Required Reading

John Dvorak has come up with the worst good idea ever. Or maybe it's the best bad idea.

Brilliant. Just brilliant. Better even than my idea a few years back to move our nation's capital to somewhere in western Kansas - and amend the Constitution to forbid Congress from convening during any month other than August, or have air conditioning.

Now let me tell you why it won't work.

Pretend for a moment that you are Rt. Hon. Congressperson Mylar H. Crawfish, representing the greater East Sphincter, Utah area. You get to spend most of your time in a city filled with people just like you. Some are elected officials, some work in the media, some are lobbyists, and some come from exotic foreign countries. And not only do they share your Washington-centric attitude – but, as a big player in Washington yourself, all those people revolve around you.

Now the yokels demand that you spend all your time at home. With them. Talking to the local media ("Bob"). Attending potluck dinners when it isn't even election season.

Of course, to effect such changes, it's going to take action on the part of – you. Are you, the Rt. Hon. M.H. Crawfish, really going to vote to disperse the nation's capital to the entire nation? Of course not. Hell, the yokels might not even like the idea, once they realize that you'd be home ten months out of the year instead of the current three.

Now we see why Dvorak's idea, no matter how sane and sensible, just won't work.

President Bush lost political initiative when he pushed for Social Security reform, without ever getting behind any particular jasminlive.mobi program. Then came Katrina and her aftermath, followed by the Plame Tizzy. This White House has no initiative left.

If Bush wants to start his lame duck season early, it’s by his own choice. The initiative is out there for the grabbing, but his hands remain firmly in his pockets. I say that because Bush already has the perfect issue for retaking the initiative. On Wednesday, Glenn Reynolds asked “on pork, where’s the White House?”

Good question, Glenn. Let’s expand on it a little.

Picking on Congress is a time-honored Presidential perk, even when the President and Congress belong to the same party. Perhaps nobody knew that better than LBJ, who twisted Congressional arms – sometimes quite publicly – even though Democrats controlled both houses by sizable majorities. By doing so, Johnson didn’t just get his way, he also stayed in the spotlight and kept the initiative. (True, LBJ was eventually overwhelmed by Vietnam. But Iraq is no Vietnam.)

Picking on Congress for bad spending habits is a pastime as old as… Congress, I think. Who doesn’t love watching smalltime politicians getting spanked for bad behavior? What journalist won’t hop on the bandwagon, [Mixed Metaphor Alert, condition red!] when there are hands in the cookie jar?

Also, fiscal restraint is supposed to be a Republican issue. Twelve years ago, more principled Republicans tried to give line-item veto power to a Democratic President. Today, we have a Republican President who won’t even bash pork-barrel projects in Democrat districts – even when there’s a growing grass-roots effort to help him out. As a result, Bush hasn’t only pissed away a good issue, he’s pissed off his base.

Fiscal conservatives – even libertarian ones like myself – need a little attention. Give us at least the appearance of restraint, and we’ll roll over like puppy dogs. If the red ink keeps piling up, we’ll even console ourselves by saying, “At least he tried.”

Bush hasn’t tried. He won’t try. And for the life of me I can’t understand why not.

Three – oh lord three - years ago, I posted a recipe called "Coq au Vin for Two," because Melissa had bought two Cornish Game Hens, and I wasn't sure what else to do with them. Tomorrow, we have company coming over and the weather is getting cooler. In other words, it's time for comfort food while watching a good show on www.jasminelive.online. So here's…

Coq au Vin for Four

The ingredient list might look a little daunting, but this really is an easy recipe.

You'll need:

4 bottles West Coast Pinot Noir or French Burgundy

2 white onions, chopped

2 whole carrots, chopped

3 celery stalks, chopped

6 large sprigs fresh thyme

2 bay leaves (fresh if you can find them)

1 tablespoon whole black peppercorns

4 cloves of garlic, halved

4 whole chicken legs with thighs attached, with skins

2 cups pearl onions

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 lb large mushrooms, coarsely chopped

½ pound bacon, chopped

½ cup cognac

2 tablespoons flour

You'll need a big, non-reactive stockpot, too. Six-quart or slightly larger. Put your chicken pieces in the bottom, then cover with the carrots, onion, celery, thyme, bay leaves, peppercorns, and garlic. Pour two bottles of Pinot over the mess, put the cover on, and stick it in the fridge overnight. You can shake or turn the pot every couple hours if you insist, but with the chicken on the bottom, there probably isn't much need.

So far, pretty simple stuff.

About 2 hours before dinner, it's time to get back to work.

