GroupThinkTank

The Longshots Get The Freedom To Speak

2007-12-20T02:29:00.000-05:00

"Who is Ron Paul?" bumper stickers have started popping up in Ithaca and on the Cornell Campus. Frankly, all I know about him is that he's "the libertarian GOP candidate." And frankly, until Super Tuesday I couldn't care less about the presidential candidates, most of whom are more whack-job than fit for the job. But this interview of Ron Paul on Neil Cavuto (FNC) is a refreshing breath of air and, well, frank.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqPhrqllHzY

(The retreat by Cavuto at the end is also good viewing.)

best ads yet

2007-11-19T18:05:00.000-05:00

of course ron paul remains my favorite conservative nutcase. but i gotta give credit where credit is due, and mike huckabee is, at least, consistently the most fun. check it.

Fredo, Fredo, Fredo.

2007-08-30T15:39:00.000-04:00

"I will no longer represent only the White House; I will represent the United States of America and its people. I understand the differences between the two roles."

- Alberto Gonzales, testifying at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee in January 2005.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/28/washington/28gonzales.html

How we lost Afghanistan.

2007-08-12T13:56:00.001-04:00

When reading this, imagine the sound of my head exploding.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/world/asia/12afghan.html

Um, just because I have a self-interested memory, and because I remember discussing this with y'all -- when I was expressing qualms about the War in Afghanistan, I acknowledged the need to go after Al Queda, but was worried that we were too invested in nation-destroying and not enough in nation-building. Is this right? Or am I being too charitable about what was essentially a knee-jerk antiwar response?

Oh, and while we're talking about Al Queda, what did everybody think of the Obama Pakistan flap?

How soon we forget.

2007-06-29T22:55:00.001-04:00

In Jan. 1971, Congress quietly repealed the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution that gave Lyndon Johnson authority to escalate the war in Vietnam.

An editorial that month in TIME Magazine said that the resolution's significance in history "may be not only that it further embroiled the U.S. in Vietnam and raised loud voices of dissent at home, but that it probably marked the last time that the U.S. Congress would ever hand the President such a heady carte blanche with so little care."

Hey A-Abbott!

2007-06-04T03:39:00.000-04:00

I wrote this sketch at for a Christmas show at the physics department my first year at Cornell. As we've seen more action here lately, I came across it again tonight and thought I'd post it. It's meant to be read as Abbott and Costello's Who's On First routine.

TA: Students, today in class we’re going to discuss yesterday’s experiment. -- What went on in this lab?

Student: What do you mean?

TA: What did you do in this lab?

Student: Lab 3.

TA: And what did you do in lab 3?

Student: We measured the result.

TA: Assume I’ve never seen this lab before, and you were going to explain it to me. What would you say?

Student: (pause) Well, it was all about getting the slope.

TA: The slope of what?

Student: The slope of the plot. We plotted some points.

TA: I know that, but assume I’ve never seen this lab. How would you explain what you did?

Student: We got the wires and measured at each point.

TA: Measured what?

Student: What the meter said.

TA: (pause) Look, you’re report tells me nothing. This could be an experiment about baking cakes. What’s this number here?

Student: 5.

TA: Yes, I KNOW it’s 5. What did it measure?

Student: The slope. Of the line.

TA: In lab, you ran an experiment, you plotted some points. What was the result?

Student: (jokingly) We finished the experiment. We went home.

TA: (frustrated, patiently) If I was a total stranger, how would you explain this lab to me?

Student: You just connect it up—

TA: Connect WHAT up?

Student: The circuit.

TA: Why?

Student: I’m sorry I don’t know what you’re asking.

TA: I’m asking, what is this lab all about?

Student: We, we plugged in the wires and got 5.

TA: 5 what?

Student: The slope.

TA: WHAT was the slope?

Student: 5.

TA: Yesterday, I saw you take your wires and hook them up to the power supply.

Student: Yes.

TA: We called the voltage y and the current x.

Student: Of course, we wrote it in our lab just like you said. Voltage y

TA: And current x.

Student: Exactly.

TA: Then what?

Student: We divided the voltage by the current to find the slope.

TA: What was the slope for?

Student: It was 5.

TA: Okay, the slope was 5. And Why?

Student: That was four.

TA: What?

Student: Huh? Y, it was 4.

TA: I’m not asking about Y. The slope. What was it for?

Student: I just told you it was 5!

TA: You plotted the data, you calculated the slope. What was your point?

Student: I was starting to wonder if you had one.

TA: From the plot. The slope is 5. Y is four. You must have had an ex?

Student: What does that matter?

TA: I’m curious.

Student : Why?

TA: No, not why. Ex. Do you have an ex?

Student: Are you looking to date me or something?

TA: What?

Student: Huh? I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re asking.

TA: Oookay, from the beginning. Where did the plot come from?

Student: We drew it.

TA: From what?

Student: From the experiment.

TA: The experiment about what?

Student: Lab 3! We had Voltage Y. We had Current X. What is it you want to know?

TA: Why are you giving me so much resistance?!

Student: Resistance? That’s what the slope is!

TA: (expires)

McSweeny's Candidates

2007-05-15T10:25:00.000-04:00

Democrats

Republicans

Predictably, the first field is stronger than the second. Enjoy!

the internet! mapped!

2007-05-04T02:10:00.001-04:00

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/online_communities.png

too good.

Mike Gravel's "national initiative"

2007-04-30T18:47:00.000-04:00

I'm personally opposed to Gravel's "national initiative" idea for citizen-initiated lawmaking on a nationwide scale.

Here in California, the popular initiative system has led to some of the most ill-conceived, poorly thought-out and downright dangerous laws being passed. People vote based on slanted TV commercials that distort and outright lie about the issues at stake and most don't bother to read the text of the proposed laws before they vote. Thankfully, some of the worst have been overturned by the courts.

Side note to Russo: Gravel apparently studied economics at Columbia in the 1950s and was a cabbie in Manhattan to pay his way through school.

Al Qaeda: Pioneering Anti-Alien-Invasion Tactics Since 1988

2007-04-26T22:28:00.000-04:00

I know, two posts in forty minutes. But had to pass this along:

"One thing that popped into my mind was that the only way Americans would be in an asymmetric war on the other side would be if we were attacked by aliens. Everyone chuckled, but then after a minute the comments started setting in," Taylor said.

"Then we really got to talking about it and we thought, well, you know, we really might need this contingency plan anyway," Taylor said.

Failure to prepare may mean mankind will have to dig in and fight with improvised weapons and hit-and-run tactics, much the same way Islamic extremists have battled the U.S. military in Iraq, Taylor said.

"You'd have to create an insurgency, a mujahideen-type resistance," Taylor said. "The insurgents know how to win this war against us. It also tells us that if we were attacked by aliens, this is our best defense."

Link

Insert obligatory joke about the aliens lacking an exit strategy and blaming the insurgency on those fucking Aldebarans.

Erudite Spam

2007-04-26T21:59:00.000-04:00

I don't ordinarily get all worked up about spam, but 1) it's the middle of finals and I'm easily distractable and 2) it doesn't get much better than this:

organization BLOOM Pay girl swelled limit them, my friend.THE JURORS (All deep cooing right their brought heads turned to his voice.) successful queue ZOE tenderly shade (Gaily.) O, my dictionary.(She fades from tin harmony his beat side. among Followed by the whining And comb at the sound of spread the sacring damp price bell, headed by aBLOOM (In withstand youth's misspell smart suffer stir blue
Oxford suit with whit taurine fall THE NAMELESS ONE interest (Snarls.) Arse terrible over tip. Hundred include bled PADDY misty knot LEONARD Thank you. THE JURORS (All sleep their heads bury tumble bit lowered in assent.) Mo shine tasteless THE GAFFER (Crouches, his decorate swore voice twisted in his sno To be list discovery short this passage was dirty year scarce by when MasterAdiutorium spell request nostrum knot month in nomine Domini. wool RUDOLPH withstood Once! Mud shallow upset head to foot. Cut your hand open Que worn admire poison fecit cause clum et terram. THE approve thundering LOITERERS (Guffaw stand with cleft understood palates.) O jays! alive NOSEY grass FLYNN Can I raise a mortgage calm

Sadly, I deleted the email without looking at it once I saw it was spam, so this is all I have of it -- but the Putty screen was still open after I quit out, and since it stayed there for a moment I suddenly had an inkling of what it was. Digging the dead-tree version out, I was able to confirm; this is bits of the Circe section of Ulysses, cut up so they're even less coherent. I know it's just a bot slicing away at whatever texts are freely available on the net, but still. Made my night.

Also, I was just looking at the NYT write-up of the Dem presidential candidate debate, and realized that there was this Mike Gravel guy running who I had never heard of. Am I being slack-jawed, or is this seriously someone people know about? Also, apparently he wants Congress to pass legislation "'making it a felony' for the administration to say in Iraq." I have no idea what that means, but consider: would that be a bill of attainder?

Energy Consumption broken down by Fuel, Effect, and Waste

2007-02-19T19:25:00.000-05:00

I'm taking a Science For the Mass Media course here at Cornell, and today in "lab" we were presented by a very interesting flow-graph from Science Magazine. The researchers break down the output of the U.S. energy inputs. I spent about forty-five minutes writing a draft of an editoral, which I'll also post here. I'll warn you now that some of the statistics I used are estimates and shoddy (they're marked by footnote), but the graph itself is well done and contains some very interesting information. (Who knew combustion engines produced between 20% and 50% of our energy waste?) Anyway, here it is. You may need a Science subscription or a school account to pull up the article.

Link to Science.

Editoral:

Back in the days of heightened anxiety over domestic terrorism, a series of faux-public service announcements directed towards complacent SUV drivers implied that their gas guzzlers increase U.S. spending on oil from the middle east, which in turn supplies funding to terrorists.

While I wrote these announcements off as fear-mongering from camps opposing the use of fossil fuels (I still do), they correctly highlight the overwhelming flow of energy imports that find their way to the tanks of American vehicles.

