psychopolitik

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2006-01-21T03:14:00.000-05:00

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Go Google Yourself, George...

2006-01-20T23:01:00.000-05:00

So far, the government's request for search records is being firewalled. This I'm actually surprised about for once...

Google is defying a request by the US government to hand over data revealing what its users are searching for online. The Bush administration wants a list of requests entered into Google's online search engine in an unspecified single week. It also wants 1m randomly selected web addresses from Google's databases.

The White House said the information is part of an effort to protect children from online pornography, and would not violate personal privacy - but the request immediately raised concerns.

Rights groups in the US are already on alert after revelations that the White House authorised phone tapping without court orders. "This is exactly the kind of thing we have been worrying about with search engines for some time," Pam Dixon of the World Privacy Forum told the Associated Press. "Google should be commended for fighting this."

What is it they want those records for? Oh, just so they can blatantly ignore a rare Supreme Court ruling that blocked yet another attempt at censorship "for the children". They think filtering software doesn't do a good enough job of blocking porn sites, ignoring that this is none of their business anyway.

Interesting side-note: their stock price took a hit over this...

Yeah, right

2006-01-19T18:29:00.000-05:00

Ever notice that those Bin-Laden tapes always seem to pop up when Republicans are in hot water over something?

Osama bin Laden warned that his al Qaeda network is preparing new terrorist attacks in the United States but indicated the group was open to a truce in response to U.S. public opinion against the war in Iraq, according to an audiotape aired by an Arabic television network today.

U.S. intelligence analysts have authenticated the tape, concluding that the speaker is indeed bin Laden, one informed intelligence official told The Washington Post. The official asked not to be identified.

Portions of the tape were broadcast by the al-Jazeera satellite television network.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan, asked about the tape at a briefing, rejected the vague truce offer. He said bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders are "on the run" and vowed that "we will bring them to justice."

Anything short of Bin-Laden's head on a stick doesn't even matter anymore. All this time of beating the drums of war & it has yet to accomplish anything since, oh, 2002 -- and even that is debatable. So these tapes, if anyone is paying attention, should serve as a reminder of failure, not a reinvigoration of politically-convenient panic.

If the hawks out there had some balls, they'd be screaming at their boy asking why the hell this guy is still alive.

States' Rights win -- for once

2006-01-17T15:53:00.000-05:00

Re: assisted-suicide in Oregon:

The Supreme Court delivered a rebuff to the Bush administration over physician-assisted suicide today, rejecting a Justice Department effort to bar doctors in Oregon from helping terminally ill patients end their lives under a 1994 state law.

In a 6-3 vote, the court ruled that then-U.S. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft overstepped his authority in 2001 by trying to use a federal drug law to prosecute doctors who prescribed lethal overdoses under the Oregon Death With Dignity Act, the only law in the nation that allows physician-assisted suicide. The measure has been approved twice by Oregon voters and upheld by lower court rulings

Now if only this principle held sway on a regular basis...

Oh yeah, about that 6-3 vote:

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., dissenting for the first time since he joined the court in September, sided with the two most conservative justices -- Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas -- in voting for the minority view.

Gee, Roberts voted in the Bush administration's favor. [sarcasm]What a surprise...[/sarcasm]

Scott at Catallarchy looked at the opinion & exposed what could quite possibly be the dumbest dissent I have ever seen: Thomas actually voted the other way only because he thought it hypocritical for the majority to call this one on federalism grounds when they bent over and took it on Raich. That's quite childish for someone on the highest court in the land...

Updated @ 1:20pm EST, 01/20/06 -- Look, a bear shitting in the woods....
A "true conservative", "christian" criticizes the ruling, & my comment on Thomas:

I say that I have read the opinions because a lot of what is being said about this case is - in my humble opinion - being assumed by those who haven't read the case. They assume that this is a victory for states' rights, a victory delivered by the liberals who suddenly embraced the argument for federalism because it suited the outcome they desired. Those same people chide Scalia and Thomas for abandoning their states' rights position, painting them as hypocrites....

While this case may have looked like states' rights versus the right to life, it was more like the right of the Attorney General to define what is a "legitimate medical use." The majority said that he had no such authority. I can see their point, but why hand the decision for that definition over to the populace of Oregon or (even worse) the legislators of Oregon? If the question is as technical as [Supreme Court Justice] Kennedy makes it out to be, shouldn't the group with the expertise - the doctors - make the decision? Yes, I am suggesting a vote amongst the doctors of Oregon as to whether they feel comfortable violating the Hippocratic Oath on a regular basis.

The doctors can vote themselves already. It's called saying "no" when the request is made. Far as I've heard, the law allows physician-assisted suicide, it doesn't require it in any sense that would suggest criminalizing a medical decision to refuse to do it.

To expand on this: Laws against suicide are ridiculous anyway. To accept that there can possibly be a law against willingly ending one's own life you would have to start off from an assumption that people are never truly in control of themselves, negating the common arguement of self-ownership -- that your body is, by definition, also your property, to use how you see fit. This isn't popularly acknowledged anymore because people see in it suggestions that laws against acts they see as culturally unacceptable would fall like dominoes if they accepted it with no loopholes or contradictions. They're correct, but that's not an arguement against legal suicide, it's an invitation to an arguement on what the law itself should be based on, w/ their view being that it should be defined by the morals of a plurality.

