1.  Thanks so much to Russ Emerson for the Sam Raimi’s Darkman DVD. I saw the film when it first came out, remember liking it very much, and look forward to revisiting it.  Much obliged, Russ.

2.  Terry Hastings points me toward this piece from Wretchard discussing a nuclear-armed Islamic world.  From “The Coming of the Bomb” (which analysis relies in large part on this War College report cited previously on this site):

[…] An earlier post argued that only a regime change could keep Teheran from getting a nuclear weapon. Since the US Army War College paper cannot envision that happening in the short term, what we are left with then, is a new Cold War with an ideology as strong—and probably much stronger than—Marxism in its prime. It’s hard to remember, now that the Berlin wall is a relic whose fragments have literally been sold for souvenirs, how perilous a time the Cold War was. It took more than 100,000 American lives on the battlefields of Korea and Vietnam. On at least once occasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the US and the Soviet Union came close to the nuclear brink. The difference between the Cold War and the new prospective struggle is that the former was between nations while the latter is between nations and secret societies bound together only by a common hatred.

Diplomats and statesmen since the Treaty of Westphalia had grown accustomed to seeing nothing smaller than nation-states. This conceptual blindness prevented foreign ministries, academics or the United Nations—the very name a testament to the limits of its sensibility—from understanding that sub-national units under the banner of a world religion could arise to challenge the established international order. It was simply impossible, and yet it was. In retrospect all the signs were there. Though globalized business, unprecendented mobility, worldwide communications long weakened the prerogative of nations, they were still regarded as supreme. The world grew accustomed to the growing influence of transnational corporations without realizing that the same factors would empower other forms of transnational organization. H.G. Wells described how complacent men could be in the presence of unseen but growing danger [cf War of the Worlds].

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most, terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.

With a few changes Wells’ paragraph could describe the mixture of smug amusement with which the Western intellectual elite watched the growing number of Wahabist mosques, the photography of landmarks, the application for flying lessons and the attendance at courses of nuclear physics by students from older worlds. They laughed, for nothing could threaten the dominion of Western Man, supreme in his socialized state at the End of History. Even after September 11 the only question for many was how soon history would return to normal after a temporary inconvenience. Little did they imagine that the expansion of the European Union, the Kyoto Agreements and Reproductive Rights—all the preoccupations of their unshakable world—might be the least of humanity’s concerns in the coming years.

Wretchard has an interesting point—and the use of Wells is perfectly apt—but to take his thinking a bit further, it helps to drift even deeper into the dystopian vision that often haunted Wells’ political imagination.  In The Time Machine, for instance, Wells pits the blissful contentedness of the surface-roaming fatted Elois, who existed, for all intents and purposes, as domesticated and resigned cattle—with the more malign subterranean Morlocks, who prey on the Eloi in an almost naturally symbiotic relationship. 

Leaving aside the interesting (from my perspective) narratological elements of the story’s construction (which gives Wells’ message its structural and temporal resonance, I’d argue), the point nevertheless remains, for purposes of this discussion, that there is an unsettling parallel developing here between our own geopolitical situation and the contented, wistful, almost philosophically resigned elitist (Eloi-tist?) class that simply accepts as part of life the more rapacious and primally directed enemy that has chosen to exist off of their weaknesses.

As in the world of The Time Machine, survival is a numbers game—a statistical tradeoff between terror and contentedness, an existential condition, certainly, but not one that appreciate the mental sacrifices that bring calm to, say, a Sisyphu; instead, it is a game of playing the odds, and hoping for the best.

Does the civilized world wish to live this way?  Or is it willing to look inside itself and find the resolve necessary to beat back the softness of a civilization under the fantastical spell of the promise of history’s end?

Somewhere, I have a narratological paper I wrote on “The Time Machine” that I should dig up and reread; but then again, I also have Van Wilder on DVD.  So what are the chances I’ll actually get off the couch…?

3.  From The Washington Post, “Supreme Court Upholds Oregon Assisted-Suicide Law”.  The decision was 6-3, with Scalia, Roberts, and Thomas dissenting.

