National Journal articles from October 1999

National Journal archives from October 1999

WHY IT'S GETTING HARDER TO APPOINT JUDGES.(Statistical Data Included)
October 2, 1999... It's taking longer and longer--and getting harder and harder--to fill vacancies on the federal courts. Some new numbers tell part of the story: The average time for Senate action on judicial nominations rose from 38 days in 1977-78 (when both...

BOB DOLE, TOBACCO RACKETEER.
October 2, 1999... The news that former Sen. Bob Dole is a racketeer may come as a surprise to some, though perhaps not to Steve Forbes, who called him worse than that in the 1996 presidential campaign. Nonetheless, no other conclusion is possible, once you have...

How Different?(political parties in the US)
October 2, 1999... Patrick J. Buchanan grew up as a Republican, campaigned for Republican candidates in college, worked in the White House for two Republican Presidents, and twice ran for President himself--as a Republican So reliable was Buchanan in his support...

The New Conquerors.
October 2, 1999... The high-technology industry has long cultivated an image of political naivete, as if a freshly scrubbed Bill Gates had just arrived at Union Station carrying little more than his innocent dreams in a cardboard suitcase. The reality, of...

The Wal-Mart War.(Statistical Data Included)
October 2, 1999... When most Americans think of the military, they think of weapons--costly, massive, and destructive instruments of war. But that's only part of the Pentagon picture, and not necessarily the most important part. Even a $200 million fighter jet...

AN ELECTRICAL POWER STRUGGLE.(deregulating electric utilities)
October 2, 1999... During the 1980s, the House Energy and Commerce Committee was known for its epic clashes between Rep. John D. Dingell of Michigan, the panel's domineering chairman, and Rep. Henry A. Waxman of California, the liberal who headed the Health and...

PIVOTAL EVENTS IN CONGRESS.
October 2, 1999... The Great Wait for Spending Bills Appropriations bills, and little else of importance, occupied the House and Senate floors this week. Lawmakers were occasionally left waiting for conference committees to crank out compromise spending...

HOUSE-SENATE COMMITTEE ACTION.(Statistical Data Included)
October 2, 1999... OVERVIEW As the fiscal year ended this week, conference committees continued trying to churn out appropriations bills, and the long-delayed spending bill covering the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education departments finally...

Hill People.
October 2, 1999... House Self-described "Science Committee Hill rat" Michael L. Rodemeyer is back in a familiar maze--the House Science Committee, where he's now legislative director for the minority. He recently completed a yearlong tour as assistant...

SOME PRIVACY, PLEASE!(financial institutions' selling of customer data)
October 2, 1999... Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, says he was dumbfounded when a Victoria s Secret catalog turned up in the mailbox at his Washington condo. How could this glossy sales pitch featuring nubile women in provocative undergarments come to an address where...

THE STEPCHILD STEPS OUT.(Interview)(Statistical Data Included)
October 2, 1999... A funny thing happened last year when the Clinton Administration prepared an emergency supplemental bill to help counter a growing crisis in military readiness. Somewhere between the times President Clinton met with the chiefs of all of the...

WILL HILLARY LONG FOR BILL?(Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton)
October 2, 1999... Hillary Rodham Clinton said recently that she hoped for "a President named Al Gore," but one of the best things that could happen to her wobbly bid for a New York Senate seat might be if Bill Bradley turned out to be her party's presidential...

BANKING ON PAXON'S GOP CREDENTIALS.(Bill Paxon)
October 2, 1999... It sure didn't take long for former Rep. Bill Paxon, R-N.Y., to shake up Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, the home of Democratic superstars Robert S. Strauss and Vernon E. Jordan. At Paxon's behest, the blockbuster law and lobbying firm has...

GOING CORPORATE.
October 2, 1999... Before the '90s, New York City corporate lawyers did deals, and Washington lawyers did government work. The big bucks were in New York, in M & A (mergers and acquisitions), and nothing got the heart pumping and the meter running like a hostile...

VIEWS ON THE AMERICAN SCENE.(Statistical Data Included)
October 2, 1999... Things As They Are Considering how things are today, would you say that the country is generally headed in the right direction, or is it headed off in the wrong direction? (margin of error [+ or -] 3 percentage points; Opinion Dynamics...

People.
October 2, 1999... Media People After more than 15 years with ABC News--a tenure highlighted by his pioneering stories on AIDS in Africa and on racial and gender disparities in medical care--veteran health correspondent George Strait has moved to the...

A RADICAL APPROACH TO GLOBAL WARMING.(Statistical Data Included)
October 2, 1999... GAITHERSBURG, Md.--The beige ballroom in the bland suburban hotel held a sea of gray and balding heads. They belonged to scientists and engineers, who, by and large, were unfashionably dressed, many wearing ugly neckties or no neckties at all....

SHE-MALE NATION.(rise in men's magazines)
October 2, 1999... Here's a fun, new parlor game to play the next time you have a bunch of media sophisticates over to your place. Take several current men's and women's magazines and tear out pages at random. Throw them in a hat and pass it around. Everyone...

TACIT APPROVAL FOR MONTENEGRIN INDEPENDENCE.
October 2, 1999... Montenegro has been an oasis of relative calm in the smoldering Balkan states, shielded in some small measure from the brutal, fratricidal conflict next door between Serbia and Kosovo. In recent weeks, however, Montenegro's faltering but...

ABOUT A NOMINEE NAMED BUCHANAN.(Patrick Buchanan)
October 2, 1999... MEMORANDUM To: George W. Bush Al Gore Bill Bradley Re: Trade as a Campaign Issue Pat Buchanan's impending switch to the Reform Party and thus his likely presence in the presidential race through the general election may...

BUSH, GORE, AND THE BELTWAY EQUATION.(George W. Bush, Al Gore)
October 2, 1999... Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore have seen their presidential campaigns head in opposite directions this year. Bush's support from the party establishment has been so broad and deep that three of his Republican opponents...

Campaign Circuit.(2000 presidential campaign)
October 2, 1999... Bush and Buchanan (Continued) At least one top Jewish fund-raiser for the presidential campaign of Texas Gov. George W. Bush has raised concerns about Bush's comments on Pat Buchanan and his controversial new book, A Republic, Not an...

IN KANSAS, A PARTY DIVIDED.(Republican Party)
October 2, 1999... TOPEKA, KAN.--The recent decision by the Kansas school board to allow local districts to stop teaching evolution brought the state Republican Party's fratricidal wars to the attention of the rest of the country. But the battle between the...

IS GORE DESPERATE OR SAVVY? STAY TUNED.(Al Gore)
October 2, 1999... Al Gore is a changed man these days. Now that he's realized that former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley is a serious threat, Gore has made several tactical changes in his campaign. Gore announced on Wednesday that he's moving the base of his...

Hotline Extra.
October 2, 1999... Quayle Quiets Comics The presidential campaign lost another Republican candidate this week--Dan Quayle Maybe more tragically, late-night television talk-show hosts and political comedians lost a favorite target. Quayle, according to...

JOHN McCAIN'S LOOKING GOOD, BUT ...
October 2, 1999... NASHUA, N.H.--During a stretch when John McCain's campaign has been displaying fresh political energy, he made it official here the other day, formally declaring before a crowd of 500 or so that he is after the GOP's presidential nomination....

National Journal Will Publish Convention Daily Again in 2000.
October 2, 1999... Over 20,000 Papers To Be Delivered Each Morning Sunday through Thursday at each convention, Convention Daily will be distributed to more than 90,000 convention attendees, including lawmakers, delegates, journalists, party officials and...

POLS STAYING OUT OF HARM'S WAY.(US military intervention)
October 2, 1999... President Clinton likes to say that the United States has become "the world's indispensable nation." A fine-sounding phrase, but what does it mean? It sounds like a call to intervention: Unless the United States acts, nothing happens. Does...

WHEN ABORTION LAWS DEFY COMMON SENSE.
October 9, 1999... Any parent who has rejoiced at seeing a sonogram showing the image of a second-trimester fetus knows how much it looks like a baby. And any parent who has seen a baby blossom into a vibrant teenage girl can imagine the agony of hearing her...

THE PAN-AMERICAN GREENBACK: COMING SOON?
October 9, 1999... Recent turmoil in the global economy has led governments in poor countries to a conclusion that may, in short order, have big consequences for the United States. The failure of "pegged" currencies in much of the Third World has caused many to...

A Return to Isolationism.
October 9, 1999... REPUBLICANS ONCE PRIDED THEMSELVES ON BOOSTING DEFENSE BUDGETS AND EXERTING U.S. INFLUENCE ABROAD. NOW THEY BOAST ABOUT NOT TRAVELING OVERSEAS. WHAT WOULD EISENHOWER AND REAGAN THINK? When three Republican Senators called a press conference...

Open Secrets.(medical records and privacy rights)
October 9, 1999... FEDERAL LAW DOES MORE TO PROTECT THE PRIVACY OF YOUR VIDEO RENTALS THAN IT DOES TO KEEP YOUR MEDICAL RECORDS CONFIDENTIAL. CONGRESS WAS SUPPOSED TO DEAL WITH THAT--BUT SO FAR IT HASN'T. In 1996, when Congress approved legislation making it...

Slide-Rule Justice.(independent panel to review scientific evidence in court)
October 9, 1999... HOW ONE JUDGE EMBRACED SCIENCE TO HELP HIM DETERMINE WHETHER SILICONE BREAST IMPLANTS CAUSE CHRONIC DISEASE--AND SHOOK UP THE LEGAL SYSTEM IN THE PROCESS You've heard the mutterings about American trial law: junk science in the courtroom....

FOR THE GOP, AN OMNIBUS IS OMINOUS.(government spending bill)
October 9, 1999... For months, the conventional wisdom on Capitol Hill has been that the legislative year will conclude the same way it did last year--with the passage of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending bundled into one back-breaking, and...

THE SENATE GOES BALLISTIC.(Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty)
October 9, 1999... If you need proof of Capitol Hill's across-the-board breakdown in bipartisanship and civility, then look no further than the mud pies that have been thrown across the chamber in recent days as the Senate has struggled to schedule--and then to...

PIVOTAL EVENTS IN CONGRESS.(October 1999)
October 9, 1999... House Passes Bipartisan Health Care Bill After rejecting three GOP alternatives, the House on Oct. 7 passed, 275-151--with 68 Republicans voting in favor--the bipartisan patients' rights proposal sponsored by Reps. Charlie Norwood, R-Ga.,...

HOUSE-SENATE COMMITTEE ACTION.
October 9, 1999... * OVERVIEW A relative calm settled in at House and Senate committees this week, as appropriations battles shifted to the floors and the backrooms of the Capitol. A bipartisan education bill slowly took shape in the House Education and the...

Hill People.(Capitol Hill)
October 9, 1999... Senate Attorney Michael M. Baylson is taking a break from private practice to help clear the cloud of suspicion now swirling around the Justice Department. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., has just appointed Baylson, 60, to head the Senate...

BOEHNER VS. MCDERMOTT.(Representatives John A. Boehner and Jim McDermott)
October 9, 1999... The controversial inquiry in 1995 and 1996 into alleged ethics violations by then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.--and the resulting House reprimand of him in 1997--is history, even for most congressional insiders. So it may be surprising...

AT AID, TWO KINDS OF WORKERS.(United States Agency for International Development)
October 9, 1999... Imagine you're a highly trained agent of the U.S. government, paid to plunge into dangerous countries at a moment's notice. Your mission: to oversee the spending of millions of dollars to promote free enterprise and democracy in places with...

SCHOOL REFORMS: NOW THE HARD PART.
October 9, 1999... PALISADES, N.Y.--On the first night of the National Education Summit last week, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and National Education Association President Robert F. Chase hit it off over filets of salmon and beef. So much so that after dinner, Chase...

THE PRESIDENT AND THE PRESS.
October 9, 1999... It is not surprising, given the level of etiquette in this town, that at a South Lawn barbecue for the press corps thrown by President Clinton, one of the guests would lecture him on the need for more press conferences. Nor was it surprising,...

INVASION OF THE NUMBERS CRUNCHERS.(taxation of electronic commerce)
October 9, 1999... The high-stakes battle over Internet taxes has become more of a duel over data than a shouting match. The Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce--which Congress established last year after approving a three-year moratorium on new Internet...

