I try to keep up with current political events to the best of my abilities: I’m on all the right mailing lists, I scan breaking news headlines every chance I get, and I’ve recently started reading The Nation and The New Republic on a regular basis for the first time since my immediate post-college years. The times in which we’re living frankly call for no less vigilance.

I have to confess, however, that I spend less time reading Daily Kos, Huffington and the like than I’d wish to. That’s why I’m so appreciative that Kyle Gann is peppering his customary musical wonderment with a steady stream of political asides. The most inspiring thing Kyle has presented just recently was a fiery indictment of the Bush justice department written by John S. Koppel, a civil appellate attorney with the D.O.J. since 1981, which appeared in the Denver Post on July 5. But this pithy little bit at the end of Kyle’s latest post caught my eye this morning:

There was a wonderfully telling moment
in Sara Taylor’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee that
doesn’t seem to have gotten much attention. She started out saying
that, as a deputy assistant to the president, she "took an oath. And I
take that oath to the president very seriously." Senator Leahy was
forced to point out to her that the oath she took was not to the
president, but to the Constitution. She conceded her error. Doesn’t
that just about sum up everything that’s been wrong with the Justice
Department?

Playlist:

King Crimson – Live in Los Angeles, July 1, 1995 and Live in Warsaw, June 11, 2000 (DGM)

David Garland – Noise in You (Family Vineyard)

Claude Debussy – Préludes – Steven Osborne (Hyperion)

Franz Liszt – Piano Music – Jean-Efflam Bavouzet (MD+G)

Roger Sessions – Violin Concerto; James Bolle – Ritual – Ole Böhn, Monadnock Festival Orchestra/James Bolle (Albany)