Liberty

Tony Snow's press briefing included a number of gems today.

Q: There are more than 3,000 current petitions for commutation ... Will all 3,000 of those be held to the same standard that the President applied to Scooter Libby?

MR. SNOW: I don't know.

Yeah, that's a 'no.' It's crazy that they won't even admit to special handling here.

On that point, and in honor of America's birthday, I would like to confess to my own special treatment at the hands of the criminal justice system.

It was twelve years ago, Independence Day 1995. I was sweating out my last few weeks in St. Louis before heading off to college. Aaron F., Andrew A. and I decided to celebrate America with Chinese black powder. So with TLC's Waterfalls on the radio, we headed out to Eureka, MO to buy a bunch of fireworks.

Fireworks are illegal in St. Louis County, so you need to go out to the boonies to buy them. As soon as you cross the county line you can stop at any number of air-conditioned Costco-sized fireworks megastores and load up on some serious artillery.

Well-equipped, we rode back in style to West County in Andrew's LeBaron convertible. And in the massive housing development of Seven Pines, we settled in with our explosives.

Our three lady companions (not girlfriends) were just barely willing to go along with this nonsense. But we had a grand old time setting off roman candles and the like in Andrew's cul-de-sac.

About an hour later, St. Louis County cops came blazing down the street right as we were setting off some bottle rockets. Andrew's crappy neighbors had ratted us out.

I took the lead in talking to the cops ... not that I had a particular negotiating ploy in mind. They informed me that we were busted for fireworks. I said "Ok."

I did manage to get our lady friends off the hook by pleading with him just to ticket us dudes. This blatantly sexist ploy went over well with the municipal employees of St. Louis County.

It looked like this was gonna be a big pain. Andrew, Aaron and I were all headed off to college out of state and we were being summoned to appear before Superior Court in the middle of fall semester.

But it turns out Andrew's uncle is a successful lawyer in St. Louis and he took our case on pro bono.

Over the course of the next couple months, I'd occasionally get type-written letters from his law firm informing me about progress on the case. One stated that he'd negotiated a plea whereby we could plead guilty to either jay-walking or littering (our choice) and get off the hook with a small fine. I wrote back to say that jay-walking was preferred as it seemed less evil.

A few more months passed, a few more notices from the County saying that a continuance had been granted in the case. And then in the spring of my freshman year, a note from the assistant district attorney. All charges had been dropped.

I think Andrew's uncle finally made the DA realize that the People's interests would be better served by prosecuting a different crime. Maybe one that wouldn't involve swapping paper for 9 months with a fancy attorney in private practice.

And so I was effectively Libbied - given special treatment because of my connections despite the transparency of the crime committed. But at least I can admit it.

So, Happy Birthday, America and congrats to you, Scooter! As we sang back in that hot summer in St. Louis, "I know that you're gonna have it your way / or nothing at all. / But I think you're moving too fast."

One of the worst things ever

In this otherwise not particularly funny clip from the Daily Show, Samantha Bee describes Missouri as "an ingrown hair on America's taint."

That stings.

Baseball's Back

Go Cardinals!

That's a winner!

My earliest baseball memory is watching Bruce Sutter strike out Gorman Thomas to win the 1982 World Series. I remember watching it on the big cabinet TV set in my childhood living room and sitting way too close the screen. When the Cards won in '82 they played Celebration by Kool & the Gang, a song so rad I thought it had been written especially for the Cardinals victory.

Now, I'm not the most faithful Cardnials fan. In fact, I was an adamant non-sports fan of any sort all during high school. But I don't think you can grow up in St. Louis without developing some appreciation of baseball. Just like you're expected to like toasted ravioli, you're expected to develop a passing understanding of the game.

I didn't follow baseball closely this year and missed most of the post-season when I was traveling. But I loved watching every out of the World Series and the last two innings of tonight's game was the most stressed I've been in the past couple months. I was IMing with Sutter in New Zealand for most of the game, relaying (mostly unneeded) updates to his dark corner of the Internet. And 24 years after Bruce Sutter's strikeout, Adam Wainwright fanned Brandon Inge to make the Cardinals the Champions of the World once again.

Good times.

And we're back

I made my triumphant completely exhausted return to San Francisco last night after a full 24 hours in transit from Paris. I'd been gone exactly 3 weeks, the longest trip I've taken in over 6 years.

I had an amazingly good time and I very much want to do more traveling ... but I'm also looking forward to chilling at home and enjoying the last gasp of summer. For example, today I rode my bicycle to pick up my mail and also bought new underwear. Fun stuff like that.

I took over 1200 pictures during the trip and saw all kinds of noteworthy stuff. Processing the photos is gonna be a fun chore but I'm doing it in parts. Today: the St. Louis chapter. I flew home to the Lou on the day after my birthday. During my couple days there we had some really good dinners and enjoyed the best weather I can ever remember in the Mid-West.

The Moms and I also went out to the Missouri Botanical Gardens to check out the exhibit Glass in the Garden (blown glass by Chihuly tucked in with the flowers). MoBat is one of those things that I never really appreciated when I was growing up in St. Louis. And most of the time the weather is so freaking horrible that a leisurely garden stroll isn't really appealing. But on a mild weekday, it's both uncrowded (except for retirees) and quite beautiful. The japanese garden in particular is a lot of fun as there's a pond filled with overfed fish who will happily pose for you.

We also took a quick peak at the new Busch Stadium which is an unbelievably ginormous pile of bricks. The "neighborhood ballpark" style doesn't really work if you don't have a neighborhood to build the park into or build a quadruple deck monstrosity. Still: go Cards!

In another flyby, we dropped by the Harrah's casino that's all of about 7 miles from my house. It's also quite large (many things are in the Mid-West). The poker room was surprisingly packed for a Monday afternoon, but I didn't play. Additionally, they've got some fun signage there.

Next: Paris.

Census

Apparently, East St. Louis is in such bad shape that even its Wikipedia page is fucked up.

In East St. Louis, the median household income is $21,324 and 35.1% of the population live below the poverty line.

While I techinically grew up in unincorporated St. Louis County, Creve Coeur is the municipality that bordered my subdivision and housed my high school. Only 20 miles from East St. Louis, Creve Coeur boasts a median household income of $75,032 and less than 3% of the population live beneath the poverty line.

It's interesting to me because I think most people I grew up with would consider themselves middle class. But statistically, the median household income places Creve Coeur close to the top 20% (lower limit for the top quintile in 2005 was $88,030).

Basically, everyone in America wants to believe that they are middle class.