Reject him

2006-01-17T15:06:00.000-05:00

The hearings showed me all I needed to know: Alito is a weasel. Vote No.

At first the guy seemed like a wash -- obviously not what I would personally prefer, but not bad enough to warrant active opposition. But I must say, anyone whose conscience allows them to slip around their words to the extent that this guy has is not fit for anything, let alone the Supreme Court.

The past reference to being anti-abortion on his Reagan administration application was one thing. That could've easily been just him playing to his audience, and even if it wasn't, it's not like the Constitution is clear on that issue anyway -- that is, in comparison with what it says on holding US citizens w/o charges or intercepting their communications without a warrant. But when that kind of was-I-lying-then-or-am-I-lying-now question becomes the basis for a sizeable chunk of ones testimony, you just want to say "ENOUGH!".

A description of the last straw, via the San Francisco Chronicle. Long excerpt, but long for a reason:

A year after Robert Bork's Supreme Court nomination was scuttled by the Senate, federal prosecutor Samuel Alito called Bork "one of the most outstanding nominees of the century.'' Eighteen years later, the comment must have seemed like a godsend to Democrats hoping to paint Alito as a reactionary unsuited for the high court.

But when a senator confronted him with his words, Alito said he had only been expressing admiration for Bork, and loyalty to the administration that appointed them both. He insisted he wasn't endorsing Bork's views on topics such as abortion, voting rights and presidential power....

Alito's 1985 application for a political job in Reagan's Justice Department took some [positions comparable to Bork] -- denying a right to abortion, disputing Supreme Court rulings on equal political districts, and endorsing the supremacy of the president and Congress over the courts. By the time of his 1988 interview with a reporter about Bork, Alito had left the administration to become the Reagan-appointed U.S. attorney for New Jersey, a position he held until his appeals court appointment in 1990.

Bork, Alito told his interviewer, was a superior candidate who had been unfairly rejected by the Senate. "He is a man of unequaled ability, understanding of constitutional history, someone who had thought deeply throughout his entire life about constitutional issues and about the Supreme Court and the role it ought to play in American society,'' Alito said.

Last Tuesday, Kohl reminded Alito of his words and asked whether his praise for Bork reflected compatibility with his opinions. "One of the ways you get at a person's judicial philosophy is to look at the people whom they admire,'' said the senator.

Alito demurred. "When I made that statement in 1988, I was an appointee in the Reagan administration, and Judge Bork had been a nominee of the administration, and I had been a supporter of the nomination, and I don't think the statement goes beyond that,'' he said. (emphasis mine)

Clearly if he agreed with Bork on the extent of executive power he'd earn himself a No vote right there. Yet, his conduct in the hearings was so slippery that frankly I could care less which Alito was telling the truth & which one was lying in hopes of being liked for it. Away with ye.

Stillborn insurgency

2006-01-15T12:58:00.000-05:00

What with the impending fallout from Abramoff, among other things, there's talk of "reform" within the Republican Party. You can laugh at that one later, because within that is something even funnier: the crackpotted idea that there may emerge from the wreckage a "libertarian" friendly direction to the GOP.

Jon Henke of QandO comments:

The entry of Congressman John Shadegg into the race for Majority Leader is, I think, a notable moment. Notable, because, as Below the Beltway notes, Shadegg is a member of the Republican Liberty Caucus. [RLC]....

It seems to me that the ascension of a Republican Liberty Caucus member to the leadership of the House of Representatives — combined with the good work being done by Rep. Mike Pence in the Republican Study Committee — would mark a remarkable shift in the balance of power within the Republican Party away from the religious right and toward the limited government faction.

"Republican Liberty Caucus"....Hah! More like Ron Paul plus some opportunistic hanger-ons. When most of the members of your caucus vote in the other direction, I'd be inclined to think your caucus means nothing.

Back to that reform thing: if the idea is to carve out the taint of Abramoff in particular & corruption in general, it might be a good idea to have as the "reform" candidate someone who didn't take money from him....

Arizona GOP Rep. John Shadegg last month shed more than $6,900 in campaign contributions from sources connected with lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who has confessed to bilking Indian tribes and buying political influence.

Shadegg's office on Wednesday confirmed that his campaign fund has returned one tribal contribution and donated to charities five others that had come to him through a partner of Abramoff and the political arm of the lobbyist's employer. One of the contributions went undisclosed for five years in violation of federal campaign-finance rules.

It just shows how deep the culture of corruption goes that someone can be considered a "reform" choice for having taken smaller bribes instead of none at all. Nice try though.

"Stability" is in the eye of the beholder

2006-01-14T14:33:00.000-05:00

Of all the things to bark about...

The US moved yesterday to stop Spain completing a $2billion arms sale to one of America's bitterest critics in the Americas, Venezuela's president Hugo Chávez. State department officials informed the Spanish government that it would not give the licences needed to allow the sale of a dozen military aircraft that carry US technology. Spain vowed to press ahead with the deal regardless.

