Daily Archives: September 22, 2003

Marshmallow Farming in Delaware

Posted on September 22, 2003 by Michael Froomkin

From time to time I plan to post mini-reviews of blogs I like. I like a number of the ones you see linked to all over the place, but there are also some less well-known, quirky and human ones that appeal to me. One of these, although far from obscure, is called Sneaking Suspicions. I like it for several reasons. The author is a practicing administrative lawyer who lives in a small town, Rehoboth Delaware. I teach federal administrative law, and it's fun to see someone talking in a level-headed way about applying the stuff I teach to practical contexts. That he does state admin law makes little difference to the fundamental principles. Plus, Rehoboth was where we went to the beach when I was a kid. I didn't (and don't) particularly love going to the beach—in some ways Miami is wasted on me—but I it's fun to have a tie to the place being talked about. Perhaps what I like best, though, is the reasonableness of it all; Fritz Schranck, the author, reads the advance sheets (recent court decisions), and makes wry and sensible comments on the foibles of the often somewhat unreasonable litigants.

And then, there's the occasional off-the-wall item. As Washingtonians, our taste of Delaware was limited to the coast. Who knew what delights were hidden inland? For example, my kids were very impressed when I showed them the picture of the Marshmallow Farm.

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I Thought the Military Was Supposed to Deceive the Enemy

Posted on September 22, 2003 by Michael Froomkin

I thought for sure the blogosphere would jump all over this, but if so I missed it. The other day the New York Times ran an article about General Wesley Clark by Katharine Q. Seelye entitled Weighing his Run, General Was Encouraged and Praised by Clintons. Now, I'll be the first to admit that the source here is not the most reliable one. This is after all the same Katharine Seelye who so memorably and unprofessionally slanted her coverage of the last Presidential election. (Want examples to substantiate this serious charge? OK. Look here, here, and here.) Nevertheless, this was an eyebrow-raiser:

To Clark's humiliation, Clinton's Pentagon relieved him of his command. And Clinton had signed off on the plan, according to several published accounts, apparently unaware that he was being deceived by Clark's detractors.
…
The end came unceremoniously. It was July 1999, shortly after Clark had led the successful air war against Serbia. Clark was forced to retire early by top people at the Pentagon who, according to several accounts, tricked Clinton.

This is pretty amazing stuff: top military or civilian officials deceiving or tricking the President. Is this common knowledge? Substantiated? Did heads roll? If not, why not?

Of course, it makes a major difference if it was the civilians or the military.

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Posted in Politics: US | 3 Comments

Rose Burawoy, Political Scientist

Posted on September 22, 2003 by Michael Froomkin

Lately, I have been thinking a great deal about something grandmother once said.

Rose Burawoy was born in Bialystock, then a thriving metropolis with a substantial Jewish population. She told me once — exactly once, as she never mentioned it again — that she remembered ‘the Cossacks’ running through and killing people in a pogrom when she was a child. She described it as something that had happened to other people, perhaps not far away, not as an eyewitness. (And, indeed, there was a pogrom in Bialystock in 1903, more killings in the area in 1920, and a pattern of killings and other anti-Semitic incidents in the 1930s ). In the retelling at least, my grandmother seems to have been as bothered by what she saw as provincialism, and was happy to escape to the bright lights of Berlin. Her life, and marriages, would later take her to Paris, and London, where she lived when World War II began, and finally to New York, where I think she was happy to be.

This geography explains something my grandmother once said that I find myself thinking of fairly often these days. I vividly recall my grandmother — alone in the family — objecting when I first said I wanted to become a lawyer. Don’t do that, she said. Why not be a doctor? Or a businessman, or anything else that involves a portable skill. A lawyer can only work in one country, and you can’t take your skill with you if you have to leave. ‘What’s wrong with that?’ I asked, ‘I like it here.’ And my grandmother, who usually treated me like a child, and who rarely said anything terribly grave about anything, much less the war — tending to limit her political commentary to how bad it was that old people had to worry about being mugged by the hooligans on the Manhattan streets, and how /insert-conservative-politician/ was good for the Jews because he was strong on defense — gave me a knowing, wise, slightly sad, very grownup look, that said she knew I, the American grandson, was not going to understand, and said, ‘When the Nazis come to America, what will you do then?’.

I laughed, of course. The Nazis were not going to take over America. And she said, quite seriously, ‘That’s what we said in Germany. Germany was the freest more democratic country in the world before Hitler. You’ll see.’

I still don’t think the Nazis are coming. But my grandmother’s question is an galling reminder that in politics, like in the securities markets, past performance is no guarantee of future results.

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Posted in Personal, Politics: US | 9 Comments