I told myself when I was watching Capote that I probably wasn't going to write about it. For some reason, writing about a near-recent film wasn't as exciting as going on about films that have been out for decades or films that no one has ever heard of. We all know Philip Seymour Hoffman won the Oscar for Best Actor this year, but has anyone really seen Capote? Do you even know what it's about?

I do. At least I do now. Before watching this movie, I had know idea who Truman Capote was, and I know that's sad. Certainly any graduate with an English degree has heard of In Cold Blood, right? Well, not this little Bachelor.

Despite my ignorance, it didn't take me long to catch on. Capote, hot off the success of his book Breakfast at Tiffany's, picks up a copy of the New York Times to read about the grisly murder of a family of four living in Holcomb, Kansas. Taking off for a writing assignment for the New Yorker, Capote enlists the help of fellow writer Harper Lee, then soon-to-be Pulitzer Prize winner for the book To Kill a Mockingbird, and travels down to Kansas to get to the heart of the story.

Capote initially has some trouble getting the local authorities and residents to respect him and speak to him. Of course, he eventually makes his way into the story and almost by accident befriends on of the suspects in the murder, Perry Smith.

This movie reminded me a lot about what I enjoyed Downfall so much. I've been recently fascinated with villains. The downfall of Hitler, the mental state of cold-blooded killers — both films really gave me a lot to think about. Working at a newspaper, I often find myself on the right side of things passing "judgment" on those who break the law. Really, that's not what I do at the paper, anyone is innocent before proven guilty, but by even mentioning that someone is "accused" of murder is tantamount to condemnation, often times. Sometimes I wonder if what makes people commit such horrible acts is really a fundamental state of evil or if it is just one person who was very, very lost.

There's a moment at the end of Capote when you get to see just what pushed Perry to commit such a horrible act. It was a profound and fascinating moment and it made me want to read the book.

Hoffman does an excellent job wrestling with his hunger for critical acclaim and success and his persistent desire to aid his friend Perry. Of course, before Capote can move on with his life and finish In Cold Blood, Perry must exhaust all of his appeals and hung for the crimes he and codefendent Richard Hickock committed.

It's a great film, and if you see it, I think you will find it more interesting than you thought.

Today, the Supreme Court ruled on the long-awaited case Hamden vs. Rumsfeld. The Court delivered a harsh rebuke of the Bush Administration and it's claim that it may try enemy combatants in front of military tribunals, with little of the rights compared to those afforded to defendants in U.S. criminal courts.

Supreme Court Blocks Guantánamo Tribunals
By John O'Neil and Scott Shane
New York Times

The Supreme Court today delivered a sweeping rebuke to the Bush administration, ruling that it exceeded its authority by creating tribunals for terror suspects that fell short of the legal protections that Congress has traditionally required in military courts.

As a result, the court said in a 5-to-3 ruling, the tribunals violated both American military law and the military's obligations under the Geneva Conventions.

The court ruled two years ago that Congress had not given the executive branch a "blank check" in the war on terror. But today's ruling, written by Justice John Paul Stevens, was the first to address the standards that should apply to suspects held in what has become a prolonged struggle.

This is perhaps the most awaited decision of the Roberts Court so far. I think it was decided fairly and the decision is just. The Bush Administrations solution for dealing with enemy combatants, while efficient, tramples on their rights as defendants and violates the law.

The decision doesn't surprise me. I have a lot of faith in the Supreme Court in its ability to deal with issues such as this. The most troubling aspect of this decision, of course, is the dissent.

Bush has appointed two Justices in his term as President. He has shifted the Court to the right with the appointment of Justice Samuel Alito to replace Sandra Day O' Conner. Certainly, if she had been aloud to vote in this case, she would have sided with the majority opinion, yielding a 6-3 vote. Though a 5-3 vote isn't that bad, if Chief Justice Roberts had not reclused himself from the case, the decision would have certainly been 5-4 — hardly decisive.

