It was nice yesterday down at the farm, and the reality of people working to get things done: Andrew, the proprietor of Croftburn Farms and a glass of wine while picking out the local food on which I subsist down here, Junior the pert high school senior with the dreams of college swirling- why she was wait-listed at William and Mary and accepted to VA Tech, and the mysteries of the favoritism handed out by the Admissions.
Junior would like to open a restaurant when she is done with college- adjacent to Croftburn Farms was the idea we had at the register, me sipping the wine and laughing as Andrew teased her about heaving up a seventy pound rack of beef to the saw.
That is the way of the country. They do things. They don’t legislate things, or make regulations about them. They just do it.
It was hard to manage the change from Loony Land up north to the country. There was more news from the White House, quietly released deep in the bottom of a news cycle that has become an annoying binary lurch between reports of Russian aggression and the deepening mystery of the disappearing jet liner.
It is quite remarkable that our vigilant press is only getting around to reporting something that happened only a few weeks after the inauguration in 2009.
(Lawyer Gregory Craig. Photo Wikipedia).
Subject of the report was a curious memorandum penned by then-White House Counsel Greg Craig, a man I have never heard of, but as pivotal in his way as the previous administration’s Jay S. Bybee, the guy who authorized the memo about the legality of enhanced interrogation techniques.
(Judge Bybee, photo Wikipedia).
That was swiftly leaked, by the way, by no less a figure than Mr. Craig, and the consequences of which he apparently took to heart. His memo, issued in April of 2009, instructed the executive branch to let White House officials review any documents sought by FOIA requestors that involved “White House equities.”
I don’t know what that means, except that it appears to mean everything, according to the legal opinion of Mr. Craig. The phrase is nowhere to be found in the Freedom of Information Act, yet the opinion effectively amended the law to create a new exception to justify keeping public documents away from the public.
Craig’s ‘equities exception’ is breathtaking in its breadth, and something the secretive Richard Nixon would have admired. As the memo put it, any document request is covered, including “congressional committee requests, GAO requests, judicial subpoenas and FOIA requests,” and “applies to all documents and records, whether in oral, paper, or electronic form, that relate to communications to and from the White House, including preparations for such communications.”
Bybee’s interpretation got him a successful nomination as a Federal Judge on the 9th Circuit. Mr. Craig left the White House under a bit of a cloud, but not because of FOIA; it was his leak of Bybee’s memo that stirred things up, among other things. He is currently a partner in the DC office of Skaggen, Arps, Slate, Meager & Flom, one of the largest and most influential law firms in the country.
He airily asserted that he was a lawyer, not a lobbyist, and immediately defended financial giant Goldman and Sachs before the Securities and Exchange Commission. His activities were in no way a violation of the two-year prohibition on Administration officials trading on their inside connections. That is his legal opinion, anyway.
Lawless lawyers are nothing new, and they appear to be quite bipartisan in nature. Mr. Bush appended “signing statements” to laws he did not like, explaining what parts he would and would not enforce. Mr. Obama has just taken the concept a lot further, in something that amounts to a change in the way we are governed. I turned off the radio in disgust. It makes me think that the terrorists won the war, and now we cannot even tell who they are.
I tuned into the alt rock station after passing the turn-off to T. I. Martin Airfield, the point where I really feel like I am back in the country. It is not quite as dramatic as the feeling we used to get crossing the Pali Pass on Oahu, where the urban hustle of Honolulu faded away to the laid-back North Shore, but it is just as real. There are signs advertising land for sale, zoned commercial, but the recession slowed the pace of development, and the advertising is starting to look a little bedraggled. That always gives me hope.
Veering off Route 29 and zagging along Route 3 to 522 and eventually the farm lane, I could feel the claws of Washington slipping away. Arriving at the gravel that serves access to the property, I shut down the Panzer and walked the property. The last vestiges of the snow are gone, and the smell of damp earth filled my nostrils.
The Turf Tiger is back in the bay in the barn, ready for the first cutting, and then I stowed away the groceries and got the equipment set up for continuation of the Pictures Project, digitizing the 35mm slides that Dad had accumulated in his long life. This outing includes more sailing regattas on little Martin Lake, a series on the then-new cabin where we spent so many happy days, and which was my (original) refuge from the commotion of the city. And Raven’s renderings from Pratt Institute, where he studied industrial design on the GI Bill after the war. I will inflict them on the blogosphere presently, but first things first.
The renderings are quite remarkable. I can see the connection directly to his later automotive designs. The subjects are ordinary objects, lamps and tables, but drawn by hand, under and artist’s lamp. Things human, not computer like the climate models.
Then, passing through the laundry room, I stepped out on the deck and rang the ship’s bell I had mounted there to signal the Russians that I was in residence, and having had a glass of wine at Croftburn Farms, was willing to continue the experiment.
They arrived a few minutes late with Biscuit the Wonder Spaniel, and we talked of Crimea, and Russia, and drank white wine as we talked of bees, and increasing the hives, and the return of the tractor from the mechanics to start the mowing cycle, and the coming time for planting, and the big load of manure that Rosemary up the road at Summerduck Run Farm donated to enhance the soil of Sevastopol Manor.
Big events coming on that front, and heritage tomatoes for the little plot in my front yard where the deer sometimes frolic.
As Mattski says, “you don’t shoot them, so they feel at home.”
I said, “no reason to, at the moment.”
They went off to get cleaned up and start cooking, and I transitioned to vodka and basketball, while whipping up the baby bok choy recipe I mentioned yesterday, adorned with Tito Al’s Philippine Hot Cured Longaniza sausages from the little sari-sari store in the strip mall by the dry cleaners back in Arlington.
It was delicious, and in celebration for the victory on the court, I drove over to see the Russians preparing for their dinner. Andrew was there and things appear to be moving forward in his courtship of the lovely Julia, and little Sasha was in her element, gray cat draped over an arm, Biscuit was cavorting, the barbecue going on the front porch
No policy discussions at all. Not one, except the general resolution that we are all in favor of more bees, and home-grown vegetables.
(Sasha and a lamb of Spring. It is coming, I swear, and that is not a legal opinion. Photo Natasha).
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303