above the law

Theodor Meron
exhonorates generals
for atrocities

metaphor

Dom Perignon quipped
when he first tasted chamagne
"I'm drinking the stars"

unsocialized III

poorly socialized
Nietzsche felt superior
in his estrangement

quality control

brittle iron wire
almost doomed the Brooklyn Bridge
shades of the EastSpan

unsocialized II

Nietzsche's life opus
sought to justify his pain
nobody liked him

Surveillance State X

ever more powers
can't sate the Surveillance State
'til it thinks your thoughts

"...wrapped in the Flag"

the PATRIOT Act
grasping for security
sold our birthright cheap

haven

for tax evaders
the British Virgin Islands
look like paradise

Surveillance State IX

is Google evil?
the Ninth Circuit Court weighs in
the answer's not "no"

unsocialized

misreading Nietzsche
jerks seek justification
behaving badly

amok

lying to Congress
Clapper played by Cheney's rules
law unto himself

Surveillance State VIII

lying to Congress
James Clapper showed confidence
he's above the Law

snap shot

"Billy Elliot"
keeps retiring its male leads
little shoes to fill

pattern recognition

customized firmware
signal-processing in bats
aural, not optic

PATRIOT ACT

James Sensenbrenner
set us on the road to Hell
playing to bigots

Surveillance State VII

"The Lives of Others"
in the age of NSA
documentary?

Surveillance State VI

frighteningly apt
best picture of the decade
"The Lives of Others"

Surveillance State V

J. Edgar Hoover
chortles from his place in Hell
we've ignored Frank Church

inspired

James is on a tear
you couldn't make this shit up
the Muse sings through him

imperfect

Locke's Social Contract
presumed rational actors
rather than humans

self-justified II

eager to believe
few of her followers grasp
Ayn Rand was crazy

Surveillance State IV

Frank Church prophesized
we'd build this Surveillance State
to oppress ourselves

self-regard

in today's column
Friedman says "bloviating"
tee hee! that shit's rich

Surveillance State III

such naivete!
Snowden bucked authority
to do what was right

O brave New World

Locke's Second Treatise
begat Paine and Jefferson
Founding grandFather

surveillance state II

once votes were tallied
Obama was co-opted
by his own spy chiefs

in the age of ultrasound

anachronistic
prostate exam's "digital"
not in a good way

Big Brother

no surprises here
NSA plays by the book
"1984"

self-justified

unlike Kant and Hume
who valued society
Nietzsche was a jerk

unreasonable search

from meta-data
matrix multiplication
reconstructs networks

we who live in houses of clay

on Chanina's pyre
just the parchment was consumed
the letters flew free

equality

ezer k'negdo
makes less sense for Adam's "rib"
than for his whole "side"

regulatory capture

Feinstein in a tool
of the spies she oversees
no one speaks for us

Price of Liberty II

to keep us all free
Ellsberg, Manning and Snowden
risked their liberty

the Price of Liberty

to remain Free Men
costs eternal vigilance
ask Edward Snowden

risking liberty for Freedom

Liberty's not free
every new Daniel Ellsberg
risks prosecution

legitimacy

Filmer's "Patriarchs"
presumed Divine Right of Kings
Locke ripped him apart

class warfare

upper management
puts the screws to the workers
to boost stock prices

disciple of Aaron

tact's as blind as love
every bride is "beautiful"
on her wedding day

incomplete

a life in haikus
like a dance glimpsed by strobelight
on interpolates

educational

Finnish schoolteachers
don't stress standardized exams
their pupils excel

stream of consciousness

misogynistic
like butter-covered women
high blood pressure rules

mutable

in Toffler's future
the texture of existence
morphs before our eyes

elegance

well-organized thoughts
enshrined in elegant code
software's pinnacle

short attentionspan

why write such tight prose
this isn't 1990
your screen's plenty big

frame of reference

to me, I go up
but if you asked the airmass
I'm descending through

mood piece

wrote you senryu
with my Fall birthday wishes
but they felt gloomy

results

Finnish schoolteachers
don't stress standardized exams
their pupils excel

moral compass

Edward Snowden's ass
could languish in a dank cell
but his soul stays pure

regulatory capture

Feinstein is a tool
of the spies she "oversees"
no one speaks for us

quis custodiet?

