'Et Homo Factus Est'

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Today I traveled from Charlottesville to the D.C. area to celebrate Christmas with friends and friends of friends.

At the annual Christmas Eve get-together at the home of Warren Coats and Ito Briones in Bethesda, I was surprised to see my old friend, Rob Teir, and his husband, Johnny Smith, who live in Texas but came all the way to Maryland just for Warren and Ito's party. (At least that's what Rob told me; there may be more to the story than that.) Rob has recently opened up a law practice in Houston, which he seems to be enjoying very much.

(I have to apologize for my strange greeting. I found it hard to believe that Rob and Johnny were there, since just last week I received a Christmas card from them, postmarked Houston. So it was a weird impulse that caused me to walk up to Rob and say, "What are you doing here?")

The food was delightful, as was the company. Warren and Ito are always perfect hosts.

After I left the party, I drove to the Cathedral of St. Thomas More in Arlington, where I arrived just in time for Midnight Mass (which started at 11:00 p.m., strangely enough, but since it ended at 12:30 a.m., I think that counts as "midnight"). An hour of lessons and carols was just ending, and the last organ piece played before Mass began was, again to my surprise, my favorite Polish carol, Dzisiaj w Betlejem. That's just something you don't hear outside of places like Milwaukee, Chicago, and Hamtramck.

I happened to have my video camera with me and captured the processional (preceded by a "Christmas Choral Introit" by Richard Proulx based on Luke 3:4 and Philippians 4:5), which was accompanied by the traditional carol, "O Come, All Ye Faithful." I also taped the recessional, which was accompanied by "Joy to the World."

Here's the video, which also includes a final blessing by Bishop Paul S. Loverde of the Diocese of Arlington:

Enjoy Christmas Day. Check back next week to see what I have up my sleeve for New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

Bill of Rights Day 2009

Each December 15 since 1999, the Jefferson Area Libertarians have celebrated the anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution with a gathering in downtown Charlottesville. Last year and this year, the gathering took place at the First Amendment Monument near City Hall, an appropriate place for such a commemorative ceremony.

Charlottesville libertarians were not the only people marking Bill of Rights Day today. Cato Institute legal scholar Timothy Lynch put a sadly dismal assessment of the current state of civil liberties on Cato's blog, Cato@Liberty (ending, however, with a brief optimistic note). A blog named Bungalow Bill's Conservative Wisdom asked its readers to "take the time to read the Bill of Rights" and courteously provided the entire text, including the seldom-read preamble. (The whole thing -- preamble, too -- was recited in Charlottesville today as part of the celebration. You can watch the video, below.)

In the course of my research for this post, by the way, I found a satirical article about a Third Amendment advocacy organization and a reference to the only Supreme Court case litigating that provision of the Bill of Rights, Engblom v. Carey. As it happens, there are a number of Facebook groups devoted to the Third Amendment, including one called the National Anti-Quartering Association and another called 1,000,000 People for the Third Amendment, which has 3 members.

And, lest we forget the broad and inclusive reach of the U.S. Constitution, a colleague forwarded me a link to an article with a reminder the the Bill of Rights applies to everyone, even gay and lesbian students in government schools. Freedom of speech and freedom of association are basic human rights.

The program that the Jefferson Area Libertarians began, as noted, with an acclamation of the Bill of Rights, led by JAL's James Curtis.

Curtis was followed by radio talk-show host Rob Schilling of WINA-AM. Rob, who is also a former Charlottesville city council member, talked about freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, two elements of the First Amendment. He noted, in reference to free assembly issues, that MSNBC's Keith Olbermann named local civil-liberties champion John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute as the "Worst Person in the World." The reason for this honor? Whitehead has asked Congressman Tom Perriello (D-VA5) to move his office to a place where citizens can peaceably assemble in order to petition the government for redress of grievances, without also violating the rights of the owners of the property where the office is located. (Perriello's current office is on private property where Tea Party-like protests disrupt the business of his neighbors.) Olbermann's left-handed compliment to the protection of property rights can be found here, on YouTube.