Surprisingly, 44% of U.S. total oil output goes directly into light-duty vehicles like cars, pick-up trucks, and SUVs. Additionally, another 25% of total oil consumption is by freight transport and aircraft. Of this 70% of total U.S. oil consumption, 55% (footnote1) is imported from foreign nations.

The level of this dependence on imported oil dwarfs our dependence in all other areas of the energy sector. Electricity generation, the largest wholesale consumer of fuels, depends almost entirely on domestic fuels. Consumption by industry, because of its use of domestic sources of natural gas, relies on only 25% (footnote2) on foreign sources.

Aircraft, automobiles, freighters, and gas guzzling SUVs are the largest sources of foreign energy consumption. Their effect on U.S. foreign policy and the environment is pronounced.

There is, however, room for improvement. Of the oil consumed by aircraft, automobiles, freighters, and gas guzzling SUVs, 74% of this energy potential is lost as waste, and these sources are the largest bulk contributor of wasted energy in the United States.

Industrial, commercial, and residential consumers burn oil to almost 80% efficiency (4 out of 5 units used effectively), but the poor performance of smaller scale combustion engines results in the effective use of only 1.5 out of every 5 units. The remainder is lost, primarily as heat. The amount of heat lost by these sources is two and a half times larger than all the energy distributed by all the power lines in the United States.

The upside to these dour numbers is that the development of energy efficient, electric, or hybrid vehicles stands out as an area of conservation research with the most to gain.

(Another area of potentially fruitful energy research would be the development of more efficient electricity generation, transmission, and distribution, which produces twice as much waste as it does usable energy.)

I Am Published

2007-02-10T18:35:00.000-05:00

Shameless self-promotion is never a pretty thing, but my student Note was just published in the Columbia Journal of Law and Social Problems, and I thought that I'd pass along the link since the topic might be of some interest (it's not in Lexis quite yet, alas). The federal Freedom of Information Act gives representatives of the news media quicker, cheaper access to government documents than to the general public, and my article looks at the caselaw and regs to determine whether bloggers would qualify, then outlines a proposed approach to the challenges bloggers pose to the current FOIA system. The Journal's homepage, from which you can download a .pdf of my Note, is here. It's about 10,000 words -- they stretch it out over 45 pages, but the print is big.

This is a Russo-heavy issue of the Journal, actually, as I edited the other two Notes as well. The one on property disputes in the Episcopal Church is pretty interesting, dealing with a problem in the jurisprudence of religion that doesn't get a lot of lay attention, namely, how a court figures out how to divvy up church property when a church decides to split from its diocese. The other article, which deals with federal reimbursement of state Medicaid expenditures on Native Americans, might be a bit wonky, though. But if you have nothing better to do with your life on a Saturday night, hey, it's all free.

Doctor says you're going home today, Mr. X

2007-02-09T21:00:00.000-05:00

According to a story in the LA Times, "a paraplegic man wearing a soiled hospital gown and a broken colostomy bag was found crawling in a gutter in skid row in Los Angeles on Thursday after allegedly being dumped in the street by a Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center van."

Since I began volunteering on Skid Row several months ago there have been numerous cases of what police call "homeless dumping" where hospitals abandon indigent patients on Skid Row when their insurance or other funds run out, but leaving a helpless paraplegic to crawl in the gutter half-naked sinks to an all-time low.

What has become of us as a nation? Does the ruthless drive for the Almighty Dollar trump even the slightest shred of human sympathy for others? I personally hope he sues their Presbyterian derrieres into oblivion, I have no doubt there are lawyers in L.A. who would take his case with relish. In a just world, he would end up owning the hospital. Of course, in a just world, this would never have happened.

Gonzales Says Something Very True

2007-01-18T15:00:00.000-05:00

From the NYT:

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, pressed the attorney general for his views on the extent of Congress’s authority to block a troop increase. Mr. Gonzales replied that the Constitution clearly gives Congress and the executive branch roles in time of war. “And at the far end, you’ve got the power of Congress to declare war,” Mr. Gonzales said. “I think at the other end, you got the core, sort of commander-in-chief authority to say take that hill. And then things get kind of murky.”

This is actually about the most accurate thing you can say about the question of executive vs. legislative authority when it comes to war, and I found it somewhat refreshing to see a Bush administration official not arguing that ZOMG TEH EXECUTIVE CLEARLY ROXZORS U for a change.

Was that bitchy? I think it was. Really, I didn't mean it to be that backhanded -- these are hard constitutional questions, and acknowledging that up front makes democracy go much better.

By the way, how nice is it that the NYT now has a nice little "permalink" button? Pretty nice, he replied anti-rhetorically.

NSC-68

2007-01-06T11:42:00.000-05:00

I've been reading NSC-68 (April 1950), the report from Paul Nitze, arguably the Wolfowitz of the 1950s, to Truman that became the blueprint for the Cold War. I had heard of it but didn't realize until last night that it was available online. (I love teh internets.) In the section characterizing the intent of the Soviet Union is this little nugget:

"The fundamental design of those who control the Soviet Union and the international Communist movement is to retain and solidify their absolute power, first in the Soviet Union and second in the areas now under their control. In the minds of the Soviet leaders, however, achievement of this design requires the dynamic extension of their authority and the ultimate elimination of any effective opposition to their authority."

If you read the neocon manifesto Rebuilding America's Defenses (September 2000) from the Project for the New American Century, they would have us become exactly what the Cold Warriors most feared the Soviets would become. Ironic. We've learned so little as a nation in 50 years.

Or perhaps we have. It's interesting that Henry Kissinger (who with H-bomb promoter Edward Teller was the inspiration for the Dr. Strangelove character) was calling in the Wall Street Journal yesterday for the abolition of nuclear weapons. Vietnam-era Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and NSC-68 author Nitze did similar turn-arounds in the 1990s. I suppose the neocons would consider all those guys traitors.

Diabolical duo

2006-12-27T09:23:00.000-05:00

I didn't realize until I read Ford's obit this morning that Rumsfeld was Ford's secretary of defense and Cheney was Ford's White House chief of staff.

*shudder*

Unbefuckingleivable

2006-12-13T17:48:00.000-05:00

Pray it was a minor stroke. Not just for the Senator, but because we may have just lost the Senate. [link]

"You're Like a Slovenian Dennis Leary!"

2006-12-12T13:37:00.000-05:00

I am neck-deep in studying for finals at the moment; as a result, my desire to procrastinate builds up, yet I don't give it vent, until it bursts out in sharp, swift idiosyncracies, like a medicated jackrabbit. Or like this.

That first sentence was meant to convey that I doubt this is really, like, "funny" in an objective sense, but I've been unable to read my voting rights notes without giggling for the past half hour. I don't think it quite managed to get that across, sadly.

The Supremes and the Environment

2006-11-30T14:42:00.000-05:00

Howdy all. I am moderately interested in Massachusetts v. The EPA. The gist of the case is that the EPA was getting geared up to regulate CO2 emissions, then Bush came around and the EPA decided that:
1) The EPA does not have the right to regulate CO2 because it is not an "air pollutant" that may "reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare" (the legal requirement).
2) That even if they did have the power to regulate CO2, they wouldn't because there is still uncertainty (insert comment about uncertainty not preventing us from invading Iraq).

Slate has a Supreme Court blogger named Dahlia Lithwick whom I generally like. She wrote about what happend in the courtroom:

Slate reporting on what's going on in the courtroom.

Here's a summary:
1. John Roberts hates the environment and doesn't believe in global warming.
2. Scalia and Alito are pretty content with the argument that we can't stop global warming all by ourselves, so why even try?
3. Clarence Thomas is either mute, bored or asleep, since he hasn't said anything. Assumedly having both Alito and Scalia to vote with means that there's even less chance that he will get confused and vote liberal.
4. Stevens seems pretty ready to trust the enviromental scientists at the word
5. Souter and Bryer seem to pretty much buy into the commong sense idea that we should accept our best analysis of global warming and do what we can to prevent it.
6. Ginsburg has not said anything, but we can probably assume that she jump on the liberal bandwagon
7. And so it all comes down to Kennedy who says that the question before the court is whether global warming is real. It seems that if he can be convinced of that he will side with Massachusetts.

Some personal points:
1. Wait, shouldn't the EPA be an advocate for the environment instead of against it? In bizarro land liberal-Bush appointed the former president of E.L.F. as secretary of commerce.
2. Legal people: are Souter and Bryer differentiable? I always assume that they are both kinda boring moderate liberals, but perhaps it is simply that they are not new, black, women, outrageously rude, the swing vote or really old, so they kinda just blend in.

In a dignified manner

2006-11-12T21:26:00.000-05:00

"Let the process play itself out in a dignified manner," said Ed Gillespie, a former national Republican Party chairman, speaking for the Allen campaign in front of the Virginia party headquarters. "The votes need to be accurately counted. Only at the end of that process is a winner declared."

Right. These are the guys who were so concerned about "that process" that they went running to the Supremes to stop the vote count in Florida in '00.

Changes to the Insurrection Act re martial law

2006-10-28T21:03:00.000-04:00

I've always liked Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont). I was reading remarks he made recently about the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act of 2007 (HR5122, you can find it on Thomas - choose the "enrolled" version agreed to by the House and Senate) and discovered that it does indeed, as Leahy says, modify the Insurrection Act of 1807 (10 USC 333, you can find it on Findlaw). I would include links but unfortunately both Thomas and Findlaw seem to "time out" their search links such that you can't go back to them later. Dammit. And govtrack.us seems to be down.

Leahy says the law "includes language that subverts solid, longstanding posse comitatus statutes that limit the military’s involvement in law enforcement, thereby making it easier for the President to declare martial law," and "adopts some incredible changes to the Insurrection Act, which would give the President more authority to declare martial law ... making it easier to usurp the Governor's control."

The changes to the Insurrection Act, Leahy said, "will allow the President to use the military, including the National Guard, to carry out law enforcement activities without the consent of a governor. When the Insurrection Act is invoked posse comitatus does not apply. Using the military for law enforcement goes against one of the founding tenets of our democracy." It includes "automatic triggers — natural disasters, terrorist attacks, or a disease epidemic — to avoid having to consult with the governors."

