By BRIAN ROSS and RICHARD ESPOSITO

Oct. 5, 2005 — Both the FBI and CIA are calling it the first case of espionage in the White House in modern history.

Officials tell ABC News the alleged spy worked undetected at the White House for almost three years. Leandro Aragoncillo, 46, was a U.S. Marine most recently assigned to the staff of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Our “wartime” president has a really terrific national security record. The Valerie Plame affair in which his top aide, Karl Rove, and the vice president’s top aide, Scooter Libby, are believed to be the official source for “outing” a covert CIA agent is one part of the record. The terrible fact that Osama bin Laudin is still free and walking around and directing a terrorist network makes me bleed red, white and blue. Taking us into a war in which all the justifications have proven false is discouraging. The response to Katrina calls into question our preparedness for a terror attack after all these years of pouring money into the nation’s largest bureaucracy, the Homeland Security Fiasco. Does anyone know who sent the nation’s capital envelopes of anthrax??? Seems like that’s dropped off the radar for some reason. Both of the wildest regiemes on the face of the earth, North Korea and Iran, our sworn enemies, have developed or are developing nuclear weapons. Our military is stretched so thin… I’ll ask a question I’ve asked before: Have we ever had such incompetent governance?

From Slate’s Mickey Kaus

The fatal, non-snobby objection to Miers: Randy Barnett points out that the “cronyism” worry isn’t just a worry about an unqualified nominee, or a theoretical worry about the “separation of powers.” There’s a concrete concern about her ability to rule against the interests of the man and family to whom she’s been so loyal (and to whom she will owe her spectacular elevation)**:

Cronyism is bad not only because it leads to less qualified judges, but also because we want a judiciary with independence from the executive branch. A longtime friend of the president who has served as his close personal and political adviser and confidante, no matter how fine a lawyer, can hardly be expected to be sufficiently independent–especially during the remaining term of her former boss.

Also, he might have added, in the possible future terms of other Bush dynasty members (i.e. Jeb). The Bushes do their business by calling on personal loyalties. It’s a legitimate question to ask whether they are (if only subconsciously!) trying to extend this modus operandi into the judicial branch. It all seems a bit Latin American, no? Harriet Miers could be the most qualified judge in the nation–and a breath of fresh air to boot–and cronyism would still be a potentially disqualifying factor. There are some moves Presidents who gain office on 5-4 Supreme Court votes can’t make. …

Update: President Bush, and some media reports, may have gone a long way toward dispelling worries about Souterism on the right. But not worries about cronyism! And they span the spectrum. … Indeed, Bush’s defense against the Souterism charge–“I know her well enough to be able to say that she’s not going to change”–only reinforces the cronyism charge. He’s putting his personal legal consigliere on the Supreme Court. If she’s going to show any independence, she’s going to have to change, no? … P.S.: As Maguire notes, Miers might still prove highly popular in opinion polls. She’s an appealing figure. I’m talking about what should disqualify her–not necessarily what will. …

**: And whom she apparently admires disproportionately. Here’s David Frum:

In the White House that hero worshipped the president, Miers was distinguished by the intensity of her zeal: She once told me that the president was the most brilliant man she had ever met.

From Andrew Sullivan’s blog

“Conservatives, I thought, were supposed to believe ideas have consequences, that American institutions – chief among them the Supreme Court and the Constitution – have specific and organic roles to play in the culture which depend on intellectual honesty, opposition to cant, and a dispassionate rejection of the politicization of the law. The reliable vote argument — absent other rationales — runs counter to all of these. This becomes obvious when you imagine a Democratic President appointing a confidante with few obvious credentials for the Supreme Court. A president Kerry could hardly convince any of us that his pick should be confirmed because she’s a reliable vote.” – Jonah Goldberg, NRO

