Very good remembrance of Vaclav Havel by Paul Wilson, in NYRB, who was in Prague during his death and subsequent mourning:

All his life, Havel lived by the belief that if you wanted something to happen, you had to do something to make it happen, and damn the consequences, including arrest and prison, and possibly even death. Speaking about the early days of the post-Stalin thaw, he once said: “The more we did, the more we were able to do, and the more we were able to do, the more we did.” It is a fine summary of his attitude, and, in a sense, his legacy. Havel was continually pushing the boundaries of the possible, and in doing so, he was able to create space for others to follow.

This quality is what, quite properly, put him in the same league as Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr. But what put him in a league of his own is the corollary: you act not to achieve a certain outcome; you act because it is the right thing to do. That is what he meant by “living in truth,” a notion he explores in some depth in his most radical and enduring work: The Power of the Powerless.

Uff! This will make you tear up… What a great woman! from NPR

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is stepping down from Congress in order to focus on her health. The Democratic congresswoman from Arizona made the announcement on a YouTube video posted to her Facebook page Sunday.

Well, the good people of South Carolina have hung a flapping, hysterical albatross around the the Republican Party and the country at large, even if Newt Gingrich bombs with the rest of us.  His victory in the GOP primaries today, ensures that his brand of vituperative nastiness will be hoisted  like a shining trophy for the infatuated to find their own, screaming reflections in.

Charles Blow, who wrote before the shameful win, has much to say about the man

Republicans are willing to forgive his flaws and his past because he connects with a silent slice of their core convictions — their deep-seated, long-simmering issues with an “elite” media bias, minority “privilege” and Obama’s “otherness.”

He’s the street fighter with a history of poisonous politics who not only goes there but dwells there. He makes his nest among the thorns of open animus and coded language.

Gingrich went on to say, “I am tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans.” Points scored. The crowd ate it up.

As for the president, Gingrich this week at a campaign stop called the president’s decision to block the Keystone XL oil pipeline “stunningly stupid.” Even more points. The crowd jumped to its feet and pumped fists.

I’d say that the disgruntled whispers I hear among some folks that they won’t vote for Obama because they are soooo disapointed might try getting regruntled, less they leave us the rest of us facing the north end of this horse moving south….

Unexpectedly, Lawrence Ferlinghetti made an appearance on the NY Times sports pages today. Of last weeks 49ers victory over the New Orleans Saints:

“That was the greatest end of a game I’d ever seen,” Ferlinghetti said in a telephone interview, proclaiming himself a renewed fan of the 49ers, at least while their playoff run lasts. They will host the Giants on Sunday in the N.F.C. championship game.

 But since he hasn’t composed a pome about football and is more likely to about the other football, which most of the world plays, take a moment and enjoy himself reading Baseball Canto.  It will tickle your politics as well as your game cock.

I’ve been re-reading Eli Wiesel’s ground breaking, terrible, memoir, Night, this last week, along with a niece in 9th grade, who is reading it in her English class. My god! I think. Was I ready for such images in 9th grade –of staggering at a run through the snow or be shot? Of babies being tossed into the flames? Of  a starving son beating his father for food? I recall 10th grade as the first of what were to become my grown-up years. We heard of Americans of Japanese ancestry being taken from their homes, schools and businesses and held in concentration camps during WW II. Unheard of! No one in my family had ever mentioned such a thing. But it was true. Nor did the adults I knew want to hear about it. For me a life-lasting skepticism of claims of national of danger and of praise for our own goodness was set in motion. But Wiesel’s memories of his own year and a half long crawl towards death, would I have been ready to take this in? I hope the teacher is a profound and careful person.

Read full review at All In One Boat

Perhaps it’s unfair to use a good Irish [or mebe California-Irish] word  for what Ward Connerly, GOP darling, has been up to with the donations that flowed his way to help keep the playing field as unlevel was they want it to be, but you gotta have something to describe it — short of outright embezzlement.

Ward Connerly, the black businessman who has been the face of the movement to end affirmative action for nearly two decades, is facing accusations from a prominent former ally that he has mismanaged — and exploited for his own benefit — donations to that cause made by fellow conservatives.

More interesting news about new forms of biofuels:

“Scientists in a cluttered Berkeley laboratory are working a bit of biochemical wizardry to transform ordinary seaweed into biofuels that promise a new source of energy for this oil-dependent nation.

The lab’s research has already fueled a startup company whose workers in southern Chile are farming nearly 200 acres of kelp offshore and building a pilot plant that aims to demonstrate it can scale up production rapidly to produce a major source of ethanol and essential chemicals in the very near future.

The raw material is the same waving kelp species that sea otters love in Monterey Bay, but its tough fronds have long proved impossible for common bacteria to digest…

SF Gate:

Mitt Romney:

An Associated Press examination of financial records of Mitt Romney shows that the Republican presidential candidate has offshore-based investments worth between $7 million and $32 million.

Perhaps an honest world will never exist.  But what’s to keep us from dreaming?  If each one of us tries to change, maybe we’ll succeed.

Rita Atria — The Sicilian Rebel

from the film The Sicilian Girl

article in the Guardian UK

Where talking is met with deadly silence: In a small town on a Sicilian hilltop, a young woman could no longer keep quiet after the Mafia shot dead first her father, then her brother. Clare Longrigg reports on the courage, the fear and the tragic death of Rita Atria.

Over the last few days, 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben and Bold Nebraska’s Jane Kleeb took to the airwaves to spread the good news about the victory on the Keystone XL pipeline. One of the best clips comes from the good folks at Democracy Now — check it out:
*

More at 350.org

Here’s  a post from a friend, with lots of on-links, as to what the heck the SOPA/PIP uproar is about. And actions to take.  In fact, if you go to Wikipedia today to do some research you will be stopped and asked to put in your zip-code which will lead to your Senator and Congress person’s names and contact points:  Get On It!

As reported by Nick Bunkley in the NY Times business pages

New Gas Economy Rules Generate Wide Support

The proposed new standards call for automakers to increase the average, unadjusted fuel-economy rating of their vehicles to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, up from about 27 miles per gallon today. Because of the way testing is done, the 2025 requirement correlates to a window-sticker rating of about 36 miles per gallon, according to the automotive information Web site Edmunds.com, or roughly what Toyota’s tiny new Scion iQ car achieves today.

Now if the algae biofuel development reported by NPR today, and here at triplepundit, prove-out, the future will take a turn for the promising….