This morning, on NPR, I heard the on-air personality refer to Lou Cannon as "Ronald Reagan's former biographer." Are you only the author of a book while you are working on it? "Philip Roth, former author of American Pastoral, is the current author of a work whose title is still unknown." No, no, no, no.
At the store, express check-out lanes are reserved for those with "less than 10 items." That sounds wrong, doesn't it? To get in that line you should have in your basket fewer than ten items. If you're talking about things you can count, fewer. A smaller volume of something calls for less. I think that's the rule. Less water. Fewer molecules.
On a graver note, Amy Davidson takes on "unprosecutable," as in, from the Washington Post, fifty of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay
are too dangerous to release but are unprosecutable and should be held under the laws of war, according to recommendations by a Justice Department-led review of all detainee cases.
It seems clear that what the Post, by way of the Justice Department, means by "unprosecutable" is "unconvictable." For these prisoners could be prosecuted. But that isn't going to happen, because if it did, they would likely be acquitted. How is it that "unprosecutable" applies to these circumstances? It doesn't. But it makes it easier for the mind to glide over some rough spots.
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