SAY IT AIN'T SO, FLO.(proposed Medicare prescription drug plan)
October 9, 1999... The Clinton Administration's effort to provide a prescription drug benefit to Medicare beneficiaries has sparked a battle with the pharmaceutical industry and among various seniors' groups over the proposal. It has also triggered a fight about...

FROM THE K STREET CORRIDOR.(Washington D.C. lobbyists)
October 9, 1999... The Green Wave A coalition of environmental groups intends to spend $8 million this fall on an advertising campaign describing the dangers of global warming. The ads will run on 200 television stations, in major city newspapers, and in...

NO PLACE FOR A YELLOW BRICK ROAD.(theme park on polluted military site)
October 9, 1999... OVERLAND PARK, Kan.--The vision is compelling: A Wizard of Oz theme park materializing on the Kansas prairie near Kansas City, where the shuttered Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant once operated. Visitors strap themselves into chairs in Auntie...

RIDING TO THE RESCUE, WITH RESTRAINT.(military intervention in international trouble spots)
October 9, 1999... Just as CNN's reach has become global, so have public demands that democratic governments "do something" about ethnic cleansing and other human rights abuses, whether the offending country likes it or not. Militaries in countries as far apart...

ARGENTINA HAS A CAMPAIGN UNDER WAY, TOO.(presidential election)
October 9, 1999... BUENOS AIRES--Along the broad boulevards and crowded sidewalks of this Argentine capital, colorful posters tout rival presidential candidates, and portenos, as the city's residents are known, forcefully debate the merits of their favorite...

Poll Readings: VIEWS ON CONGRESSIONAL PERFORMANCE.
October 9, 1999... Lawmakers at Work Do you approve or disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job? (margin of error [+ or -] 3 percentage points; Gallup Organization Inc.) 1 /17/99 9/26/99 APPROVE 50% ...

People.(politics and media)
October 9, 1999... Interest Groups Peggy A. Lewis is laboring in a new locale: The former deputy assistant secretary of Labor for public affairs has shifted into the arena of liberal activism. She's now stationed at the Washington-based Children's Defense...

HOW GORE'S PREPPING FOR BRADLEY.(presidential nomination debates between Vice President Al Gore and former Senator Bill Bradley)
October 9, 1999... "Thrilla in Vanilla" is how comedian Jay Leno describes his expectations for the debate bouts between two sometimes somnolent Democrats, Vice President Al Gore and former Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey. Pay-per-view excitement the debates may...

Murphy: It's McCain.(media consultant Mike Murphy; presidential candidate Senator John McCain)
October 9, 1999... Republican media consultant Mike Murphy is signing on with the presidential campaign of Arizona Sen. John McCain. According to McCain Communications Director Dan Schnur, Murphy will serve as a senior adviser whose "primary concentration is...

SENATE DEMOCRATS AND WISHFUL THINKING.(gaining Senate majority in 2000 election)
October 9, 1999... Senate Democrats are once again crowing that a majority is within their reach. And things are breaking their way. In recent weeks, Delaware Gov. Thomas R. Carper, a Democrat, decided to challenge GOP Sen. William V. Roth Jr., while former New...

Hotline Extra.(political news)
October 9, 1999... First-States Feud It's common for presidential candidates to slug it out in early-primary states like Iowa and New Hampshire. But now the states themselves are slugging it out. In recent days, Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack has reacted angrily to...

ABOUT AL'S MANY CHALLENGES.(Vice President Al Gore)
October 9, 1999... BEDFORD, N.H.--Al Gore's latest initiatives are supposed to have a simple purpose. You don't have to be a political scientist to know that his decision to press for a series of debates with Bill Bradley, his only challenger for the Democratic...

WHY SILICON VALLEY MATTERS MORE.(presidential election)
October 9, 1999... Last week, Texas Gov. George W. Bush and former Sen. Bill Bradley, D-N.J., held fund-raisers in California's Silicon Valley. Both of them are staking claims on the high-technology territory that Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore have been...

Corrections.(Correction Notice)
October 16, 1999... A recent item (10/9/99, p. 2911) about lobbying over the Caribbean Basin Initiative incorrectly stated that a letter sent by the CBI Coalition to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., urged approval of a House Ways and Means Committee...

