Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.

Runner’s diary, Friday

Mixed things up a bit today. Did my three miles (actually, a little more) at the end of a workout that included some weights and a couple of new wrinkles — two miles on the stationary bike and 1,000 meters on the rowing machine — that I’ll be trying including in my workout over the next few weeks.

The run, though, remains most important as I slowly train for the 18-mile LBI run in October.

The run: Three miles in 25:36 (3.1, a 5K, in 26:21 ) — a shocking 8:32 pace, shocking because of yesterday’s seven-mile run. I basically decided to leave it all on the treadmill, so to speak.

Today’s iPod selection: Bob Dylan’s Love and Theft.

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A threat to the constitution

Dan Froomkin hits the nail on the head in his White House Watch column in The Washington Post.

The president’s “offer to make senior aides available for private interviews about the firings of eight U.S. attorneys” fails the smell test because “it would deny the public any reliable record of what was said.”

It would remove the pressure from senior aides, most notably White House political guru Karl Rove, to come clean on their involvement in the firings — while denying the public an opportunity to assess their veracity.

And it would make Congress a party to keeping important information obscured from the kind of public scrutiny that comes when journalists and bloggers have a chance to untangle the skillful evasions so common to this White House.

This is a president who likes to tightly control the little bit of information that gets out there and an administration that has engaged in bullying of critics (the Plame leak), has pushed lies and distortions — all to defend its distorted notion of executive priviledge and power.

It is because of this kind of behavior that George W. Bush’s presidency will go down in history as the one that posed the most serious threat to the Constitution.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
The Cranbury Press Blog

E-mail me by clicking here

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Tony Snow, constitutional scholar

The title of this post is actually a line from Josh Marshall’s blog post on Tony Snow’s press conference this morning. Here’s an update from him. I like the first post better.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
The Cranbury Press Blog

E-mail me by clicking here.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.