In the short run, I don't think the Court's shift to the right will make too many waves. I believe the Courts docket will get more controversial as now four right-wing Justices can easily accept writ of certiorari. Already, the Court has two controversial abortion cases that will be decided within the next year.

In Scalia, Thomas and Alito's dissent, all Justices cite Congress' attempt to strip the Court of jurisdiction in the case as a valid reason to ignore the case altogether. They also cited the dangers of the majority's decision:

Justice Scalia focused on the jurisdictional issue, arguing that Congress had stripped the court of jurisdiction to proceed with this case, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, No. 05-184, when it passed the Detainee Treatment Act last December and provided that "no court, justice, or judge" had jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions filed by detainees at Guantánamo Bay.

The question was whether that withdrawal of jurisdiction applied to pending cases. The majority held that it did not.

Justice Thomas's dissent addressed the substance of the court's conclusions. In a part of his opinion that Justices Scalia and Alito also signed, he called the decision "untenable" and "dangerous." He said "those justices who today disregard the commander in chief's wartime decisions" had last week been willing to defer to the judgment of the Army Corps of Engineers in a Clean Water Act case. "It goes without saying that there is much more at stake here than storm drains," he said.

One premise of the minority's opinion is that we are at war and wartime affords the President the latitude to suspend habeas corpus in times of war. While this is in the Constitution, I don't believe the premise holds weight. How much of a "war" is the war on terror? How long will the war of terror last? What is a victory in the war on terror?

Did the framers of the Constitution view war to be the lifelong struggle between a nation and a seemingly endless band of terrorists or is war a point when a nation enters into conflict with another nation. I think this war is not the "war" the framers of the Constitution had in mind when they impugned the President with power to put justice aside.

I think this is the fundamental debate that we need to wage. At this moment, the right and left are trying to wage completely different arguments. Pundits like Michelle Malkin see the war on terror as World War III, while Democrats, liberals (and dare I say moderates) see the war on terror akin to something like the war on drugs, but much more serious. I think once our nation gets on the same page and settles this fundamental argument, we can come up with solutions to the problems facing us.

There has been a lot of talk this week about the New York Times and its publication of an article discussing the details of a government program that monitors the international wire transfers of Americans suspected of being terrorists. Republicans on Capitol Hill are considering taking legal action against the Times, which in the past year has exposed legally-questionable Executive programs that have not been legally verified outside of the Oval Office or a closed session of a select Congressional committee.

I understand the argument posed by critics that say revealing programs like the NSA's domestic spying initiative and the Swift financial records program causes irreputable harm to national security, and the New York Times does as well. This was put forth in a very excellent editorial in today's edition of the Times:

Patriotism and the Press
New York Times Editorial

Over the last year, The New York Times has twice published reports about secret antiterrorism programs being run by the Bush administration. Both times, critics have claimed that the paper was being unpatriotic or even aiding the terrorists. Some have even suggested that it should be indicted under the Espionage Act. There have been a handful of times in American history when the government has indeed tried to prosecute journalists for publishing things it preferred to keep quiet. None of them turned out well — from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the time when the government tried to enjoin The Times and The Washington Post from publishing the Pentagon Papers.

... But any argument by the government that a story is too dangerous to publish has to be taken seriously. There have been times in this paper's history when editors have decided not to print something they knew. In some cases, like the Kennedy administration's plans for the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, it seems in hindsight that the editors were over-cautious. (Certainly President Kennedy thought so.) Most recently, The Times held its reporting about the government's secret antiterror wiretapping program for more than a year while it weighed administration objections.

Our news colleagues work under the assumption that they should let the people know anything important that the reporters learn, unless there is some grave and overriding reason for withholding the information. They try hard not to base those decisions on political calculations, like whether a story would help or hurt the administration. It is certainly unlikely that anyone who wanted to hurt the Bush administration politically would try to do so by writing about the government's extensive efforts to make it difficult for terrorists to wire large sums of money.