The 10 C-295 transport planes and two CN-235 patrol planes, which Venezuela has insisted would not be armed and would be used for tackling drug smuggling, were part of a deal to supply ships and planes. "In a region in need of political stability, the Venezuelan government's actions and frequent statements contribute to regional instability," the US embassy in Madrid said in a statement. "This proposed sale ... has the potential to complicate the situation." (emphasis mine)

Uh, yeah, because things were quite stable when we were propping up dictators down there...

This is a petty slap at them over the region no longer playing ball on trade, nothing more. When you tie people's hands on every little detail & then have the nerve to call the result "free trade" & "liberalization", is it any wonder that they reject it?

Unexpected Truth Alert

2006-01-12T16:31:00.000-05:00

Joe Biden just had an honest moment:

Supreme Court nominees are so mum about the major legal issues at their Senate confirmation hearings that the hearings serve little purpose and should probably be abandoned, Democratic Sen. Joe Biden said Thursday.

"The system's kind of broken," said Biden, a member of the Judiciary Committee considering the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito.

"Nominees now, Democrat and Republican nominees, come before the United States Congress and resolve not to let the people know what they think about the important issues," such as a president's authority to go to war, said Biden.

As the committee headed into its fourth day of hearings on the Alito nomination, Biden told NBC's "Today" show that a better solution might be to skip hearings and send nominations straight to the Senate floor for a vote. "Just go to the Senate floor and debate the nominee's statements," the Delaware senator said, "instead of this game."

As the article further notes, that's actually how it used to be done. There'd be spewing about it anyway if that were taken seriously, but that's us.

Another thought Re: Alito

2006-01-12T16:11:00.000-05:00

I wondered a slight bit of something. Do not take the following as endorsement of the idea, just as submitting it for consideration:

Suppose the "advise & consent" part for confirmation of Supreme Court justices were revised so that though the Senate still voted on the nomination, the questions for hearings (a modern phenomenon) were submitted by regular citizens -- 50 randomly picked, one from each state? That'd bypass the grandstanding tendency of congressmen, while encouraging citizens to at least muddle into some sort of understanding of the judicial branch. Plus, a lot of the code talk that usually goes on in these kind of affairs would be voided in one stroke, since someone that isn't in office for anything that wants to ask about some type of relevant issue would just spit it out. It'd be relatively easy to do, what w/ modern communication technology.

As I said, not endorsing this, just holding it in the wind to see what flies into my face over it. If you have any other thoughts on encouraging citizen concern about these kind of things, then say that too. I'm wide open.

If he walks, it's on

2006-01-12T15:18:00.000-05:00

Padilla has entered his plea:

Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen who was held for more than three years as an "enemy combatant," pleaded not guilty Thursday to criminal charges alleging he was part of a secret network that supported Muslim holy war around the world.

The plea, followed by a judge's refusal to set bail for Padilla, came one week after he was transferred from military to civilian custody.

The plea marks Padilla's first formal answer to any government charge associated with terrorists. His lawyers fought for three years to gain access to the federal courts. "Absolutely not guilty," said Michael Caruso, one of Padilla's Miami lawyers. Padilla did not speak during the hearing.

A lot of people who feed off of the power of government ought to be praying that he's convicted. Because if after all this "dirty bombs!" mess, & him, a U.S. citizen, being held in limbo for years at the behest of the president....mark my words, if the outcome of all this is that a jury finds him innocent, there will be havoc. This is simply too big to ignore, the implications from such would blow the doors open, watch.

Congressmen? Or prop-comics?

2006-01-12T14:08:00.000-05:00

They used to throw tomatoes at bad comedians:

Since Alito first sat down in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday, it has become clear that the process is as much about the senators and their own agendas as it is about the nominee. Several lawmakers have spent more time delivering their own stemwinders than they have asking questions of Alito. Nary a mind appears to have been changed....

"Since the politicians seem to have made up their mind, and the rest of this is simply playing out, I suspect that if there weren't TV cameras, this part of the hearing would be over by now," said Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.).

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), who is thinking about running for president in 2008, found a sure-fire gimmick to get the cameras turned on him. Discussing a controversial Princeton University alumni group of which Alito was once a member, Biden clapped on a Princeton baseball cap. Every camera in the room swung to him, and the sound of shutters clicking was deafening.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) also understood the value of props in a hearing as dry and legalistic as this one. He pulled out and waved a pocket-sized copy of the Constitution. Again, cameras clicked.

Republicans had props of their own. Responding to Democrats' claim that Alito was being evasive and refusing to answer key questions, Kyl displayed a poster with quotes from the day's newspaper articles describing him as a forthcoming witness....

This shows the catch-22 with televising things like this. Sure it gives the public an eye on the procedure, but also it gives politicians an excuse to ham it up & cheapen the whole point. Of course, if they stuck to the script then even fewer people would watch it, so....

