And We Move On...

Life seems a series of serial sets. One set is the set of births, of new beginnings. Another is the set of deaths, the big ones as well as the little. One would be a fool to argue there are not subsets -- little deaths may be on their own -- but there is no doubt such things come again and again.

I experienced one of those little deaths this weekend, and it surprises me how much it hurts. 

Thoughts On TIME's Fallible Headline

In a recent issue of TIME magazine, the editors of that periodical chose this headline for its cover story: "Why Being Pope Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry." In the wake of that apparently bland article, one writer asked why the editors would have used such a headline; he was perplexed by the whole of that headline, and you can read his thoughts here.

Here's the comment I left in response to his query:

I have not read all the comments here; I have not read the TIME magazine article in question. But please permit me to express what I felt when I first saw the headline when I spotted this particular issue of TIME on the newsstand.

It’s simple. The editors of TIME are exploiting a wild misunderstanding about papal infallibility. The common belief is that the Church teaches the Pope is intrinsically infallible in all matters. In other words, the Church teaches that the Pope — as Pope — is never, ever wrong and thus cannot apologize. The headline is really a fundamental dig at a parody of Catholic teaching; the headline is perhaps even meant as ironic. If so, it is ironic in an extremely mean and petty way. Ultimately — if the editors are NOT ignorant of Catholic teaching — the headline employs a straw-man fallacy, one that essentially courses through those salons willfully ignorant of Catholic doctrine and dogma.

This is cheap journalism at its most obvious. It’s vulgar; it’s the sort of stuff offered by snickering scoffers one might meet in junior high school. The whole thing brings to mind a revised temptation of Christ: “If you’re really infallible, you can’t be wrong about anything, can you?” TIME wants to exploit this fundamental prejudice about Church teaching, hoping that, if the headline is all people read — and it will be — the prejudice will still be effectively reinforced in the populace.

Truly discouraging.

Peace.

©2010/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Apologies

I have once again turned on the function that moderates comments. I can describe it in no other words than that Contratimes is under attack by "DM," who dumps absurd comments here. It is a shameful attempt, or so I believe, to sully the integrity of this site and others like it that present a Christian "worldview" in an intelligent, gracious and generally well-written manner. I may have "DM's" motives all wrong, but I doubt it. 

If anyone knows how I might shut out "DM" and his/her ilk, please advise. I deleted 3 identical comments yesterday, spammed even through "word verification" security steps. The comments strike me as perverse, random, stereotypical and, sadly, anathema to dialogue. 

Sorry for the inconvenience. I believe that comment moderation stifles discussion and discourages reader visits. My hope is to get things back to normal as soon as possible. 

Peace. 

Bill Gnade

The Days Are Numbered

Last evening I went kayaking. And fishing. I caught the tail end -- in many ways the best end -- of the longest day of the year. I was alone on the water until 9:30; the sky was still beautifully aglow, the sun unwilling to quit behind the reclining edges of the earth.

About 8:45 I caught a largemouth, about 15 inches long, and gently released it into the cool waters. The waxing gibbous moon touched the violet sky to the south and east. At the top of the 9 o'clock hour the church bell chimed at the far end of the pond, its final peal trembling softly over lily pads and through pickerel weed, faintly shaking the still air beyond the quiet woods and the far-off fringes of winter.

I paddled down the outlet to the winding, lazy Moose Brook, quietly wending my way home. A beaver startled me at the break of one bend, slapping its tail seemingly right inside my eye. I had to lay back on my kayak -- my legs extended along the bow -- to glide beneath the old bridge, my hands touching the damp, rusted steel beams a couple of inches from my face. I climbed onto shore with more effort than last year, and dragged my kayak across the lawn toward my house. I moved with gratitude, and reluctance.

Slickly Tarrying

I ask this rhetorically, recognizing, of course, that all questions are fundamentally asked rhetorically. I ask, "Would it have been politically disastrous for the Obama Administration to have the Deepwater Horizon oil leak capped quickly; would it be even worse for the administration if the oil leak was easily and quickly cleaned up?"

To some readers the question may seem ludicrous. I admit they are most likely right. It sure sounds ludicrous. 

