on Internet Explorer to the exclusion of Mozilla/Firefox. I consider that unacceptable–I’ll be damned if I’ll be forced to use that piece of junk, and any site worth its salt will find a way to work universally–which Google does on a regular basis.

Another mention of Google Image Search, by the way–it’s very handy for my classes. Just the other day, I thought to mention the Altair computer from the mid-70’s in my Computer class. I hadn’t prepared for it, but no problem–just hop onto Google Image, and within about 10 seconds I had some great photos to show the class on the monitor. Apple’s beautifully-executed zoom feature let me crop out everything else, so the image took up the whole screen. Cool.

Speaking of Apple, they’ve just signed on to the Blu-Ray DVD format, the next-generation high-definition DVD format which can hold up to 50 GB of data using a higher-frequency laser to etch smaller bits onto the disc. This is in opposition to the HD-DVD format, which has a lower capacity but which is cheaper to produce, according to its representatives. On the face of it, I would take this as a sign that Blu-Ray is better, simple because of Apple’s history of choosing the better format (though some of those formats, such as Firewire, have lost out through Microsoft and Intel’s sheer force of market control). Still, it is worth noting that Sony and HP are among the companies supporting Blu-Ray, and so there might be some influence from companies Apple has had close relations with as of late.

So far I haven’t found too many birding sites of much quality for Japan, but there are some very good ones out there. Perhaps the best, or rather a very good one which is best presented, would be Mike Danzenbaker’s Nature Photography site; he has about 200 Japanese birds categorized in a sidebar menu, with photographs of each that he’s taken. That’s the primary site I used for identifying species before I got my reference book.

Next would be Takashi Koike’s Virtual Birding in Tokyo site, with photos of birds listed by type, but also a list of 124 different birds by family, with English names much more accessible.

After his site, Naoto Kitagawa’s Online Birdwatching site is very good, albeit a little less accessible. Though in English, the birds (separated into field and wetland categories) are primarily listed by latin family names, which resolve into more recognizable English names only when each is clicked on. If you’re looking for a specific type of bird, it’ll probably be in there–but if you don’t know the Latin name, then it’s a real haystack search to find the right one. Still, he’s got some great photos in there.

Although this site is in Japanese, The Tokyo • Suginami Wild Bird site has a lot of very good photos taken by a Tokyo birder (with many taken on trips outside Tokyo, and outside Japan). Pages for birds by location are numerous, and there is also a comprehensive list, again in Japanese.

Then finally, as a reference site, Japan Hotspots has a great many links to sites of interest for birdwatchers in Japan. Enjoy!

The most recent episode of The West Wing was one of the better episodes of the season. Although Sorkin and his magic pen have now long left, the show continues to be of very high quality, an entertaining cross between personal drama and a stimulating civics lesson. This week featured B-stories about border skirmish and ridiculous yet believable yahoos-bringing-us-to-the-brink-of-war between the United States and Canada, as well as a group of youth suffragettes gaining Toby’s respect. But the A-story featured an event based on reality: the House Republicans, during an election campaign, shut down a floor vote on stem-cell research when campaigning Democrats come to town to cast their votes, only to deny them that right and reschedule the vote after the Dems have left town. This is based upon what Senate Republicans did last year when Kerry came to D.C. in order to cast his vote for a veteran’s health care bill in June of last year: they cancelled the vote. The only difference was that the real Republicans shut down Congress purely to spite Kerry (after having bitterly complained that Kerry didn’t vote enough); in the West Wing episode, they do it because they don’t have enough votes.

The episode was remarkable not just for its look at issues, but also because it demonstrated that the same old spark is still going with the show; this week you could see the old fire burning, even if it didn’t have the full benefit or Sorkin’s banter.

But it was not the only show that showed its old energy resurging–The Simpsons put on a grand performance as well. Though recent episodes, as well as many in the past few seasons, have shown a certain tiring, this week’s comic farce was back on at full force. Again, Homer seems not to have a job at the power plant unless it comes in handy for a plot, as he takes over for his injured father as a greeter for Sprawl*Mart (motto: “Not a Parody of Wal*Mart,” alternately, “if you worked here, you’d be poor by now”); again, Bart does some terrible stuff to Lisa, who overreacts to it (getting a restraining order, forcing Bart to sleep with the local wildlife) and Gary Busey guest stars as the narrator in an educational “Guide to…” video on dealing with restraining orders (“… all of whom couldn’t deal with me because I’m too real“). There were some misses in the episode, but far more hits, and a lot of great lines.