Basically we get the representation we deserve, folks. Ignore what goes on, & you get campaign-style grandstanding & softball questions during what's supposed to be a heated fracas on all things Constitutional, and the only place you see a reference to the Constitution is as a Carrot-Top moment for someone who shows by their legislative actions to have never read it.

Alito's going to be confirmed having answered basically nothing relevant. Aside from Senator Drunk-off-his-arse bringing up executive overreach in a moment of clarity, nothing was said with weight behind it. Tomatoes aren't hard enough, bricks would be more appropriate.

Nagin, PLEASE!

2006-01-12T13:54:00.000-05:00

First one to say they didn't see this coming gets a Dunce cap & some quality corner time:

Tempers flared as expected Wednesday with the unveiling of a bold plan to temporarily halt the issuance of building permits in flood-ravaged parts of New Orleans -- a four-month timeout proposed by Mayor Ray Nagin's rebuilding commission to allow for a planning process that would chart the future of those neighborhoods.

The message to Nagin's Bring New Orleans Back commission from many of the roughly 20 audience members who spoke out at the presentation of its land use plan was direct and simple: Don't tell me what I can do with my property. Fueling the anger was the plan's call for using eminent domain, as a "last resort," to buy out homeowners in areas that show few signs of rebirth. (emphasis mine)

So they get through all this, just for the city to try to kick them out. Nice one.

Considering all the talk about how people that were forced away are somehow "better off", how the lowest areas (coincidentally -- according to them -- also the blackest) should be "reclaimed" by the gulf, & how quickly politically connected developers showed up, it's obvious what's going to happen: New Orleans is gonna be remade as a cajun-themed DisneyLand, an expensive, soulless tourist trap and nothing more.

If we can't have the NO back, then may we have Little New Orleans' sprout up in cities across the country. The rest of us could use some flavor.

The sky has fallen

2006-01-10T17:22:00.000-05:00

SCOTUSblog's liveblogging of the confirmation hearings shows not only that someone asked a relevant question, but that that someone was....Ted Kennedy.

I wasn't even expecting anyone to bring up the topic of executive overreach, let alone him. They need to hammer on that from here on out. Maybe try to deliberately get Alito pissed off about something, people tend to get honest when they're angry. But who would be able to say something meaningful & get him mad with it? Any ideas?

Re: measuring economic freedom

2006-01-10T16:46:00.000-05:00

A Hit'n'Run post on the Heritage Foundation's annual Index of Economic Freedom -- and the resulting arguement over the meaning -- inspired the following...

I've never given much credit to the "Index of Economic Freedom". For many reasons: the inaccurate suggestion that economic freedom & civil liberties are two different animals (notice Singapore's position on that list...), general distrust of a Republican thinktank, etcetera. Though, the main one would be how economic freedom is defined by people sympathetic with the State.

The criteria for such ranks are inherently biased in favor of a corporatist interpretation of capitalism in that they would consider some concerns that are actually completely compatible with a true free-market economy to be "social issues" (read: socialist crap) & thus not to be counted. To serve a real purpose in measuring economic freedom rather than compatibility with corporatism, the measurement itself would have to be redefined:

1) extent to which open, honest exchanges are "left alone".

2) whether the relationship in the larger-scale sectors between management & employee is defined by the State (in collusion with either), or is solely on a voluntary case-by-case basis. For example, though a "closed-shop" law (requiring union membership for employment) & "right to work" rules (stating you can be fired for any, or no, reason, among other things) are outwardly intended for different factions, both are impositions by government on labor.

3) equality of status between various manners of voluntary economic organization. Basically, whether or not the government plays favorites to some types of market actors.

4) corruption. Degree to which "who you know" matters to market access.

I'm curious what the rankings would be on such a list.

This would pull the definition of economic freedom more in line with how liberty is defined in non-economic terms: absense of force. The more that economic activity is driven by voluntary means, w/ no hidden force guiding anything, the more free that economy is. I'd personally object to measuring economic freedom & personal liberty seperately on principle, but there's a right way to do everything.

New lows every day

2006-01-09T17:37:00.000-05:00

Mkay, with crap like this they're just trying to be so absurd that it becomes impossible to joke about:

In the 50 years that Grant Goodman has known and corresponded with a colleague in the Philippines he never had any reason to suspect that their friendship was anything but spectacularly ordinary.

But now he believes that the relationship has somehow sparked the interest of the Department of Homeland Security and led the agency to place him under surveillance.

Last month Goodman, an 81-year-old retired University of Kansas history professor, received a letter from his friend in the Philippines that had been opened and resealed with a strip of dark green tape bearing the words “by Border Protection” and carrying the official Homeland Security seal.

I dunno which one's worse: the paranoid assumption that an elderly former professor is somehow worth scrutiny, or that they didn't even attempt to disguise that they opened it.

These morons "represent" us...

2006-01-09T12:59:00.000-05:00

Geez, it's just opening remarks & they're already cranking up the Suck Factor. Excerpts:

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.:

"The challenge for Judge Alito in the course of these hearings is to demonstrate that he will protect the rights and liberties of all Americans and serve as an effective check on government overreaching.

This would be nice if he himself cared about these things. But alas, the only congressman that can say stuff like this & not warrant sneers & eye rolls is Ron Paul...

