Sorry about the unannounced hiatus (it came as something of a surprise to me, as well), but things should be back to normal around here by Monday or Tuesday. Look for normal blogging to resume then.

UPDATE (3/15): Well, it's Tuesday, and things are not, in fact, quite back to normal here on Jack's little acre. And since I'm not exactly sure when they will be, let's just extend the blog hiatus through the end of the month.

Thanks, as always, for your patience, and I'll see you April 1.

ANOTHER UPDATE (4/12): "Oh, Lord," prayed Saint Augustine, "grant me chastity and continence . . . but not yet." And that pretty much sums up my feelings about the blog these days; I want to get back to it, but not quite yet. Which means that I'll be exercising my right to remain silent for another few weeks, I guess.

Look for new posts (or at least a fresh update of some sort) by the end of the month. Until then, thanks for sticking around, and I hope all's well with you and yours.

Here's Kevin Drum attempting to clear up a minor (but endlessly contentious) issue in the annals of American politics: Why, exactly, was PA Gov. Bob Casey denied a speaking slot at the 1992 Democratic convention?

Short answer: Conventional wisdom says it was because he wanted to give a pro-life speech and that's verboten at Democratic conventions. But no: the real answer is that it was because he had refused to endorse the Clinton/Gore ticket — and if you don't endorse the ticket, you don't get to speak.

But is that true? Is that what people actually said at the time? Through the magic of Nexis I pulled up about a hundred news stories from July 1992 that mentioned the Casey controversy and read them all. My conclusion: in fact, he was prevented from speaking because he wanted to give a pro-life speech.

Regular readers won't be surprised to learn that I basically agree with Kevin's sifting of the historical evidence here. (O'Toole agrees with Drum. There's a blogospheric shocker, huh?) But I think I'd probably put the em-PHA-sis on a different syl-LA-ble in my conclusion.

Yes, Gov. Casey's desire to give a pro-life speech was the proximate cause of the dispute. But the reason for it involved a much larger strategic concern -- namely, the Clintonites' determination to show that their guy, unlike Walter Mondale and Mike Dukakis, was tough enough to bring the entire Democratic party, left, right and center, to heel. In other words, the Casey matter was only about abortion to the extent that Sister Soulja was about hate speech or that Clinton's support for the death penalty was about crime control -- which is to say, not much at all. It was mostly about sending the message that Bill Clinton was a different kind of Democrat, the kind who could be trusted to stand up to what was then seen as an undisciplined party of special pleaders and narrow interests -- and, by extension, to anyone who wished decent, law-abiding Americans ill at home or abroad.

That was my take at the time, anyway, and I still think it's the most useful way to think about the Casey controversy. Love him or hate him, you just can't ever assume that Bill Clinton was really talking about what he was talking about. He usually wasn't.

NOTE: I'm offering no judgment here on whether the negative perception of the Democratic party described above was accurate or not -- just recognizing, as Clinton and his people did, that it was pervasive and problematic at the time.

I'll be away from the computer for the rest of the weekend, so I've temporarily disabled comments and trackbacks. Sorry for any inconvenience, and, assuming all goes according to plan, I'll see you Monday.

UPDATE (3/7): I'm back, as are comments and trackbacks.

Fire at will.

Like most bloggers I've spoken with over the years, I usually have a pretty good idea of which O'Toole File posts are likely to generate a little interest around the ’Sphere and which ones aren't. Every once in a while, though, I guess wrong, and a piece that I truly expect to help kick off a larger conversation just, well, dies, as this one on the potentially pernicious effects of campaign finance reform did last September.

Some posts are just slightly ahead of their time, I guess.

The Republicans warned me that if I voted for John Kerry, American foreign policy would be turned on its head. And they were right!

Despite my own reluctant support for the Iraq war on what one might call Friedmanic grounds, I suspect that Tom over at FunctionalAmbivalent is mistaken to worry overmuch about President Bush's going down in history as a "great" president due to the potentially positive shake-up that it may currently be producing in the Middle East. The sad truth of the matter is that the price we're paying even today -- a price that's only likely to increase over time -- for this administration's bumbling pre-war diplomacy, as well as its utterly feckless refusal to properly plan for a successful postwar occupation, will make any future initiative to carve this president's visage into Mount Rushmore a rather tendentious affair, to say the least.

As I've said before, I truly do wish this president the best -- after all, it's my country, too -- and I sincerely hope that at some point we will all be able to look back and say that, on balance, this militarily and morally messy expedition was a net plus for the country. But that's really the best that we can hope for at this point. And that just ain't the stuff of presidential greatness, I'm afraid.