THE SHAME OF THE RONNIE WHITE VOTE.
October 16, 1999... The Democratic spin is that the Republican Senate's Oct. 5 party-line vote, 54-45, to reject Ronnie L. White's nomination for a U.S. District Court seat in Missouri was tinged with racism. At the very least, as President Clinton put it, the...

A YOUNG MAN, A DEMON, AND A VIRUS.
October 16, 1999... On Aug. 30, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the results of the first study of HIV infection rates among young urban men, ages 15 to 22, who have sex with men. The news was not good. In the seven major cities studied, 7...

Rosty Revisited.(US congressional leader Dan Rostenkowski)
October 16, 1999... THE STORY OF A CHICAGO POL'S RISE AND FALL, AND THE CHANGING POLITICAL CULTURE OF THE HOUSE IN WHICH HE SERVED. EXCERPTS FROM A NEW BIOGRAPHY OF A MASTER LEGISLATOR From day one, Dan Rostenkowski was content to be a workhorse. He was a...

An Enemy No More.(Statistical Data Included)
October 16, 1999... THEY MAY INVOKE RONALD REAGAN'S NAME, BUT TODAY'S REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL HOPEFULS LACK HIS ANTI-GOVERNMENT ZEAL. THEY WANT TO USE GOVERNMENT, NOT DISMANTLE IT. This wasn't the Gary Bauer of political lore. Maybe it was because he was...

A ROTTEN NEST EGG?(Statistical Data Included)
October 16, 1999... Long ago, in the days before a booming economy and growing labor shortages, corporate America handed out comfortable pensions, along with the proverbial gold watches, to long-serving employees as they headed off to the golf courses at age 65....

A POTENTIAL PEACEMAKER IN THE TRADE WARS.(Brief Article)
October 16, 1999... Mounted on a wall plaque in the office of Democratic Rep. Sander M. Levin is a universal machine joint, a gizmo typically used to fasten an engine to an automobile frame. Levin shows off this hardware, purchased in his hometown of Royal Oak,...

PIVOTAL EVENTS IN CONGRESS.
October 16, 1999... A Mushroom Cloud Over the Democrats The Senate's defeat of the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty on Oct. 13 was a significant setback not only for arms control and President Clinton, but also for the Senate Democrats' strategy of...

HOUSE-SENATE COMMITTEE ACTION.
October 16, 1999... * OVERVIEW Appropriations fights still loom over the Capitol, but congressional committees turned their legislative thoughts to matters of life, death, and art. Democrats won a victory for states' rights in the Internet age, while education...

Hill People.(Brief Article)
October 16, 1999... Senate Trading places: Ivan Schlager, the minority staff director for the Senate Commerce Committee, is swapping his Capitol Hill job for a turn in the private sector. He'll serve as counsel in the Washington office of the New York...

FOLLOW THE LEADER? FORGET IT.(Brief Article)
October 16, 1999... A year ago, two little-known figures--a wealthy North Carolina trial lawyer with no political experience and an even-wealthier Illinois state legislator--were on the brink of quite an accomplishment: capturing U.S. Senate seats by defeating...

STILL NO DEFENSE AGAINST HEDGE FUNDS.(Statistical Data Included)
October 16, 1999... What the Titanic was to ocean liners, Long Term Capital Management was to hedge funds: a huge, high-profile, state-of-the-art innovator for the rich and well-connected, whose captains and passengers alike never dreamed it could take on so much...

BEHIND THE TEST-BAN FIASCO.
October 16, 1999... It's hard to imagine a bigger contretemps, unless one thinks back to, say, last winter and the Senate's poisonous engagement over impeachment. This time around, what started out as an arms control question somehow devolved into a partisan game...

COUNTING ON K STREET.(federal election fund raising)(Statistical Data Included)
October 16, 1999... As Congress slouches toward adjournment and campaign 2000 heats up, many of Washington's lobbying elite are being deluged with requests for fund-raising help. Campaign committees, presidential candidates, and members of Congress are putting the...