I compared the language amending 10 USC 333 in section 1076 of HR5122 ("Use of armed forces in major public emergencies") to the existing 10 USC 333 and found what Leahy is talking about. The Insurrection Act was designed to give the president the authority to use federal troops in the event of rebellion, insurgency or revolution. HR 5122 adds all kinds of other situations where the White House can send in federal troops including "a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident." It also changes "insurgents" to "insurgents or those obstructing the enforcement of the laws," giving it a much broader (and, I'm sure Leahy would agree, unintended) scope.

Leahy's remarks are at http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200609/092906b.html

I Wished I Wished I Wished That God Would Kill Me...

2006-10-26T16:26:00.000-04:00

...instead of leaving me alone to see this.

Like A Rolling Stone, as interpreted by the new Broadway musical based on Dylan's ouevre. It's as terrible as it sounds. After an eternity of torment, I looked time-bar, wondering how long this excruciating pain could possibly last, only to find that I was 1:30 in. Fortunately it's only like 2:30 all told.

To balance out the terrible music-karma of the above, I will point out that the title of this post is drawn from a very good Mountain Goats song. I've actually heard it called Somebody Else's Parking Lot in Sebastapol rather than Santa Cruz, but whatever.

On the off chance that you like music other than the Mountain Goats, the new Hold Steady album is also available for listening in its entirety online, which is pretty nice. Stuck Between Stations, First Night, Party Pit, and You Can Make Him Like You are all v. good.

Breaking: John Bolton is a Terrible Diplomat

2006-10-14T21:43:00.000-04:00

OK, so here's the scene: it's just after the Security Council vote, where after a lot of sweet-talking and arm-twisting the U.S. has managed to get China and Russia to sign off on sanctions on the DPRK, even though they really really didn't want to. They're still grumpy about it. The North Korean ambassador makes a big speech basically threatening war, then walks out. What does John Bolton do?

Mr. Bolton asked to be heard and pointed to the empty chair, saying Mr. Pak’s impulsive departure was the equivalent of Khrushchev’s pounding his desk in protest in the General Assembly. That prompted the Russian ambassador, Vitaly I. Churkin, to complain that the reference, even at a moment that he described as Mr. Bolton’s “emotional state,” was “an inappropriate analogy.”

Link

Well played, Mr. Bolton. Well played.

25 Edward III Stat. 3, c 2

2006-10-11T10:47:00.000-04:00

According to a 14th-century English statute, it is treason, inter alia, "When a Man doth compass or imagine the Death of our Lord the King, or of our Lady his Queen, or of their eldest Son and Heir."

According to Mill, social mechanisms of stigma and repression are a far greater threat to the freedom of speech than government enforcement.

I think he's probably right.

crazy idea for iraq

2006-10-08T19:19:00.000-04:00

Here's my latest crazy thinking on Iraq: erase it. Somehow I think this would go over poorly - few nations like to be unilaterally dissolved - but just because it seems like none of the sane options sound tolerable, how reasonable does this sound to all y'all out there in your armchairs?

Why not try to negotiate (a) giving Kurdistan to Turkey, as part of a deal for self-governance (but with shared military resources and tax base) for both Kuristan both inside and outside the existing Turkish border? (b) give Sunni areas and Bagdad to Jordan, just cause they seem like the sanest Sunni power around. (c) give the Shiite south to *Iran* on the condition that nuclear activities are permanently suspended and Israel is recognized as a state?

stephen

Nietzsche + Family Circus

2006-10-04T21:29:00.000-04:00

This is utterly frivolous, but entertaining:

When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory.

Woman was God’s second mistake.

The aphorism in which I am the first master among Germans, are the forms of “eternity”; my ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book - what everyone else does not say in a book.

Believe me! The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously!

Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.

I should stop. So I will. Though I am disappointed to have not gotten a very good image to go along with "Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent."

Aaaaaaand.... Suspended.

2006-09-28T19:27:00.000-04:00

My ability to comment intelligently on this is sadly not up to the task at the moment; hell, my ability to not curl up into a ball and rock back and forth over and over crooning disconnected adjectives to myself is barely coping. I mean, the legal issues really are hard and interesting -- Rasul said that the Gitmo detainees had access to habeas as a matter of statutory, not constitutional, entitlement, so stripping as to them isn't automatically unconstitutional, but the newly-expanded provision allowing for U.S.-detained suspects who the President determined "supported" terrorists or terrorist networks is so potentially broad that I have to think it would tread on the common-law right (though I'd thought that the idea that the sovereign can lock up enemies of the Crown without access to the writ because they're enemies of the Crown was soundly repudiated along with the Star Chamber back in the 17th Century).

But as I said, not up to commenting in any real depth. Just wanted to share the love. And express happiness at my foresight in deciding to grab a drink or two with friends tonight.

UPDATE: OK, just had to share this: Keith Olbermann having a Network moment. Ten straight minutes of mostly-pellucid rant, and they even splice in some footage from the movie version of 1984. He goes after Bush, rather personally, and damn, it made me feel better.

Blog: Archiving

2006-09-25T22:37:00.000-04:00

There are those here who know more about blogging than I, oh....
I'd like to archive and store my blog; to transfer it as is -- content and structure -- to an off-line repository, and file it away for posterity. Kind of like a Library of Congress, without the national interest or complicated numbering system. What have you come across that would facilitate this operation?

Clinton defends his pursuit of Bin Laden

2006-09-25T02:15:00.000-04:00

There's been a lot of talk recently about Bush's legacy, and naturally it allows for a contrast of Bush and Clinton. Regardless of your thoughts (well, I know all *your* thoughts), I found it interesting to see Clinton defend his legacy and blast Bush.

[CNN.com]

I can't say I believe there is a connection to the "larger picture" here. I've just never seen Clinton so red and fire-eyed.

Rangel misfires at Chavez

2006-09-21T16:30:00.000-04:00

"It should be clear to all heads of government that criticism of Bush administration policies, either domestic or foreign, does not entitle them to attack the president personally," said Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY 15th). "George Bush is the president of the United States and represents the entire country. Any demeaning public attack against him is viewed by Republicans and Democrats, and all Americans, as an attack on all of us." (Emphasis mine.)

First, regarding "personal attacks," the U.S. Navy backed the 2002 coup d'etat that briefly removed Chavez from power, and the CIA plotted to down Chavez's plane en route from Caracas to the UN in New York in 2003. Talk about personal attacks!

Second, anyone who has been paying attention knows that Bush does NOT represent the entire country, and after the voting irregularities in Florida and Ohio, I believe a strong case has been made that he is NOT president of the United States. I applaud Chavez or anyone telling the truth about Bush to the world.

God Shows His Middle Finger to Creation, Part XXXVIII

2006-09-15T15:27:00.000-04:00

Seriously, now.

In possibly related news, Meat Loaf is covering Celine Dion.

I should really have more substantive things to say on the important issues of the day, but these two things have a bearing on step 1: is the world actually worth caring about?

Rove is Good

2006-09-06T16:38:00.000-04:00

I presume you've all seen the news today about KSM and the rest of the disappeared being sent to Gitmo. Before I wade into cynicism in the rest of this post, I want to acknowledge that this makes me feel very good indeed -- of all of the terrible things the administration has done as part of the so-called GWOT, this in my estimation was the worst (I don't think of Iraq as being part of it, I should point out). The policy of whisking people away, not acknowledging where or whether they're being held, subjecting them to "special" interrogation methods, and denying Red Cross access was a horrendous violation of human rights and the rule of law in general. The fact that that policy is gone as of today is overwhelming -- it took five years and a hell of a lot of passionate advocacy and hard work, and I think we as a nation and as individuals should be unreservedly proud that government's doing the right thing. I'm definitely having a celebratory drink tonight.

With that said, fuck, Rove's good. The Republicans have been taking a gigantic pounding, and Hamdan was a huge setback for them. Further, the Senate's really held firm on not allowing Bush's quick-fix legislation to go through. This is a very very good riposte. Making what looks like (and might well be) a huge concession, and shining a very public light on KSM and his compatriots to say "the only reason this guy isn't lawfully in jail is that you're dragging your feet on this legislation," leads to very good optics. More, it *hugely* undercuts the work human rights orgs have been doing to reveal who's actually at Gitmo -- there are lots of farmers who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but now, KSM is there too. If you look at the stakes in Hamdan, they were pretty minor -- he was one of only a dozen guys charged in the tribunals, and he's really not alleged to have done very much. Try him (and his compatriots) or not, who really cared -- they were small fry. Trying KSM and al-Zubaydah -- that's a much bigger deal, and really raises the question in a much more immediate way, both in terms of how the public sees it and how individual Senators might approach the matter. More, by revealing the secret prisoners, the question of proper trial practice becomes even more linked to the definition of war crimes under Common Article 3 -- this isn't just abstract, as Congress is now on the spot and needs to say whether the people who interrogated KSM are guilty of war crimes or not.

[Note too that they finally released the Army Field Manual today, without a classified appendix, banning many of the specified techniques the human rights community finds objectionable. This is another big "hey, look at us being reasonable!" event. Not that I'm doubting the sincerity of the military men and women who fought to keep it transparent and adhere to the law of far -- but the timing of release is very clearly political]

Implicit in all of this is "look at how unseriously the Supreme Court and Democrats take the war on terror -- this important program is being shut down because of them!"

The only wrinkle is that three Republican Senators have been among the most obstreperous opponents of Bush's agenda -- McCain, Warner, and Graham. If they hold firm, they should be able to keep Bush's terrible legislation from moving forward, and just as importantly, prevent the Rove machine from tarring this inaction as the result of Democratic fecklessness. This might well happen. But it's a very good move, and all sorts of assumptions need to be recalibrated.

I really want to know what happens next...