I think this case was always about the technical question of federal commerce clause power and justice department overreach—not really, as many idealogues on both sides would have it, about the legality of physician assisted suicide itself (in a vaccuum).  That is, it was a state’s rights case v federal power to regulate interstate, moreso than anything else—but not one that was clear cut, because coming into play were the definitions of “medicine” (see Scalia’s dissent) and the proper, licensed role of physicians in administering to patients.  Not to sound too flip or ghoulish, it seems to me a special category of Kevorkians is needed if we’re to satisfactorily settle this issues on free will vs. hippocratic oath grounds.

I don’t think the dissenters ruled on “moral” grounds here (that is, I think that though they recognized the moral character of the case, they ruled, ultimately, on expanded DoJ powers, which were legally defensible, though wrong, in my estimation); ulitmately, I believe their decision came down to looking at the case as one of statutory interpretation, and they sided with an increased power of the justice department to regulate and define proper drug usage.

I disagree with the dissenters (which puts me at odds with Scalia, Thomas, and Roberts—and I generally find myself in agreement with Thomas), but I do so only because I believe this was a separations of powers issue, and I think state’s rights and the rights of the voters of the states to make what are essentially personal decisions writ large should, whenever possible, trump technical questions of dubious semantic dickering that are simply too close to call.

Having said that, I believe it is time we as a nation do something to separate “medicine” and its “proper”use from something that can be argued is properly deployed to administer intentional death.  Like the “torture” debate, the real issues rest with the definitions and their legal applications.

[related:  Gonzales v Oregon oral arguments PDF; 6-3 majority opinion; Scalia’s dissent; Thomas’ dissent; opposing blogosphere view here.  See also, Lyle Denniston (SCOTUSblog); TChris at TalkLeft; Howard Bashman; NYT (via Ace)]

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Baseball Crank seems, too, to agree with my reading of the decision (and in so doing taked Dave Schraub to task); and most surprisingly, so does Bill INDC, who is ever on the look out for conservative legal activism. Thomas’ dissent followed the line of Raich (which, though it was a horrible decision), compelled the legal ruling here in the narrow sense.  We have Scalia to thank for that…)

See also, Ann Althouse and Prof Bainbridge.  And, via Terry Hastings, the WSJ, which pins this decision where it belongs—with Scalia’s poorly-reasoned Raich decision (which I argued as one of the worst decisions of the last 50 years; ironically, constructionists like Thomas [see his dissent] likely feel constrained by its Constitutionality, as ruled—even though he himself wrote a stinging dissent). 

4.  Finally, I need wine.  A big glass of red wine. Because right now, the Klonopin just ain’t doing the trick.  And protein wisdom ain’t nothing without his mellow.

5. UPDATE:  Via Link Mecca, AKI reports, “NUCLEAR: IRAN CLOSER TO THE BOMB THAN THOUGHT”:

Iran may be much closer than previoulsy thought to possessing significant quantitites of enriched uranium, according to revelations to Adnkronos International by a source who has had direct access to the research laboratories of A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan’s bomb and now in disgrace for selling nuclear secrets to states with nulcear ambitions. To date, the only means to establish whether Tehran already possessed enriched uranium to make atomic bombs, have been intelligence reports, suppositions and denunciations by Iranian dissident groups, keen to curry favour with the West.

It was the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the political wing of the People’s Mujahdeen, that in 2002 gave a decisive contribution to revealing the existence of the secret plant at Natanz, used by the Iranians to enrich uranium, though some of their subsequent claims have been proven incorrect.

In Vienna, in November 2004, Farid Soleimani, the Council leader, alleged that in 2001 [A.Q.] Khan had handed over to Iran a significant quantity of enriched uranium. The government of [Pakistan] swiftly issued a denial. However, a high-level source, who asked to remain anonymous, says that the allegation was founded and that the transferral of enriched uranium (as well as components for building centrifuges for enrichment and of designs for building missile heads able to transport the bomb) dated back much earlier….

“I am recounting this episode to illustrate what everyone knows and no-one in Pakistan will ever admit officially, that is, Khan was a scape goat, he was sacrificed to pay for everyone because his network was under the control of the government and the military” our source explained….

“On various occasions, Tehran received plans and component for the centrifuges, uranium and even some enriched uranium. Technology and materials were often moved across the border with Baluchistan, or through Afghanistan, all areas where the controls of ‘enemy’ intelligence services were almost impossible” he added.

So much for nurturing that mellow…