Sullivan is gay, so he’s worried about gay rights …

Here’s an interesting story. Back in 1989, Harriet Miers gave answers to a questionnaire on gay rights when she was running for the Dallas city council. She didn’t favor repeal of anti-sodomy laws, but she did say yes to the question:
“Do you believe that gay men and lesbians should have the same civil rights as non-gay men and women?”
She was noncommittal on several other questions, saying, for example, that she would be willing to discuss the need for a law prohibiting discrimination in housing or public accommodations against people who had AIDS or were HIV-positive.
Asked whether qualified candidates should be denied city employment because they are gay or lesbian, she said, “I believe that employers should be able to pick the best qualified person for any position to be filled considering all relevant factors.”
I’m not sure what to make of this, except to say that this was 1989, and that her refusal to endorse discrimination against gays and lesbians on those grounds alone speaks well of her. (Hey, this was Texas in 1989.) Her view that people could be arrested for private consensual sex, however, was and is alarming. But a whole lot of people have changed their minds on that in the last decade or so. Maybe Miers is one of them. I think it’s a fair question to ask of her at the Senate hearings: “Do you believe that gay men and lesbians should have the same civil rights as non-gay men and women?” And: “What do you understand by the term ‘civil rights’?”

More from Andrew Sullivan

“Just talked to a very pro-Bush legal type who says he is ashamed and embarrassed this morning. Says Miers was with an undistinguished law firm; never practiced constitutional law; never argued any big cases; never was on law review; has never written on any of the important legal issues. Says she’s not even second rate, but is third rate. Dozens and dozens of women would have been better qualified. Says a crony at FEMA is one thing, but on the high court is something else entirely. Her long history of activity with ABA is not encouraging from a conservative perspective – few conservatives would spend their time that way. In short, he says the pick is ‘deplorable.'”

– Rich Lowry, NRO.

It seems to me at this stage that Miers might well be a quiet, decent judicial restraint conservative on the court. I’m still open to supporting her nomination. But a more fundamental issue is simply her intellectual and legal caliber. This is SCOTUS. After Roberts, we have gone from a clear A grade to a C +. It seems to me her nomination would be most successfully defeated merely by insisting that the court gets someone qualified in the most basic meaning of the term.

THE BEST SPIN YET: “It’s not as bad as Caligula putting his horse in the Senate.” – Richard Brookhiser, NRO.

One more thought. Bush is a deeply arrogant and insecure person (the qualities go together), a man who refuses to cower in the face of criticism. This can be a good thing, as in his tenacity in the war on terror. But it is also a hubristic flaw – evident as early as “Mission Accomplished” – which has only been reinforced by his re-election. The one thing that could motivate him to appoint a crony as obviously unqualified as Miers is precisely to stick a finger in the eye of those accusing him of cronyism. Tell him we need more troops in Iraq? It’s the one thing he won’t do. Tell him he’s a big spender? We get: “It’s going to cost whatever it costs.” Tell him he has botched the Iraq occupation? He’ll give the architects Medals of Freedom. There’s an adolescent streak of pure willfulness in the man. He cannot and will not self-correct. If pushed into a corner, he will simply repeat the error in order to prove himself immune to criticism. We had one chance to correct this – the only one he understands. And he got away with re-election after four years of spectacular, unconservative incompetence. I’m afraid I have limited sympathy for those complaining conservatives who were silent when it mattered, and are now living with the consequences.

From Another Blog

There were complaints of cronyism and questions about Ms. Miers experience by both sides. According to the L.A. Times, conservatives were particularly harsh in their comments. One example:

Manuel Miranda, a conservative lobbyist active in promoting Bush’s judicial nominees, argued that “the president has made possibly the most unqualified choice since Abe Fortas.”

From George Will

Senators beginning what ought to be a protracted and exacting scrutiny of Harriet Miers should be guided by three rules. First, it is not important that she be confirmed. Second, it might be very important that she not be. Third, the presumption — perhaps rebuttable but certainly in need of rebutting — should be that her nomination is not a defensible exercise of presidential discretion to which senatorial deference is due.

It is not important that she be confirmed because there is no evidence that she is among the leading lights of American jurisprudence, or that she possesses talents commensurate with the Supreme Court’s tasks. The president’s “argument” for her amounts to: Trust me. There is no reason to, for several reasons.

He has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution. Few presidents acquire such abilities in the course of their prepresidential careers, and this president, particularly, is not disposed to such reflections.

Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that Miers’ nomination resulted from the president’s careful consultation with people capable of such judgments. If 100 such people had been asked to list 100 individuals who have given evidence of the reflectiveness and excellence requisite in a justice, Miers’ name probably would not have appeared in any of the 10,000 places on those lists.