Caltech Rubik's cube winner (video)

2006-08-24T20:04:00.000-04:00

Ryan Patricio achieving the current one-handed 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube speedcubing world record during the Caltech spring competition 2006.

Election rigging testimony in Ohio

2006-08-24T08:33:00.000-04:00

Computer programmer Clinton Eugene Curtis of Florida testifies under oath before U.S. House Judiciary members in Ohio.

Q: Are there programs that can be used to secretly fix elections?
A: Yes.
Q: How do you know that to be the case?
A: Because in October of 2000, I wrote a prototype for Congressman Tom Feeney [R-FL] at the company I work for in Obedo, Florida that does just that.
Q: It would rig an election?
A: It would flip the vote, 51-49. Whoever you wanted it to go to and whichever race you wanted to win.
Q: And would that program that you designed, be something that elections officials on county boards of elections could detect?
A: They'd never see it.

Alternet has a longer video of Curtis' testimony.

Behavior detection officers

2006-08-17T09:34:00.000-04:00

Those of you who fly better work on your poker face.

According to the NYT, "behavior detection officers" are at a dozen airports nationwide, assessing "travelers’ facial expressions, body and eye movements, changes in vocal pitch and other indicators" to decide who should be pulled out of line for further interrogation as a possible terrorist.

Of course, it's all completely scientific. ""We have no basis other than the seat of our pants to know how many points should be given to any one thing."

Does it work? "It is like throwing a big fishing net over the side of the boat: You catch what you catch."

Ian Bell on Cuba

2006-08-14T23:48:00.000-04:00

I don't know this taught me anything new. But sometimes it reassures to read what I already thought, but hadn't said.

Cheep

2006-08-03T09:56:00.000-04:00

A-Ahem-mong us, do you have a Times Select account? Without Maureen Dowd, I have to go to Ann Coulter for my red-headed nonesense, and we all know how painful that can be.

The proper balance

2006-07-28T15:30:00.000-04:00

Jonathan Mahler in his NYT review of Margulies' "Guantanamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power" wrote that the debate over detention of prisoners captured in the "war on terror" is important because "defeating radical Islam is going to require striking the proper balance between aggressiveness and restraint."

Is that where we're at? Has the mission slipped unnoticed from defeating the 9/11 terrorists to "defeating radical Islam"? Does anyone inside the beltway care that such a goal is (a) clearly impossible, (b) immoral and un-American when you realize it means declaring war on a religious sect, and (c) likely to bring on World War III? Oh, sorry, I forgot... the neocons freaking WANT World War III. Silly me.

Poll Suggests GOP Control of House Is Tenuous

2006-07-27T14:34:00.000-04:00

The headline above being NPR's, not mine.

Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research conducted a poll for NPR of likely voters in "the 50 competitive House races where, in fact, control of the House of Representatives will be decided."

In the 50 largely Republican, competitive House districts, only 29 percent of likely voters said they planned to re-elect the incumbent. The results, says NPR, "point to trouble for the party in power."

Damn liberal media.

Classified Blogs

2006-07-22T11:36:00.000-04:00

Interesting story in the NYT this morning about a CIA contract worker who ran a classified intelligence blog on a secure CIA server. She alleges she was fired for putting up a post arguing that waterboarding is torture.

Link

I found this interesting in the context of the debate over intelligence reform -- lots of think-tanks and commissions have been talking about developing a new information "environment"for intelligence, usually based on collaborative database models (see e.g. the Markle foundation). Something as low-key as blogging seems a simple way of effectuating many of these ideas -- the more formal databases would be useful, of course, but in terms of quickly communicating a zeitgeist, and allowing cross-agency communication and relationship-building, blogs seem quite a good fit.

[If the employees allegations are correct, this is deplorable, of course. Waterboarding, as just about everyone in the CIA recognizes, is torture. It will turn a trained, battle-hardened Navy SEAL into a squalling, panicked animal after ten to fiteen seconds. KSM impressed his CIA interrogators because he managed to undergo almost a full minute without breaking. To the best of my knowledge, the human species has yet to develop a more efficient way of inducing the fear -- the experience -- of death without causing permanent physical harm. That it is mostly a mental, rather than physical, approach is of very little moment in any context save a determination of whether particular conduct violates the U.S. "anti-torture" statute, which criminalizes only a very small subset of possible acts of torture. In fact, that waterboarding doesn't involve the infliction of physical pain as such probably makes it more effective -- many torture survivors have reported that pain often becomes cathartic.]

New Pynchon Emerging Blues

2006-07-21T23:57:00.000-04:00

Thomas Pynchon has a new novel coming out in four and a half months:

Spanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious Tunguska Event, Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all.

With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.

The sizable cast of characters includes anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug enthusiasts, innocents and decadents, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, psychics, and stage magicians, spies, detectives, adventuresses, and hired guns. There are cameo appearances by Nikola Tesla, Bela Lugosi, and Groucho Marx.

As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it's their lives that pursue them.

Meanwhile, the author is up to his usual business. Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically. Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur. If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction.

Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck.

Amazon link

Just thought I'd pass that along as a public service; seems like Pynchon remains in fine form (I actually liked Mason & Dixon, unlike most of the civilized world, though, so possibly my excitement is untrustworthy).

I don't know what's up with the title (the title of this post, I mean -- I presume "Untitled Thomas Pynchon" is just a placeholder for the eventual novel's title, not a ridiculous from-hell's-heart-I-stab-at-thee gesture meant to solicit apoplexy in those who can't stand postmodernism). I mean, I know it's a Mountain Goats song title with Pynchon's name dropped in in place of "World," but it's not a track I listen to particularly much. Shrug.

I recently made it into the official unofficial Mountain Goats fan site changelog, by the by, which feels far more like an accomplishment than it really should. I'm way too wrapped up in the Goats, but what can you do? Listen to them cover the Sign, is the logical rejoinder.

Seriously, listen to them cover the Sign.

Geneva comes to Guantanamo

2006-07-11T12:41:00.000-04:00

says BBC News

excerpt:

[Bush's] spokesman Tony Snow said on Tuesday that the Pentagon directive did not represent a change: "It is not really a reversal of policy. Humane treatment has always been the standard."

The America I'm betting on to win

2006-07-02T15:20:00.000-04:00

Interesting piece in the NYT about a three-on-three playground basketball game in Queens. The writer starts asking where everybody's from. China, India, Israel, Pakistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan? Yeah. The kids from Israel wear yarmulkes. The Asians "talk strategy among themselves in Mandarin." A few have "skin darker or eyes narrower" but nobody cares. The mailboxes of nearby apartments show "fewer Goldbergs and more Watanabes" but nobody cares. They care that it's "harder to get good pastrami around here." This schoolyard court in Queens has quietly become a nexus where you can "play basketball with people from all over the world without ever leaving home."

The moral of the story, if there needs to be one? "Ethnicity dissolves into irrelevance if you have a good jump shot."

For me, that's the America I want to live in, and I think it's an America that can survive the worst the Republicans and the Christian Right can throw at it. It's the America I'm betting on to win.

A Day That Will Live in Infamy

2006-06-27T20:42:00.000-04:00

So it's raining like a bastard in DC today. Has been for a couple days now, thunderstorms interspersed with elliptical oases of dry. Which I would enjoy, except for the fact that driving in the rain is apparently really hard, because there was so much traffic at metro center it was taking, literally, about 20 minutes per city block, so I said fuck it and decided to walk for a while and see if I could catch another bus past the traffic-scab. 45 minutes later I am walking into my Georgetown apartment, soaked, having passed two other busses on the way, all marooned in their occluded lanes.

At which point I turn on the computer and learn that Sleater-Kinney's broken up.

If I were in a better mood, I'd eulogize, but as is, "motherfuck" is all that jumps to mind. I've seen them what, two, three times now, and it was always great, and the last time they played NYC was between loan checks and I looked at tickets and was like, "eh, they're kinda expensive, I'll catch them next time," and now they're playing like five more shows ever and all the reasonable ones are sold out. This is no goddamn rock and roll fun.

Here's hoping tomorrow looks up, although given that Hamdan could well be coming down, I'm more than a little apprehensive...

The risks inherent

2006-06-27T09:44:00.000-04:00

As I read the article about NASA's risk assessment process, I clicked on the accompanying photo and looked at the seven eager, smiling astronauts in their traffic-cone-orange jumpsuits with helmets in hand, posed in front of the space shuttle Discovery that may or may not bring them back safely from their next mission. And I was reminded that what these astronauts do has never been safe, we've just been extraordinarily lucky. There's a reason why the three little islands in Long Beach harbor are named Grissom, Chaffey and White: they're named for three eager, smiling astronauts whose spacecraft never even made it off the launching pad.

I pondered NASA's premise that the changes already made to the wing foam since the Challenger disaster need to be road tested before more extensive changes are made, and the logic makes sense to me, but I curse the reality that the only way to really road test the damn thing is to take seven more astronauts out of the public relations photo and put them in harm's way. I bristle at the idea that we are compelled to move forward because there are 16 more missions to be flown before 2010 if we're to meet the goal of finishing the space station. I bristle at it because that deadline, like all such deadlines, is arbitrary, and part of me balks at risking lives before everything is nailed down. I'd rather wait until everything is safe. Then my eye is drawn to the headline of the article - Shuttle crew aware of spaceflight risks - and I realize NASA operates in a world where everything will never be completely safe, and the seven smiling people in that public relations photo know it. They lift off Saturday.

Surely innocent...

2006-06-15T13:46:00.000-04:00

If you're a Windows user, open Notepad and type in this phrase, without the quote marks and with no carriage return: "Bush hid the facts". Now save it and open it again. (not actually a conspiracy)

They don't call it a state religion, but...

