It’s late, and I’m reading John Keats to teach in the morning.  But my mind keeps circling back to what happened in the senate today, although I likley have nothing to add to what you know already.

The legislation passed by the Senate permits torture.  Furthermore:

The compromise legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights.

Of all the things We’ve seen from the Bush Administration, this may be the worst, in some ways.  Iraq, Katrina: these horrific disasters might chartitably be attributed to stupid blundering.  But today’s legislation reveals on the part of this administraion a carefully considered and unrelenting propencity for evil.  Congress has given to the president the right to arrest, hold, and torture any one of us at his own discrestion, and without any right to challenge our arrest by right of Habeas Corpus (on this, see Glenn Greenwald’s piece, via The Bellman).

Democrats have been quiet on this issue.  A day of great shame for all Americans.

Dziga Vertov’s 1929 Man With a Movie Camera is tonight’s sequel to Walter Ruttman’s Berlin: Symphony of a Great City.  I’ll be over at the Temple Buell Hall’s Plym Auditorium at 7:30pm (as you ought to be too), to check it out.  Perhaps I’lll see you there.

Marmaduke Explained.  Via Mefi.

So the semester is now well underway, and it’s a beautiful fall afternoon, and I’m sitting out in front of one of the downtown Champaign coffee shops with a pile of papers to grade resting on my table.  And so even thought I’d more or less forsworn blogging because I need to finish the dissertation and prepare my job materials, I’m prompted to turn back, for a moment, to The Qualm, my obscure and poorly-lit weblog, lacking both the defensible professionalism of the academic blog ala berube or digby, and the rhizomatic touchy-feelyness of the youtubers. 

This has been a difficult semester in a few respects.  I’ll leave those out for now.  But one thing that’s not been difficult thus far has been my teaching.  In fact, teaching has been overwhelmingly good.  My writing classes have gone very well, and my intro to literary studies class has been almost disturbingly good, presenting me with heretofore unknown problems, such as how to move discussion forward, when there are consistently too many hands to call on.  On Friday, as I walked into the class, the class began enthusiastically chanting my name.  Which was, for me, a little unusual.

Probably this is mostly because I’ve postponed most tests and papers in that class until fairly late in the semester (their first being due tomorrow).  We’ll see how much chanting I hear, once they have their first paper returned. 

I really don’t have time now to blog too usefully, but permit me to direct your attention to a couple attention-getting items.  It won’t be news to you, but just for fun, have a look at the covers of Newsweek magazine, and see if you can spot the difference between the covers of its different international and American editions.  Similarly, I was surprised at the degree of political manipulation attested to by this former worker at ESPN. [Update: ESPN denies].

Not a picture of a healthy society.  Which reminds me of something else I’ll recommend.  A week ago, I managed to get myself to a screening of Walther Ruttman’s Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, a film that sets out to provide a detailed portrait of Berlin, as Ruttman filmed it in 1927.  A silent-film documentary, Ruttmans film attempts to tell the whole story of a day in Berlin–from lightbulb factories and train stations to clerical offices and school and the city’s electric nightlife (what we *don’t* very often see is the home life of the Berliners).

But of course, watching these films of everyday people in 1929, what one looks for are the signs of the Germany was about to develop in the 1930’s, and which are visible here only fleetingly.  Too many ragged people outside the opulent hotels.  Ominous newspaper headlines about the growing Soviet threat.  And perhaps the fascination of the film itself with the sublime novelty of mechanical power.  One of the visual motifs of the film is the switching of tracks–and one can’t help but wonder at what point the lives of the kids we see in Berlin, 1927 got shunted towards Italy, Normandy, and the frozen ground of Soviet Union.  One wonders what switches, here in the States, have already been thrown, and which ones can still be reset.

My excellent Microsoft Intellimouse has been on the fritz, so I picked up a temporary replacement at Target.  But something about it seems a little bit freaky.

From the ABC News Blog:

Bin Laden Gets a Pass from Pakistan

September 05, 2006 5:41 PM

Brian Ross and Gretchen Peters Report:

Ht2_pakistan02_060524_nrOsama bin Laden, America’s most wanted man, will not face capture in Pakistan if he agrees to lead a “peaceful life,” Pakistani officials tell ABC News.

The surprising announcement comes as Pakistani army officials announced they were pulling their troops out of the North Waziristan region as part of a “peace deal” with the Taliban.

If he is in Pakistan, bin Laden “would not be taken into custody,” Major General Shaukat Sultan Khan told ABC News in a telephone interview, “as long as one is being like a peaceful citizen.”

Bin Laden is believed to be hiding somewhere in the tribal areas of Pakistan, near the Afghanistan border, but U.S. officials say his precise location is unknown.

In addition to the pullout of Pakistani troops, the “peace agreement” between Pakistan and the Taliban also provides for the Pakistani army to return captured Taliban weapons and prisoners.

“What this means is that the Taliban and al Qaeda leadership have effectively carved out a sanctuary inside Pakistan,” said ABC News consultant Richard Clarke, the former White House counter-terrorism director.

The agreement was signed on the same day President Bush said the United States was working with its allies “to deny terrorists the enclaves they seek to establish in ungoverned areas across the world.”

The Pakistani Army had gone into Waziristan, under heavy pressure from the United States, but faced a series of humiliating defeats at the hands of the Taliban and al Qaeda fighters.

“They’re throwing the towel,” said Alexis Debat, who is a Senior Fellow at the Nixon Center and an ABC News consultant. “They’re giving al Qaeda and the Taliban a blank check and saying essentially make yourselves at home in the tribal areas,” Debat said.

More.