“had no qualms about investing in firms that made napalm or indulged in a host of other morally suspect activities.”

A perfectly omniscient ANYTHING would have a 100% success rate, because they wouldn’t commit their resources anywhere except where they knew they could win. Jesus Christ.

Never? The last time we saw prosecutors and judges facing serious penalties, was in 1800′s San Fransisco when they were tried under private courts for corruption.

No. If his conviction rate is too low, it means he is bringing a lot of cases to the grand jury that he doesn’t have enough evidence to try. A perfectly omniscient and fair DA should have 100% conviction rate because he won’t try cases with insufficient evidence.

Another way of putting it is: “Brevity is the soul of wit.”

As for “warm, homespun Midwestern humor,” perhaps they have him confused with Garrison Keillor? They were about the same age, one from Indiana, the other from Wisconsin? Close enough, right?

All due respect, that’s a bit shallow. Vonnegut was acutely self-aware of his shortcomings.

And if you claim that I have no way of truly knowing, Vonnegut wrote, “One must be very careful what one pretends to be, because one is what one pretends to be.” So his true face is what was in his novels either way.

Also, my impression is that at the state court level there is a bit of a revolving door with regard to prosecutors and defense attorneys. The salaries for ADAs are low enough (at least when compared to private practice) that most of the people run for DA will have spent some time in private practice building up their kids college fund, usually criminal defense.

Cops steak out hydroponics shop and follow a customer home. Knock on the door and ask to come in and search. Homeowner refuses. Cops “smelled growing marijuana and heard ‘the distinct sound of foliage being broken’” so they broke through his iron gate and dragged the homeowner out of the house. I guess that new supreme court ruling is already working as planned.

While I have little affection for Thug Cops, I would point out that during my lifetime (1961 to date) almost every time the on-campus anti-’establishment’ counterculture has taken a protest off campus they have seriously misjudged how much nonsense they will be allowed to get away with, and gotten clobbered. The 1968 Democrat convention in Chicago is a prime example; the symbolism of throwing baggies full of sh*t at police may be great, but the facts are that the cops are blue collar guys whose reaction is highly likely to be unpleasant, and acting surprised makes you look like a complete twit.

The police reaction to the WTO protests wasn’t RIGHT, but it wasn’t new either. I think that police reaction to unruly protests is a separate issue to police militarization and increased thuggishness.

Your points are well taken. If we wanted to make a timeline, I guess we might also add the reaction to the WTO protests of 1999. I think that’s the first time I saw the “Darth Vader” style riot gear come out. I do agree that we were heading in the wrong direction before 9-11, but I think that event solidified the committment of too many at all levels of government to “take the gloves off,” not just to deal with terrorists, but to deal with any who are considered to be “undesireables” in the eyes of the political and corporate executive class.

No, they’re for the riots when the economy collapses and “domestic terrorist militias”.

The book will do little to dampen enthusiasm for Vonnegut’s work. “He’s not a relic of the 1960s. His work is vibrant today even posthumously,” said Sumner. “Maybe we just expect too much of our heroes.”

I was born in 1972, and can’t wait for the “heroes” of the 1960 finally to stop being looked at that way, which sadly won’t happen at the earliest before all the people who came of age in the 1960s idolizing these “heroes” finally retire.

While I don’t think you are necessarily wrong, I’m not at all sure that says more for Vonnegut than it says against the literary world of the last fifty years. Which in many ways has degenerated into neurosis and neurasthenia. I would argue that any analysis that omits the impact of Thomas Harris casting a psychotherapist gone bad as the ultimate monster has missed something important. That More thoughtful kicking around of ideas has gone on in the Science Fiction ghetto than in all the New York Literary circles combined. That the definition of “Literature” needs badly to be broadened back out until it once again includes books that somebody other than a self-described intellectual will read for pleasure.

She may be fighting the good fight on mortgages, but CA AG Harris is a career person first.

That changes absolutely nothing about his legacy, which is arguably, and certainly in my opinion, the greatest literary contribution of the second half of the 20th Century.