Gregorian Calendars the world over agree: 2014 has ended. For the third year running, it’s time for me to review the ten best albums I noticed that were released last year; jeer at a few for being remarkably bad; and also serve up a 20-track mix of highlight singles, half taken from the top ten albums list. This year affords a special treat, as you can now stream the playlist in-line!
Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution is the latest scholarly work from former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. The book is as spare and strictly to-the-point as its title: discounting an index, a few pages of acknowledgements, a few more pages of glossy colour photographs, and an appendix with a complete transcription of the United States Constitution (as amended), Stevens makes his case for six distinct constitutional amendments in just 133 pages. 
As a retired Justice, it isn’t surprising that the selection and emphasis of many of the proposals underscore Steven’s frustration with often recently decided jurisprudence and are targeted to undermine or reverse certain decisions. The no-nonsense prose, coloured with Stevens’s famed wit, makes for an engaging and insightful read.
No proposed amendment is immune to critique, and some are less immune than others. But a majority of them clearly address pressing contemporary issues that likely need profound and dramatic legal changes to adequately remedy. The biggest challenge to Stevens’s proposed remedies is one he himself addresses in a short prologue: namely that the amendment process has been very infrequently used, and never more infrequently since the Civil War than in the last forty years. But, by suggesting remarkably simple yet concrete changes we could actually act upon, Stevens makes a powerful case that there are ways we can effect change more more decisively than what the slow and piecemeal legislative process may afford and less unexpectedly than ‘law from the bench’ often provides. I’ll discuss each proposal in turn.
Lately it seems fashionable to acknowledge or embrace or espouse alternative theories of gender. The more extreme liberal contingent of social network users whose activity I follow have been frequently posting content about gender and sexual identity. These essays seek at a minimum to establish that the so-called gender binary is variously a myth, a remnant of former times, an unjust impediment to progressive modes of self-expression; and in extreme cases, a pox on our houses, an obnoxiously privileged slight, a pernicious evil that purveyors grow increasingly exasperated of explaining to their less enlightened friends and acquaintances. From what I’ve read and seen though, this neo-gender movement seems itself to be a poorly conceived tempest in a semantic teacup which has been so badly articulated that it has been basically impossible to proceed to its logical conclusion. Taken together with the self-congratulatory tone of much of the literature, this suggests to me that gender theory is more about self-aggrandizing liberality than serious science or activism.
Even though I’m way late, I wanted to create a top music post for last year just like I did for 2012. As I said then, I don’t pretend to be able to weigh in like the Serious People at AllMusic and Pitchfork and Rolling Stone with shiny, definitive lists about what was really the best. Also I’m pretty sure even at the time of writing that there are specific albums I should have already made the time for, so that could change a lot. But I can’t know everything and I never will, and last year’s list has held up pretty well upon review. I’ll use the same winning format again: top ten albums (ranked and reviewed in detail) plus a few honourable or interesting mentions (unranked but with a few notes) followed with a 20-song, 20-band playlist (ordered for taste).
As I detailed last month, my former residence, presciently nicknamed Acropolis, has been lifted into the air by hydraulic jacks and left to rest on wooden towers known as ‘cribs’. This was done for a reason: the house needed to be moved eight or nine feet toward the street in order to make room for townhomes in what was the house’s backyard. Heady stuff, I know.
Lifting the house up on stilts was impressive enough, but I couldn’t quite imagine how they were then going to move it thereafter. On the Tuesday before last, I found out.
As is well known, American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki was killed by a drone attack in Yemen on 30 September 2011. He was alleged by the government to have been a “senior talent recruiter” for al-Qaeda, primarily by creating “radicalising” YouTube videos. The administration never charged or indicted him of him with any crime, much less tried him before an impartial tribunal, so his killing should offend the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. The Obama Administration doesn’t agree with that straightforward analysis, but was unwilling to reveal the legal basis for their assumption of the power to execute American citizens in secret with no charge, trial, or congressional or judicial oversight. Members of Congress begged the Administration for months following al-Awlaki’s killing for memos explaining the Administration’s position, and finally the Administration deigned earlier this month to yield a draft white paper dated fifteen months ago — not to Congress proper, mind you, but to two of its subcommittees.
That white paper has now been leaked publicly. While it is unclear whether it completely details the Administration’s thinking, the paper is sufficiently devastating that Democratic California Representative Barbara Lee said in an open letter to the Los Angeles Times that it “should shake the American people to the core.” But Obama’s a nice guy, right, so how bad can it really be?
I was until recently among a crazy troupe of rag-tag whippersnappers who shared a dream: to live affordably on Capitol Hill in a free-love commune, throwing wild parties yet responsibly engaging with our community and the environment. We named our hilltop palace Acropolis, but our Gods did not demand sacrifice. We were starry-eyed lute-toting moon sailors with a heading fixed on paradise.
That utopian fantasy was not realized for at least twice as many reasons as you can imagine, and one of them is this: our landlords bought the house in order to literally lift and move it west about three meters in order to build a condominium in the backyard. Only in the GREATEST COUNTRY ON EARTH, right? We all cleared out as agreed when it came time to do this move, and I was lucky enough to witness and document the first phase of it yesterday: the Raising.
After some serious delays and multiple requests, President Obama finally indicated last Wednesday that he would allow two Congressional committees to see copies of a certain secret memo. What they actually got was a white paper from the Office of Legal Counsel (the part of the Department of Justice which exists to advise the President about the legality of proposed policy) which detailed the Administration’s understanding of when and how it can legally assassinate suspected American terrorists abroad. The straw that broke the camel seems to have been the recent furor over John Brennan’s confirmation hearing to become CIA director, as he is widely understood to be the staunchest advocate of our secret drone war.
It was shocking enough when LucasFilm announced last October that it was selling the Star Wars franchise for $4 billion to none other than Disney, who would produce three more movies as sequels to the original trilogy. The horror of that news was leavened by the rational hope that even Disney probably couldn’t do worse to Star Wars than what Lucas himself did by deciding to make the prequels. Surely the negotiations were short.
Al Jazeera has just purchased Al Gore’s Current TV cable network for an estimated $500 million. Al Jazeera, you may remember, is a rabidly anti-american news broadcaster whose headquarters George W. Bush considered bombing in 2005. Current has been around for most of a decade but I only heard of it after Keith Olbermann got fired from MSNBC, so I guess ‘struggling‘ is apt.
Anyway, what’s wild is the reaction. First, the most predictable blowhard, Rush Limbaugh, running at the mouth this afternoon: “I wonder does this mean Joy Behar and Jennifer Granholm are now going to have to wear burkas and veils over their faces? If they do, it might help raise audience levels.”
More surprisingly, Time Warner Cable immediately responded to the deal by dropping Current, claiming they “did not consent to the sale to Al Jazeera.” An odd play given the recent upsurge in visibility for Current and the worldwide popularity of Al Jazeera.