Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"Unfortunately, the history of democracy is that leadership philosophy is eroded as the competition between elites becomes more intense. That's what happened with Athenian democracy; that's what happened in the Roman Republic. So you look at our system today; you see our elites doing it, and you know were in big trouble. It's in my lifetime that this has happened, that elites have begun to put winning ahead everything else, ahead of truth and country.

"When Watergate was prosecuted, there were Republicans in Congress that were after Nixon. They thought what he was doing was unconscionable, and today that's not the case. Today, Democrats stick with Democrats, and Republicans stick with Republicans. They dont care what their party leaders have done. Just in my lifetime, I've seen this civic culture go from something thats respectful of democracy to something that is manipulative of it. The problem is if you let this go uncorrected, the Democrats are going to do something worse later, and then the Republicans. It's just an arms race almost, and it will just tend to degenerate."

-- Lance deHaven-Smith, in an interview in Research in Review Magazine, Florida State University, Fall/Winter 2005

The radio in the kitchen had drifted off its station, so when I went downstairs for food I heard CSPAN covering the Alito hearing instead of music.

I caught the exchange between Sen. Kennedy and Sen. Spector, and the very strong reaction that exchange gave me was, "What are they trying to hide? It sounds as though it's something someone deems very important to keep hidden."

The über-cynic hiding under a mattress in a back room of my skull did suggest that it's possible that Kennedy carefully orchestrated it to manipulate Spector into a reaction he hoped would give exactly that impression for the benefit of anyone watching or listening to CSPAN -- that Spector wants to keep something important hidden and any fence-sitters should smell something fishy whether there's anything there or not -- but the merely-ordinarily-cynical parts of my brain suggested that doing so would have to be much more difficult than it looks and my first reaction being a more likely reflection of reality ... (to whatever extent one can trust Occam's Razor when analyzing the US Congress, anyhow).

I know what Alito's opponents expect/hope to find, and Spector's response to Kennedy just made it look as though some Alito backers already know the opponents are right. So yeah, I wanna know for sure too, either way.