Harriet Miers Biography

Harriet Miers serves as Counsel to the President. Most recently, she served as Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff, and prior to that she was Assistant to the President and Staff Secretary.

Ms. Miers has a long and distinguished professional career.

Before joining the President’s staff, she was Co-Managing Partner at Locke Liddell & Sapp, LLP from 1998-2000. She had worked at the Locke Purnell, Rain & Harrell firm, or its predecessor, from 1972 until its merger with the Liddell Sapp firm. From 1995 until 2000, she was chair of the Texas Lottery Commission. In 1992, Harriet became the first woman president of the Texas State Bar, and in 1985 she became the first woman president of the Dallas Bar Association. She also served as a Member-At-Large on the Dallas City Council.

Ms. Miers received her bachelor’s degree in Mathematics in 1967 and J.D. in 1970 from Southern Methodist University. Upon graduation, she clerked for U.S. District Judge Joe E. Estes from 1970 to 1972.

Ms. Miers had a distinguished career as a trial litigator, representing such clients as Microsoft, Walt Disney Co. and SunGard Data Systems Inc. Moreover, when she left her law firm of Locke, Liddell & Sapp, Ms. Miers was serving as Co-Managing Partner of the firm which had more than 400 lawyers.

Throughout her career, Ms. Miers has been committed to public service. In addition to her extensive involvement in the State Bar of Texas and the American Bar Association, Ms. Miers has been an elected official, a statewide officeholder, and a strong advocate of pro bono work.

During her time in the Administration, Ms. Miers has addressed numerous legal and policy questions at the highest levels of decision making, most recently serving as the Counsel to the President of the United States.

Ms. Miers has been a trailblazer for women professionals.

In 1972, Ms. Miers became the first woman hired at Dallas’s Locke Purnell Rain Harrell. In March 1996, her colleagues elected her the first female President of Locke, Purnell, Rain & Harrell, at that time a firm of about 200 lawyers. She was the first woman to lead a Texas firm of that size.

In 1985, Ms. Miers was selected as the first woman to become President of the Dallas Bar Association.

In 1992, she became the first woman elected President of the State Bar of Texas. Ms. Miers served as the President of the State Bar of Texas from 1992 to 1993.

Ms. Miers recent career has been marked by her participation at the highest levels of government.

She was appointed Assistant to the President and Staff Secretary on January 20, 2001. As Staff Secretary, Ms. Miers acted as “the ultimate gatekeeper for what crosses the desk of the nation’s commander in chief.” In addition to this important role, Ms. Miers supervised more than 60 employees in four departments.

In 2003, Ms. Miers was named Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff. As part of the Office of the Chief of Staff, she was a top domestic policy advisor to the President.

Ms. Miers has served as Counsel to the President since February 2005. In this role, she has served as the top lawyer to the President and the White House, and in particular has been the principal advisor judicial nominations.

Ms. Miers’s professional accomplishments have been recognized time and time again.

Ms. Miers made partner at her law firm in 1978; the next year, she was honored as the Outstanding Young Lawyer of Dallas by the Dallas Association of Young Lawyers.

On numerous occasions, the National Law Journal named her one of the Nation’s 100 most powerful attorneys, and as one of the Nation’s top 50 women lawyers.

She has received countless awards recognizing her distinguished career, including 1997 Woman of the Year, the 1996 Louise Raggio Award, the 1993 Sarah T. Hughes Award, and the 1992 Dallas Bar Association’s Justinian Award for Community Service. In 2005 she received the Sandra Day O’Connor award.

In 1996 alone, she was honored with the Anti-Defamation League’s Jurisprudence Award and the Legal Services of North Texas 1996 Merrill Hartman Award.

She also has been the recipient of a Women of Excellence Award, sponsored by Dallas’s Women’s Enterprise, for her work with the Dallas Bar Association and Dallas’s Girls Inc.

Ms. Miers has been an active participant in our nation’s political process.

In 1989, she was elected to a two-year term as an at-large candidate on the Dallas City Council. She chose not to run for re-election when her term expired.

Ms. Miers served as general counsel for the transition team of Governor-elect George W. Bush in 1994.

