Anonymous Doc on modern death — I feel like in the media, death-before-modern-medicine is romanticized, as if everyone died in his sleep, as if everyone had a peaceful and wonderful death back when we didn't have medicine. You know what? They didn't. People suffered. And in a lot of cases, they probably suffered much more than today.
It's Complicated: David Souter finally tells Americans to grow up. — It saddens me to think that it took Justice Souter 19 years of heavy constitutional lifting and departure from the court before he could turn to the American people and explain clearly that much as we might want judging to be easy, it never can be. Constitutional originalism is like Biblical inerrancy. It must very comforting to avoid nuance in favor of strict absolutism.
Jon Stewart on Obama and executive authority — Really, Mr. President, we elected you to be better than the other guys. "Hope and change" doesn't mean more of the same. Otherwise we may as well have President Palin and resign ourselves to the inevitable decline of American power, influence and economic strength under the same increasingly ideological, incompetent conservative misrule we've seen since Reagan.
Obama: Republicans blocking progress in Congress — President Barack Obama accused Republicans on Saturday of blocking bills that would boost the nation's economic recovery and lift a $75 million cap on what oil companies must pay to families and small businesses affected by an oil spill. Is it an accusation when it's true?
With No Gulf Solution in Sight, Louisiana Turns to Prayer — This is roughly the same group of people who don't believe the government should regulate the oil industry. God is in a better position to do so?
First draft of history — An excellent chronicle by Sean Flynn in the July GQ of the events on and around the Deepwater Horizon just before and just after the explosion. From The Edge of the American West.
What Shakedown — Conservative commentator Daniel Larison on the BP "shakedown".
?otD: When do the mouse police ever sleep?
6/20/2010
Writing time yesterday: n/a
Body movement: brief suburban walk later
Hours slept: 10.0 (interrupted)
This morning's weigh-in: 231.2
Yesterday's chemo stress index: 9/10 (infusion)
Currently (re)reading: Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett