Suspect by Scott Turow
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This story is told in the first person by Pinky, a bisexual private investigator with a nail through her nose. She works for a local attorney who is defending the female police chief against allegations of sexually harassing male members of her force. As usual with Turow, the courtroom scenes are top-notch. The investigative stuff is more in the fantasy range, but generally fun overall. The author’s usual obsession with sex is apparent here, but somehow not as distasteful as usual. Pinky gets hung up on her neighbor, a mysterious fellow who is obviously up to no good, but his sexual prowess does not seem to be in doubt. Turow seems committed to diversity since we have black, white, Hmong, Chinese, Hispanic, and the whole rainbow flag of personnel here. Of course Pinky seems to be the only one who figures things out and is a rule-breaker, which gets her in hot spots, but, hey, this is a detective thriller, so you gotta expect that. The ending is too gadgety and implausible for my taste but overall I enjoyed the book.

One small cavil is the author’s misstatements of the law at times, which is surprising since he’s a Harvard Law School graduate. He even got something as basic as the Miranda rule wrong … twice. Near the beginning he says that if a cop rushes a suspect into a squad car and drives off without giving him Miranda warnings, anything the suspect says in the car can’t be used in court. Wrong. That’s only true if the officer questions him. Miranda is triggered by the combination of custody and questioning. Officers often wait until they get to the station and let the detectives do the questioning. Anything the suspect blurts out in the car is admissible. The second time, a suspect was being questioned by police and FBI without the warnings. He was told that he wasn’t under arrest “at this time”, but it was stated that it was obvious to everyone that if he tried to leave he would be arrested. That’s custody and that requires the warnings. There’s a lot of FBI procedure he gets wrong (I’m a retired FBI agent and legal advisor, so I know this stuff), like sending an expert out from the FBI lab, but I was happy to see that the FBI is portrayed as the good guys in this one.

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Those following the news know that a federal judge in Texas recently ruled that the abortion drug mifeprestone, currently in wide use in the U.S., was not properly approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and therefore is banned from the market nationwide. At the same time a federal judge in Washington state ruled that mifeprestone must remain available. These conflicting ruling caused the Texas case to go up on emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. There the court ruled that the drug can remain available for now without restrictions until the Court of Appeals in Texas considers the U.S. Government’s appeal of the lower court ruling.

This case really isn’t about the FDA or its approval process. As we all know, it’s a power play by the anti-abortion crowd, which includes the Texas judge, a Trump appointee who has been outspoken on the issue before being appointed. To be fair, they see any and all abortions to be baby murder and feel morally justified in any actions that stop it, even if that involves breaking the law, or ignoring democratic fairness. Polls show about 70% of Americans want mifeprestone to remain available. Abortion is legal in most states, but many so-called “red” states have been passing laws banning it altogether or with severe restrictions. These legislatures are comprised largely of older white men.

My wife has come up with a solution. She has suggested that some “blue” state should sue the FDA to ban Viagra and other erectile dysfunction pills. The same approval process was used by the FDA in both cases. When Viagra is thus banned, the courts can and should lump the cases together on appeal to decide the FDA’s powers and the court’s authority to overrule them. I believe that as soon as that happens, all those red states will drop their objections to mifeprestone.

The Listeners: A History of Wiretapping in the United States by Brian Hochman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hochman writes well and provides a mostly well-researched history of wiretapping in the U.S. He explains the fine points of the many Supreme Court rulings and other significant cases spanning the years. It took me back to law school and I learned a great deal. Many of the cases discussed were interesting in themselves, rather entertaining, in fact. Overall I enjoyed the book.

However, as a former FBI agent and Legal Adviser I found the book had two significant flaws. One is his assertion that federal courts “rubber-stamp most any wiretap application.” P.204. He cites statistics of a high rate of approval by judges as evidence. This overlooks the fact that such applications are scrutinized very thoroughly within the FBI itself. If a lawyer within the FBI and DOJ were to approve an application that was later denied, it would be a severe black mark, possibly career-ending. For this reason the internal controls are much more strict than the law requires. If an application makes it as far as a federal judge it is almost certainly a valid application with no justification for denial. Imagine how the author and media in general would react if such applications were regularly denied. The FBI would be excoriated for having a cavalier attitude to requirements of the law. For people like Hochman, if judges approve warrant applications, it’s a sign of lax judicial oversight, not of the FBI and police carefully doing their job properly. This demonstrates an anti-wiretap and anti-law enforcement bias on the author’s part.