From 1995 until 2000, Ms. Miers served as Chairwoman of the Texas Lottery Commission, a voluntary public service position she undertook while maintaining her legal practice and other responsibilities. After then-Governor Bush appointed Ms. Miers to a six-year term on the Texas Lottery Commission, she served as a driving force behind its cleanup. In an editorial, The Dallas Morning News complimented her distinguished service and her success in ensuring the lottery’s integrity.

In addition to her trailblazing role in the Dallas Bar and Texas State Bar, Ms. Miers has been a strong voice in the American Bar Association, the leading professional organization for lawyers across the country, and the Texas State Bar.

She was one of two candidates for the number two position at the ABA, chair of the House of Delegates, before withdrawing her candidacy to move to Washington to serve in the Bush Administration.

Ms. Miers also served as the chair of the ABA’s Commission on Multi-jurisdictional Practice and was a member of the ABA Governance Committee.

She has also served as the Chair of the Board of Editors of the ABA Bar Journal.

Similarly, she has served as the chairwoman of the Legal Services to the Poor in Civil Matters Committee of the State Bar of Texas.

Throughout her career, Ms. Miers has successfully balanced her professional obligations and community involvement.

For example, while she served as President of the State Bar of Texas, Ms. Miers also logged 125 pro bono hours handling an immigration and naturalization case for Catholic Charities of Dallas.

In addition to her service to the Bar and her pro bono commitments, Ms. Miers has served on the Executive Board for the Southern Methodist University School of Law and as a Trustee of the Southwestern Legal Foundation.

Ms. Miers is single and very close to her family: two brothers and her mother live in Dallas, and a third brother lives in Houston.

from Slate’s blog review

Crony on the Court?
By David Wallace-Wells
Posted Monday, Oct. 3, 2005, at 11:30 AM PT

Crony on the court?: This morning, President Bush nominated White House counsel Harriet Miers, who has never been a judge, to replace Sandra Day O’Connor. Bloggers’ reaction was quick and biting—and this time, much of the venom came from conservatives.

At the National Review, former Bush speechwriter David Frum sets the tone by calling the nomination “an unforced error” and a missed opportunity to significantly shift the court rightward. Leading conservative Ed Morrissey agrees. “Not only does Harriet Miers not look like the best candidate for the job, she doesn’t even look like the best female candidate for the job,” he writes at Captain’s Quarters.

Volokh Conspiracy legal eagle Orin Kerr is especially flummoxed. “As far as I can tell, she has no particular experience or expertise in any areas of law that the Supreme Court is likely to consider in the next twenty years; she has no history of having thought deeply about the role of judges in a constitutional democracy; and she is a complete unknown among the parts of the DC legal community that will now be considering her candidacy for the Supreme Court.” Many beltway observers are equally dismayed. “It’s possible that with a six-week bar review course, any of us would be more qualified than Harriet Miers to sit on the Supreme Court,” writes Washington Monthly editor Amy Sullivan, a guest at Political Animal. “Bush chose hackery.”

President Bush today announced he will choose his former personal lawyer, Harriet Mier, as his next Supreme Court nominee to replace the redoubtable and balancing Sandra Day O’Conner.

My friend Sharon Astrin nailed the pick. Her logic was, apparently, impeccable (Sharon is often impeccable in other ways). Sharon figured that Ms. Mier is an insider loyalist with few public statements about judicial matters, and like Dick Cheney who was selected as vice president after leading the search committee for a nominee, Ms. Mier was the lead White House appointee to seek out Supreme Court nominees. My own guess was Alberto Gonzalez, the attorney general. I’m rather glad Sharon was right instead of me.

One of the reasons I’m glad is that it appears that this selection will probably “save” Roe v. Wade from being overturned. Sorry, pro-lifers, but not this time.

Ms. Mier is a former corporate lawyer known for being able to keep her darn mouth shut in her Dallas practice before going to the White House with President Bush. Discretion is a big deal in all events, but in this case it means that this nominee won’t have many uncomfortable questions to answer about things she’s said publicly before going before the Judiciary Committee of the Senate. It will be very difficult for anyone to block this nominee as far as I can tell at this point.

In fact, it doesn’t appear that Ms. Mier is an ideologue about much of anything, at least according to the public records. Smart, savvy and hard working, yes. Hard right wing, no.