The president has not helped his cause by withdrawing his earlier nomination of Harriet Miers in the face of criticism from an extreme faction of his own party."

So what's he saying here? He would've voted to confirm Bush's sock puppet, despite her being a clearly unqualified sychophant?

Sen. Jon Cornyn, R-Texas:

"Groups are trying to defeat your nomination because you will not support their liberal agenda. And the reason they oppose you is precisely why I support you.

Way to oversimplify there.

I want judges on the Supreme Court who will not use their position to impose a political agenda on the American people. I want judges on the Supreme Court who will respect the words and meaning of the Constitution, the laws enacted by Congress, and the laws enacted by state legislatures. ... the meanings of the Constitution and other laws should not change unless the people change them. A Supreme Court appointment is not a free ticket to rewrite our laws however you and your colleagues see fit."

If the laws violate the Constitution then it is their JOB to throw them out. What he's endorsing is not "judicial restraint", it's judicial submissiveness.

Consider yourself lucky I'll never have the opportunity to make a nomination. Now, get to pretending to ask relevant questions so he can pretend to answer.

Hearings start tommorow

2006-01-08T16:10:00.000-05:00

Anyone want to place bets on whether Specter & co will finally ask questions that matter? I got 5 on "probably not"...

Immigration. Again.

2006-01-08T15:20:00.000-05:00

I strongly doubt that opinion is shifting, so this just means that fewer people care:

Illegal immigration protests organized across the country Saturday drew small numbers, and some were outnumbered and out-shouted by those who support immigrant rights.

The so-called "Stop the Invasion" protests were organized in 19 states, demanding the government increase border security and penalize employers who hire illegal workers. "We are keeping the debate on illegal immigration in the forefront of the American consciousness," said Joseph Turner of Save Our State, who was among about two dozen protesters who waved American flags outside a home-supply store in a Los Angeles suburb.

But Turner's group in Glendale was surrounded by more than 100 drum- beating supporters who chanted, "Racists go home." The two groups traded shouts and obscene gestures for more than an hour. One man was arrested for assault, police said.

Real talk: rallies like these don't work unless you have both a critical mass of participants & some sort of moral arguement, otherwise it's just a bunch of people shouting in the street. Besides, both sides have a flawed arguement:

-the "immigrant rights" groups are naive to occurences where illegal immigrants get special attention that others don't (i.e.: getting signs printed in their own language since they refuse to learn english), & seem to dismiss the slightest of cultural questions as "racist". Regardless of what one personally thinks about the culture here -- I myself have plenty of issues with it -- adapting to an extent is necessary, otherwise you're handicapping your livelihood, period.

-the anti-immigration people, on the other hand, are showing themselves to be steeped in US entitlement mentality so deep it's clouding the actual problem. Yelling "they took our JOBS!" is NOT an arguement for more border security, it is an arguement for the labor relationship in this country to adapt, confusing economics with race is the oldest trick in the book (look it up, blacks used to be shut out of unions for this reason). To make an example of someone...

"This is not a racist thing," said Daniel Anastasia, 46, a construction worker from Westchester, N.Y. "We pay taxes, they don't.

Dan doesn't realize it, but he just made an arguement for switching to a consumption-based tax.

I get paid what the union says.

Time to have a talk with that union then.

The contractor pays them cash. It's not fair to me."

The question to ask here is "why can't the contractor pay ME in cash?", get on it.

If you're just coming here to work, then that's fine IMO, we'd just like to know that that's what you're doing. Also, it'd be nice if you learned the language. That's all I really want out of immigration policy.

Another cliche dies

2006-01-05T00:59:00.000-05:00

You've heard the old saying "The Pen is mightier than the sword", right? Not anymore:

When President Bush last week signed the bill outlawing the torture of detainees, he quietly reserved the right to bypass the law under his powers as commander in chief. After approving the bill last Friday, Bush issued a ''signing statement" -- an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law -- declaring that he will view the interrogation limits in the context of his broader powers to protect national security. This means Bush believes he can waive the restrictions, the White House and legal specialists said.

''The executive branch shall construe [the law] in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President . . . as Commander in Chief," Bush wrote, adding that this approach ''will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President . . . of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks."

The sword is officially mightier than the pen now. How else can one actually sign legislation meant to restrain their power while simultaneously declaring they will not obey it?

In case I haven't made it clear enough before, my view on the whole torture thing is built more on a value of honesty than with revulsion to brutality. I personally do not approve of it, & find that any ruling structure that ends up resorting to it deserves to collapse, though that is not what REALLY gets my blood boiling. No, what I hate is how by our conduct we have stretched US exceptionalism -- an idea that already started off with problems -- so far that it amounts to a blank check. We point out the window shouting "look at those SAVAGES! They don't play by rules!", puffing up our egos as some kind of timeless heroic badass -- The Lone Ranger with the weaponry of The Terminator -- who must do atrocious things simply to be able to sleep at night.

That distinction is a lie.