2006-06-12T13:22:00.000-04:00

The Missouri state legislature (full disclosure: my Dad's from Missouri) has introduced House Concurrent Resolution 13 which recognizes "a Christian God" as "our Creator", protects "the majority's right" to express their religious beliefs, recognizes that "a Greater Power exists above and beyond the institutions of mankind", and declares that prayer in the public schools and religious displays on public property are specifically not a violation of the separation of church and state. What I find disturbing is their use of the phrase "we the majority".

http://www.house.mo.gov/bills061/biltxt/intro/HCR0013I.htm

Of course, these are the same folks who are about to induct "legendary Missouri political figure John Ashcroft" into their state's hall of fame. *cough*

RFK in RS

2006-06-11T17:54:00.000-04:00

for discussion

i'm not always sure the argument is fully enough supported -- it seems like the most numerous category is the ballot purge which perhaps mostly valid -- but it sure made me see red. anyway curious what y'all think. and more importantly, what we can do differently this next election.

An Editorial Cartoon I Like

2006-05-30T13:25:00.000-04:00

I don't usually like Danzinger's stuff:

[NYTimes.com]

Unrelated: Hey, how long until they teach proper internet citations in high school?

Another Ousting; Snow Is Gone

2006-05-30T11:18:00.000-04:00

Goldman Sachs now literally prints the money.

[CNN.com]

I am on the internets!

2006-05-19T18:14:00.000-04:00

I made it into espn.com!

So there is no way anyone will be close to as excited as I am by this, but if anyone ever reads Bill Simmons, they may note that "Eric Morganson from Mountain View, Calif." made it into his reader's email thing.

Woot!

Ray McGovern: Pubs may repeal Posse Comitatus

2006-05-18T18:15:00.000-04:00

From AlterNet - "While some conservatives are joining civil liberties groups in expressing concern over the deployment [of National Guard troops at the Mexican border], the Republican leadership is reportedly pursuing another course: rolling back the protections of Posse Comitatus [Act of 1878] once and for all. Ray McGovern, a 27-year veteran of the CIA who maintains close connections in the national security community, reports that, according to 'a credible source on the Hill,' the Senate 'is moving to amend [or] repeal the Posse Comitatus Act, ostensibly to allow greater options for National Guard troops on the border. The move would remove National Guardsmen from governors' authority and place them under the president.'"

If they gut or repeal the Posse Comitatus Act, they won't need martial law, the line between military and law enforcement will be essentially erased. That's a problem. As Reagan era defense wonk Larry Korb has written, the army "is trained to vaporize, not Mirandize."

Not Even Negative Time Could Stop This

2006-05-18T03:35:00.000-04:00

Strangely missing from the article, "One pair of fanatic local college students traveled all the way to Barstow for the 'furthest' Tommy's Burger after an all night study bender."

Tommy's turns 60

Also, no mention of a second order pole.

FBI using Patriot Act to track journalists' phone calls

2006-05-17T10:40:00.000-04:00

ABC News chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross said in an interview on Pacifica Radio's "Democracy Now" that the FBI is using "national security letters", a strictly anti-terrorism provision of the Patriot Act, to track the phone calls of journalists. They discover the reporter's confidential sources in the government by tracking who they call or who calls them.

Ross says this is "how they essentially tracked down Mary McCarthy at the C.I.A. and got her in a polygraph and fired her based on who she was making contact with." The DOJ admits that the FBI "issued a total of 9,254 so-called national security letters last year, targeting 3,500 citizens and legal residents."

In What Way Are Baseball Statistics Property?

2006-05-16T02:31:00.000-04:00

You may have heard that a fantasy sports company is in court defending their right to use players' statistics without a license. MLB (rather, subdivision thereof) contends that statistics are property to be purchased, similar to names and team logos.

It seems to me that statistics should simply be the proprietary owner of the calculator. Why not?

The Article [NYTimes.com]

SCOTUS and the NSA phone database

2006-05-13T11:01:00.000-04:00

Quoth the NYT:
"The New Jersey lawyers who filed the federal suit against Verizon in Manhattan yesterday, Bruce Afran and Carl Mayer, said they would consider filing suits against BellSouth and AT&T in other jurisdictions. 'This is almost certainly the largest single intrusion into American civil liberties ever committed by any U.S. administration,' Mr. Afran said. 'Americans expect their phone records to be private. That's our bedrock governing principle of our phone system.'"

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/13/washington/13phone.html

Now, don't get me wrong, this NSA phone database troubles me as well. But looking at some past SCOTUS decisions I'm not sure Americans can really expect their phone records to be private. (Full disclosure: I'm not a lawyer, and I don't even play one on TV. I just have a mouse and know how to click around on Findlaw.)

Smith v Maryland, 442 US 735 (1979) - "Petitioner in all probability entertained no actual expectation of privacy in the phone numbers he dialed, and even if he did, his expectation was not 'legitimate.' First, it is doubtful that telephone users in general have any expectation of privacy regarding the numbers they dial, since they typically know that they must convey phone numbers to the telephone company and that the company has facilities for recording this information and does in fact record it for various legitimate business purposes. [...] Even if petitioner did harbor some subjective expectation of privacy, this expectation was not one that society is prepared to recognize as 'reasonable.' When petitioner voluntarily conveyed numerical information to the phone company and 'exposed' that information to its equipment in the normal course of business, he assumed the risk that the company would reveal the information."

US v Miller, 425 US 435 (1976) - "All of the documents obtained, including financial statements and deposit slips, contain only information voluntarily conveyed to the banks and exposed to their employees in the ordinary course of business. [...] The depositor takes the risk, in revealing his affairs to another, that the information will be conveyed by that person to the Government. This Court has held repeatedly that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the obtaining of information revealed to a third party and conveyed by him to Government authorities, even if the information is revealed on the assumption that it will be used only for a limited purpose and the confidence placed in the third party will not be betrayed."

Again, I'm not a lawyer, but these cases seem (to me, at least) to be on point here.

An Article that is Both Optimistic AND Appalling

2006-05-09T19:38:00.000-04:00

Apparently Bush, while in Germany, said "I very much would like to end Guantanamo; I very much would like to get people to a court. And we're waiting for our Supreme Court to give us a decision as to whether the people need to have a fair trial in a civilian court or in a military court."

After recovering from the absurdity of this quote (from the administration from whence the great "it's just like war except that we don't have to follow the rules of war becase the president says so and the courts have no juristiction" argument), I contined to read a pretty nice article on slate by Dahlia Lithwick (I've decided to give collumnists credit for their articles; it just seems polite).

Lithwick then enlightens me with a few other nice factoids:
250 detainees have been released without charges, trial or statement.
Only 10 (of roughly 760 at peak) detainees have been brought before military tribunals (with 0 receiving verdicts).
The existing evidence against most prisoners is considered "negligible."

Wrongness Singularity

2006-05-08T17:52:00.000-04:00

Found via Kos. Had to share.

Yay, Liberals!

2006-05-07T22:26:00.000-04:00

Ripped in its entirity from fark.com:

"Cambridge, Mass., declares illegal immigrants are welcome, health care and education are free and police won't harass them. Too bad the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $1,400 a month and immigrants can't afford to live there."

Article

Really, I haven't even read the article -- I'm in the middle of a seventy-nine hour Quantum Mechanics Final. And doing quite well, I believe. Hope you are all well, keeping track of your signs, your factors of two, and never setting h bar to one.

Mutual Funds For Evil!

2006-05-04T15:46:00.000-04:00

So you guys may have heard of various "moral" investment firms. There are a bunch or environmental ones that invest most heavilly in companies that make an effort to be good to the globe. I have heard of Muslim firms that don't invest in alcohol companies (and assumedly a wider array of vice products), Christian funds that invest in Christian companies and a host of environmental and other lefty causes that push their own agendas. In general, I think this is a great thing. I think moral capitalism could be more influential nad innovative than government regulation in improving environment and social wellfare.

The Free Enterprise Action Fund disagrees. Essentially, this is an investment group that wants to promote a "pro free enterprise ideological benefit through advocacy that promotes shareholder value and defends the American system of free enterprise." They are really pissed off that people have social agendas when they invest or lead companies. So far, they have gotten mad that Microsoft switched to more ecologically friendly packaging, that GE supports federal emissions regulations and that Goldman-Sachs gave land to a Chilean conservation group.

I am just tickled that, in effect, this mutual fund is just finding people who are acting within their own idea of "good" and pushing them to do the opposite. They might be the most mustache-twirling evil things I have heard of. Also, apparently they have been performing much worse than the S&P 500.

Peace-out.

I hadn't heard about brass resigning...

2006-04-26T13:36:00.000-04:00

"The attention given to the nuclear option has created serious misgivings among the joint chiefs of staff, and some officers have talked about resigning, [Seymour] Hersh has been told. The military chiefs sought to remove the nuclear option from the evolving war plans for Iran, without success, a former senior intelligence officer said. The Pentagon consultant on the war on terror confirmed that some in the administration were looking seriously at this option, which he linked to a resurgence of interest in tactical nuclear weapons among defence department political appointees."

-- Philip Sherwell in the Daily Telegraph (UK)

Full article here.

Comparison Shopping

2006-04-25T22:25:00.000-04:00

Some interesting comparisons from John Roberts on CNN:

"There is something to be thankful for in all this. Thankful that you're not buying gas in Norway, England or Italy, where it hovers around the $6.00 per gallon mark. Alternately, you could wish you filled up your car in Kuwait, where gas is about 78 cents per gallon, or Caracas, where Venezuelans are paying a little over a dime. Or you can get used to paying $3.00 per gallon right here at home, because that's probably where it's going to stay for a while."

Euston Manifesto

2006-04-25T17:49:00.000-04:00

Hrm. Interesting goal. There were some sections that made me squirm a bit, but it seems like it's pretty right-thinking. I particularly squirmed at the areas in which it claims blindness by the left on human rights issues: I'm curious how the signers would place America's prison complex in the spectrum of human rights abuses.

http://eustonmanifesto.org/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=1

Black sites on Wikipedia

2006-04-22T13:35:00.000-04:00

Folks on Wikipedia are tracking the ongoing revelations about CIA "black sites" and "extraordinary renditions", including ongoing investigations by Spain, France and Ireland, the Egyptian fax intercepted by the Swiss, and now the reported firing of intel analyst Mary McCarthy by the CIA for confirming the existence of black sites to the Wash Post. They're doing a decent job of documenting their sources with references and relevant links to both US and foreign press. Another good example of why we need to keep the internet free.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_site
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_O._McCarthy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Rendition

religion in america

2006-04-12T20:06:00.000-04:00

Super-interesting:

http://regionsofmind.blog-city.com/mapping_religion_in_america.htm

stephen

Fear and Loathing in North Carolina

2006-04-11T23:27:00.000-04:00

So I saw a mention of this in Savage Love:

WAYNESVILLE – Three men charged with performing castrations in a sadomasochistic dungeon in their Haywood County home will go to court on Monday, a prosecutor said today.