But please note the longstanding trope -- now more trite than trope -- that the Republican Party has "always been in bed" with "Big Oil" and the ruthlessly greedy denizens of Big Business. The trope is part of any liberal's DNA, being asserted with machine-like predictability; and it has made its way into the narrative of the current oil disaster in the Gulf. But the trope is like a wet blanket over the eyes, blinding us to the truth that if the oil leaked throughout the Gulf can be quickly contained and cleaned up, then critics of Big Oil's "reckless indifference to the planet for greed's sake" have little political leverage. Does this explain Mr. Obama's failure to act quickly at the outset of this crisis? Why has he been so slow to accept help from those who've offered it? Why has he dragged his feet in meeting with officials from BP? Why has he not used all the resources at his disposal to help BP and the state governments who are desperately asking for help?

And why, too, has he spent the bulk of his energy, and most of his words, on placing blame, threatening punishment, and seeking recompense -- think big $$$ -- and "justice"? Why his energetic denunciations, and yet his lethargic assistance? 

This seems clear: the Democratic Party MUST MAINTAIN THE TROPE and its derivatives. The party MUST CONSTANTLY REINFORCE the trope that oil companies are inherently corrupt, that the oil industry is toxic from beginning to end, and that oil spills are the worst ecological event in history, ruining the earth and seas for years, decades and centuries.

By the way, denunciations of greed are nearly always rooted in greed. 

©2010/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved. 

Forgetting, An Unmitigated Disaster

It was a simple question asked by Don Imus. He asked it this morning: "Has there ever been such an ecological disaster like this anywhere at any time?"

I paraphrase Mr. Imus, but I do complete justice to the question. Has there ever been such a horrid thing as this oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico?

Mr. Imus received an adamantine answer from his newsman: "Never. Absolutely not. No."

I wrote about the Ixtoc 1 oil disaster earlier at Contratimes (here and here). It is an important bit of history, nay, it is a wildly important bit of history. I hope Contratimes readers learn more about it (here's a great start, as is this).

Friday night I asked a question at a political gathering of like-minded folks: Does anybody remember the June 1979 Ixtoc disaster? No one remembered.

Why? Perhaps because at the time of that incredible disaster in the Gulf Americans were obsessed -- as were the news media -- with two things, Three Mile Island (March 28, 1979) and the Iran Hostage Crisis (November 4, 1979). Yes, the media attended to the Gulf gusher that dumped 30,000 barrels of crude oil every day into the Gulf for TEN MONTHS, but there were other dangers to worry about (and America was still struggling with the gas crisis that hamstrung, or was exacerbated by, the Carter administration). As I've admitted earlier at Contratimes, this writer, who was just a young man at the time, has no recollection of the Ixtoc 1 disaster. But I sure remember the national panic around nuclear power and the crazy ayatollah in Tehran.

Despite America's national preoccupations at the close of the 1970s, it nonetheless amazes me that none of my friends or peers remembers the Ixtoc 1, and this for the simple reason that you'd think we'd all remember a disaster that began on an oil rig whose name is an accidental anagram for Toxic. How could we not have remembered the Toxic Ixtoc off the Gulf coast of Mexico?

Have the media and administration ignored the Ixtoc 1 disaster because it actually works against their  preferred narrative -- and their political agenda? Does it harm the administration to remind us that what Mr. Obama claims is "unprecedented" isn't unprecedented? Does it hurt their cause to inform citizens that the Gulf actually recovered far better than expected?

I have listened to loads of pundits and read their opinions. I cannot comprehend their ignorance, or their silence, about this important event that began in 1979. Nor can I explain their silence about the recovery of the Persian Gulf after Saddam Hussein dumped vast quantities of oil into that sea in 1991. Here's an interesting passage from The Weekly Standard article (to which I linked earlier today):

As the New York Times noted in a 1993 story, the Persian Gulf recovered surprisingly faster than anticipated from the 1.2 million ton spill Saddam Hussein engineered in 1991: “The vast amount of oil that Iraqi occupation forces in Kuwait dumped into the Persian Gulf during the 1991 war did little long-term damage, international researchers say.”

I am not so dull-witted or hard-hearted as to suggest the current oil leak in the Gulf is NOT an unmitigated disaster, one that we can brush aside as "not all that bad." I have always been an environmentalist, though I stand in what might be called the "Franciscan tradition" rather than the political ecology movement I was weaned on as a child. What is happening tears my heart out; I simply cannot look at the images of pelicans covered in crude oil. But I am concerned far beyond the environment of the biosphere; I am deeply concerned about the environment of the human mind, be it the individual or the collective. I am worried that we are not only forgetting, we are not even learning or knowing. It's not that we've forgotten, it's that we never knew in the first place. What I mean is this: The Deepwater Horizon leak is NOT unprecedented, nor is it -- yet -- the "worst oil spill in history." Not to KNOW this, or to willfully ignore it, is a pollution of the mind.