Other speakers included Dr. James Lark, the former national chairman of the Libertarian Party, who noted that the Bill of Rights limits democracy while protecting individual liberties and human rights, and local entrepreneur Paul Perrone, who spoke about the importance of the Tenth Amendment.

The keynote speaker was Christopher Horner, a scholar with the Competitive Enterprise Institute who specializes in energy and climate issues. Horner is the author of Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming (and Environmentalism). Given his field of expertise, naturally, he addressed how proposed "cap-and-trade" legislation -- whether Waxman-Markey, which passed the House of Representatives in June, or Kerry-Boxer, which is happily languishing in the U.S. Senate -- will adversely affect the civil liberties of Americans. As John Munchmeyer put it in his introduction of Mr. Horner, by regulating carbon dioxide as an evil pollutant, "I guess this bill is going to regulate life at its basic core," because CO2 is what humans exhale and what plants use to make oxygen.

Here are the speeches from today's Bill of Rights Day celebration in Charlottesville, divided into six segments:

Part I -- Reciting the Bill of Rights:

Part II - Remarks by Rob Schilling:

Part III -- Remarks by Rob Schilling (continued):

Part IV -- Remarks by Jim Lark:

Part V -- Remarks by Paul Perrone:

Part VI -- Remarks by Chris Horner:

You can see video of the Charlottesville Bill of Rights Day celebration of 2007 here, and Bill of Rights Day 2008 is here. (Update: I also found video from 2006, with further information about that year's event here.)

Update: The Daily Progress had a nice front-page photo of the event, featuring John Munchmeyer passing out copies of the Bill of Rights, in today's paper. It is not, of course, available on the Daily Progress web site. There is, however, a page one story about John Whitehead and Keith Olbermann.

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Journalists' Panel at Blogs United

Political candidates were not the only special guests at the Blogs United conference held at Christopher Newport University in Newport News last weekend.

Blogs United organizers also invited some journalists who cover Virginia politics for established news media outlets and who also blog as part of their jobs.

The participants in this lively panel discussion, which lasted for almost a full hour on the morning of November 21, were Anita Kumar of the Washington Post, Ryan Nobles of NBC12 in Richmond, Kimball Payne of the Hampton Roads Daily Press, and Julian Walker of the Virginian-Pilot.

In fact, Walker wrote about Blogs United on his own "Pilot on Politics" blog after returning from the conference:

In a role reversal of sorts, bloggers from across the ideological spectrum quizzed a panel of state government reporters who also blog: Anita Kumar of The Washington Post, Kimball Payne of the Daily Press, Ryan Nobles of NBC12 in Richmond and this Virginian-Pilot scribe.

Among the bloggers lobbing questions during a lively, engaging back-and-forth at Christopher Newport University were J.R. Hoeft and Brian Kirwin from Bearing Drift, Vivian Paige, Shaun Kenney, Lauren Victoria Burke at Crew of 42 and Article XI's Eileen Levandoski.

For her part, Anita Kumar wrote on the Post's "Virginia Politics Blog":

Did you know there's a Republican New Media Caucus in Congress? Neither did we.

But one of the group's chairmen -- Virginia's own U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman (R) -- was on hand to speak to dozens of bloggers today at the Blogs United conference at Christopher Newport University in Newport News.

I'll be posting the video of Congressman Wittman's remarks soon. For now, however, we can look at the video of the panel discussion featuring the journalists/bloggers. It is divided into eight segments.

The four panelists are introduced by blogger Vivian Paige in Part I:

The conversation continues in Part II:

Part III:

Part IV:

Part V:

Part VI:

Part VII:

The final segment is introduced with a question from newly elected Fluvanna County Supervisor Shaun Kenney, who also has a well-known blog. In Part VIII, Kenney asks about the Washington Post's nearly unique emphasis in covering gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell's graduate-school thesis:

More video from the 2009 Blogs United conference will follow.