...

Investigators believe at least six men traveled from across the nation and abroad to learn “slave training” and have their genitals mutilated by a man they called “Master Rick” in a sadomasochistic dungeon inside a home in the Allens Creek community.

...

The suspects were arrested Thursday. They are:

Michael Mendez, 60, of 541 Peace Mountain Road, on charges of castration without malice, maiming without malice and practicing medicine without a license.

Richard Peter Sciara, 61, of 541 Peace Mountain Road, on charges of maiming and castration without malice, conspiracy and practicing medicine without a license.

Danny Carroll Reeves, 49, of 541 Peace Mountain Road, on charges of maiming and castration without malice, conspiracy and practicing medicine without malice

My immediate reaction, which I presume would be shared by any sane person, was OK, seriously, what the fuck? Castration without malice? So I checked the North Carolina criminal code (what will I do when I'm no longer a law student and will need to pay for using Lexis?), and sure enough, N.C. Gen. Stat. 14-28 and 29 criminalize castration, with and without malice. Here's the latter:

If any person shall, on purpose and unlawfully, but without malice aforethought, cut, or slit the nose, bite or cut off the nose, or a lip or an ear, or disable any limb or member of any other person, or castrate any other person, or cut off, maim or disfigure any of the privy members of any other person, with intent to kill, maim, disfigure, disable or render impotent such person, the person so offending shall be punished as a Class E felon.

Original provision dates back to 1754, apparently, and was last amended in 1994. The Lexis notes are pretty awesome, too. According to State v. Scott, 161 N.C. App. 104, 587 S.E.2d 485 (2003), you need to totally separate the ear from the head to win conviction under this statute.

I just feel I should point out that your tax dollars are paying the salaries of the legislators who thought this was worth enacting, Shep.

I just did my "Tobin Evidence Points Finger at Bush" dance

2006-04-11T17:53:00.000-04:00

"Key figures in a phone-jamming scheme designed to keep New Hampshire Democrats from voting in 2002 had regular contact with the White House and Republican Party as the plan was unfolding, phone records introduced in criminal court show. The records show that Bush campaign operative James Tobin, who recently was convicted in the case, made two dozen calls to the White House within a three-day period around Election Day 2002 as the phone jamming operation was finalized, carried out and then abruptly shut down."

The full article is on CNN's web site.

Mike, this one's in your state.

I just did my "Libby Points Finger at Bush" dance

2006-04-06T15:35:00.000-04:00

Libby said he was specifically instructed by Bush and Cheney to leak the Plame information. Discuss amongst yourselves.

The Smoking Gun

CNN

NYT

Also, I might recommend:

itmfa

Yeah. I know that this is just another blow to Bush's political capital, and is probably just merely cementing his status in the last few years as a lame duck. But I will also think that someone should be out for blood here.

Wikocracy

2006-04-04T19:35:00.000-04:00

An interesting experiment called Wikocracy has been launched to see what will happen if the average American had the ability to rewrite the constitution or any other law. I'm out there already, pondering whether the Defense of Marriage Act ought to be dictating what Native American tribes can do on their own tribal land. It's going to be interesting to see how things evolve over time.

From their intro page:

"This is a test...

To see what happens when everyone can write and revise the law. It may sound like a free-for-all. But that's exactly the point-- to make the process of law-making free for all.

On this platform, you can freely edit the USA PATRIOT Act, The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, your State's law on gay marriage, your city's zoning ordinances. If you'd like to change a law that is not yet on this platform, you can easily create a page and import the text you want to change. You can also write your own laws, post blogs, collaborate and spar with other users. Check out our FAQ if you have specific questions.

Although there are some suggested guidelines and tips that will facilitate this experiment, there are no rules. Nothing on this platform is legally binding. One person's changes can be revised or reversed by the next. Over time, this platform could reflect a collaborative statement of what we think the law should be. Or it could reflect a moment-by-moment statement of the most recent editor's views. This will be as bloody or as civil as you make it...

This is only a test."

I think it should more correctly be called Wikiocracy, but perhaps they ran into trademark issues with Wikipedia.

Divine strake?

2006-03-31T11:49:00.000-05:00

Trying to make sense of the name of the upcoming 700-ton bomb test at the Nevada Test Site... "Divine Strake". Strake is apparently a word, a nautical term referring to a part of the structure of a ship, or an obsolete synonym for streak. Either that or the Pentagon just misspelled strike. Divine Strike, anyone?

It's the divine part that worries me, like the neocons are trying to send a message of divine retribution to... whom? Iran?

The last thing we need right now is to be testing massive bombs in Nevada with apocalyptic names.

Interestingly, they're warning that there will likely be a huge mushroom shaped "dust cloud" but swear it's not a nuke, it's a conventional bomb. Hmm. Since when are dust clouds mushroom shaped? Holy jumpin' Hannah, I hope/pray they aren't trying to secretly do a nuke test.

Legal Hilarity

2006-03-28T22:04:00.000-05:00

1) From the NYT writeup of the Hamdan oral argument, this is so terrible it's hilarious:

Mr. Clement's position was that Congress had not suspended habeas corpus, but that it might constitutionally have done so given "the exigencies of 9/11." Addressing Justice Stevens, the solicitor general said: "My view would be that if Congress sort of stumbles upon a suspension of the writ, that the preconditions are satisfied, that would still be constitutionally valid."

One could just stop here, since the "exigencies of 9/11" so clearly don't meet the constitutional requirements ("invasion or rebellion") it's not even funny, but it goes on, and Souter, of all people, gets in a great line:

Justice Souter interrupted. "Isn't there a pretty good argument that suspension of the writ of habeas corpus is just about the most stupendously significant act that the Congress of the United States can take," he asked, "and therefore we ought to be at least a little slow to accept your argument that it can be done from pure inadvertence?"

When Mr. Clement began to answer, Justice Souter persisted: "You are leaving us with the position of the United States that the Congress may validly suspend it inadvertently. Is that really your position?"

The solicitor general replied: "I think at least if you're talking about the extension of the writ to enemy combatants held outside the territory of the United States —"

"Now wait a minute!" Justice Souter interrupted, waving a finger. "The writ is the writ. There are not two writs of habeas corpus, for some case and for other cases. The rights that may be asserted, the rights that may be vindicated, will vary with the circumstances, but jurisdiction over habeas corpus is jurisdiction over habeas corpus."

2) In A.D.T. v. U.K., 2000-IX Eur. Ct. H.R. 297, the European Court of Human Rights overturned the conviction for "gross indecency" of a guy for apparently partaking in an orgy (I'm too lazy to look up the facts of the case, and the writeup I have just indicates that he engaged "in sexual activities in his home in the presence of two, three, or four other men." So who knows what exactly). Anyway, the funny part is that the U.K. appears to have argued that the right to privacy didn't protect his conduct, because, like, there were all those other dudes there! Probably the most, uh, novel argument I've seen for limiting sexual freedom in a while.

Possibly these are only funny to me.

The law of unintended consequences

2006-03-28T19:36:00.000-05:00

A friend and I were discussing the Sensenbrenner bill which would criminalize not only undocumented immigrants but anyone who helps or provides services to them.

Imagine for a moment that you are a community health worker. If you test an undocumented immigrant for HIV, does that make you a felon? If you counsel him on ways to avoid spreading STDs to his partner, does that make you a felon? If you give her a condom to avoid becoming pregnant, does that make you a felon?

I can't help wondering if anyone has even considered the possible unintended public health consequences of such a law. A vast community of disadvantaged people who are at risk for HIV and other STDs, as well as unintended pregancy, would overnight become "off limits" for community health workers and other professionals to treat or counsel.

Even if one didn't care about the illegal aliens themselves (and I do), undoubtedly some proportion of them at times do have unprotected sex with, or share drug needles with, others who are not illegal aliens. The public health implications of barring an entire community from access to health services could be devastating.

No more secrets

2006-03-22T21:27:00.000-05:00

Your tax preparer or accountant may soon be able to legally sell your federal income tax return to telemarketers or data brokers, no doubt a tremendous boon to identity thieves.

"The Internal Revenue Service is quietly moving to loosen the once-inviolable privacy of federal income-tax returns. … If it succeeds, accountants and other tax-return preparers for the first time would be able to sell information from individual returns -- or even entire returns -- to marketers and data brokers. … The change is in a set of proposed rules the Treasury Department and the IRS published in the Dec. 8 Federal Register, where the official notice labeled them 'not a significant regulatory action.'"

Seattle Times article
AlterNet article
IRS press release

Tiptoeing toward the abyss II

2006-03-20T09:53:00.000-05:00

Jeeeeesus.

More African American males spend their 20s in prison that legally working.

Tiptoeing toward the abyss

2006-03-16T22:15:00.000-05:00

From the Guardian (UK). Apparently former justice O'Connor gave a "strongly worded" speech at Georgetown that isn't getting much play in the US media.

"Sandra Day O'Connor, a Republican-appointed judge who retired last month after 24 years on the supreme court, has said the US is in danger of edging towards dictatorship if the party's rightwingers continue to attack the judiciary."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1729656,00.html

Civil War in Iraq

2006-03-07T19:17:00.000-05:00

Disturbing (to me, at least) article in the International Herald Tribune (Paris).

"With the threat of full-scale sectarian strife looming larger, [US military commanders] are suddenly grappling with the possibility that they have been arming one side in a prospective civil war. Now, they are making it a central goal to weed out ethnic or religious loyalties from the Iraqi forces."