From the beginning of mans time as talking apes there have not been rules to war. The entire point of combat is that it's what happens when the parameters of civil society stop working. Any attempt to say otherwise has amounted to a sideways self-hate, a strategic calculation, or both. It was considered par for the course when villages were ransacked & burnt to the ground, when urban areas were carpetbombed, That was WAR.

But no, we come along and do the exact same things, and add a special twist: "We're not like THOSE people!" We attribute any atrocity done to altrusitic reasons, as if we do the world a favor or something. Personally even if we were doing favors I'd still oppose it, as it's not our job & they don't deserve charity anyway. As if that wasn't enough, we have the unmitigated GALL to be sideways about the whole mess:

"We're sooooo advanced! Now shut up & pass those pliers, this guy still has teeth!"

F**k that. Either we're advanced and we don't do it or there is no great separation. It'd actually be more humane to just come out and admit it. Nothing worse than a liar...

Split-the-baby works for once

2006-01-04T19:46:00.000-05:00

Shorter Supreme Court: "Yeah, transfer Padilla. Your dictatorial powers are still up for scrutiny anyway"...

The Supreme Court ordered terrorism suspect and U.S. citizen Jose Padilla transferred from military custody Wednesday to stand trial in Miami, Florida. The brief order came at the request of the Bush administration, which had been blocked by a federal appeals court from moving ahead with the transfer.

The high court is also considering a broader appeal from Padilla, questioning whether President Bush had constitutional authority to hold him in military custody since 2003 as an "enemy combatant." The government had argued that that issue was moot because Padilla would be charged in criminal court. The Supreme Court will consider whether to review the appeal January 13

There was the attitude that this was a one-or-the-other case at first: either Padilla stands trial & the "enemy combatant" designation still exists, or the SC reviewed it & Padilla sat in limbo until they made their ruling. Glad they figured out this was a fallacy.

For our sake, let's hope that Alito doesn't turn out to be a total authority-monger, cuz this one just might go long enough for him to get confirmed before they decide. Sad, because the constitutionality of this is such an open-and-shut Hell No that a properly stocked court would rule on it inbetween bites during lunch.

Eh, you take your wins where you can.

Well DUH...

2006-01-03T01:02:00.000-05:00

This may or may not become a semi-regular feature: "News I Could've Pulled From My Arse"

The idea behind it is simple. Sometimes a situation will come along that should've been seen a mile away, a story so obvious that I could've guessed and came up with the same thing. Hence, I could've pulled it from my arse. No real comment beyond a wisecrack would be necessary, since the fact that it is a story alone makes the essential point.

First installment -- "Most Justice Department probes of high-level leaks go nowhere":

When President Bush defended the National Security Agency after the disclosure that it had spied on hundreds of Americans, he angrily denounced media leaks about the program, and the Justice Department has now opened a criminal probe. But an ongoing Justice investigation of the president's own staff in an unrelated leak case and the handling of hundreds of other leak allegations each year suggest that the probe of the NSA leak - which focuses on the disclosure of classified information to The New York Times - faces huge obstacles.

Only two government officials have ever been convicted of leaking classified information to a news organization. Samuel L. Morison, a Navy intelligence analyst, was prosecuted for leaking three spy satellite photos to Jane's Defence Weekly in 1984; Jonathan Randel, a former Drug Enforcement Administration analyst, was convicted in 1999 of leaking confidential information about DEA investigations to a London newspaper....Mark Corallo, a former Justice spokesman who is now a spokesman for Bush adviser Karl Rove in matters related to the Fitzgerald investigation, said the department typically received hundreds of requests a year from intelligence agencies to investigate leaks, and most cases went nowhere.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've a leak to go investigate. The one I'm about to take...

Re: not trusting the military...

2006-01-03T00:18:00.000-05:00

No shock here:

Support for President George W. Bush's Iraq policy has fallen among the US armed forces to just 54 percent from 63 percent a year ago, according to a poll by the magazine group Military Times.

Barely above 50% for people that willingly signed their lives over to the government? No wonder...

Though, as usual, since this is a poll, there's the obligatory grain-of-salt. Or is there?

Military Times, which publishes popular magazines for each of the US military branches including Army Times and Navy Times, cautioned that its poll, of 1,215 active-duty servicemen, is not necessarily representative of the military as a whole. The respondents were "on average older, more experienced, more likely to be officers and more career-oriented than the military population." (emphasis mine)

This isn't salt, it's anti-salt. If it's slightly over 50% when skewed towards people for whom the military is a career, then the true number is under when you factor in the average greenhorn. This is like doing a survey on eating disorders & including a caution that there aren't that many fashion models or crackheads in the sample.

Reading between the lines

2005-12-31T15:10:00.000-05:00

The average person would look at this story -- a bit on a change in succession for the DoD's "doomsday" scenario -- and yawn, then resume downloading porn.

Brad Spangler, however...

In contrast to the lazy assertions that those who consider the possibility of a hidden agenda advocate a conspiracy theory, we’re being told in this case to uncritically accept a rather unlikely coincidence theory — that it’s just a coincidence that a policy review indicates that this would somehow be a wise choice and that the current holders of those three offices just happen to be neocon loyalists.

