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Again. No word yet on how long before power will be restored.
Tomorrow temps are supposed to reach the upper 90s. If ComED doesn't resolve this quickly, an awful lot of customers who went 3-4 days without power last week are going to be extremely peeved.
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The Times said prosecutors had met with Strauss-Kahn's lawyers on Thursday and the parties were discussing whether to dismiss the felony charges.
The paper said that prosecutors had discovered issues involving the asylum application of the 32-year-old housekeeper, who is Guinean, and possible links to criminal activities, including drug dealing and money laundering.
"Indeed, Mr. Strauss-Kahn could be released on his own recognizance, and freed from house arrest, reflecting the likelihood that the serious criminal charges against him will not be sustained," the paper said. "The district attorney's office may try to require Mr. Strauss-Kahn to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, but his lawyers are likely to contest such a move."
The paper quoted what it said were two well-placed law enforcement officials as saying that although forensic evidence showed there had been a sexual encounter between the French politician and the maid, the accuser had repeatedly lied and prosecutors did not believe much about what she had told them. [...]
It said prosecutors' investigators had discovered that the woman had had a phone conversation with an incarcerated man within a day of her encounter with Strauss-Kahn in which she discussed the possible benefits of pursuing the charges against him. The conversation was recorded.
Like I said after prosecutors paraded Strauss-Kahn in front of the cameras for the traditional perp walk:
I don't believe the press should be censored, but I do have concerns about government agents inflicting their own punishments while an accused is still entitled to the presumption of innocence. The courts are supposed to punish those found guilty, not the cops and not the D.A. And there is also the issue of deliberately tainting the jury pool.
I really have a problem with police and prosecutors who believe it's their job to publicly humiliate an accused. Mistakes happen, investigators construct faulty narratives, witnesses can be both certain and wrong, experts sometimes offer flawed analyses and, on occasion, victims are not victims at all.
So I wonder how much this is going to cost the City of New York and Sofitel.
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Jeff Bercovici at Forbes:
Joseph Farah and Jerome Corsi have some pretty interesting beliefs. They believe Barack Obama was born in Kenya, not there’s no proof Barack Obama was born in Hawaii.* They also believe Hearst Corp. and a writer it employs ought to pay them hundreds of millions of dollars for making fun of them for believing that first part. Read more
Who needs comedians? Every time I open my browser, I see something that puts me on the floor.
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Here is Dr. Marcus Bachmann, who owns a Christian counseling clinic with his wife, Rep. Michele Bachmann, commenting on homosexuality:
We have to understand: barbarians need to be educated. They need to be disciplined. Just because someone feels it or thinks it doesn’t mean that we are supposed to go down that road. That’s what is called the sinful nature. We have a responsibility as parents and as authority figures not to encourage such thoughts and feelings from moving into the action steps… And let’s face it: what is our culture, what is our public education system doing today? They are giving full, wide-open doors to children, not only giving encouragement to think it but to encourage action steps. That’s why when we understand what truly is the percentage of homosexuals in this country, it is small. But by these open doors, I can see and we are experiencing, that it is starting to increase.
One is ls left to wonder if some psychotherapists are motivated by an unconscious wish to inflict further emotional harm on those who are already suffering.
Consider this: suppose Bachmann or one of his staff members is seeing a patient who has been secretly struggling with homosexual feelings or experiences. What are the chances that such a patient will be able to disclose how he or she is feeling to a therapist after being branded a barbarian?
This isn't some far-flung possibility. Conflicts, guilty secrets and shame about sexuality are quite commonplace. And aside from the problem of making self-disclosure more diffiult, Bachmann's statement tells patients that he has determined in advance what the patient needs to think, believe and be. That isn't therapy; that's indoctrination.
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Snapped a few more shots at Oz Park yesterday.
Oz Park, in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago. Tin Man under the fold.
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Cheryl Fuller:
A reader emailed me to ask why therapists do not want patients seeing more than one therapist at a time. Historically, in Zurich it used to be the practice for analysts to suggest to analysands that they see 2 analysts at the same time, one of each gender. The assumption was this would make a more complete experience. But so far as i know, that is no longer recommended.
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This old post is enjoying a modest bump in traffic this morning.
The NY Times ran an interesting article on mimicry and social rapport. The author describes the emerging view among researchers that "social bonding between strangers is highly dependent on mimicry, a synchronized and usually unconscious give and take of words and gestures that creates a current of good will between two people."
This is a fascinating subject and the Times piece represents only the tip of the iceberg. Researchers since Daniel Stern, who conducted micro-analyses of mother-infant interactions, have been studying interactional "dances" to glean insights into mutual interpersonal regulation and mind-to-mind influences.
Neuroscientist Vittorio Gallese believes that mirror neurons play an active role in these apparent influences. Gallese and his colleagues uses the term "embodied simulation" to refer to an unconscious, prereflexive mechanism that generates representational (psychic) content. Essentially when we observe others, our brains map what we observe as if we are the subjects that we are observing. In so doing, we automatically generate psychic content that represents the internal experience of whomever we are observing. Gallese argues that embodied simulation is central to our ways of knowing the world and, more specifically, other minds in the world.
Although, recently, there has been a backlash against the overselling of mirror neurons, it is clear that researchers who are studying the role of interactional synchronization are onto something very powerful. Gallese wrote an interesting paper linking this research with a number of psychoanalytic and clinical constructs including unconscious communication, projective identification, empathy, autism, and transference-countertransference interactions. Gallese's paper is here.
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The Chicago Tribune:
While he appeared relieved by the verdict during a news conference Monday, Fitzgerald refused to characterize the case's outcome as a victory for himself.
"The vindication is to the people of Illinois," Fitzgerald. "It's right that the citizens' interests are vindicated. That's not a personal joy. It's bittersweet, but we needed them to see that."
Fitzgerald is the longest-serving U.S. attorney in Chicago history, with nearly 10 years in office, and it's the second conviction of a former governor on his watch, following the corruption case against George Ryan.
Patrick Fitzgerald is the prosecutor who won convictions of Scooter Libby on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to federal investigators.
President Bush commuted Libby's sentence, but refused to pardon Libby despite considerable pressure from Libby's friend, Dick Cheney. President Bush knew damn well that Libby was guilty of real crimes. But, at the time, the blogosphere-supported, conservative denialist machine was in overdrive, claiming that the charges against Libby were nothing but the vindictive act of a politically motivated prosecutor. Fitzgerald had to be a puppet of the Democratic Party establishment.
In reality, it was conservative bloggers who were vindictive and politically motivated, which is why they slandered an honest man who was doing his job.
There is no question that Fitzgerald has always been a zealous--some say ruthless--federal prosecutor. But he has never shown even the slightest evidence of partisan motivation in his prosecutions. He was appointed on the recommendation of former Republican Senator Peter Fitzgerald (no relation), a staunch conservative. He has prosecuted Republicans, Democrats and countless nobodies who ran afoul of federal law.
Simply by virtue of the fact that he's the prosecutor in the Northern Illinois District, I imagine that Pat Fitzgerald has actually prosecuted more Democrats than Republicans. He even prosecuted Obama's old patron and neighbor, Tony Rezko. And now, in a case that represents one of his most significant prosecutions, he won convictions of the impeached Illinois Democratic governor on 17 out of 20 felony charges.
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At the corner of Michigan Ave and Ontario St, a group of girls, age 13-ish, waiting to cross the street:
Girl 1: She's with Roger now.
Girl 2: I thought Roger was gay?
Girl 3: No, he was just bi for like ten minutes.
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