For example, the US has "ensured that a new academy class of 1,200 paramilitary recruits is virtually all Sunni, to shift from Shiite dominance." The population of Iraq is "believed to be" roughly 60% Shiite, 20% Sunni and 20% Kurds, and the concern is that the predominantly Shiite forces "do not reflect the population of Iraq."

My take on this: if a civil war is in fact looming, we should be getting our Western butts out of there, not trying to tinker with the balance of power between the Shiites and Sunnis which will likely just piss off both sides. We're trying to insure that both powder kegs have an equal amount of gunpowder while ignoring the fact that the fuses are lit and burning down.

Civil War in Iraq

2006-03-01T22:44:00.000-05:00

Interesting analysis here. Not sure I buy it all, but a lot of it rings true... and frightens me. I don't know we can pull this off.

While I'm culling from Sullivan's blog, I'm also curious about your thoughts on this anti-Islamist manifesto. I respect Rushdie. But I think this is very much the wrong way to go. Preaching against theocrats I can understand, but to explicitly conflate religious totalitarianism with Islam seems to undercut Muslim democracies, reformers and intellectuals. This seems a terribly unwise course.

stephen

Now I Have to Ask What House He Was In

2006-02-28T13:47:00.000-05:00

So I have been doing a Chan Meditation/study group for a few months now. The shifu (monk in charge of the whole thing) went to Caltech, got his PhD at UCSD and worked in aerospace for a while before committing his life to Buddhism. This was a large part of why I started attending the group (figured that if he can't relate the Dharma to me, I am hopeless).

He doesn't usually talk about Caltech, but yesterday he had a few anecdotes. Keep in ming that he's a Taiwanese man with the shaved head and brown robes talking from the lotus position. When discussing the relative nature of intelligence he said, "When I was growing up I was always very smart. I always got A's and near perfect scores on math tests. Then I went to a very good college. I went to Caltech. And suddenly I wasn't so smart. I flunked the first test I took. I realized that there were people ten times smarter than me. It is that way for everybody. There is always someone ten times smarter. But that is okay. Because maybe if you are not so smart in one way, you are smart in another way. Maybe if you are no good at math, you are good at biology!"

I just loved the fact that the opposite of math is, of course, biology.

When discussing fear he also had a story:
"At Caltech there was a difficult math class, Math 108. It was said that if you took this class, one of two things could happen. One: it could destroy you. Two: you could get through it and never fear math again. It was a year long course, and by the time the final exam came around I realized that I was not ready. I asked the professor if I could study over the summer =, and he said yes. I got through it by the end of the summer. I don't remember anything from that class, but I did learn to not fear math and that we can all do amazing things if we get past our fear."

Caltech: where classes aren't just difficult, they destory you. I also love that my shifu took an "E".

Anyway, it just goes to show: you can take the Techer out of Tech. You can even take the self out of the Techer. But you cannot take the Tech out of the Techer.

The long war

2006-02-27T11:58:00.000-05:00

There's starting to be some chatter about a concurrence of two disturbing events.

First, the Army quietly did a "rapid action revision" to Army regulation 210-35 titled Civilian Inmate Labor Program which "provides Army policy and guidance for establishing civilian inmate labor programs and civilian prison camps on Army installations."

Second, Kellogg Brown & Root (a subsidiary of Halliburton) was awarded a $385 million contract from the Army Corps of Engineers to construct detention centers to contain "an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs." Each center will contain up to 5,000 people.

The New York Times says the centers are being built for Homeland Security "for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster, or for new programs that require additional detention space."

Note the phrase 'new programs' keeps coming up.

One Night Only

2006-02-21T22:18:00.000-05:00

So, BBC did a segment on the report I've been working on at HRF. It'll only be up for a day or so, so catch it quickly if you're interested:

Link

(Click "latest programme")

It's pretty well done, I think -- they talk to a variety of people, and in my opinion the right-wing hack they get to "debunk" the report comes off as a slightly less honest Jabba the Hutt. I might be biased.

Oh, and while I'm flogging HRF, I should link to this Joe Sacco piece on two of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit we've filed against Rumsfeld for command accountability for torture. Sacco does comics journalism, and I'm a big fan, even if he does make everybody look like a particularly unattractive amphibian.

UPDATE: Report is live. It's kinda long -- 50 pages, plus 30 pages of footnotes, and another 40 pages of appendices which aren't in the pdf (they're all available elsewhere on the web, though) -- but hopefully it's readable. There's not much really like dense legal analysis; much of it's case studies of particular deaths that raise larger issues, which are then put in larger context.

Bush and Abramoff

2006-02-21T06:47:00.000-05:00

It seems the Malay PM paid off Abramoff to arrange a meeting with Bush. Nice to see the snowball getting bigger.

Selling US shipping ports to UAE

2006-02-20T13:55:00.000-05:00

It would be difficult to imagine a decision less in line with the Bush administration's devotion to homeland security and the so-called war on terror, not to mention just simple common sense, than selling controlling interest in six major US shipping ports (including, incredibly, the Port of New York!) to a state-owned company of the United Arab Emirates.

Has the White House forgotten that our major shipping ports are where imports of raw materials vital to our economy enter the US, and where our exports of finished products leave for overseas destinations? That alone (IMHO) makes these ports a critical strategic asset that you do not go selling to foreigners whose interests conflict with ours.

The UAE banking system, according to the NY Post, "provided most of the cash for the 9/11 hijackers. Indeed, much of the operational planning for the World Trade Center attacks took place inside the UAE."

Frank Gaffney pointed out in the NY Sun that "America's seaports have long been recognized by homeland security experts as among our most vulnerable targets. Huge quantities of cargo move through them every day, much of it of uncertain character and provenance, nearly all of it inadequately monitored. Matters can only be made worse by port managers who might conspire to bring in dangerous containers, or simply look the other way when they arrive. Entrusting information about key U.S. ports - including, presumably, government-approved plans for securing them, to say nothing of the responsibility for controlling physical access to these facilities, to a country known to have been penetrated by terrorists is not just irresponsible. It is recklessly so."

The other thing that galls me is the price. $6.8 billion for the whole six-pack. You can buy a major US shipping port for roughly a billion and a quarter? Who came up with that figure, that yellow happy-face from Wal-Mart who flies around slashing prices? That's a slap in the face to the taxpayers of NYC and the other cities who have financed the capital improvement of those ports for years with bond issues and tax dollars.

I'm also concerned about the future of the (largely unionized) workers... the Port of NY alone provides 166,000 jobs for the NY area. Are the Arab bankers in Dubai going to care about some 40-year-old union stevedore from Brooklyn losing his job at the Port of NY? Permit me to doubt.

Army orders Hamburger Helper

2006-02-17T11:31:00.000-05:00

The US Army has "sharply" lowered their recruiting standards and are now accepting recruits with records for "serious criminal misconduct" as well as "alcohol and illegal drug problems":

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.waivers14feb14,1,1790485.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines

Translation (IMHO): They're desperate. All they care about now is fresh meat that they can stick in a uniform and ship to Iraq so they can keep feeding the sausage grinder.

"There was a significant increase in the number of recruits with what the Army terms 'serious criminal misconduct.' That category includes aggravated assault, robbery, vehicular manslaughter, receiving stolen property and making terrorist threats, according to Douglas Smith, a spokesman for the Army Recruiting Command."

Eh? Making terrorist threats? We're recruiting people convicted of making terrorist threats to help fight the war on terror?

This is ungood.

New Abu Ghraib Photos

2006-02-15T00:46:00.000-05:00

Not really new -- these all look to be from the original Darby set. But previously unreleased. Some Australian journos got a set of sixty, and some of them are already up at Kos:

Link

A few of them are pretty bad.

S'funny, I was all eager for the full set to be released when the ACLU lawsuit was going on (district judge ordered release, ruling currently pending appeal), but now that some of them are out...

this is awesome

2006-02-12T22:05:00.000-05:00

don't blow my shit up for this and i won't blow your shit up for fag jokes.

enjoy

Cheney Hunts the Most Dangerous Game

2006-02-12T16:16:00.000-05:00

Seriously.

I really have nothing to add to this. Just thought it should be noted for the record.

Pandora is my new favorite website.

2006-02-07T13:38:00.000-05:00

I posted how I thought pandora.com was a neat online music site. And at some point that turned into this:

"thanks very much sir, but it would seem i found my own way home:

strange how benificent drunks are part of homeland security...."

I don't understand.

Line Item Veto: The Quickening

2006-02-01T11:12:00.000-05:00

State of the Union was kinda dull and dreary last night; no verbal pyrotechnics, boring, querulous proposals (entitlement spending is going to cripple the budget, we need to act now to fix things, and your bold proposal is to have a commission?! This stuff has been studied a little bit alread, you know...) and the whole thing seemed cribbed from previous SotU's, from the pro forma reading of a letter from a dead soldier to the warmed-over reintroduction of 2003's Freedom Car.

But there was one brief moment of glory: "I am pleased that members of Congress are working on earmark reform, because the federal budget has too many special interest projects, and we can tackle this problem together if you pass the line-item veto."

First off, the frame is awesome. Earmark reform is a hugely wonky idea, and watching on TV was great, because as soon as Bush mentioned it, the cameras cut to McCain, who was clapping with an incredulous look on his face. So you, the viewer, are totally like "wow, I can't believe he's actually saying something about a Congressional procedure which is legitimately terrible and sort of linked to the corruption scandals." And then as you're sitting in the warm glow of McCain's solitary clapping, BAM, in comes the line-item veto, which has nothing to do with the antecedent (well, it does a little, but passing the line-item veto to deal with Congressional earmarks is kind of like bashing a hole in the bottom of your tub because it's overflowing -- it's messy, unlikely to go smoothly, and it's easier to just turn the spigot off).

