I was surprised to see all these local schools closed today. I don’t recall ever getting a day off of school due to rain–only about three inches of it at that.
Back in the good old days we had to battle the elements armed only with this quaint contraption we called an umbrella. I wonder what ever happened to those things.

Via Andrew Sullivan comes this Ryan Lizza observation on the Bush campaign:

[F]or the most part, spending time on the trail with Bush is like being transported to a parallel universe. The only music is Christian rock and country tunes about plain-talking everymen. The only people who ask the president questions are his most feverish supporters, never the press. In this alternate universe, Iraq and Afghanistan are marching effortlessly toward democracy. The economy is, in the words of former Broncos quarterback John Elway, who introduces Bush in Greenwood Village, “the best in the world.” John Kerry, whose platform is to the right of Clinton’s in 1992, is calling for a massive expansion of government.

Is Bush out of touch with reality? Well, let’s compare and contrast. Here’s what Bush had to say yesterday on Iraq:

In Iraq, there’s ongoing acts of violence. This country is headed toward democracy. There’s a strong Prime Minister in place. They have a national council. And national elections are scheduled for January. It wasn’t all that long ago that Saddam Hussein was in power with his torture chambers and mass graves. And today, this country is headed towards elections.
Freedom is on the march.

A beautiful sight, isn’t it–freedom is blossoming in Baghdad.
But here’s the contrasting view Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) offered yesterday:

“We’ve gotta be honest with ourselves … the worst thing we can do is hold ourselves hostage to some grand illusion that we’re winning,” he told reporters on Thursday.
“Right now we’re not winning. Things are getting worse,” Hagel added. “Measure that by any measurement you want. More casualties, more deaths, more oil pipeline sabotage, I mean you pick the measurement standard and it’s worse than where it was six months ago or 12 months ago.”

Hmm, two vastly different assessments. Which one do you think is more attuned to reality?

The former head of the National Security Agency weighs in on Iraq:

“Bush hasn’t found the WMD. Al-Qaida, it’s worse — he’s lost on that front. That he’s going to achieve a democracy there? That goal is lost, too. It’s lost.” He added: “Right now, the course we’re on, we’re achieving [Osama] bin Laden’s ends.”
. . .
“This is far graver than Vietnam,” said Gen. Odom. “There wasn’t as much at stake strategically, though in both cases we mindlessly went ahead with a war that was not constructive for U.S. aims. But now we’re in a region far more volatile and we’re in much worse shape with our allies.”
. . .
Gen. Odom remarked that the tension between the Bush administration and senior military officers over Iraq is worse than any he has ever seen with any previous U.S. government, including during Vietnam. “I’ve never seen it so bad between the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the military. There’s a significant majority believing this is a disaster. The two parties whose interests have been advanced have been the Iranians and al-Qaida. Bin Laden could argue with some cogency that our going into Iraq was the equivalent of the Germans in Stalingrad. They defeated themselves by pouring more in there. Tragic.”

Wow, that sounds grim, doesn’t it?
But don’t worry. Our leader assures us that “freedom is on the march.”

Today’s lesson in legal ethics:
Model Rules of Professional Conduct: Rule 1.8(j):

A lawyer shall not have sexual relations with a client unless a consensual sexual relationship existed between them when the client-lawyer relationship commenced.

What does this mean? It means not to do this:

Theresa Olson, the former King County public defender accused of having sex with her client in a jail meeting room two years ago, testified yesterday that she had an inappropriate relationship and had physical contact with her client, but maintained that it was simply “a hug gone bad.”
. . .
Olson is accused of having sex with her client, Sebastian Burns, who was later found guilty with friend Atif Rafay of the 1994 slayings of Rafay’s father, mother and sister in their Bellevue home.
. . .
Olson testified that she and Burns had developed romantic feelings for each other, and that when Burns gave her a hug during their August 2002 meeting, she did not pull away.
“I should have, but I did not,” she said, adding that the hug � which was more than platonic � had surprised her.
Bar lawyer Joanne Abelson pressed Olson, asking her whether she found the hug “flattering,” “exciting,” “stimulating” and “thrilling.” To each question, Olson replied, “yes.”

I guess the lesson here is to be careful with those hugs.

Back when 60 Minutes aired its report featuring the disputed Bush National Guard memos, I pointed out that the White House itself released copies of two of the documents:

After the broadcast, the White House, without comment, released to the news media two of the memos, one ordering Bush to report for his physical exam and the other suspending him from flight status.

At the time I thought it was funny that the White House had these documents, since it claimed it had already released all that it had.
Shortly thereafter, word came out that the White House had received said documents from CBS. Okay, no big deal. But then all the brouhaha about the document’s authenticity erupted. Even Laura Bush weighed in, calling the documents apparent forgeries.
This raises an interesting question: if the documents were so clearly false, why did the White House release them without disputing their contents?

Q Scott, on the National Guard documents on “60 Minutes,” the First Lady says she believes these are forgeries. The RNC has accused the Democratic Party of being the source of these documents. Knowing then what you know now, would you still have released those documents when you did?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, that’s a hypothetical question, John. We received those documents from a major news organization. We had every reason to believe that they were authentic at that time. And in keeping with the spirit of releasing documents and being open about all the documents that we have, we made those documents available to everybody else so you could look at them yourselves. Since that time there have been a number of questions that have been raised about these documents and their authenticity. There continue to be questions raised. Those are serious issues; they ought to be looked into fully.

How about that–We had every reason to believe that they were authentic at that time. If the White House thought the entire 60 Minutes report was bogus, that would be a reason to question the authenticity of the documents, wouldn’t it? But tellingly, it didn’t dispute the substance of the report. So the entire debate this last week has not been about Bush’s military record–which by all accounts is lacking; instead it’s been about the paper trail.
You can always count on the America media to get at the heart of an issue, huh?