From our side of the news-opinion wall, the Swift story looks like part of an alarming pattern. Ever since Sept. 11, the Bush administration has taken the necessity of heightened vigilance against terrorism and turned it into a rationale for an extraordinarily powerful executive branch, exempt from the normal checks and balances of our system of government. It has created powerful new tools of surveillance and refused, almost as a matter of principle, to use normal procedures that would acknowledge that either Congress or the courts have an oversight role.

I think the Times took sufficient ethical steps in its decision to publish their stories and I view any government official's criticism of the Times to be very dubious. Appealing to the fear of endangering national security has become a favorite of this government, and it's getting old. I just hope people will start catching on.

I live in Visalia, Calif, and it's not like any place I've lived before. Visalia is like a suburb without a city, a fruit without the vine. It is often boring and uninteresting, but at the same time it is beautiful and serene. The landscape is breathtaking, the mountains are just awesome. Agriculture is abounds and there is always an excellent farmer's market going on someplace. It's a nice place to live, for the most part. At least I've managed to get by.

It's hard to believe that I've been here for 9 months already. I remember thinking a year living here was going to mean so much, but it still feels like the day I pulled up in my car, looking for a place to live. I can't believe so much time has flown by. I don't want to live here forever, but for the next year or so, it's not such a bad idea. I have kept myself busy, but I feel like I still need to commit to this place some more.

Training for the marathon was a great way to keep my feet on the ground in Visalia. I had a team that I ran with and I got to see some great running spots close to town. My favorite place to run is Yokohl Valley, this area down Highway 198 off of Yokohl Drive that takes you into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It's very pretty and ranchers keep a lot of cattle out there. It was entertaining to trot down the road mooing at the cows staring at me as I ran by.

Running has been the one thing I have done most in Visalia. It's not as challenging as the roads back in Georgia, but I do love Visalia for it's safe streets and plentiful running space. Restaurants are lacking, though, in my opinion. Being a vegetarian makes it kind of difficult to find food for my selective palate. Most of the places I enjoy most are too expensive for casual dining or just too far away.

A lot of people around here go to Fresno to party or go out, but I have not jumped on that band wagon yet. It's difficult when you don't have an established network of friends like I had back home. It's not that I don't have any friends, but the friends I do have here are not Fresno-party friends. They are mostly easygoing-Visalia friends. And while they may not take me to the more exciting places in the Central Valley, it is nice to know I have someone to get a drink with in boring ol' Visalia.

When I moved here, I figured I would travel to San Francisco or Los Angeles more often to escape the void that is Visalia, but steep gas prices have mostly snuffed that idea. I am going to go to San Francisco in two weeks to see some friends from college, I can't wait. There's nothing like seeing a familiar face out here where I know so few people.

A friend of mine asked me this weekend if I regret coming here to Visalia. It's been 9 months, and while things aren't always as exciting as they were back when I was in college, I can say that I don't regret it. I wonder how I would feel if I had stayed in Georgia, and I know I would have regretted not taking the chance to go someplace different. I'm glad that I found the courage to take a chance.

But I should have to courage to embrace Visalia. I feel like I still reach out to home and am stuck someplace in between. That's probably the worst part of living here — really living here. Meeting people, making friends and building relationships that start to become more relevant than the relationships you left behind. I think, having been here 9 months already, I should establish those ties. It's difficult, but I probably won't be happy here until I do.

It's sad to watch the past drift away, but if you don't have anything to do besides watch it pass, it can be really depressing. I'm glad that I have such a vibrant, intriguing place like Visalia to make my present worth holding onto.

I know I have been the sporadic blogger as of late. I have been working early shifts this week and trying to keep up with a very brutal work out/running schedule. I will try to keep up though!

This week I watched arguably Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece film Vertigo. My recent descent into all things Hitchcock was inspired by my viewing of "Rear Window" several months ago that had me witness a different, more suspenseful side of Hitchcock than the wacky antics of Cary Grant in "North by Northwest." I thoroughly enjoyed "Rear Window," and I have recently also viewed "Dial M for Murder," which didn't turn out to be half bad either.