So what’s really going on? Hell if I know — but what it looks like ought to scare the shit out of you.

It looks like the President doesn’t trust the military. In particular, it looks like the President especially doesn’t trust the military in the event of a disaster wiping out several leading policy makers at the same time. I believe it indicates the President has potentially gone beyond being merely a little unbalanced and has slipped into the paranoia that Stalin and other dictators have suffered from. I hope I’m wrong. (bold emphasis mine)

Another odd thing about this: considering the common media portrayal of the US as being in perpetual grave danger, you'd think these kind of things would get more attention than this. Even if you take into account the implication that the libertarian equivalent of "Spidey Sense" triggers here, most of the public isn't going to put the pieces together, so it can be used for sensationalist purposes anyway. Why is it still buried despite that? Why is Yahoo -- and through another blog at that -- the first place I heard about this? Wouldn't it make more sense from the Statist Media viewpoint to hype this as somehow necessary to the security of the country rather than make it a sleeper?

New Year predictions

2005-12-30T16:16:00.000-05:00

-When it is politically convenient, a claim will be made that a terrorist plot has been foiled. This will be used as grounds for keeping the Patriot Act, despite evidence coming up that the discovery had nothing to do with any new rules established since then. Anyone questioning this will be called "anti-american". Media coverage will be so sensationalized that it amounts to free campaign advertizing.

-Somewhere, a Libertarian will make a significant (as in "damn, he/she coulda won...") showing in an important race in the 2006 elections. This will be ignored.

-Another stereotypically photogenic white woman will go missing due to her own stupidity. This will not be ignored.

-I will laugh at people that made a New Years Resolution.

Buy donuts (or the terrorists win)

2005-12-30T16:08:00.000-05:00

Should've seen this coming a mile away:

Many of the loans intended to boost economic recovery following the 9/11 terrorist attacks actually went to small businesses that did not qualify, according to an internal Small Business Administration report.

The report, released by the SBA's inspector general on Wednesday, found that only nine of 59 loan recipients that were sampled showed the attacks "adversely affected" them, which was a requirement to receive a loan under the Supplemental Terrorist Activity Relief (STAR) program. Roughly 85% of the loan recipients in the report did not justify that the attacks hurt them, and many recipients did not even know that the loans were part of a program aimed at providing 9/11 relief, the report said.

Congress authorized the STAR program in the aftermath of 9/11, setting aside up to $4.5 billion in loans to be given by private lenders to small businesses. To become eligible for the loans, small businesses had to show that they were that were "adversely affected," and the lenders would have to document exactly how they were impacted. Congress put the program under the purview of the SBA, which would guarantee up to 85% of each STAR loan.

More than 7,000 small businesses received STAR loans. Some of those loan recipients included a South Dakota radio station, a Virgin Islands perfume shop and more than 100 Dunkin' Donuts and Subway shops, according to the Associated Press.

Billions of dollars. Congress. 9/11. Complicated buereacracy.

Shit, your neighborhood drug dealer probably got a loan....

Numbers

2005-12-28T22:02:00.000-05:00

Specifically, numbers you likely haven't heard about if you get your news from TV.

Referring to the record of outgoing Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan:

When Congressman Ron Paul reminded Greenspan of (his own past statements on) "Gold and Economic Freedom," Greenspan said he now realizes he had been wrong, and that as Fed Chairman he was able to pursue policies that mimic the gold standard.

That however is a preposterous claim. As Mark Skousen showed in his book The Economics of a Pure Gold Standard, the global supply of gold has historically tended to grow 1-2% per year. Since gold supply would be the basis of money supply under a pure gold standard (or at least the monetary base under the weaker version with fractional reserve banking), then it follows that under a "mimic gold standard" the money supply would grow at the same low rate. Yet between August 1987, when Greenspan became Fed Chairman, and November 2005, the monetary base rose from $233.5 billion to $782.5 billion, a 235% total increase or 6.8% at an annual rate. The M3 measure of money supply rose during the same period from $3.62 trillion to over $10 trillion, a 179% increase or 5.8% at an annual rate. Money supply growth has thus been far in excess of gold standard conditions. (emphasis mine)

It's a pity that the current political climate doesn't allow us to fill his office with cement instead of another body when he leaves....

Nonsense, plain and simple

2005-12-26T15:28:00.000-05:00

Colin Powell must've got knocked in the head recently...

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday that it would not have been "that hard" for President Bush to have obtained warrants for eavesdropping on domestic telephone and Internet activity, but that he saw "nothing wrong" with the decision not to do so.

"My own judgment is that it didn't seem to me, anyway, that it would have been that hard to go get the warrants," Powell said. "And even in the case of an emergency, you go and do it. The law provides for that."

He's right about it not being hard to get the warrants:

-The spy court has approved thousands of them in its history & has only rejected five.
-Warrants can be made retroactive, allowing a wiretap to begin without one.
-In the case that the spy court rejects a warrant request -- which it rarely ever does -- there are two levels of appeals available, one of which is calling an immediate private session of the Supreme Court.