Sharon said something else about this nominee that I thought was brilliant: “this is Bush’s Ruth Bader Ginsberg”. Give Ms. Astrin credit where credit is due, she made the pick and polished it off with elan.

Sunday’s Washington Post coverage:

By Jim VandeHei and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, October 2, 2005; Page A05

As the CIA leak investigation heads toward its expected conclusion this month, it has become increasingly clear that two of the most powerful men in the Bush administration were more involved in the unmasking of operative Valerie Plame than the White House originally indicated.

With New York Times reporter Judith Miller’s release from jail Thursday and testimony Friday before a federal grand jury, the role of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, came into clearer focus. Libby, a central figure in the probe since its earliest days and the vice president’s main counselor, discussed Plame with at least two reporters but testified that he never mentioned her name or her covert status at the CIA, according to lawyers in the case.

His story is similar to that of Karl Rove, President Bush’s top political adviser. Rove, who was not an initial focus of the investigation, testified that he, too, talked with two reporters about Plame but never supplied her name or CIA role.

Their testimony seems to contradict what the White House was saying a few months after Plame’s CIA job became public.

In October 2003, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters that he personally asked Libby and Rove whether they were involved, “so I could come back to you and say they were not involved.” Asked if that was a categorical denial of their involvement, he said, “That is correct.”

Washington insiders speculate, according to the article, that the prosecutor is contemplating a sticky wicket for the Bush Administration: a charge of criminal conspiracy to “out” covert CIA employee Valerie Plame by a number of White House operatives, mostly centered in the office of the Vice President, the emotional and intellectual engine of the effort to drive the nation into war in Iraq and the originator of the idea that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

For those of you that read the papers, you will know that the top two suspects are Karl Rove, the president’s chief of staff, and L. “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff. The discussions between those two and reporters for the New York Times and Time Magazine (both of whom were jailed for refusing to disclose their sources) have been the focus of the grand jury for several months. The grand jury is over on October 28, and the prosecutor is expected to hand down indictments, if any, within the next few days.

Present and former intelligence officers decry the exposure of Ms. Plame, wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson. Wilson’s refutation of a State of the Union assertion by President Bush that Iraq had sought to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger began the White House effort to discredit him via his connection by marriage to Ms. Plame. It is widely agreed by intelligence analysts that the failure of the Bush White House to punish the exposure of Ms. Plame would be a long-term problem for the nation. Bush, who originally said he would fire anyone involved, now has a “wait and see” attitude based on whether there are criminal charges that stick.

Clearly this administration is capable of anything, including treason, in service of their failed policies.

This article appeared in Sunday’s New York Times

By ROBERT PEAR
Published: October 1, 2005
WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 – Federal auditors said on Friday that the Bush administration violated the law by buying favorable news coverage of President Bush’s education policies, by making payments to the conservative commentator Armstrong Williams and by hiring a public relations company to analyze media perceptions of the Republican Party.

In a blistering report, the investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, said the administration had disseminated “covert propaganda” in the United States, in violation of a statutory ban.

The contract with Mr. Williams and the general contours of the public relations campaign had been known for months. The report Friday provided the first definitive ruling on the legality of the activities.

Lawyers from the accountability office, an independent nonpartisan arm of Congress, found that the administration systematically analyzed news articles to see if they carried the message, “The Bush administration/the G.O.P. is committed to education.”

The auditors declared: “We see no use for such information except for partisan political purposes. Engaging in a purely political activity such as this is not a proper use of appropriated funds.”

The report also sharply criticized the Education Department for telling Ketchum Inc., a public relations company, to pay Mr. Williams for newspaper columns and television appearances praising Mr. Bush’s education initiative, the No Child Left Behind Act.

If your stomach isn’t churning after reading this, no comment of mine is going to make a difference.

Told by his aides that 3 Brazilian soldiers had been killed in Iraq, the president broke down and cried. Finally, regaining his composure, he asked Secretary Rumsfeld: “Just exactly how many IS a brazillion?”

My mind is strange.

My first thought is that it’s 13 months before the ’06 election and will he have a preliminary hearing before then that will be showcased on television. A conspiracy charge isn’t very sexy image-wise, but there will always be the courthouse steps refusals to speak to the press under advice of attorney.

How well will that play in the Congressional races in OK and TX?