A MEGA-MERGER MAKES WAVES.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
October 16, 1999... Not since Hill and Knowlton Inc. gobbled up Gray and Co. in 1986 has K Street seen anything quite like the sale of the Cassidy Cos., Washington's largest independent public affairs group, by Shandwick International, the London-based public...

HEADYJOURNALISTS.COM.
October 16, 1999... Journalists are cops--cops of a rarefied sort, but cops just the same. They cruise around watching for deviations from the social or ethical norm, issuing frequent citations, i.e., news stories. Since they are free to decide which norms matter...

STOPPING POT, ONE CUP AT A TIME.(Molalla, Oregon)
October 16, 1999... Living up to its national reputation as a live-and-let-live kind of place, Oregon has long had a liberal tilt to its drug laws and enforcement policies. Twenty-five years ago, the state became the first in the nation to decriminalize marijuana....

IT'S THE OFF-SEASON FOR TRADE DEALS.
October 16, 1999... SANTIAGO, CHILE--In the heat of the 1992 presidential campaign, George Bush proposed a free-trade agreement with Eastern Europe. It was quickly dismissed as a transparently crass attempt to woo ethnic voters in, among other places, Detroit and...

People.
October 16, 1999... Image-Makers After only a year with the firm, Torie Clarke, the president of the Washington issue advertising firm Bozell/Eskew, is off to Hill & Knowlton's Washington shop to become executive managing director. Clarke said she had...

THE EDUCATION OF W., COURTESY OF PPI.(George W. Bush, Progressive Policy Institute)(includes related article)
October 16, 1999... Looking for "compassionate conservative" ideas? Try the Democratic Leadership Council. It seems to be working for George W. Bush. An education proposal Bush outlined Oct. 5--consolidating 60 federal education programs into five--cribs...

BRADLEY, GORE, AND VOLVO VOTERS.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
October 16, 1999... Why is Bill Bradley ahead of Al Gore in polls of likely voters in next year's Democratic presidential primary in New Hampshire, but behind him in national surveys? It's not just because the former New Jersey Senator has devoted more attention...

A LOOK AT VULNERABLE HOUSE GOP INCUMBENTS.(Republican legislators)
October 16, 1999... With their slim 222-213 majority in the House, the Republicans don't have much of a margin for error in 2000. The conventional wisdom is that they're most at risk in open-seat races; that's because 16 Republican incumbents have declined to run...

Hotline Extra.
October 16, 1999... Underdog Day Afternoon At the Iowa Democratic Party's annual Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner in Des Moines on Oct. 9, the media agreed that Vice President A1 Gore came across looking like a more confident candidate. As Fox News Channel's...

A NEW, IMPROVED AL GORE?(Brief Article)
October 16, 1999... DES MOINES, IOWA--The decision by Vice President A1 Gore to come out swinging against former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley at last weekend's Iowa Democratic Jefferson-Jackson Dinner was a big hit with the heavily pro-Gore crowd, which cheered...

WHY HEALTH CARE'S BACK.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
October 16, 1999... The House and Senate have now passed separate versions of health care reform legislation. Meanwhile, on the campaign trail, A1 Gore and Bill Bradley have laid out their own proposals. All the recent attention ensures that health care has...

THE SPY THAT CAME IN FROM THE CLOUDS.
October 23, 1999... SAN DIEGO--It's the wing--impossibly long and white and fragile-looking--that draws your eyes to this new flying machine that is inspiring a revolution in aerial warfare. At 116 feet, double the wingspan of a typical U.S. fighter aircraft,...

PRAIRIES NOT SO LONESOME ANYMORE.(rural Internet service)
October 23, 1999... TECHNOLOGY In remote upper South Dakota, grazing cattle easily outnumber the 2,000 customers of the CamWal Electric Cooperative. With only one customer for every mile of power line, this sparsely populated territory of the northern prairie...

PRODDING POLITICIANS IN SILICON VALLEY.(Statistical Data Included)
October 23, 1999... LOCAL GOVERNMENT NEAR SAN JOSE, Calif.--Sitting here in traffic, hemmed in by miles and miles of stationary automobiles, it occurs to me that rush hour is definitely not the time to reflect on the wonders of life in Silicon Valley. It is...