Breaking eggs

Isn't the first step in making an omelette.

It's, in fact, pretty much the last thing, though it may be done fairly soon after the first thing.

Yesterday I made a couple of them, taking advantage of the second flush from the oyster mushroom kit I bought in SLO on 24 Mar.

So I made a rustic duxelles.

Chop fine, but not minced, about a 1/4 cup of onion, toss into a small skillet with a dab of butter.

Chop the gill meat of a cup of oyster mushrooms (reserve the stalks, laying them in a bright windo with good airflow will let you dry them. Later you can powder them to thicken and flavor soups and sauces) This should be finer than the onions.

When the onions are a little short of how done you want them to be... don't let them caramelize, add the mushrooms, reduce the heat and cover loosely.

Beat two, or three, eggs, per omelette. Let them rest.

When the mushrooms have gone to a dull brown, and reduced by about 1/2-2/3rds, butter a skillet and pour an omelette into (I use an eight inch cast iron skillet, it's perfect for a two-egg, and not too cramped for a three egg). The heat ought to be a little high, so the skin will set quickly.

Once the omelette has set, reduce the heat. When it's ready to fold, cover one half with about half the duxelles, and fold.

Flip it, once, to get both sides completely cooked.

It'll make three omelettes.

It takes about 20 minutes.

To make it a classic duxelles, takes longer, and wants shallots, in about equal measure, to the onions. All should be cooked until it becomes a paste.

If you make this, fill the omelette with something else (cheese, ham, peppers, etc.) and then ladle the duxelles over the top.

Scooter Libby, and Paris Hilton

Lots of ink has been spread, and uncounted electrons recycled, on both of them.

I see parallels, mostly in the various hypocrisies being bandied about by those who are defending them.

Poor Libby just couldn't catch a break, to hear those who wrote letters to the judge asking him to be lenient.

Libby, you see, was the victim. It doesn't matter that the crimes for which he was convicted were serious, and related to a grievous harm to our national (and perhaps the world's) interest.

No, see the Att'y General, appointed a special prosecutor (who was a US Att'y, appointed by GW Bush) to look into an complaint by the CIA (being run by Bush's man Tenet); who alleged (to read all these letters, falsely) that a covert agent had been outed.

This rogue, Republican, prosecutor actually asked Libby questions, which Libby (under oath) answered with lies.

The prosecutor, ignoring Libby's noble purpose in preventing the person who sabotaged the US efforts to contain nuclear proliferation in the Horn of Africa (known to be a hot-spot of folks who really don't like us, and would like to be able to more easily trade in radioctive materials) from being brought before the bar, had the effrontery to present a case to a grand jury, which (imagine) actually indicted him for perjury, and obstructing justice.

If that weren't bad enough some witless bunch of jurors failed to see through all the flim-flam, and convicted him.

How does this relate to Paris Hilton?

Well the story making the rounds is she is being treated more harshly than she deserves. Someone (a rogue judge... spouting nonsense about "respect for the law") insisted that she serve a whole 45 days.

Only the facts aren't that she was pulled over for a DUI, and given 45 days.

No. She was given 45 days for violating probation.

For what was she on probation?

Driving recklessly, while drunk, back in January. She got three years for it. Along with it came some restrictions; she could only drive while in possession of a valid license, had to enroll in a program, and (as is standard with probation) had to obey all laws and court orders.

She didn't. She got a ticket for driving without a valid license, (after she, and her lawyer(s) were sent a notice that her license was suspended) and had to sign that she knew she wasn't allowed to do it (so she got a second chance, more than many get). Her passenger got to drive the car home (again, this was more slack than some get, the police could have impounded the car)

She never enrolled in a program.

Then she decided to take a midnight drive; still without having had her driving privilege restored. This wasn't a quick trip to the grocery, no, it was ding 75 in a 30 zone (miles per hour, not kilometers), at night, with no lights.

She was late to court.

She got 45 days.

She got off easy, the judge had every right to revoke her parole, and send her to prison (not jail) to serve the entire bit her probation was in lieu of.

Yep, them poor people, getting so much more grief than they deserve. Libby has the "it wasn't the sex, it was the 'perjury'" crowd explaining that his, very real perjury; and obstruction of justice, aren't all that bad, and Hilton has the same people who say the system give too many slap on the wrist sentences accusing the judge of being to harsh for giving some 45 days in jail; and insisting she actually serve the sentence, instead of making her go to prison for a couple of years.

Those rich, and famous, people just can't get a break.

Obama

I've been having some reservations about him for a while. There seems to be a lack of depth to him; he seems to be playing at the Clintonian game of "triangulating," trying to set up a win with the swing voters, after the primary, than really telling me what he thinks.

But now I have to question his judgement. Robert F. Bauer, Obama's general counsel, is clueless about history, and clueless in a way which is bad for the republic.

First, he's advocating a pardon for Libby. Why? Because that will create some sort of backlash against the president.

Where, one wonders, is this backlash supposed to come from? Right now the president is polling around 30 percent. It's not like the populace need him to do something overt to repudiate him.

The press... well the press couldn't care less. They are all touting the story that Libby didn't do anything wrong, that Fitzgerald ought to have gone after the "real" crooks, the one's who outed Plame; despite that being impossible because of what Libby did.

No, the press isn't going to stick it to Bush if he pardons Libby.

That's the first thing which bothers me about that (not the idea that one might want, for politics, to have a miscarriage of justice done, in the interest of a greater good being done).

The second thing is this elaboration, "Nothing in the nature of the pardon renders it inappropriate to these purposes. The issuance of a presidential pardon, not reserved for miscarriages of justice, has historically also served political functions -- to redirect policy, to send a message, to associate the president with a cause or position. Gerald Ford radically altered the nation's politics with the pardon of Richard Nixon. Credited with an act of national healing, he also spared the man who had selected him for the vice presidency and whose prosecution might have haunted his party even more than the act of pardoning him. He reshaped with a stroke of the pen the national agenda: this pardon, he told Congress, was meant to "change our national focus." George W. Bush's father expressed his contempt for the opposition's "criminalization" of policy differences, with a batch of pardons for high Republican

We may be in the place we are now, precisely, because of Ford pardoning Nixon. Nixon got to skate, and while lots of people expressed disapproval of what he'd done, the system basically said it wasn't a big deal. Light wasn't really shined into the dark corners, and the roaches got to scuttle to safety.

The fruits of that were things like Bork (of the Saturday Night Massacre) being nominated to the Supreme Court.

Then the Bush pardons. We are most definitely paying the price for those, because some of those pardoned people are still active in present politics; they've been apointed to the Bush cabinet.

The "criminalization" happened when people like Oliver North went around, you know, breaking the law (and then lying about it to Congress, and bragging about having lied to Congress).

That Bush might be implicated if the people he pardoned had been tried, well that doesn't matter in the equation; Bauer just brushes this aside characterizing that as Bush pere, "expressing his contempt," not for the rule of law, but rather for differences of opinion on matters of policy.

That's not the sort of attitude I want the counsel to the president to have. That Obama has someone who thinks like this, is problematic.