Ciceronian Review

Persia

I am Omaha, for the first time.  (I've been in Nebraska a couple of times before, but more in the way of passage then visit.)  Omaha turns out a lovely place.  It has plenty of interesting architecture for a city of its size.  The larger buildings, especially at night, are well formed and visually interesting.  There is a gorgeous little park in the middle of town (maybe not middle literally).  And some good food.  Good food makes a city for me, and if there are buildings to examine and admire, all the better.  And some entertaining stores.  So, for Omaha, I recommend eating at Ahmad's.   Serves Persian food, and very credible job it does.  Small restaurant (sets about 30 at a time, at most).  The chef produces delicious and authentic (not sure how one defines that, but it conveys the idea) Persian food.  (Yep, the great devil, Iran -- interesting food.) 
Also an amusing place called City Limits.  Both in the old merchant district (I think that is what they call it.)
If I had found it last night, would have eaten there then as well.

Having spent a bit of time in the Midwest, this was a pleasure, a delight to discover.  Much of it is covered with horrid food.  The best one can hope for most nights is corn fed beef, which is not all that great when you get down it.  Not as flavorful as grass fed, and presented in pretty ordinary mindless ways.

Come Back Bob

I recommend this post and following comments.

Bob's back, and he has the full page in NYRB to prove it.

Abortion is Ordinary

This story from the Tuesday NYT is worth a close read.  The story concerns Dr. Susan Wickland, who provides abortion services in a number of states.  She is a rather interesting person, whose choice of practice was influenced by her history, the horrible services she received as a young woman.  Intermixed are some startling facts, at least startling to me.  Consider this paragraph:

Dr. Wicklund, 53, said that at current rates almost 40 percent of American women have an abortion during their child-bearing years, a figure supported by the Guttmacher Institute, which researches reproductive health policy. Abortion is one of the most common operations in the United States, she said, more common than tonsillectomy or removal of wisdom teeth. “Because it is such a secret,” she said, “we lose sight of how common it is.”

I had thought abortion common, but not that common.  It raises some questions for the electoral politics.  Is it that many users take a Limbaugh attitude (condemn those drug users until one become one, and then it is just an unfortunate illness)?  Is it that many users retrospectively condemn themselves?  I don't know, and those two options seem to quick to be a very great part of the story.

Lawyers Can Do Good

Baton-wielding police fought with lawyers outside courthouses in Islamabad and Lahore again Tuesday, arresting dozens more as they enforced Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s crackdown on judicial activism. Three days after Musharraf suspended the constitution and declared a state of emergency, Pakistan’s judicial system is in lockdown, with thousands of lawyers jailed and many judges detained in their homes.

Lawyers at the vanguard?  Courage of their convictions.

Self-Parody

Food fear takes a new form:

Like Hansel and Gretel hoping to follow their bread crumbs out of the forest, the FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists.

The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area.

The brainchild of top FBI counterterrorism officials Phil Mudd and Willie T. Hulon, according to well-informed sources, the project didn’t last long. It was torpedoed by the head of the FBI’s criminal investigations division, Michael A. Mason, who argued that putting somebody on a terrorist list for what they ate was ridiculous — and possibly illegal.

Small Consolation

The jury came back in the trial of the Metropolitan Police -- guilty of endangerment. (NYT story here.)  A fine was levied against the department - $364,000 and $800,000  in legal costs.  The jury inserted a note that no individual officers should be held responsible.  I thin the judge's remarks are apropos: He said it was hard to decide the appropriate fine because "any costs to the police is a cost against a police officer on the streets".  Of course, the head once more expressed regret, but not so much that anyone in the force is held responsible for killing an innocent man.  (Actually, the folks in charge got promotions.)

A guilty verdict is better than an acquittal, but it I wonder what the family thinks.  It is not the verdict or the charge alone that bother, although they do.  Part of what they represent came through in the testimony, where, for example, Cressida Dick (who got a promotion out of it) testified:

Through his behaviour that day, as I understand it, that behaviour when challenged, he came to be shot.

Well, I wonder what is next, if anything.  A civil proceeding?

Update:

There will be an inquest sometime next year.  In this trial no evidence was taken from either  the shooters or any of the witnesses to the shooting.