It's its own disaster, entirely toxic.

Peace. 

©2010/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved. 

The New Plantation

We heard many things in the days following the election of a certain president. We heard most singularly that to criticize him was to commit a racist act. 

Today, those who criticized others for criticizing Barack Obama are now criticizing him rather vociferously. But these critics of the president are immaculate. They can't be racists. They're leftists. 

Where must one go to be so successfully inoculated? 

"How To Think About Oil Spills" -- The Weekly Standard

Interesting, indeed.

Insanity As Policy: So The White House IS Emotional About Oil

Incredible.

(If the link does not work, search Google for "Drilling Bits of Fiction." I found the article this way.)

Thoughts On Ms. Maddow's Report [revised, 12:16 pm]

I thought the following quotation a fitting preface to what follows:

My favorite observation on engineering comes from Frank E. Mosier, formerly a top executive at Standard Oil, because it recognizes both the possibility of greatness and the impossibility of perfection. In a commencement address at the University of Pittsburgh School of Engineering in 1989, Mosier said, “All engineering is glorified failure analysis, and great feats of engineering are nothing more than successful bets that your ideas will be more economical or efficient or beautiful without being disastrous.” (Andrew B. Wilson) 

________________

I promised I would comment on Rachel Maddow's report to which I linked below (June 7, 2010). Part of me wishes I hadn't made such a promise. It's not that I have nothing to say, it's that I have little to say that may be interesting.

What Ms. Maddow intends to highlight in her report is that the technology used at present to cap the massive oil leak 5,000 feet beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico appears utterly archaic. She notes the antiquity of the techniques at hand; there is an ironic tone throughout her report. The thrust of her story: things have not changed much in the last 30 years. To her, that's inexcusable.

But is it inexcusable? Is it fair of her to hold such faith in technology's progress? Is her criticism rooted in reality, or has she assumed something religious, namely a belief that mankind is always progressing, or must progress, or can progress, if the collective will and mind are focused on the highest ideals?

I note that nothing has much changed in thirty years in stopping fires. Fire trucks still race through town and city streets, hoses and nozzles are tugged and pulled; water is pumped from tanker or hydrant and aimed to douse flames. Yes, occasionally foam is used, but the method is nearly the same; besides, foam is used only to suppress relatively small conflagrations (except, I believe, at airports). But things have not much changed, really, in the method.

I note too that the electricity coming to my neighborhood comes the way it has for far more than 30 years. Improvements are obvious, but they are relatively minor: the technology has been honed, but not yet perfected, and surely not transcended.

The way water is delivered from well to kitchen tap; this, too, has not changed much over the years, at least here, where I live. There is a pump; the physics of varying pressures still follow the typical pipe-and-hose technologies used seemingly forever. (And while many in my town have wells, the town water system is built on a reservoir/gravity model, a model which is undeniably Caesarean.)

I have sat in airplanes that have not been substantively improved upon -- in any theoretical sense -- for decades: I have sat on airplanes that are perhaps 30 years old. Such planes still roll down long runways; they still roll on round rubber tires, and they still jostle passengers in rough air.

So, one might observe that the BP disaster is to be fixed only one way: by using technologies no one seems able to improve upon.

But there's a wrinkle even here, as it seems things have improved. Ms. Maddow notes that the first disaster analogous to the BP spill, one that occurred in 1979, was only 200 feet beneath the ocean's surface: The Ixtoc well dumped 30,000 barrels per day into the very same Gulf of Mexico, and  it took nearly ten months to bring that well under control.

And yet today, right now, BP is dealing with a well 25 TIMES deeper than Ixtoc; a mere 55 days into the current disaster, the flow of oil is not yet stopped, but it is at least restricted.

Indeed, this morning oil is still leaking at a harrowing rate in the Gulf, but the technology seems  considerably improved since 1979, though, of course, the current state of that technology is not what one would describe as revolutionary. But that BP has managed to capture huge quantities of oil over the past few days says something about the state of technology here, that it is not necessarily as archaic, or as absurdly feckless, as Ms. Maddow portrayed.

Ms. Maddow's report also fails to fully enlarge upon the news event she uses to begin her report: the June 1979 oil spill along the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS). What is interesting is that the TAPS was opposed for years by environmental groups, and yet such groups' dire predictions about the overall environmental impact of the TAPS have not been fulfilled, as the TAPS has not been an unmitigated environmental disaster. The June 1979 leak was caused by the pipeline settling; there were several leaks that occurred because of settling along the line's impressive length. But there has been nary a significant leak along that line, or surely not as many as predicted. Curiously, some of the leaks occurred as a result of sabotage (e.g., 16,000 barrels in 1978). Even one bullet hole made quite a mess (258,000 gallons in 2001).