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Candidates Speak at Blogs United Conference

Blogs United, a bipartisan group of Virginia political bloggers from throughout the Commonwealth, gathered in Newport News last weekend to talk about blogging ethics, legal matters, new media, technology, and politics. About three dozen individuals participated.

The speakers included U.S. Representative Rob Wittman (R-VA1) and eight candidates for Congress. I'll be posting video of Congressman Wittman's speech later, but I have already uploaded the eight people who seek to join -- or unseat -- him to YouTube.

The eight come from four different districts -- the First, Second, Third, and Fifth. Here they are, in district numerical order.

From the First District came Democratic candidates Scott Robinson and Krystal Ball, who are seeking their party's nomination to challenge Congressman Wittman in the 2010 general election:

From the Second District, there are four potential Republican challengers to incumbent Representative Glenn Nye: Scott Rigell, Ben Loyola, Kenny Golden, and Scott Taylor:

In the Third District, Coby Dillard is seeking the Republican nomination to face incumbent Congressman Bobby Scott (D-VA):

Finally, in the Fifth District, Michael McPadden is one of six or seven potential Republican challengers seeking to face off against incumbent Representative Tom Perriello (R-VA5):

For more information about Blogs United, check out its web site (a blog, naturally) and its Facebook group.



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Video of 'Locked Out' Panel Discussion

A powerful documentary film, a joint project of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics and the Community Idea Stations (public television in Virginia), had its theatrical premiere at the Virginia Film Festival in Charlottesville on Saturday, November 7.

Locked Out: The Fall of Massive Resistance tells the story of a shameful chapter in Virginia history, when the Byrd Machine, Governor Lindsay Almond, the General Assembly, and local officials colluded to close down the government schools rather than permit them to be desegregated. Instead of ending Virginia's tradition of segregating schools according to racial classifications -- one school here for Negroes, another school there for whites -- the state's elites decided to close the schools altogether and prohibited the election of school boards by the people.

The film tells the story in the words of the African-American students who lived through the process of desegregation in several Virginia localities: Arlington, Prince Edward, and Warren counties and the cities of Charlottesville and Norfolk.

The one-hour documentary, which is studded with archival film and video footage as well as photographs and recently completed interviews with participants, marks the 50th anniversary of Massive Resistance, which began -- and, in most places, ended -- in 1959. (The holdout was Prince Edward County, where schools remained closed until 1964, resulting in 10- and 11-year-old pupils sharing classrooms with 5- and 6-year-old first-graders.)

After a screening for a sold-out audience in the Culbreth Theatre on the grounds of the University of Virginia, Larry Sabato of the Center for Politics moderated a panel discussion that included the documentary's director, Mason Mills, as well as former Virginia Governor L. Douglas Wilder, who had become the nation's first elected African-American governor precisely 20 years before, on November 7, 1989.

Other panelists were students who suffered under Massive Resistance and whose interviews are included in Locked Out: Rita Moseley of Prince Edward, Donald Martin of Charlottesville, Michael Jones of Arlington, Delores Brown of Norfolk, and Faye Coleman Hoes of Warren County.

Before the film was projected, Larry Sabato introduced it.

After the film was screened, Sabato assembled the panelists and posed a few questions. Later, he opened up the floor to questions and comments from the audience.

Panel Part I:

Panel Part II:

Panel Part III:

Panel Part IV:

Panel Part V (Conclusion):

In that last segment, Sabato urges the audience to visit the Center for Politics web site and click on its Youth Leadership Initiative, to help the Center raise funds to distribute copies of Locked Out via DVD to schools around the country.

Locked Out: The Fall of Massive Resistance will have its broadcast premiere on November 16 at 9:00 p.m. on WCVE and WVPT, and it will become available nationwide on other PBS stations over the next few months.

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Luniversary

The press is atwitter this week about the 40th anniversary of the moon landing of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin,with Michael Collins orbiting the getaway vehicle. (I suppose Twitter is atwitter, too.)