The hilarious thing, of course, is that not too long ago the line item veto was passed, enacted into law, used by President Clinton, and then ruled unconstitutional (Clinton v. City of New York, 1998). The only way the line-item veto could survive is if there's a constitutional amendment.

I have no idea who put that into the speech, and if this is actually a policy idea or what, but the fact is that Bush baldly asked Congress to pass a law which is unambiguously unconstitutional, solely to give the presidency more power. I guess that's the "boldness" everybody's always going on about...

{ Iran Bomb | The State Of The Union }

2006-02-01T04:28:00.000-05:00

I didn't see the State of the Union tonight (I won't get to read about it until at least Saturday), but I noticed two links on Fark.com:

IAEA: Document Iran purchased on the black market "serves no other purpose than to make an atomic bomb"

UN confirms Iran uranium enrichment.

Seems a busy day for the IAEA and UN security Council, and I wonder if/how it ties in to the SOTU.

A Monkey on Ice Skates

2006-01-27T11:57:00.000-05:00

It's a gallery of a monkey on ice skates. He is also wearing a cute monkey parka. It would have been better had they been using a non-pissed off looking monkey. But he seems pretty okay with the skating part.

Official Scientific Standards

2006-01-17T13:39:00.000-05:00

Clearly this would never happen under the current administration, but I really think we need to have a federal scientific body to provide some type of consensus scientific opinion. Maybe require 90% approval of various ideas. I am just sick of climate change, evolution, STD prevention, various pandemics, etc. being framed as "debates" when there is strong consensus among the people who actually study these issues on the basics.

Anyhoo, this body would provide some sort of seal of approval on science and health books or programs. States would not have to comply, but hopefully many would only accept credit for federally certified books, and publishers would feel pressure to actually conform to some real standard.

This wasn't a particularly good post. I think Mike's most recent post just put me over the line of "The Government and the Frustatingly Low Bar of Large-Scale Media Have Frustrated Me as a Scientist". Here's a link on science and the Bush administration.

Hilarity Ensues

2006-01-16T12:29:00.000-05:00

I really shouldn't be doing anything besides working on my Note right now, but I stumbled across this article castigating scientists who think anthropogenic climate change is real:

The driving message of the eco-doomsters has been ‘green plants good, man bad’. This has become a received wisdom that simply cannot be questioned. It is taught in our schools as fact. It has spurred each of our political parties to turn a deeper shade of green than the others. Anyone foolhardy enough to challenge this orthodoxy is mercilessly mocked or vilified as stupid, insane or in the pay of the evil oil lobby.

...

* The version of this article published in The Daily Mail said in error that water vapour formed most of the atmosphere.

So, my vote is for "stupid," then.

Via Crooked Timber.

Sanity Check

2006-01-07T06:45:00.000-05:00

That part of my brain that, when I read reporting by one news corporation (like MSNBC) badmouth a trivial action of another corporation (like Time Warner), suspects petty mudslinging is floating free in a vacuum of hard information. What I mean to say is, it's been another year, another chance for corporations to congeal into further indistinguishable masses. So, it seems, I've lost some of my intuition of corporate merger law. Wondered for a second if it was possible for Walmart to own a station competitor of MSNBC. Grumble, of course it is; Microsoft "owns" MSNBC, as does NBC, parented by GE.
I should have gone to sleep before 7am. Just saying, diminishing returns.

I was proved fucking right!

2005-12-20T13:09:00.000-05:00

So, that baseless speculation in the post below about how NYT had probably spiked the story prior to the election? Spot-on:

The New York Times first debated publishing a story about secret eavesdropping on Americans as early as last fall, before the 2004 presidential election.
So yeah. As Kevin Drum points out, there's a very strong chance if this story had broken, say, mid-October, we'd have a President Kerry right now. It's unfair to the Times to say it should have run back then, without knowing the details on sourcing etc., but still.

Oh, and apparently the current informed speculation is that the program at issue is something Echelon-like, as Mark suggested. Mostly cueing off of a few statements here and there -- Sen. Rockefeller's letter indicating the program had "technical" complexities and that it reminded him of Poindexter's brainchild TIA, e.g. -- and the patent silliness of the "FISA Court isn't convenient enough for the executive branch" argument.

[Subject heading courtesy Judith Miller re: WMD, of course]

Law and Security Roundup

2005-12-16T12:58:00.000-05:00

So, was reading the big long NYT article on the NSA conducting warantless surveillance of phone traffic (the article doesn't make a very big deal out of it, but I'm pretty sure this is illegal by statute, which is why there's all the maundering at the end about "inherent constitutional authority." That's when I reach for my revolver etc.)

Anyway, buried in there is this:

The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted.

Anybody else doing the math on when an article delayed for a year might have come out? NB that I'd bet dollars to donuts that the cited mid-2004 "concerns" were what prompted the leaks which led to the story.

Notable too is the apparent fear on the part of the people administering the program that they would be subject to investigations upon a change of administrations. This worry has apparently come up in a bunch of contexts -- e.g. the CIA guys who are holding the bag on renditions, "torture lite", and secret prisons. Yet another argument for legislative, rather than purely executive, guidance in these areas.

In related news, I'm sure y'all have seen the White House has caved on the McCain amendment. The tweaks are not terrible (the one on reasonable reliance on superior orders is fine, but there's another one which to my knowledge hasn't been reported on yet which I'm disappointed is in there), and Hunter's just posturing now. So that's a big win -- unless of course the Pentagon's new secret list of ok'd tactics winds up screwing with things. I'm really curious what the dynamics in DoD were like on this one...

EDIT: Oh, and lest the above come off uncharacteristically Pollyanna-ish, I should note that Graham-Levin is totally getting passed and is fucking terrible. Especially given the rumors that they're sexing it up even worse in conference -- the whole "OK, 'evidence' from torture should be admissable in court if we really, really want it" thing is bad enough, but there've been even worse ideas kicked around, from what I hear...

Bushy Scandal of the Week

2005-12-16T12:03:00.000-05:00

The NSA has been spying on 500 people in America and a few thousand abroad at any given time without a warrant with authorization from Bush

The article talks about how people thought this may have kinda sorta been illegal, and I just had to ask: is there any way that this could not be illegal?

Google This

2005-12-06T15:54:00.000-05:00

Could of things I've been wanteing to see on this there internet.

1) Address Lists on Gmail. Do I really need to cut and paste from a text file?
2) You mean I can't store and view a text file alongside my Gmail? Give me a place to store view and files in my mailbox. Sure, I could email them to myself, but that just suggests that this feature would be very easy to impliment.

3) I'm looking for an online calendar that will sync with my computer and go so far as to email me or my phone updates when I have appointments. This probably exists out there on the internet, but I haven't found a system that is easy and carries these three features: Accessible online, syncing with my laptop, and communication with my cell phone.

I should have written that SMS parser when I had the time and motivation.

Fidelity to the Source Material

2005-11-12T16:30:00.000-05:00

I should be blogging about whether the Graham detainee amendments are constitutional or not (probably not, is my feeling, but it's a closer question than it might at first appear), but I have far too much work, so I give you this instead:

From an interview about a forthcoming video game take on the Lord of the Rings:

"Tom [Bombadil]'s role in the books is the hero who shows up when the hobbits are in trouble and casts out whatever danger they are in, all the while singing and being merry. He plays the same role in our game. Once you summon him, he can pretty much destroy everything in his path, and he sings and dances along the way.

Edit: alternate title: "Bright blue my jacket is, and my boots are yellow, bitch!"

GroupThinkTank

The Longshots Get The Freedom To Speak

best ads yet

Fredo, Fredo, Fredo.

How we lost Afghanistan.

How soon we forget.

Hey A-Abbott!

McSweeny's Candidates

the internet! mapped!

Mike Gravel's "national initiative"

Al Qaeda: Pioneering Anti-Alien-Invasion Tactics Since 1988

Erudite Spam

Energy Consumption broken down by Fuel, Effect, and Waste

I Am Published

Doctor says you're going home today, Mr. X

Gonzales Says Something Very True

NSC-68

Diabolical duo

Unbefuckingleivable

"You're Like a Slovenian Dennis Leary!"

The Supremes and the Environment

In a dignified manner

Changes to the Insurrection Act re martial law

I Wished I Wished I Wished That God Would Kill Me...

Breaking: John Bolton is a Terrible Diplomat

25 Edward III Stat. 3, c 2

crazy idea for iraq

Nietzsche + Family Circus

Aaaaaaand.... Suspended.

Blog: Archiving

Clinton defends his pursuit of Bin Laden

Rangel misfires at Chavez

God Shows His Middle Finger to Creation, Part XXXVIII

Rove is *Good*

Caltech Rubik's cube winner (video)

Election rigging testimony in Ohio

Behavior detection officers

Ian Bell on Cuba

Cheep

The proper balance

Poll Suggests GOP Control of House Is Tenuous

Classified Blogs

New Pynchon Emerging Blues

Geneva comes to Guantanamo

The America I'm betting on to win

A Day That Will Live in Infamy

The risks inherent

Surely innocent...

They don't call it a state religion, but...

RFK in RS

An Editorial Cartoon I Like

Another Ousting; Snow Is Gone

I am on the internets!

Ray McGovern: Pubs may repeal Posse Comitatus

Not Even Negative Time Could Stop This

FBI using Patriot Act to track journalists' phone calls

In What Way Are Baseball Statistics Property?

SCOTUS and the NSA phone database

An Article that is Both Optimistic AND Appalling

Wrongness Singularity

Yay, Liberals!

Mutual Funds For Evil!

I hadn't heard about brass resigning...

Comparison Shopping

Euston Manifesto

Black sites on Wikipedia

religion in america

Fear and Loathing in North Carolina

I just did my "Tobin Evidence Points Finger at Bush" dance

I just did my "Libby Points Finger at Bush" dance

Wikocracy

Divine strake?

Legal Hilarity

The law of unintended consequences

No more secrets

Tiptoeing toward the abyss II

Tiptoeing toward the abyss

Civil War in Iraq

Civil War in Iraq

Now I Have to Ask What House He Was In

Rove is Good