But what Ms. Maddow doesn't explore is the obvious, that a leak on land is far less difficult to contain and control than any leak is under water. Is the BP Gulf Oil spill an argument for dry land exploration and drilling? (I ask this, of course, with the assumption that there are no viable alternatives to oil that are at the ready.) Is this an argument that, if ocean drilling is still desired, shallower depths should be preferred? Or are we grateful that, if a disaster should occur at sea, it is as far from land as possible?

Lastly, allow me to quickly explore Ms. Maddow's last assertion that the oil industry is the most profitable industry in the world. (No, it isn't.) But first we need to clarify our terms. What does "most profitable" mean? Does it mean the business that nets the largest number (in $$)? Well, then, perhaps the oil industry is wildly profitable, as some oil companies post quarterly profits in the tens of billions of dollars (though I guess Wal-Mart is now vying for top spot in the "most profitable" category). But "most profitable" in the technical sense refers to those companies who show the largest profits above margin, above their total operating expenses. Those huge numbers seen in the oil industry are only 10% over margin, whereas profits in other industries show profits 20-30% over margin. Not long ago, when everyone was up in arms over Exxon-Mobil's massive profits (as a total number in $$), which were a mere 10% over margin, American Express and Apple were showing profit margins well above 20%. Surely the more profitable businesses are not necessarily those whose quarterly earnings statements show the largest possible dollar amount. If Big Oil is to be loathed for making profits of 10%, why not Big Credit and Big Computer, who "steal" from their customers, enjoying profits of 25 to 35%?

(Please, don't send me links from Forbes or wherever showing me I am wrong here. I am not. There are businesses that are far more "profitable" than the oil industry. Please note, again, how I am using the term, as a percentage of total revenues. [A $1 billion profit sounds impressive, but not if you've spent a $1 trillion to get it.])

Anyhow, just some thoughts. 

Peace. 

©2010/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved. 

Rachel Maddow: An Interesting Report

I intend to comment on this video more fully in the next day or two. For now, I offer it to you not for political but historical reasons. Does anyone remember this? I am ashamed to admit I've no recollection of this event at all. 

Anyhow, it's very much worth watching. Again, I will discuss the report later. 

Please watch:

BEYOND IRONY

What is the size of my carbon footprint? About the size of Kentucky -- and growing.



Indeed.

When It Leaks It Spills

Is the Gulf Catastrophe technically the result of an oil spill, as many are wont to say, or an oil leak? Just wondering. But doesn't the answer influence the way the issue is framed? 

(Metaphors abound!)

What an issue it is!

"We Shall Restore Science To Its Rightful Place"

Men on the moon, a rover on Mars, a probe in deep space slinging around Saturn; unmanned drones dropping smart bombs on secret caves 8,000 miles away; a manned submarine (Trieste) photographing life in the Mariana Trench seven miles down -- and a hole terminally leaking oil.

I Guess This Means I Made The Guest List

Contratimes has had visitors from high places, but yesterday marked our first visit from the "Executive Office of the President USA." 

Hello, and welcome. 

My WORD: Two Heartbeats Away From The Presidency

Here are the US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's comments as given to a group of Catholics at a meeting last month:

“They ask me all the time, ‘What is your favorite this? What is your favorite that? What is your favorite that?’ And one time, ‘What is your favorite word?’ And I said, ‘My favorite word? That is really easy. My favorite word is the Word, is the Word.’ And that is everything. It says it all for us. And you know the biblical reference, you know the Gospel reference of the Word. 

“And that Word is, we have to give voice to what that means in terms of public policy that would be in keeping with the values of the Word. The Word. Isn’t it a beautiful word when you think of it? It just covers everything. The Word. 

“Fill it in with anything you want. But, of course, we know it means: ‘The Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us.’ And that’s the great mystery of our faith. He will come again. He will come again. So, we have to make sure we’re prepared to answer in this life, or otherwise, as to how we have measured up.”

The word 'word' is a beautiful word -- if you think about it.

I could have this wrong, but I heard somewhere that the word 'word' was actually Logos. But what do I know?

A question: Do you think Sarah Palin knows the Greek word for 'word' used by St. John the Evangelist? And do you think Ms. Palin would know the Gospel reference?