Sunday will be the highlight of the weekend's reminiscences, when there will be a rare joint appearance of Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins in Washington.

According to an article in today's Times of London:

The crew of Apollo 11, however, have not shared the cosy friendship one might have expected since they splashed back to Earth on July 24, 1969. “Amiable strangers” is how Michael Collins — the third astronaut, who remained aboard the command module orbiting the Moon while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed and took a walk — once described their relationship.

On Sunday, the eve of the 40th anniversary of their return to Earth, the three will be reunited in public for what is likely to be the last time. With all of them nearing their 80th birthdays, they will deliver a joint lecture on space history at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington.

Perhaps the best news of the week is that Hollywood restoration artists are using digital magic to piece together the videotapes of the 1969 moon landing, which had been erased and reused by NASA in the early 1970s. (The same thing happened at NBC, which reused the videotapes of the earliest episodes of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. People had a different attitude toward archival videos back in those days.)

Maggie Fox of Reuters explains:

The original recordings of the first humans landing on the moon 40 years ago were erased and re-used, but newly restored copies of the original broadcast look even better, NASA officials said on Thursday.

NASA released the first glimpses of a complete digital make-over of the original landing footage that clarifies the blurry and grainy images of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the surface of the moon.

The full set of recordings, being cleaned up by Burbank, California-based Lowry Digital, will be released in September. The preview is available at http://www.nasa.gov.

A NASA news release gives more details:

A team of Apollo-era engineers who helped produce the 1969 live broadcast of the moonwalk acquired the best of the broadcast-format video from a variety of sources for the restoration effort. These included a copy of a tape recorded at NASA's Sydney, Australia, video switching center, where down-linked television from Parkes and Honeysuckle Creek was received for transmission to the U.S.; original broadcast tapes from the CBS News Archive recorded via direct microwave and landline feeds from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston; and kinescopes found in film vaults at Johnson that had not been viewed for 36 years.

"The restoration is ongoing and may produce even better video," said Richard Nafzger, an engineer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who oversaw television processing at the ground tracking sites during Apollo 11. "The restoration project is scheduled to be completed in September and will provide the public, future historians, and the National Archives with the highest quality video of this historic event." ....

On July 20, 1969, as Armstrong made the short step off the ladder of the Lunar Excursion Module onto the powdery lunar surface, a global community of hundreds of millions of people witnessed one of humankind's most remarkable achievements live on television.

The black and white images of Armstrong and Aldrin bounding around the moon were provided by a single small video camera aboard the lunar module. The camera used a non-standard scan format that commercial television could not broadcast.

NASA used a scan converter to optically and electronically adapt these images to a standard U.S. broadcast TV signal. The tracking stations converted the signals and transmitted them using microwave links, Intelsat communications satellites, and AT&T analog landlines to Mission Control in Houston. By the time the images appeared on international television, they were substantially degraded.

At tracking stations in Australia and the United States, engineers recorded data beamed to Earth from the lunar module onto one-inch telemetry tapes. The tapes were recorded as a backup if the live transmission failed or if the Apollo Project needed the data later. Each tape contained 14 tracks of data, including bio-medical, voice, and other information; one channel was reserved for video.

A three-year search for these original telemetry tapes was unsuccessful. A final report on the investigation is expected to be completed in the near future and will be publicly released at that time.

NASA also gives a more specific link to the preview of the restored footage.

In 2005 and 2006, I mused about my own memories of the Apollo 11 landing.




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Virginian Francis Collins to Head NIH

During graduation season, I wrote an article that included a report about Dr. Francis Collins as the commencement speaker at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. Collins has now been nominated to be the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by President Barack Obama.

Gardiner Harris reports in the New York Times:

President Obama on Wednesday nominated Dr. Francis S. Collins, a pioneering geneticist who led the government’s successful effort to sequence the human genome, as head of the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Collins’s selection, which had been rumored for weeks, was praised by top scientists and research advocacy organizations for whom the health institute is a crucial patron.