Paul Krugman:

Four years ago, Alan Greenspan urged Congress to cut taxes, asserting that the federal government was in imminent danger of paying off too much debt.

On Wednesday the Fed chairman warned Congress of the opposite fiscal danger: he asserted that there would be large budget deficits for the foreseeable future, leading to an unsustainable rise in federal debt. But he counseled against reversing the tax cuts, calling instead for cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Does anyone still take Mr. Greenspan's pose as a nonpartisan font of wisdom seriously?

No, they don't. Nor should they. . . .

I should note here at the outset that I'm less than thrilled to find myself writing this post for a couple of reasons: (1) As I've said before, I'm genuinely tired of hearing some of my fellow Democrats (a tiny minority, of course) use terms like "fascist" and "Nazi" carelessly, and an opportunity to call down a party eminence on the issue wouldn't be entirely unwelcome at this point; and (2) I've never been a particular fan of West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, so defending him here on the blog doesn't necessarily strike me as the highest, best use of my limited call on your time. Still, in the interests of fairness, I have to tell you that when you examine the senator's supposedly outrageous comments with regard to Republican efforts to limit the use of the filibuster in their entirety, it's just about impossible to make the case that they were unacceptable, or even inappropriate, in any way. Here's an extended excerpt:

Free and open debate on the Senate floor ensures citizens a say in their government. The American people are heard, through their Senator, before their money is spent, before their civil liberties are curtailed, or before a judicial nominee is confirmed for a lifetime appointment. We are the guardians, the stewards, the protectors of our people. Our voices are their voices.

If we restrain debate on judges today, what will be next: the rights of the elderly to receive social security; the rights of the handicapped to be treated fairly; the rights of the poor to obtain a decent education? Will all debate soon fall before majority rule?

Will the majority someday trample on the rights of lumber companies to harvest timber, or the rights of mining companies to mine silver, coal, or iron ore? What about the rights of energy companies to drill for new sources of oil and gas? How will the insurance, banking, and securities industries fare when a majority can move against their interests and prevail by a simple majority vote? What about farmers who can be forced to lose their subsidies, or Western Senators who will no longer be able to stop a majority determined to wrest control of ranchers’ precious water or grazing rights? With no right of debate, what will forestall plain muscle and mob rule?

Many times in our history we have taken up arms to protect a minority against the tyrannical majority in other lands. We, unlike Nazi Germany or Mussolini’s Italy, have never stopped being a nation of laws, not of men.

But witness how men with motives and a majority can manipulate law to cruel and unjust ends. Historian Alan Bullock writes that Hitler’s dictatorship rested on the constitutional foundation of a single law, the Enabling Law. Hitler needed a two-thirds vote to pass that law, and he cajoled his opposition in the Reichstag to support it. Bullock writes that “Hitler was prepared to promise anything to get his bill through, with the appearances of legality preserved intact.” And he succeeded.

Hitler’s originality lay in his realization that effective revolutions, in modern conditions, are carried out with, and not against, the power of the State: the correct order of events was first to secure access to that power and then begin his revolution. Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality; he recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law on his side. Instead, he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal.

And that is what the nuclear option seeks to do to Rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate.

It seeks to alter the rules by sidestepping the rules, thus making the impermissible the rule. Employing the “nuclear option”, engaging a pernicious, procedural maneuver to serve immediate partisan goals, risks violating our nation’s core democratic values and poisoning the Senate's deliberative process.

That ain't hate speech, folks, or anything like it. In fact, it's nothing more or less than a standard-issue Robert Byrd floor speech, the very kind he's been delivering to a heavy-lidded chamber for almost half a century now -- separation of powers, senatorial privilege, Horatio at the Reichstag, etc. So, a word to our Republican friends: Lighten up already, huh? The "politics of victimization" is supposed to be the Democrats' stock in trade. Moreover -- and here's a nontrivial point, so I think I'll close with it -- you good people really do need to get your own rhetorical house in order before you even think about criticizing anybody else's.

Earlier this week, I carefully (respectfully, even) began to express my concerns about the ongoing empowerment of the activist wing of the Democratic party. The Moderate Voice's Joe Gandelman examines the issue further here.

According to the WaPo's Mike Allen, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's redistricting shenanigans in Texas have accomplished something that his Democratic opponents never could: They've left the ethically-challenged congressman vulnerable in his home district.