Vertigo was next on the list, and I thought I knew what I was getting. In the film, Detective John Ferguson (played brilliantly, of course, by James Stewart) suffers a traumatic event, strickening him with acrophobia and subjecting him with vertigo whenever he suffers an episode. I figured the story would jut off from there into a typical Hitchcock storyline. You know, maybe Stewart has to juggle his fear of heights and his desperate need to solve a case of murder and deceit, set in the sunny city of San Francisco. What I got, however, was a film that was so unlike Hitchcock — or so I thought.

Instead, shortly after suffering an accident on duty, which leaves a fellow officer dead, Ferguson retires from the force. At the behest of an old friend Gavin Ester, he is asked to trail Ester's disturbed wife Madeline, who Ester believes is possessed by her deceased ancestor, Carlotta Valdes, who killed herself after her husband ran off with her daughter. Presumably, all the women in Madeline's family line eventually go mad, cursed by the scorned Valdes.

The movie descends into this sordid plot and the circumstances of Ferguson's premature retirement drift further and further from the core of the thriller, which very quickly becomes a romance. As John and Madeline fall deeper and deeper in love and her madness broadens, bringing her to the brink of oblivion, the film reaching a gripping height followed by a surprising reversal, and all of a sudden you can't help but jump up and exclaim, "Now, this is a Hitchcock film!"

I can't possibly go on from there. All I can say is every Hitchcock film plays a role in this film. Romance, intrigue — murder! Vertigo has got it.

If you have no semblance of what the film Vertigo is, I suggest you come into this film as ignorant as I was. You will be rocked, I guarantee it. I don't know if it gets any better than this, I sure hope so. My next Hitchcock film is Lifeboat. We'll see how it goes.

This week, I saw a movie called "Downfall," which is a film about the final days of the Third Reich during World War II. I added it to my movie queue a few months ago when I read that the movie had caused a stir when it was released. Hitler, who is often depicted as a brutal dictator and inhuman monster (rightly so) is somewhat humanized in the film, as the viewer almost feels sorry to watch the ailing man's empire fall to pieces. It was appropriate that I watched this film after another film I had been hotly anticipating. That movie was Sarah Silverman's "Jesus is Magic," a stand-up comedy film that pokes fun at the Holocaust and other touchy subjects. (And, in case you're wondering, I didn't find the film to be particularly good, or funny).

Anyways, "Downfall" was an excellent movie to watch. The movie mostly depicts the elite heads of Germany in their last days as the Red Army encircles Berlin. For any history buff, this would be a fabulous film, as many notable Nazi government officials are paraded throughout the film. I got so lost in the long list of characters, that it was only at the end of the film when names were provided with pictures that I was able to ascertain just who it was I was seeing half the whole time.

The one character you do follow easily throughout the film (besides Adolf Hitler) is Traudl Junge, one of Hitler's favorite secretaries and the primary source for most of the film. Shortly before Junge died in 2002, she wrote a detailed account of her experiences in the Führerbunker. Her book, Der Untergang, was released in 2004 and is the primary source of the film. She gives a brief introduction interview before the film begins and some final reflections at the end.

The movie begins with Junge being hired as Hitler's secretary in 1942, in the midst of the Second World War. The movie quickly jumps forward to April 20, 1945, — Hitler's birthday — as artillery fire is just hitting Berlin and military commanders scramble to halt the Russian's advance. The government building is quickly evacuated and arrangements are made for high-ranking officials to leave Berlin. Of course, Hitler stays, and Junge, unable to abandon her Führer, can so no reason to leave as well.

There are some well-recognized characters in the film. Magda Goebbels arrives with her children to cheer up Hitler and sing for him (And, in case you don't know your history, they all meet a very short end). Eva Braun shows up, determined to not let the fall of her nation get her down. One of the most haunting scenes of the movie is her insistence to go above ground and throw a party while the Russians are shelling the city (of course, driving the drunken revelers back below).

