[LINK] No more Firefly

Via larkvi. I only caught bits of episodes and Serenity, but I'll miss the franchise nonetheless.

[BRIEF NOTE] Power, meet drunkenness; drunkenness, power

The New York Times' coverage of Cheney's recent statements appears to be fairly typical of the coverage that they have received/.

Talking with a small group of reporters on Air Force Two as he flew from Pakistan to Oman, Mr. Cheney spoke in far broader terms about the effort to expand the powers of the executive than President Bush did on Monday during an hourlong news conference.

"I believe in a strong, robust executive authority and I think that the world we live in demands it," said Mr. Cheney, who was in many ways the intellectual instigator of the rapid expansion of presidential authority as soon as Mr. Bush came to office.

Today, he made no effort to play down his central role in aggressively seizing those powers, citing his early battle to keep private the names of people he consulted while drawing up recommendations for Mr. Bush on energy policy. That effort was ultimately upheld in the courts.

[. . .]

He described the War Powers Resolution, passed in 1973 in a post-Vietnam effort by Congress to prevent the president from committing troops without sharp congressional oversight, as "an infringement on the authority of the presidency" and suggested it could be unconstitutional. Similarly, he said budget legislation passed in the 1970's restricted the president's ability to impound money.

"Watergate and a lot of the things around Watergate and Vietnam both during the '70's served, I think, to erode the authority I think the president needs to be effective, especially in the national security area," Mr. Cheney said.

There are good reasons to be suspicious, it seems, of executive authorities unchecked in their ambitions by democratic oversights. There were good reasons in the Watergate era, and there are good reasons now, both inside and outside the United States. Peer review is critical for good governance, or at least it is for objectively good governance.

[BRIEF NOTE] Update on the Ruthenians

Towards the end of this September, I blogged about the Ruthenians, the seemingly abortive fourth East Slavic nation. The Ruthenians' slow movement towards nationhood over the first half of the 20th century was abruptly halted by the Soviet annexation of their homeland in 1945 and their assimilation to the Ukrainian nation. At the time, I'd concluded that a revival of Ruthenian ethnicity in its homeland was unlikely, that Ruthenian identity would be a phenomenon of the Ruthenian diaspora. Writing today in Transitions Online, Brian Posun suggests that this is wrong ("A Minority in Waiting"), that thanks to the recent Orange Revolution in Ukraine and Ukraine's new hopes for European integration there's a chance of official recognition.

Hopes that such examples of support from abroad would be less important rose with the Orange Revolution. Rusyns in Ukraine had grounds to be optimistic that the new administration in Kyiv would give them more of a chance than its predecessors. Rusyn leaders were active during the 2004 presidential election campaign and the crisis that erupted as millions of people took to the streets in the Orange Revolution. Three leading Rusyn organizations publicly supported the campaign of Viktor Yushchenko campaign and joined the groundswell of popular condemnation of electoral fraud.

After Yushchenko's victory, Rusyn leaders wasted no time before aiming their lobbying effort at the new authorities. They were soon disappointed. Yulia Tymoshenko, the co-leader of the revolution and subsequently prime minister, sent a handwritten reply to their letter, but its contents merely restated Kyiv's old view that Rusyns are Ukrainians and that they could expect no help from the authorities.

[. . .]

What activists have so far not accomplished, bureaucrats just might. Many Rusyn activists see Yushchenko's goal of European Union membership for Ukraine as their best hope. Although membership remains a distant prospect, many Ukrainians see a real chance of closer integration.

If Kyiv is to have a real shot at becoming an EU candidate country, it will have to satisfy Brussels that it takes minority rights seriously. The hope is that the carrot of EU membership will be sufficient incentive to the Ukrainian government to take recognize the Rusyns as a minority. Ever-hopeful, members of the World Council of Rusyns like to think it may happen before the congress next meets in 2007 – just over the border from Ukraine, in Romania.

[BRIEF NOTE] On political correctness

Last night a friend blogged about how so many people who proudly proclaim that they aren't politically correct (with the implication that they are brave, unshacked by sterile pieties and intellectually courageous) are in fact going out of their way to be crudely offensive in the classic ways of established bigotries. Bert Archer's recent posting on gay jokes comes to mind.

I think it’d be great if we could all feel post-racist enough to make nigger jokes, or post-anti-semitic enough to make Jew jokes. But we don’t. And so I find myself peeved that we seem fine with gay jokes. David Letterman’s Top 10 on Dec. 13 included about as many gay stereotypes as you could stuff into 10 gags, and my co-workers, at Canada’s most liberal and Liberal newspaper, just made three jokes in quick succession about Jake Gyllenhaal bending over to grab his toes, etc.

Now, as it happens, men who have sex with men do, from time to time, stick their penises into other men’s bottoms. It’s also true that some of these men like designer fashions. It’s moreover true that most professional basketball players in Canada and the States are black, though I suspect that jokes about NBA standing for the Negro Basketball Association would not only not wash, people would feel abashed at telling them. At least, the people making these gay jokes would.

A commenter argued persuasively that offensive jokes might well demonstrate that a minority's existence is accepted and that integration is actually happening. That still doesn't detract from the rudeness. It certainly doesn't demonstrate any particularly laudable bravery.