The latest political scuttlebutt around here is that Ernest Istook will be in the race for governor, although I can’t imagine a greater disaster.

That will leave the 5th District, essentially Oklahoma City, an open seat in Congress and therefore a hotly contested seat nationally between the national parties. I hear that’s the seat that Mary Fallin may seek.

What Democrat can take that seat from the GOP?

My own personal choice is Bernest Cain, but my personal conversations with him have been sincerely negative. He says he doesn’t have any interest and I hate that, but I have to believe him since he’s told me this on several occasions and has even refused my fundraising help. We went to law school together and we’re friendly, but I don’t claim to a “source close” to Sen. Cain.

Given the heavily GOP nature of the 5th District, I would think there would need to be a “tough” and/or “reform” Democrat to cross party lines on registration.

Oh, by the way, FUCK Tom DeLay. I think the death penalty’s barbaric, but…

10 years on each count. Hmmmm. This is serious shit for a Majority Leader from the U.S. Congress.

Since DeLay had to step down as Majority Leader, don’t you know there’s some dancing, wining, dining, arm twisting and shitting bricks going on in Wash. D.C. These are the times to enjoy being a common, ordinary voter and not a member of the political class.

I haven’t even touched the commentary yet, since I’m waiting to see the Sunday papers go all righteous and indignant, pulling out the big guns and coming up with a “watch this closely” summary. Assholes.

Our friend, SuzArt, danced out of VZDs tonight singing “Tom DeLay’s Indicted! Tom DeLay’s In-Dieee-ted!” Oh, how the closed captioning spun by!

Conspiracy has always been a curious criminal charge to me. Talking as a crime. Free speech and association problems anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

After the success of Napoleon Dynamite, I think the 5th District Democrats ought to find a good liberal Hispanic named Pedro …

I was hoping to get this in before midnight…

quick musings while at work

Everyone in this town is telling the same joke: They asked President Bush what he thinks of Roe versus Wade and he said he didn’t care how they got out of New Orleans.

Have we ever had such incompetent governance?

I’m sure that the Repubs will tell me how great things are under this “wartime” president, but think about it… have they done anything other than say the things that the furthest right Republicans want to hear? I mean, they do ONE thing really well, and that’s run for office. Scientists resign from positions at the EPA, FDA and even Treasury because the Bush White House cooks the books and doesn’t respect facts when the facts are inconsistent with their theory. We went to war to find the weapons of mass destruction WE GAVE THEM and then we can’t find them. We invaded Iraq despite the fact that 19 of the 20 WTC terrorists were from Saudi Arabia. Why didn’t we invade Canada? It’s closer! And, what have we accomplished in Iraq besides 2,000 U.S. deaths, 15,000 casualties for us alone and tens of thousands of Iraqi dead and wounded? Does it look like we’re winning the war against terrorism or that we’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest that will plague us with a thousand stings for generations to come? Heard from Afghanistan recently? Well, they had elections and millions voted and millions didn’t and Osama bin Laudin is still walking around somewhere. My x-wife and I helped get our son out of the French Quarter, but thanks to no help from the feds, who left him there in a freefire zone without food, water, electricity or telephone service along with thousands who were sweltering in the convention center and Superdome. That whole thing was FUBAR from start to finish and now the Republicans want to have an “investigation” composed entirely of Bush’s cronies from the right wing of the House Republican Party. Whoosh!!! I can feel the heat of the supercharged whitewash flying overhead as I write. Wanna guess how things would be if Clinton were in the White House? Anyway, have they gotten anything right in six years? The stock market is just about exactly where it was when Bush took office and that’s only because we’ve inflated the hell out of our dollar with more debt than in the entire history before these guys took office (they started with a surplus, but that didn’t last long). I just find myself humming “Everybody Knows” by Leonard Cohen all the time.

musical note

G Sharp. Heard this great protest song by a guy I think is named “Babyface”. It’s about wondering what it’s like when the President talks to God. Check it out.

saw the son this a.m.

My son, Jack, met me for coffee this a.m. at the Red Cup, but I didn’t have time to spend much time with him because I had to get to the office for God knows what reason. He’s looking good and my friends say he made them laugh by regaling them with stories of waiting tables at Flip’s in the 1980s.