The second flaw is the total lack of coverage of the largest category of wiretapping in law enforcement: consensual monitoring (CM). In the introduction, the author precisely defines wiretapping as “the act of intercepting or recording messages or voice conversations transmitted over electronic communications networks.” Perhaps he meant “and” rather than “or,” but that would be ironic since he ridicules lawmakers for that exact ambiguity in early laws on the subject. Assuming he meant what he wrote, the vast majority of wiretapping as he defines it, at least in my post-Hoover experience (1970s, 80s and 90s), consisted of recording with the consent of a party to the conversation. CM may or may not be considered intercepting, but it is certainly recording. This is legal without a warrant under federal law for anyone, and I think in all states when it is by, or in cooperation with, law enforcement. It is most often done by informants, co-conspirators cooperating to get lenient treatment, crime victims (e.g. kidnapping and extortion), witnesses, undercover agents, and even, as in Richard Nixon’s case, by the criminals themselves. One of my last CM cases was ordering the warrantless installation of a recorder on the telephone of the spouse of a kidnapped executive being held for ransom (with her consent, of course). The “wiretap” as Hochman calls it, was instrumental in leading to the rescue of the victim unharmed, capturing of the kidnappers, and recovering the ransom money. Hochman’s anti-wiretap diatribe seems to consider this an unconscionable violation of privacy. Oh, those poor kidnappers whose privacy was so badly violated; they didn’t get much privacy for the next twenty years doing hard time. By the way, they were planning to kill the victim once they got the money. I’d put a conservative estimate of the frequency of CM as upward of 20 times compared to that of Title III (court-ordered) recordings, perhaps ten times that. Wiretaps of both kinds are a necessary tool for protecting the public. In my 25+ years in the FBI I never saw any abuse of it. Hochman’s omission of CM is both indicative of bias, looking only for instances supporting his view of wiretapping as evil, and sloppy research by overlooking the vast majority of data in the field he purports to cover. Nevertheless, the book is a good read and makes intelligible to the lay reader what are some very technical points.

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The Arms Maker of Berlin by Dan Fesperman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the best book I’ve read all year. The suspense starts from page one and doesn’t let up all the way through. Nat, a historian, is shanghaied by the FBI and put on the trail of some missing documents from World War II about the White Rose, his academic specialty. His mentor, an old wartime OSS hand, dies suddenly and suspiciously and leaves him clues. But entering the mix is a dodgy blond woman researcher from Germany and a middle eastern man of dubious intentions. The scene shifts back to the wartime and we see Kurt Bauer, the teenage scion of a major industrialist, trying to survive the war while retaining the affections of his lady love. The time frame shifts back and forth throughout the book. There is double dealing and betrayal everywhere, both then and now.

The research that went into this novel is incredibly rich and the plot is nearly believable because of it. There is plenty of death and spycraft to satisfy the hardcore thriller buff and more than enough detail of Germany and Switzerland for those more inclined to appreciate ambience and history. Keeping track of all the players and trying to discern their true motivations is a challenge in itself. The sexual tension is muted but palpable in places. In short, the book has everything. Read it.

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We recently tried Fubo TV, a streaming service. They offered a free 7-day trail. We were interested because we have been having troubles with YouTube TV, the streaming service we use in lieu of cable TV. Both carry a full set of channels (ABC/NBC/CBS and the usual cable channels). In the end, we decided to remain with YouTube TV for now.

Our biggest complaint against YouTube TV (YTTV) is that it often freezes and locks up the TV. This happens when we rewind and then try to start again, such as when we missed something and want to review it. Sometimes we can turn it off and back on with the remote and it will be okay, but other times the TV is so frozen that it won’t even respond to the on off button. When that happens my wife or I have to get up and unplug the TV, wait a full minute for the capacitors to drain, and then replug it. This is obviously a serious annoyance.  Occasionaly YTTV won’t even play at all. I’ve complained repeatedly to YTTV support but got no help. So that’s why we tried Fubo.

I’m happy to say that Fubo did not have that problem. We could rewind and then play without a problem. The interface is also more intuitive and easier to navigate than YTTV. But there were a few difficulties with Fubo not present with YTTV. The biggest one – in fact the deal killer – was that it doesn’t support in-show closed captioning. In order to get closed captioning with Fubo you have to go to the TV’s settings and navigate to the Accommodations page and then to the captioning option and select on or off. If we always wanted captions on or always off, this wouldn’t be a problem, but there are shows we must have the on for, and others where they must be off, so we need to do this repeatedly. On my Samsung TV it takes 24 button pushes to make this change and then return to the show. 24! This not only is a big interruption, but for me it’s painful. I work the remote while my wife crochets, and I have arthritis in my thumbs. It literally hurts to do this. YTTV has captioning embedded in the app, so it’s only two clicks to turn it on or off.