The movie just gets more and more depressing from there. It's one thing to see the dark consequences from war through the eyes of the victor, but what was it like to be German when your nation falls to the Allies? How would it feel like to see all the silent whispers of the "final solution" turn out to be horribly true, even beyond your greatest nightmares. That is the story you see though the eyes of Junge, and it is so compelling. I can't imagine hell being any different from the crumbling Berlin you see in director Oliver Hirschbiegel's film.

It's a must-see, you know, if you can get past the fact that you'll be seeing a film about Hitler and it's subtitled. But, if you're anything like me, you know the best films are probably not in English anyways.

Of course, the terrible things I heard from the Nuremberg Trials, about the 6 million Jews and the people from other races who were killed, were facts that shocked me deeply. But I wasn't able to see the connection with my own past. I was satisfied that I wasn't personally to blame and that I hadn't known about those things. I wasn't aware of the extent. But one day I went past the memorial plaque which had been put up for Sophie Scholl in Franz Josef Strasse, and I saw that she was born the same year as me, and she was executed the same year I started working for Hitler. And at that moment I actually sensed that it was no excuse to be young, and that it would have been possible to find things out — Traudl Junge

It has been a while, but I guess you could say I have been "recovering." I did indeed run a marathon on June 4, 2006, and all I can say, if you have to ask me to describe it so succinctly, is that it was "something else."

That's the number one thing I find annoying about people asking me about the marathon. They expect me the boil down a five hour and eighteen minute experience into just a few words. It's impossible! So many things happen to you during a marathon, and it took me a few days to process the whole thing myself. Well, I think I'm ready to write about it, so here goes.

I didn't actually look at the course map until a week before I ran the race. For some reason, knowing anything about the race was immaterial to me until I raised enough money before my fundraising deadline (by the way, I raised $2,640 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society). Once that was squared away, I started to actually consider running the marathon which, surprisingly, was a very funny thing. When I first looked at that map, I started laughing out loud. We run all over downtown San Diego, and when that's all done with, it's still only 10 miles! There's 16.2 miles of hell right after that!

Team in Training did a send-off for us. I brought tofu, rice and veggies to the potluck, but not many people had much (too bad, more for me). We got our singlets and race info. Early Saturday morning we met at the Holiday Inn on Plaza Drive. We took a slow bus to San Diego and my mentor gave me some useful advice for running my first marathon (which he had done only months earlier).

Sometime before or after going over the Grapevine, I was listening to "The Wand" off the new Flaming Lips album, tapping my feet on the ground, when I started thinking to myself...I forgot my running shoes! No joke. Worst possible thing you could do before running a marathon, and it happened to me. For a split second, I thought to myself, "How the hell could you do something so stupid?!" But a second later, I regained my composure and started to think of a solution to my problem. I would just have to buy a new pair of shoes at the Expo.

San Diego is very nice. It reminded me of Atlanta with lots and lots of sun. I frantically combed over the Expo looking for a New Balance booth, but I had to settle on a pair of Mizunos that actually looked very similar to the shoes I had been running in all season. After I got my timing chip, Rock 'n' Roll Marathon commemorative shirt and number, I went back to the hotel for a nap before heading out to the TNT Pasta Party at the convention center. After filling up on carbs, I was off to bed.

Up until that point, it was all still a big joke. I was still laughing about it at the Pasta Party, a mere 10 hours before the race started. But on the race day morning, there's nothing left to do but run. I got dressed, headed out to the bus at about 3:45 in the morning and got to the start line around 4. We had about two hours before start, so I just laid there, listening to my iPod and waited. I was in such a daze, I really felt like I could run the whole day, so I'm glad I wasn't super tired and pessimistic or it would have been so much more difficult.