Here is the kind of thing that passes for "deeply spiritual" language, particularly for those who stand on the religious left, even the Catholic religious left: "The Word. ... It just covers everything. The Word. Fill it in with anything you want."

What do leftists fill it in with? Who knows?

But we do know this, or at least Speaker Pelosi knows it: "[The] Word is, we have to give voice to what that means in terms of public policy in keeping with the values of the Word."

Giving voice to the Word is what the Word means. Get it?

Word.

©2010/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

She Is Quite Scary

There is a petition to have her removed from a TV network.

There is an unauthorized biographer -- and harsh critic -- who has rented the house directly next door to her so he might more fully observe her family.

There are the countless remarks weekly made about her in sundry TV programs, newspaper columns, blogs, and "social networking" sites, like Facebook.

The object of all this attention is the apparently inimitable Sarah Palin. But I ask: Why is she such a threat to my leftist peers? Why their fixation, or perhaps more pointedly, their obsession?

The logic of it all seems rather simple. If Sarah Palin is the idiot her critics claim she is, then there is no threat whatsoever. Hers would have to be a rare sort of incompetence to have the power to threaten the country; her inadequacies would really have to be a veil over a well-concealed genius for her to destroy, as her critics fear, the work of the Founding Fathers in the name of her "favorite" Founding Father, which, as you know, is actually "all of them." Thus, the obsession seems remarkably misplaced, and nearly pathological.

I call it the Palin Drone.

But really, why the fear, the anxiety, and the attendant derision? If, as so many of my leftist friends have taught me, one fears what one does not understand, is this corporate angst naught more than a failure of comprehension? Is Ms. Palin too abstruse for my friends to interpret? Is she too foreign for them to find a thread of shared humanity with her, one that ties them, no matter how tenuously, to a common language, history or worldview? Do they really fear her because they fail to understand her?

I don't know anything, really, about Sarah Palin. I had never heard of her until her name was announced -- in late August 2008 -- as the woman then-presidential candidate John McCain chose for his running mate. The first time I heard her speak at length was her quite unforgettable speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention. Nor would anyone ever confuse me for a Sarah Palin fan. I am simply an outsider looking in through nascent cataracts. But there is one thing I do know in all of this: She is not feared for being stupid. And if she is not feared but merely loathed -- I also thought that folks loathe only what they fear and fear what they don't understand -- I ask, "Why?"

I shall tell you why she is loathed in a moment.

Let me posit that if Ms. Palin is indeed feared because she is incompetent, such fear has nothing to do with her. She is not the object of fear at all. What is the object of fear is the whole process of democracy. For it is democracy that permits, even encourages, the participation of ALL citizens in the legislative process. No voice is too dumb, feeble or poor to be heard. By definition, democracy must allow† even the most insipid or dull to seek public office; if this were not true, then democracy would only be open to the elite, and hence would not be democracy at all. No, no. Democracy by definition contains within itself the means to elect to the highest stations the very stupidest people in the land. It must permit that possible outcome.

But does any reader believe leftists who obsess about Ms. Palin are really worried about democracy? Or is leftist anxiety about Ms. Palin proof that leftists ultimately abhor democracy?

Honestly, I think it all a bit simpler. I believe Ms. Palin is not so much the object of fear but the object of punishment. The obsession is really about retaliation; this is all a tremendous scolding for her sin.

What was that sin? Well, I've told you before; it's a sin she commits nearly every time she speaks in public. Her sin, nearly a mortal sin (she has committed an unpardonable sin, which I will mention presently), is that she laughed at liberals. She dared to poke fun at them. She mocked them. And she did this at the Republican National Convention. She even did it all rather effectively; any objective person knows that Ms. Palin delivered her punchy jokes with aplomb. She was indeed rather funny. Thus, she infuriated the Democratic Party, particularly the leftists in that party.

But let me stipulate that the Democratic Party is not a humorless bunch: they can laugh at themselves. They can be poked. They can be playfully prodded and gently mocked. With one exception. They cannot allow themselves to be mocked by someone they deem stupid. Only the truly bright have permission to be witty, sardonic, satirical. 

This then is Ms. Palin's mortal sin, and it is this that the left is bent on making clear to her: She has not understood her place. To the left, Ms. Palin merits ridicule and attack because she fails to see her stupidity; and she fails to see that, by comparison, those she ridicules are far above her station. This is the message leftists must drive home, that stupid people cannot -- and must not -- ever laugh at the them.