Other significant differences include picture quality and ease of fast forwarding. Fubo’s picture was sometimes (not often) fuzzy, while YTTV did not have this problem. With YTTV when you fast forward the screen dims and there’s a progress bar at the bottom. As you move along the bar, a snapshot picture shows above the cursor so you know where you are and when to stop or go back. Fubo has a similar feature, but it only pops up on some shows and even then, only every few clicks, not every time. It’s much harder to find the exact spot you want with Fubo. Fubo also buffers for several seconds every time you fast forward or reverse. Things move faster with YTTV, With YTTV each click goes forward 15 seconds; with Fubo it’s 10 seconds. That means more painful pushes for my thumb on Fubo to go the same distance.

We’re still not entirely happy with YTTV and are looking for an alternative. I looked into Sling TV, but its only real advantage is a lower price. That comes with the absence of CBS, a channel we watch regularly. It also requires a special digital antenna. We live in a hilly area and don’t get good reception over the air (OTA) so I’m not going to take a chance on untested hardware that may or may not work, especially since one of our favorite channels is not included. The only other option out there that I know of is cable TV, but that had its problems, too, the biggest being twice the monthly cost or more for an equivalent package and a long-term contract. It also had a finicky DVR taking up counter space in our kitchen and not always working. YTTV and Fubo don’t require contracts and their recordings are done in the cloud. No hardware is required for them beyond normal household wi-fi.

Emily is one of the most popular names for girls in the United States, but its popularity is waning. See the chart below.

Why is this so? The New York Times has an article on this today (but it’s paywall blocked so I haven’t read it). But I did read a good article about it here Carnegie Mellon article. Emma grew more popular over time. What the article says, in brief is that there is a push-pull between parents’ desire to have a child fit in and the desire for them to feel unique or special. When Emily became too popular, parents switched to Emma which sounds enough like Emily to be seen as mainstream, but with a personal twist. It’s difficult to know exactly what appeals to each individual parent. This may be pure speculation, but it fits in with my own experience. My granddaughter’s name is Ember. Close enough to seem normal, not weird, but definitely unique.

I just updated my music playlists again. I moved out some things I was tired of, but, of course, didn’t delete them from my files. I may put them back in. Some the new ones I list below were in my playlists before, but got stale. Now they feel fresh again. Others I just discovered recently. Here are the additions:

• Hoodle Addle – Carl Sonny Leyland (but I edited out the vocals)
• I got a Gal – Leyland – vocals edited out
• Nordeast Rag – Pat Donohoe
• Many a Mile – Patrick Sky
• Vitality Rag – Ross MacLachlan
• Alton Blues [Take 2] – Barrelhouse Buck
• Hickory Smoke Rag – Trebor Tichenor
• Memories of You – Eubie Blake
• Do I Ever Cross Your Mind – Chet Atkins & Dollie Parton
• Island Style – Randy Lorenzo
• Scandal Walk – George Gershwin
• Butch Thompson – Recorded from Prairie Home Companion
• Chevy Chase – Eubie Blake

I hope you have fun checking these out.

The Dark Flood by Deon Meyer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The first 300 pages of this “thriller” is a snoozefest, but right about page 300 it turns into a real page turner. The plot is good if you have the patience to wait for it to develop.

Vaughn and Benny are two South African detectives with problems – one with weight and one with alcohol. The book begins with a wild gunfight that is totally irrelevant to the rest of the book. The two detectives are demoted over something that happened in a previous book and which is shamelessly promoted. They end up with lower rank in a sleepy, wealthy suburb working a missing person case. ZZZ. Meanwhile we meet Sandra, a young and comely realtor who is married to a professor on sabbatical. They’re in financial trouble, and since hubby is writing a novel, i.e. not bringing in any dough, she needs to make some money as they can’t meet the mortgage payment. A lecherous millionaire wants her to sell a wine estate he controls, but he tells her lasciviously, the commission “doesn’t come for free.” Thus starts the story of the real estate deal from hell. What does this have to do with Vaughn and Benny? Nothing until the last quarter of the book, but it does all come together in quite an entertaining way.

The text is peppered with Afrikaans words and slang expressions. This gives it an interesting flavor, but can be somewhat distracting. There is a glossary at the end, which I didn’t discover until I was almost at the end. I kept getting off on tangents when looking up the terms on my phone. For us Yanks with no familiarity with South African geography or anything else it’s a bit challenging to follow at times, but it also carries with it a slight exotic flavor. In the end, I enjoyed it. I don’t know where the title comes from since there is no flood, dark or otherwise. This is the seventh book in the series.

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