Once we were all corralled at the front, there was no turning back. I was in corral 12, but unlike the Peachtree Road Race, which takes almost 45 minutes to get from your corral to the starting line, it was only about 7 minutes after the actual start time that I was off and running. The first few miles were not too difficult. I just ignored the new shoes and pretended not to care. I was so focused on the bands playing at the side of the road and the spectators that I didn't even notice how slowly the mile numbers trickled by.

I thought that maybe I would be so preoccupied at the beginning thinking about the incredible distance I was trying to surmount, but I was really ambivalent at that point. I was just in a daze, thinking about a lot of different things. I mostly took the race in 2 to 3 mile increments. At mile 2 I had some Powerade. At mile 5, I took a PowerGel and had some water. And then 2 miles later, I took some more Powerade. It's easier if you think of the race like that instead of taking on the whole behemoth at once.

It wasn't until I hit mile 11 that I started to have some problems. I started getting a blister on my foot, which I mostly ignored. I was also hitting a point in the race where the course got kind of boring (we were running on an Interstate!) so I started to drift. I would walk through all the water stations, but I started walking 2 minutes instead of just one. I got to see my coach at around this time, so that was great motivation to keep me going up to the half.

The race dragged on from here, and around mile 18 I started doing intervals of walking and running. One of my team members was running at a pretty consistent pace, so she kept passing me while I was running and I kept passing her when I would start up again at a 9 minute pace. We tried to keep each other motivated, and it was great to get that encouragement at that point in the race.

At about mile 21 and 22, we hit this point where we did a small loop and sort of double backed on the course. I was so finished at this point, it was at this moment that I hit my "wall." It was pure will power that drove me on from here. I tried to run to mile 24 and walk to 25 and put up a final sprint through to 26.2, but I mostly did my intervals. I got some encouragement from my coaches and some pointers on the finish line that were very useful.

But at this point, you got to realize, I was a physical wreck. I had been doing intervals for a while, and it had gotten to be so difficult to switch from running to walking and vice versa. Every time I would start running again, it was like I was pulling my legs out of stiffening concrete. I was so ready to collapse.

After we entered to Marine depot, my coach told me that when I saw a tunnel, I could expect to see the finish line just beyond it. Once I saw the tunnel, I was so determined to finish, I quit walking and start sprinting to the finish. I think I got to about a 6:45 pace, my best of the entire race — I was so through with it. Once I passed over the finish line, I swear it was such a rush. You think you would have something amazing to punctuate that moment, but I was so relieved and I could quite honestly have burst into tears at the moment if I had tried hard enough.

See, that's the thing. I learned in that moment why people are crazy enough to run marathons. I didn't want to cry because I was sad. I didn't want to cry because I was depressed, either. I wanted to cry, I believe, because I was mourning the fact that this marathon was so difficult. I took myself to my limit and then pushed myself four extra miles, and for what? There was no reclining chairs at the finish line, there was no handsome reward (except for this really nifty medal they gave us). All there was was this incredible feeling that I had survived something physically grueling and the promise that I would recover from it. I felt like, had this been some life or death situation, where I had survived some horrible ordeal, like being stranded on some mountain or something, I would experience the same exact feeling. Equal parts relief, exhaustion and triumph.

I got myself a bagel, (a medal), some blister relief shoes and my personal things. I called my mother and a few of my friends and then made my way back to the hotel room for a much deserved nap. After you run a marathon, you feel not unlike a midget on stilts — I felt like I could fall over at any moment. Short distances, like hunting around the TNT Victory Party for a vegetarian alternative to ribs and chicken, became major endurance treks. Oh, if I could have just sat down for 3 days...

But I made it. Recovery is going well, I started running again on Monday (I know, I'm crazy), and I am even planning on running a marathon again sometime. I would like to get myself more prepped for the next time around, though. I was just running this one to finish. Next time around, I want to break 4:30 :-)

Thanks to everyone who supported me in my marathon goal! I couldn't have done it without you!