The news agencies must be sitting on their hands to avoid any embarrassment. I think it’s happening ;o}}

Anyway, though his actions were off school grounds and in no way related to or disruptive of school activity, the principal wanted him suspended. Well, that whole freedom of speech and first ammendment thing got in the way, according to the trial courts. Enter Ken Starr, to take the appeal.

I shit you not.

Visit the Schapira Blog, What we know so far …

… and tell ‘em Big Mitch sent ya!

I read the 15 hours and had a hard time with it. I was wondering if it wasn’t a typo? Also, someone mentioned that Jason got “24 Hours” from the receptionist. During highly confidential bargaining, why would anyone keep a receptionist until 2:30 in the morning? Isn’t that asking for the info to leak out? Wouldn’t it be more likely to have someone deliver sandwiches and roll all the phones to voice mail? Even if the meeting goes on longer and you need more food/coffee–wouldn’t you just order delivery?

Barbara B: I’m not so certain that resignation precludes a pardon. I believe one of Lincoln’s cabinet faced this question.

I always read the “About” page on anyone’s links. Yours leads me to Little Green Footballs and Powerline. Nuff said.

>Still, it’s comforting that “…a dozen eyes looked at this…â€, etc.

Will Pitt has now posted a ‘clarification.’ When he said a dozen eyes had looked at the Leopold piece, he now says that he meant a baker’s dozen.

Ooops. That has now been re-corrected. It was pointed out to Will that a Baker’s dozen would yield an odd number of eyes. He and Jason then caucused (for something less than 15 hours but more than half a day) and came back with different answers, Jason insisting that a one-eyed man had been among the proofers, while Will described the process of editing by a committee of 13, each of whom edited one sentence in the piece while covering one eye, so as not to spoil the confidentiality of the sources whose names were only half-hinted at.

When we pointed out to Will that a baker’s dozen was 11, not 13, his disarming smile and response “maybe with the baker’s you know”, was unconvincing. Jason suggested that they had meant Dusty Baker’s dozen, referring to an old custom among African American who play “the dozens”, or pass insults against each other. Justin insisted that the process of editing had seemed to him like a mere passing of personal insults against him.

This still left us somewhat in the dark, since it was hard to see how this new understanding of the dozen eyes could help give us confidence in the article they had all scanned.

At this point, Will began doing riffs on the words “dozen” and “doesn’t”, saying things like – “does Jason make up fax? No he dozen.” Leopold took umbrage at this line of conversation, and began to talk about the issues of literacy and numeracy, insisting he had never been good with numbers anyway, and this was one source of the confusion in “24 business hours” and the “15 hour” negotiation. He also began referring to the “24 business hours” as “two dozen business hours, and it was only when he added, “give or take a few” that we began to worry.

Finally, we asked Will for the names of the editors, thinking this might clarify some of the confusion. Will said he would only name the editors if it turned out the sentences they had looked at included grammatical misusages. When I raised an eyebrow at Roberta, Will added a coda – that he no longer considered “business hours” a grammatical error, since it has come to his attention that Fitzgerald uses the term business hours to mean the hours of the Starbucks at 15th and K. This particular Starbucks has a back room that is only open for reading and sipping weekdays from 5 pm to 9 pm, so the meaning of 24 business hours is clearly 6 business days. Leopold nodded, saying he had thought all along that the indictments would be announced on Memorial Day, probably inside the oval track of the Indy 500.

Still, we were no closer to the truth, or the truth was no closer to out, or something. But we were hungry, having now discussed this for many business hours, so we adjourned to the Starbucks, and clarity set in.

I am concerned that Rove is trying to spike the story of his possible indictment by luring media elements (including non-MSM) into predicting his imminent indictment, only to see it not happen. After a few of those, anyone predicting indictment will be accused of crying “wolf”. While it may be very likely Rove will be indicted sometime in the next year, it is very useful for him to kill the story until it actually happens, especially with 2006 elections less than six months away. Remember how the Bush AWOL story got killed in the MSM–the story of the faked memos killed off the fact that Bush quit four years into a six year term of service.

Leopold did not “clarify” the meaning of the 15 hours. If anything, he corrected it. He wrote very clearly in the original story that Fitz was in Luskin’s office for 15 hours. If he now says that isn’t the case, he has changed his story, not clarified it.

In a way, though, I hope you’re right. It is going to be very hard for the Republicans to find someone to run in ‘08 who hasn’t had a picture taken with Bush. Without pardons, a Republican candidate might get away with saying Bush’s heart was in the right place, but the people around him just weren’t very good managers. The old “pure heart-empty head” defense. With pardons, the Democratic campaign ads would write themselves. Something along the lines of restoring honor and integrity to the White House…

Love your comments, and always look for them, by the way. It’s a pleasure to watch your mind at work.