____________________

High school comes to mind when I think about this whole drama around Sarah Palin. I am thinking of those kids who believe themselves eminently superior to many of their popular peers. You know the set: the group of quasi-academics racking up good grades, distinguishing themselves from "those other" kinds of people. I am talking about the snob set, those who confuse good grades with moral character and intellectual ability. I am talking, perhaps, about the distinction between the National Honor Society's insouciant ironists (who often seethe with envy) and the apparently less metacognitive jocks (two groups that are not mutually exclusive, of course). Ms. Palin, as you know, was indeed a high school jock; you also know she didn't attend a "real" college. Surely you remember that wickedly self-righteous, "most-likely-to-succeed" group in high school? And surely you see them at work today in all sorts of affairs, public and private, looking down from on high, perhaps even down the aquiline arcs of their glorious noses, no? Surely you hear them now: Sarah Palin is an idiot.

Odd, but Barack Obama strikes me as exactly the sort of person who believes that if he gives an answer today that would have given him an A+ in college yesterday, he has not only given the right answer, he's achieved greatness. In other words, he's the kid in high school who confuses the A+ with real achievement and aptitude.

Granted, I ramble.

___________________

The other day I was thinking that graduating summa cum laude from the greatest school on the planet might actually be meaningless. After all, is it not conceivable that a school could be flat-out wrong about much of what it dispenses as "real" knowledge? If so, it follows that a student could excel at error, at falsehoods. Imagine for a moment the valedictorian at the University of the Flat Earth, or the feted professor emeritus at the College of Alchemy and Phrenology. Surely they both may relish in their many conceits, but their achievements would mean little in the world of the real. What if the "wise" are the fools? Isn't it likely that fools actually believe themselves wise?

Admittedly, I am in the netherlands here. There is little to be gained from such musings. I am a fool, which, I know, proves I am wise.

A fool's conclusion, for sure.

___________________

One last thing. A beef, if you will. It has to do with being judgmental.

Let me put it this way. If someone is going to write that Sarah Palin is a terrible writer, that person better be a better writer than Ms. Palin. If a person is going to call Ms. Palin stupid, he or she better be smarter than the former governor of Alaska.

It's about using measures, for, as you know, "whatever measure you use to judge others will be used against you." If you can't count to 5, you better not be laughing at the person who can only count to 12.

And if you're going to call someone a dope, you better be ready to prove you're more than a mediocrity.

Peace.

†See Raphael Demos' very important comment here. 

©2010/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Mere Conversation

Haste is part of the very essence of blogging (at least a lot of it). Unfortunately in my haste on Friday I failed to make a few salient and ever-convincing points. Forgive me. Indeed, I am failing -- and flailing. 

The topic, of course, was -- and is -- the Sestak Offer, an allegedly dastardly deed in which the Obama Administration -- allegedly -- offered Congressman Joe Sestak a "high-profile position" in the administration in exchange for a political favor, namely, that he abandon his pursuit of the Senate seat held by Arlen Specter.

The current White House explanation for this whole story is offered with simplicity -- and one stunning concession. The simplicity is found in the narrative: former President Bill Clinton merely mentioned to Mr. Sestak that the White House was wondering if he'd consider an "uncompensated" advisory role within Mr. Obama's circle of shakers and movers. The genesis of the idea occurred somewhere in the brain of Mr. Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel; it was apparently his idea to enlist his former boss for such an important task as the Sestak query indubitably was.

Others have already pointed out the preposterousness of this narrative. Mr. Clinton is not some lightweight; he's an obvious heavy. Does he really get trundled out to make such a lightweight, unimportant offer to Mr. Sestak? Egads, no.

Moreover, I learned today that the position Mr. Sestak was offered would have required something other than what the administration expected. You see, the current story is that the administration wanted him to keep his seat in the House of Representatives; he could pull double-duty over at the White House "advising" the president, pro bono, on the President's Intelligence Advisory Board (or something similar). However, it turns out that the rules at play would have disqualified Mr. Sestak from serving on the board without giving up his seat in the House.

The stunning concession, by the way, comes in the last paragraph of the White House counsel's statement:

There have been numerous, reported instances in the past when prior Administrations -- both Democratic and Republican, and motivated by the same goals -- discussed alternative paths to service for qualified individuals also considering campaigns for public office. Such discussions are fully consistent with the relevant law and ethical requirements.

In other words -- well, you already know those words.

By the way, one thing is clear: the White House admits it offered Mr. Sestak something.