With so much bad news coming down the pike, I guess it was inevitable that a piece of good news would slip in. Goodbye, John Ashcroft; no one will miss you.

His farewell letter sure gives us something to laugh about.

“The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved.”

Nice to know. I’ll sleep a bit easier tonight.

Ashtray, if you remember, was the one who, only days before September 11, wanted to reduce anti-terrorist spending so he could focus on the important stuff, like prostitution and pornography. His track record in convicting September 11 suspects has been atrocious, and he’s been by far the most controversial and pompous AG in my lifetime (Ed Meese being the only one who even comes close). The 2nd bush term just became a notch more acceptable less repugnant.

I’m afraid we are going to see and more instances of this sort of thing in America, and I find it more than disturbing. It’s plain nuts. I live in a red state, and I’m wondering if I should move back to New York and hope that the Northeast secedes as soon as possible.

Seven amazing pages. There’s certainly no place like it on earth.

Ellen Sander has an uplifting post that makes good reading for those who need some serious uplifting (like me). What a week.

Several months before I moved to Hong Kong I stumbled upon a web site that was so disarming, so ingenious and creative and full of energy that I contacted its proprietor, a college student living in Massachusetts named Daniel Hong. I told him how much I admired his work and that I’d be privileged if he’d allow me to write articles for the site and help edit his own copy. Daniel was Korean, and his English needed polishing, though I found his writing, mistakes and all, to be endearing and charming.

Some of the early pieces in this blog were actually essays I wrote for Daniel. The post on the ice-skating star Chen Lu was for danielhong.org, as was Kicking the Bucket, the first post to get me a link on another blog (thanks, Conrad). Daniel was a web designer, and his site was a treasure trove of stories and interviews and reviews of new web sites. It was also a webcam site; Daniel had a webcam in every room of his apartment, and he seemed to enjoy being the center of attention.

He was also selfless and giving. He was always participating in Walk for AIDS and Walk for Breast Cancer and Walk for Hunger, always raising money for charities. All this, and he was only in his early 20s. I knew him mostly via the Internet and we only met once, in 2001 when I was visiting my family in New York. He was one of the kindest, sweetest people I ever met, with just a little touch of devilish humor.

I don’t remember when the last time we spoke was, though I think it was early 2002. I called him and he sounded terrible. “I can’t talk, Richard,” he said. “I need to go on Prozac. I’ll tell you about it later.” I left him alone, and I never heard from him again. When I tried to send him emails with new essays, they bounced back. I thought I did something to offend him, and that I was on his “refuse” list. I was quite upset.

I wrote an email to Daniel just two days ago because I wanted to get in touch with a mutual friend. The email didn’t bounce back this time, but there was no reply. Then I located the friend using google, and in my email I told him about my blog and I mentioned Daniel. What happened later was a little awkward; the friend read one of my posts and put in a comment that mentioned Daniel and how sad he was that Daniel had passed away — he presumed that I knew all about it.

When I saw the comment, it was a though a rat had bitten me. I looked at it and I kept re-reading it, trying to make sense out of it. Passed away? Dead? Daniel Hong? He’s a kid! He’s probably only 25 years old.

I wrote a frantic email to our mutual friend. I’m afraid I put him in the awkward position of having to break the awful news to me. (If you’re reading this, thanks so much for bearing with me last night; I was a bit hysterical.)

The reason for the tragedy: Daniel had been trying to get his green card for years, and apparently the INS denied it. Daniel was so distraught he took his own life.

I’ve had to deal with the deaths of friends and loved ones before, having lost my brother in 1996 and my closest friend in 1991. This was, however, the first time someone I loved had committed suicide.

As I heard the reason, I felt a rush of pain, of rage and of confusion. Daniel was so talented, he could do anything. He could have designed web sites and run businesses from Korea and come back to visit anytime. Yes, maybe he was crushed and disappointed — but is that a reason to take your life? And so young? So full of life and wit and brilliance? Why? How could he do it to himself, and to those who love him, his mother, his family?

I don’t know all the details yet, but I know enough for this to be a very dark day. I knew he was upset when I called, but I had no idea he could even be thinking about suicide. Not Daniel. I knew Daniel was going to be rich and famous. He had everything going for him.

And so, once again, I face the sad fact that people are not always what they appear on the outside, and sometimes those who appear strong and resilient are the most weak and fragile of all.

I tried to put myself in Daniel’s place, to understand how hopeless, how totally miserable he must have felt to actually kill himself. I can’t do it. He must have been totally shattered, every dream wiped out, with no possibility of hope, ever. Or at least it must have seemed that way to him. Why didn’t he call me? Why didn’t he say something?