So if you thought that either or both of those shows were not up to their old standards, you should start watching again. Not that there aren’t other things worth looking at. For example, I never thought I’d say it, but Battlestar Galactica is a pretty good show. Not the old one, of course, that sucked big-time; rather, the new series with Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell. They’ve finished their 12-episode first season after the four-hour mini-series from 2003, all on the Sci-Fi Channel. The show has very good production quality, good writing, and good acting (you could wonder at how the Sci-Fi Channel got its two rather luminary stars to sign on to what once was a B-quality Star-Wars knock-off). It’s also the second-highest-rated cable TV show, after USA’s Monk (also a good show, though I’ve only seen a few episodes; it’s very funny, but I’m told that the gags tend to tire upon repeated viewing).

Other Sci-Fi fare include the now-cancelled Enterprise on UPN (just when the show has started to hit its stride), Stargate SG-1 (now finishing its 8th season, moving on to the 9th but with star Richard Dean Anderson bowing out) and its new spin-off, Stargate Atlantis (a show with promise, so long as it doesn’t spin off into absurdity).

A fan of the original CSI, I’ve started watching its spin-offs as well, based in Miami and New York (wait for more cities to join–maybe we’ll get a Law and Order-style spin-off-for-every-day-of-the-week schedule). And some said that Star Trek was going too far with just two concurrent spin-off series! The new CSI’s do fairly well, with fair casts, but let’s admit it: it’s the combination of the gore and the cops-and-robbers bad-guy-gets-it-in-the-end classic kitsch that keeps it going.

Speaking of spin-offs, there’s yet another lawyer show from David E. Kelley, a hand-off from The Practice (which ended last year): this one is called Boston Legal (not to be confused with Boston Public). This show is excellent, but less for the writing than it is for the two stars: James Spader (Alan Shore, the brilliant deviant with a heart of gold) and William Shatner (“Denny Crane!” the bombastic narcissist with incipient Alzheimer’s). Rene Auberjonois does well as a senior partner (rounding out the three sci-fi alumni), as does Candice Bergen, who started late, but got off to a resounding start. The show’s plots are standard Kelley fare, but Spader and Shatner give the series its real life.

And finally, there’s 24, in its fourth season. Thankfully, they’ve given up on the whole Kimberly-Bauer’s-damsel-in-distress routine after three seasons, but they’re still in their how-can-we-drag-Jack-Bauer-back-to-CTU-even-though-he’s-left phase. We’re also still seeing the old someone-at-CTU-is-a-mole (when will they ever learn?), and the petty office politics–but there are compensations. Seriously, though, I’d like to see them just put Bauer back in charge at CTU and for once have there be no moles or traitors, and see if they could build a good season with that.

This time the bad guys kidnaped the Secretary of Defense and his daughter (coincidentally Jack’s new boss and lover, those terrorists just won’t leave him alone), but that was just cover for a much bigger and insidious plot. Halfway through the season, the main threat seems to have been shut down, but naturally there will be something new coming up, unless they just want to show multiple-frame shots of all the characters sleeping for the next 12 hours with the clock ticking away (“be-boom, BE-boom; be-boom, BE-boom! … snooore!”). Or maybe Kimberly will suddenly appear only to be kidnaped again.

All kidding and convenient plot points aside, the show is actually pretty good action-adventure, and has been through it’s four years on the air. There are some good twists and turns, interesting characters, and some rousing action sequences. Though there is one questionable point: they seem to be getting carried away with the torture issue. At first, the series had Bauer killing or torturing only in extreme moments, but now it seems like someone’s getting tortured every episode (Jack’s boss’ son, two CTU employees, a terrorist suspect, and Jack’s lover’s ex-husband are the ones that come to mind immediately). You begin to wonder if this is Rupert Murdoch’s way of desensitizing the public or simply popularizing the practice. Either way, it could get tiring pretty quick. But despite that nit, the show is still well worth watching.