Feinstein's oversight
regulatory capture
new shah, same Savak

the fish stinks from the head

Feinstein's "oversight"
regulatory capture
shields our oppressors

kabuki theater

Feinstein's "oversight"
consists of giving carte blanche
to the PoliceState

but what can we do 'til then?

in 2020
as a write-in candidate
Snowden gets my vote

not playing the game

Stephen Wozniak
faults Apple for it's tax games
nobody asked him

the tool for the task II

REV's innovation
interactive batten shape
flies both fast and slow

the tool for the task

Hemingway's blunt prose
allowed for no ornament
to blunt his ideas

indiscriminate

strange equality
half the rape victims are male
in this man's army

unintimidated

this generation
won't live Tommy Walker's life
"ain't gonna take it!"

nomen est omen

"blackwater fever"
malaria's lethal stage
funny choice of name

make way!

Ernest Hemingway's
prose allowed no ornament
to blunt his ideas

intimidation

gutless Harry Reid
surrenders pre-emptively
to filibusters

values

just one coin--held close--
eclipses the whole landscape
Lucre blots out worlds

you know there's something going on here

from LZ to launch
twenty degrees fahrenheit
frightening lapse rate

youth will be served

next generation
Wall Street's Occupy movement
echoes Tiananmen

left behind

billionaires' ante
everyone who's anyone
sails an hydroptere

strange bedfellows

justice Scalia
in defense of Civil Rights
slams DNA swabs

let him who is without...

Original Sin
St. Paul's key innovation
mandates empathy

public domain

Jane Austen's screenplays
predate the motion picture
free for the taking

...and we change in them

tattoos fade to blue
memories in sepia
of another age

missing the point

navel-gazing, rapt
Holder obsessed on guidelines
left Law unenforced

hocus pocus

Holder's sleight of hand
Rule of DoJ guidelines
subs for Rule of Law

disreputable

voters in Iran
get to elect anyone
whom the Mullahs picked

business in front, party in back

cocaine's for their friends
Venezuelan kidnappers
gives marks ketamine

smile!

Rio's favelas
"pacified" for the WorldCup
Disneyfication

do you feel lucky?

"I'll just have the fries"
hamburgers by the roadside
E. Coli roulette

used

Department of State
turns a few tricks on the side
as CIA's bitch

rejected!

flying Chris' "K"
Clay met the repeller field
that thing won't come down

puppetshow

CIA asset?
domestic propaganda
hard-sell by FauxNews

duplicitous

Ashfaq Kayani
cultivates the Haqqanis
"strategic assets"

short-sighted

resistant TB
somebody else's problem
were it not for planes

Spring!

Ankara riots
aren't about Sycamores
Turks mean to be heard

flux

all paths lead downhill
equilibrium means death
Life happens in flux

branchings

Robert Johnson's death
made room for Led Zepellin
Crossroads/multiverse

profoundly risky

eight hundred foot dives
risk narcosis and the bends
high stakes going low

meta-stable II

like prince Rupert's drop
once her boundaries are nicked
Syria shatters

meta-stable

like un-annealed glass
once her boundaries are nicked
Syria shatters

making it up

rather than the Law
Eric Holder's DoJ
enforces "guidelines"

tempus mutantur

it's all mutable
since Yochanan ben Zakkai
we're all Reform Jews

subtle

Olympia Beer
like a tent pitched at ebb tide
too close to water!

mass culture

the Hillary Step
used to weed out dilettante
all things get dumbed down

trying to be helpful

authentic service
if you order in English
prepare to get forked

second-hand

fruit-stealing squirrels
might be good baked in a pie
in lieu of cherries

the company you keep

perverse symmetry
gay youth comes out as BoyScout
shunned for fashion gaffe

form and function

I stick to haiku
sonnets are hell to proof-read
on this tiny screen

mostly empty

electrons flitter
like flies in a cathedral
the void's within us

send us your poor

Emma Lazarus
in an expansionist age
welcomed laborers

fuel

all things have their place
Doritos are crap as food
but they're great kindling