Based in Bethesda, Md., the N.I.H. is the most important source of research money in the world; over the next 14 months it will dole out about $37 billion in research grants and spend $4 billion on research programs at its Maryland campus.

“Francis Collins is an extraordinary scientist and one of the nicest guys you could ever meet,” said Dr. Otis W. Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society.

Gardiner notes, however, that despite expectations that Collins will face an easy confirmation by the U.S. Senate, there is some minor controversy that accompanies his nomination. One aspect concerns his management of the human genome project, while another is "unease" about Collins' evangelical Christian religious beliefs.

As a commencement speaker at VCU, Collins showed himself to be affable as well as brainy. He entertained the graduates and their family and friends with a parody rendition of "My Way," accompanying himself on the guitar.

His musical talents are mentioned in the New York Times story:

Dr. Collins earned a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Yale University and a medical degree from the University of North Carolina. He likes to sing and play a guitar decorated with a double helix, the shape of genetic code.

(The article does not mention Collins' undergraduate education at the University of Virginia. Collins is a Shenandoah Valley native.)

Here, in three parts (the third part featuring the humorous musical climax) is Francis Collins' commencement speech at VCU on May 16.

Part I:



Part II:



Part III:

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Celebrating the Fourth of July

In honor of Independence Day, I have collected various versions of our national anthem, "The Star Spangled Banner" (lyrics by Francis Scott Key, set to the old English drinking song, "To Anacreon in Heaven"), which I have recorded over the past couple of years.

First is one of the most recent, from the 2009 Republican Party of Virginia's state convention on May 30. Here are the Hullabahoos, an all-male a capella group from the University of Virginia, singing the national anthem at the Richmond Coliseum:

From about two weeks earlier than that, the next video was made at the 2009 commencement exercises at Virginia Commonwealth University (also at the Richmond Coliseum). The national anthem, sung by J. Chase Peak, is preceded by "Pomp and Circumstance."

Last September, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin appeared at a campaign rally in Richmond. (She was then the vice-presidential running mate of Senator John McCain.) Governor Palin introduced Hank Williams, Jr., who -- even though he neither grabbed his crotch nor spit on the ground -- gave the worst rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" since Roseanne.

A much better presentation of the national anthem was heard on Constitution Day (September 17, 2008) at Montpelier, the home of James Madison in Orange County, Virginia. Here "The Star Spangled Banner" is performed by opera singer Eric Greene, who is introduced by television journalist Jim Lehrer.

On Labor Day 2008, at the annual Buena Vista parade and political rally, Miss Virginia (Tara Wheeler) opened the speechifying with the national anthem:

Happy Independence Day!

Happy Canada Day!

Let's take a few moments to wish our friends to the north a happy Canada Day.

It was on this day in 1867 that a brave band of Canadians ventured into the deepest, densest, darkest, most treacherous section of London, seeing to it that a bill passed the British Parliament to grant the provinces of North America a measure of autonomy. A hard-fought semi-independence, indeed!

In honor of the holiday, I have selected a few video clips for entertainment purposes only.

First, from Rose-Marie, Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald sing "Indian Love Call":

Next, Natalie Nevins performs the Big Band classic, "Canadian Sunset," on a 1966 episode of The Lawrence Welk Show. Ah-one, ah-two:

Third, Bob and Doug MacKenzie celebrate in the Great White North fashion(with beer):

Finally, Alanis Morrisette sings the Canadian national anthem, "O Canada," at -- naturally -- a Stanley Cup hockey match, in both English and French:

Célébrez, mes amis!


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Dear Leader, Yes We Can!

No comment is necessary, except for crediting Reason.tv with this great mashup celebrating the best (worst?) of Obama-sycophancy.

This video is also available on YouTube, where it will live on and on and on as a reminder to these children about what their well-meaning but muddle-headed parents made them do. (I've passed this along to some Red Diaper Babies of my acquaintance, to give them a dose of nostalgia.)