It will take me a few days or weeks to deal with this. I spent the morning using google to pull up bits and pieces of his cached web site, the only part of Daniel that remains.

Wherever you are Daniel, please know that a lot of people miss you. Your little site lit up the world, and you brought happiness to everyone who knew you. I hope you’re at peace now. We all love you.

I’ve posted before about the feisty elderly doctor, and she’s been profiled a lot this past year. But it was only after reading this article that I decided she really does deserve the Nobel peace prize. How do I nominate her?

A few weeks ago the Globe and Mail put out a staggering number of articles on the PRC, and this week the Guardian follows suit. If you have any interest in China, just go there — there’s something there for everyone.

Reader David, thanks for the tip!

We’ll need help and mentoring to adjust to the new theocratic America. Luckily, help is on the way.

Via Jesus’ General.

Brad DeLong points us to a 1986 story by Robert X. Cringley that illustrates why the odds are against us when it comes to reshaping the Milddle East in our own image. It’s scary reading.

PBS | I, Cringely . Archived Column: I eventually finished the piece and decided to go see the war since I had been in Beirut and Angola, but had never seen trench warfare, which is what I was told they had going in Iran. So I took a taxi to the front, introduced myself to the local commander, who had gone, as I recall, to Iowa State, and spent a couple days waiting for the impending human wave attack. That attack was to be conducted primarily with 11-and 12-year-old boys as troops, nearly all of them unarmed. There were several thousand kids and their job was to rise out of the trench, praising Allah, run across No Man’s Land, be killed by the Iraqi machine gunners, then go directly to Paradise, do not pass GO, do not collect 200 dinars. And that’s exactly what happened in a battle lasting less than 10 minutes. None of the kids fired a shot or made it all the way to the other side. And when I asked the purpose of this exercise, I was told it was to demoralize the cowardly Iraqi soldiers.

It was the most horrific event I have ever seen, and I once covered a cholera epidemic in Bangladesh that killed 40,000 people.

Waiting those two nights for the attack was surreal. Some kids acted as though nothing was wrong while others cried and puked. But when the time came to praise Allah and enter Paradise, not a single boy tried to stay behind.

Now put this in a current context. What effective limit is there to the number of Islamic kids willing to blow themselves to bits? There is no limit, which means that a Bush Doctrine can’t really stand in that part of the world. But of course President Bush, who may think he pulled the switch on a couple hundred Death Row inmates in Texas, has probably never seen a combat death. He doesn’t get it and he’ll proudly NEVER get it.

Welcome to the New Morality.

What is our plan to win over there, in the face of a mentality that we can never fathom? Is it just to keep fighting until we wipe them all out? Is that what liberation’s all about? Bring ’em on, bush taunted, and he got what he asked for. And now our young soldiers get to pay for our president’s hubris.

Maureen Dowd has written what is quite simply her best column ever. Her passion pervades every phrase, every comma, yet her logic is cold, dispassionate and precise.

Like the president, vice president and defense secretary, General Karl wanted to wipe out the gray, if-it-feels-good-do-it, blame-America-first, doused-in-Vietnam-guilt 60’s and turn the clock back to the black-and-white Manichaean values of the 50’s.

W. and Karl played up western movie stereotypes. After 9/11, the rugged frontier myth, the hunter/Indian-fighter hero in a war of civilization against savagery worked better than ever. But this White House’s frontier is not a place of infinite progress and expansion, stretching society’s boundaries. It doesn’t battle primitivism; it courts primitivism.

Instead of the New Frontier, Karl and W. offer the New Backtier.

Even as a child, I could feel the rush of J.F.K.’s presidency racing forward, opening up a thrilling world of possibilities and modernity. We were going to the moon. We were confronting racial intolerance. We were paying any price and bearing any burden for freedom. We were respecting faith but keeping it out of politics. Our president was inspiring much of the world. Our first lady was setting the pace in style and culture.

W.’s presidency rushes backward, stifling possibilities, stirring intolerance, confusing church with state, blowing off the world, replacing science with religion, and facts with faith. We’re entering another dark age, more creationist than cutting edge, more premodern than postmodern. Instead of leading America to an exciting new reality, the Bushies cocoon in a scary, paranoid, regressive reality. Their new health care plan will probably be a return to leeches.

America has always had strains of isolationism, nativism, chauvinism, puritanism and religious fanaticism. But most of our leaders, even our devout presidents, have tried to keep these impulses under control. Not this crew. They don’t call to our better angels; they summon our nasty devils.

For a while I stopped reading Dowd, I thought she was so determined to place cutesiness over depth. Not anymore. She’s been spectacular lately, and here she’s at her very zenith.