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G-man: a book review

I just finished reading “G-man,” Beverly Gage’s Pulizer-winning biography of J. Edgar Hoover. During his lifetime, Hoover became synonymous with the FBI, the agency he founded, developed and controlled until his death. In the beginning, Hoover conceived of the FBI as a purely investigative agency, apolitical and devoted to the most up-to-date technologies of crime-solving and record-keeping. Early on, he created a huge database of fingerprint, a database that proved key in, among other cases, the identification of James Earl Ray as Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassin. Hoover accepted the FBI role in law enforcement only grudgingly. Much of his career he was consumed with his war on communism. It began with the first red scare at the end of WWI, then flared again in the 1950s with the McCarthy era. Hoover was deeply conservative, sexist and racist. He hired blacks and women only for menial jobs, never as agents. He maintained a life-long association with the Kappa Alpha fraternity, which ...
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Quote of the day

What’s going on? In short, over the last couple of weeks Republicans and Donald Trump have decided they’re losing this election. It’s not clear to me that anything has actually changed — except to the extent that for the party on the ropes “nothing changing” becomes a bigger problem the closer you get to Election Day. What’s focused people’s attention is Donald Trump yesterday reposting a fan’s tweet (on Truth Social) basically arguing that Republicans are heading toward an electoral tsunami and don’t seem to realize it. He’s also reportedly gearing up to have all the GOP’s election ads focus on him — which has Democrats basically ecstatic.   ~Josh Marshall
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Take care of your liver

When I was in college, I competed in a peanut eating contest: how many peanuts could someone eat in one minute. For a short time, I held the record by simply eating whole peanuts without removing the shells.     Eventually, someone else won by the same trick. Years later, I learned that this is a bad idea, since peanut shell often carry aflatoxin from Aspergillus mold. Aflatoxin is hepatotoxic and can cause liver cancer. Two of the most familiar threats to a healthy liver are viral hepatitis and alcoholism. But an increasing source of liver damage is herbal and dietary supplements that people imagine are health foods.   “These herbal and dietary supplements include ashwagandha, turmeric, and green tea extract. Researchers note that green tea extract is often marketed as preventing liver disease. “This latest review cites research from the US Acute Liver Failure Study Group that found that acute liver failure caused by herbal and dietary supplements rose from 9.7% from 199...
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Quote of the day

Elections are a pageant of democratic life, with all the boisterousness, intensity, and sometimes crassness that goes with that. They’re about values, identity, our collective trust or lack or trust in particular candidates, music, rallies, emotion. If we really believe in popular democracy and decision-making we shouldn’t be bothered or worried that some of it mirrors the sports enthusiasm, celebrity culture, enmities, pugilism, hopes and dreams that animates so much of our popular culture — and always has. How would it be any other other way? Just speaking for myself, I don’t see this as well, we can’t expect any better. I think it’s mostly a wonderful thing, how a big impossibly diverse country with a deep obstreperous streak makes collective decisions about its future and governance. This is why when I hear people decrying “horse-race journalism,” I mostly see red. I think they want it to be the civics class. Or more specifically, I think they want it to be the civics class for...
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Time to buy a bidet?

In all the brouhaha surrounding the latest US-Canada trade dust-up, this detail isn’t getting the attention it deserves: “One of the most affected categories would be paper products. American-made toilet paper and paper towels sold into the Canadian market will now face steeper tariffs at the border.” In the end, there’s still time for TACO. But just to be safe, there are DYI bidets for sale. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/economists-trump-canada-trade-war_l_6a8f09c6e4b02b26136e477a?origin=home-latest-news-unit  
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Quote of the day

By simultaneously mandating the creation of Trump-approved eligibility lists and targeting state officials who allegedly issue ballots to ineligible voters, the White House is sending a clear message to its political enemies: Use its list, or else. The Court’s treatment of these provisions as independently innocuous is roughly analogous to arguing that because a bank robber hasn’t actually opened fire, the teller staring down the barrel of his gun should not understand “empty the safe” as a threat.   ~Jay Willis
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Fish

I never cared much for fish growing up in East Tennessee. At home, fish came in brown squares out of the freezer. On family camping trips, we’d have salmon patties made with canned salmon. Once, on a family vacation down east, I raked for clams in the Chesapeake Bay, and my mom steamed them. They were OK, but not special.   My mind began to change when I became a faculty and would be invited to dinner with out-of-town seminar speakers. Restaurants get the best cuts of meat and fish, and for many types of fish, the preparation makes a lot of difference.    Now, I love sushi and sashimi and regularly grill salmon, trout and tuna. Since we’re ensconced in the Ocean State, I’m looking forward to a greater variety.    I’m not a believer in food as medicine. Yes, moderating intake of fats and oils and of sugar is a good idea, but the lettuce in your salad isn’t an antidote for the fats in your salad dressing.    For years, we’ve been told that the omega-3 fa...
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