Frankly, I'm skeptical. But I never expected to actually have to learn to say the words "Congressman Nethercutt" either, so don't go by me.

Let's see. First, the Republicans passed a phony Medicare drug benefit that was essentially just a giveaway to the big pharmaceutical companies. Then, they started going after Social Security. And now, they've decided that only some people -- specifically not the elderly -- are entitled to a little extra protection from the harsh new bankruptcy laws they're ramming through Congress this week.

What's this all about, anyway? Has the GOP become, well, objectively anti-senior citizen? I'm not sure. But it's certainly time for reasonable people to start asking the question.

The bloggers over at Unfogged have been diligently going about the business of delighting, edifying and entertaining us on a daily basis for two years now. Congratulations, folks. And thanks.

Why were leprosy patients still being quarantined in Japan all the way up until 1996, despite the fact that other nations had long since abandoned the practice? According to a new report, the country's health ministry was simply trying to protect its budget:

"Japan's policy of absolute quarantine... did not have any scientific grounds," the government panel said.

"The health ministry, in order to secure an adequate budget for treatment, emphasised the continued need for the policy of absolute isolation to the finance ministry," it said.

Doctors, who also had vested interested as the administrators of sanatoriums, did not challenge the policy, the 1,500 page report added.

The panel also criticised Japan's courts for helping the government uphold the policy and the country's media for failing to report it.

Yes, this story should be a cautionary tale for liberals about the sometimes dangerous nature of bureaucracies. But conservatives should be even more abashed. After all, they're the ones who've been working overtime to get the science out of scientific policy-making for the last four years. And this is but a tiny example of the kind of tragedy that their irresponsible conduct is courting.

No, not the latest gravity-defying achievement in Capitol Hill comb-over technology, but the E! Entertainment Network's daily reenactments of the Michael Jackson trial.

Classy, huh?

Slate's Dahlia Lithwick says that yesterday's Supreme Court opinion abolishing juvenile executions was "the judicial equivalent of plucking out [Justice Scalia's] chest hairs, one by one," and after reading her typically smart analysis of the case, you can see why.

Borrowing a concept from mathematics, David Ignatius calls what we're seeing in the Middle East these days "a glorious catastrophe," but warns that now is not the time for triumphalism:

It's hard not to feel giddy, watching the dominoes fall. In Lebanon, "people power" forced the resignation Monday of Syria's puppet government; in Egypt, the Pharaonic Hosni Mubarak agreed Saturday to allow other candidates to challenge his presidency for life; in Iraq, the momentum of January's elections is still propelling the nation forward, despite bickering politicians and brutal suicide bombers.

But catastrophic change is dangerous, even when it's bringing down a system people detest. This is not a time for U.S. triumphalism, or for gloating and lecturing to the Arabs. That kind of arrogance got us into trouble in Iraq during the first year of occupation. It was only when Iraqis began to take control of their own destinies that this project began to go right. The same rule holds for Lebanon, Egypt and the rest. America can help by keeping on the pressure, but it's their revolution.

That's good advice. Let's hope that the folks in charge, as well as some of their more, uh, excitable supporters, can bring themselves to take it.

Associated Press:

A militant brazenly challenged the new Palestinian security chief Tuesday, firing his weapon outside police headquarters in this West Bank town as the commander was holding meetings in the building. The chief ordered the gunman's arrest, but quickly backed down and let him walk away.

The confrontation between Interior Minister Nasser Yousef and Zakariye Zubeydi, a militant who is seen by residents as the ruler of Jenin, illustrated the delicate balance the Palestinian Authority must strike between reining in armed groups through persuasion and fending off international calls for a crackdown.

Like just about everyone else, I'm pretty enamored of the new Palestinian leadership at the moment. But these kinds of stories aren't terribly encouraging, are they?

In the wake of today's announcement that John Tierney will be taking over William Safire's "conservative slot" on the New York Times' op-ed page, David Kurapka asks a pretty darned good question over in Jim Romenesko's Letters section -- namely, who are the editors of the Wall Street Journal looking at to fill their "liberal slot" now that Al Hunt has moved on, and when, exactly, are they planning to announce their choice?

In this morning's LA Times, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates notes that "today, even when they work exactly as designed, our high schools cannot teach our kids what they need to know" to succeed in the new economy, and he's right. Unfortunately, diagnosing the problem is a lot easier than solving it, as his op-ed, with its vague exhortations and mushy policy prescriptions, goes on to rather painfully demonstrate.