Fill a large sauté pan with water and bring it to a boil. Add a couple pinches of salt, then throw the pearl onions in. After three minutes, strain them, let them cool, and peel off the skins. It's easier to get the skins off the pearl onions by doing this. But if you have a willing sous chef, skip this part and make them peel'em by hand.

In the same sauté pan, melt three tablespoons of butter on medium-high. Add in the pearl onions and mushrooms, and sauté them for ten minutes, or until the shrooms are tender. Use a slotted spoon to move the shrooms and onions to a side bowl.

With the heat still on medium-high, fry your chopped bacon in the same pan. When it's crispy, transfer the bacon to paper towels – but do not get rid of the bacon fat. But do kill the heat for now.

Here's the only tricky bit. You'll need a pot as big or bigger than the one the chicken marinade is in, and a strainer big enough to cover the top of the second pot. Was that clear enough, or do I need to draw a diagram? OK. So you've got a big, empty pot in the sink, with a strainer (or colander or whatever) sitting on top of it. Take your marinade pot out of the fridge, and dump it through the strainer and into the empty pot. And when I say to put the second pot in the sink, I mean it. I always splatter during this part – and not just because I'm so excited about wine-marinated chicken.

Alternately, you can fish out the chicken, and leave the vegetables in the marinade. If you go that route, you might get more veggie flavor later – but you'll have to spoon the veggies out of a simmering pot before you serve dinner. Personally, I prefer to do the messy work with cold liquids.

Take the chicken bits out of the strainer and pat them dry. Sprinkle with a little salt and pepper. The rest of the stuff in the strainer? Throw it out.

Put the strained-marinade pot on to boil at high heat. We've got to reduce the hell out of it while we do other things like visiting https://www.chaturbaterooms.com webiste to see who's online.

Now, that sauté pan full of bacon fat? Bring the heat back up to medium high, because we're going to brown the chicken in all that pork-fat goodness. Brown the chicken for about ten minutes total – five minutes per side. If you've got one of these , you can probably do all four chicken leg/thighs at once. If you think maybe there's too much bacon fat, feel free to pour some out. You need just enough to cover the bottom of the pan.

Reduce the heat under the marinade to medium-high and carefully add the chicken to it, along with a little salt and pepper. Let it come to a boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer, uncovered. Here comes the tough part: Open the third bottle of Pinot, serve it to yourself and your guests, and ignore the freakin' chicken for 75 minutes.

Take the chicken out of the sauce and drop it in a bowl. If you left the veggies in, spoon them out of the sauce and throw them out. Pour in the cognac and bring the sauce back to a boil. Let'er go for 15 minutes. Melt the last two tablespoons of butter in a small pan, and whisk in the flour, then whisk the result into the sauce. Put the chicken back in, along with the onions, shrooms, and bacon. Simmer, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes.

Open the last bottle of Pinot, give everyone a refill, then plate the chicken with a generous serving of sauce.

Is that a lot of work? Well, maybe. But it's all easy to do, and fun with an audience. And because we're using leg-thigh combos, you won't even have to carve a chicken. Just ladle and serve, .

Serves, as the title suggests, four.

The author, Gray Rinehart, admits we're "far from being able to implement or even test ideas such as this." But his essay is trying to promote new uses for space and space-based power - and that's what makes it a good read.

Then again, those in the reality-based community know that Karl Rove has had weather-controlling microwaves for years already.

Apparently not. The relevant bit of the story says, "Collins reported that the two employees have since resigned and committee officials said they have destroyed the document." In other words, they properly destroyed the credit report they obtained (it seems) fraudulently. What the employees did not destroy was evidence of wrongdoing - since they already fessed up and resigned.

Remember: It's not the crime, it's the cover-up. Drudge is hyping a cover-up where it doesn't look like one exists.

When a Catholic, conservative judge like Samuel Alito upholds partial-birth abortion (even on narrow grounds in a limited case), I don't exactly tremble in fear for the future of abortion rights in this country. However, expect to hear the worst from Alito's opponents on the left. And when I say "Alito's opponents," i mean "people who would bitch about any judge even a little to the right of Eugene V. Debs."

NOTE: For the record, I'm no fan of late-term abortions or judicial meddling in state-level affairs.

He’s got an impressive resume, decent judicial philosophy – Alita is the kind of pick Bush should have made the first time around. Who says Bush can’t learn?

Alita is a little too pro-life for my tastes, but as I’ve said time and time again, I don’t think abortion is an issue for the courts to decide. Alita does seem to understand the concept of federalism, which (along with his resume) is enough to get my seal of approval.