With all that in place, I could get a warrant approved for spying on my neighbor if I felt like it. So....why not just get the warrant??? There's no reason at all for such surveillance to just go on without the warrant, getting one is as easy as falling.

Of course, we all know why no attempt was made. This was a dragnet, an indiscriminate grab of anything & everything to be sifted through later. Even the spineless state-worshippers currently on the Supreme Court would've rejected that one, that's been illegal since....ever.

Uncle Sam in my stocking

2005-12-26T15:13:00.000-05:00

One of the gifts I recieved this Saturnalia was a preloaded debit card (since you can't send cash in the mail & expect it to actually get there). Before I could use it, I had to call the company's customer service line & get a PIN number. Called, followed the instructions, put in a PIN, no big deal. Then I heard the following message:

"Due to the Patriot Act, your card will not be fully activated unless you stay on the line & speak with one of our representatives, who wil request extra information from you. If you do not do this, your card is subject to cancellation within 48 hours"

Next thing that happened was a message saying they would put me on hold, then the line went dead.

Question for Bush loyalists: how exactly is meddling with my present preventing terrorism?

I had a good Saturnalia, did you?

2005-12-26T12:57:00.000-05:00

One of my presents? THIS.

Yes, that address is what you think it is. www.psychopolitik.com

I now have a fully-hosted blog, setup in Nucleus. The technical details are still being worked out, but I WILL be moving there, & this will become a backup site. Once the conversion is complete, emails will be sent out to anyone who has me linked to update.

Waitaminute....

2005-12-24T02:46:00.000-05:00

This better have been him saying "eh, give the ol' man what he wants" and not his actual view...

Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. once argued that the nation's top law enforcement official deserves blanket protection from lawsuits when acting in the name of national security, even when those actions involve the illegal wiretapping of American citizens, documents released yesterday show.

As a lawyer in the Reagan Justice Department, Alito said the attorney general must be free to take steps to protect the country from threats such as terrorism and espionage without fear of personal liability. But in a 1984 memo involving a case that dated to the Nixon administration, Alito also cautioned his superiors that the time may not be right to make that argument and urged a more incremental approach.

Lawsuits? Please, I'd be pushing for criminal charges...

There's a reason these kind of things require warrants: as everyone is assumed innocent until proven guilty, the authorities (ideally) need to prove that their suspicion may be credible, otherwise they are simply NOT to bother us, period. Without that, everyone is a suspect by default. Anyone who would consider requiring that measure of protection to be too much of a burden is in effect saying we are all guilty, and can kindly F off.

DUMB

2005-12-24T02:19:00.000-05:00

WTF...

In search of a terrorist nuclear bomb, the federal government since 9/11 has run a far-reaching, top secret program to monitor radiation levels at over a hundred Muslim sites in the Washington, D.C., area, including mosques, homes, businesses, and warehouses, plus similar sites in at least five other cities, U.S. News has learned. In numerous cases, the monitoring required investigators to go on to the property under surveillance, although no search warrants or court orders were ever obtained, according to those with knowledge of the program. Some participants were threatened with loss of their jobs when they questioned the legality of the operation, according to these accounts.

Federal officials familiar with the program maintain that warrants are unneeded for the kind of radiation sampling the operation entails, but some legal scholars disagree. News of the program comes in the wake of revelations last week that, after 9/11, the Bush White House approved electronic surveillance of U.S. targets by the National Security Agency without court orders. These and other developments suggest that the federal government's domestic spying programs since 9/11 have been far broader than previously thought. (emphasis mine)

As if the violation of yet more warrantless dragnet tactics wasn't bad enough (believe me, the hole already being dug is so deep they've passed the center of the earth & are reaching China), this registers so high on the Idiot Scale that it's broken. How in the hell do supposedly competant, sane people assume that the type of muslim extremist that is both A) extreme enough to "think big" by attempting a nuclear attack & B) tech-savvy enough to construct one would be such an imbecile that they'd leave the freakin nuke material in one of their mosques??? Uh, yeah, some aspiring al-qaeda guy has bricks of weaponized uranium chillin in a mosque basement where it can contaminate shit on top of being found, I'll find that plausible when I shove gophers up my ass...

Suicide booty

2005-12-23T01:33:00.000-05:00

Tell the truth: Would you bang Osama's niece?

It's a start

2005-12-22T01:06:00.000-05:00

You've heard about it a million times already: CEOs getting huge bonuses despite the company performing terribly. A mere symptom of the gulf between what ownership truly means & what it means to hold stock -- obviously no one in a similar situation would willingly hand over a million dollar bonus to someone that sucked at doing their job.

Well here's some good news:

Shareholders will have to approve any future hefty severance packages for top Coca-Cola Co. executives, the world's largest soft drink company confirmed Wednesday.

The Coke board changed its policy in October, Charlie Sutlive, a Coke spokesman said, and it was announced Wednesday by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters labor union, a major Coke shareholder, which proposed the reform at Coke's 2005 annual meeting in April.

Coke will seek shareholder approval for employment agreements and future severance payments that exceed 2.99 times the sum of base salary and bonus. Earlier such decisions only required board approval. U.S. corporations are being prodded by an array of hedge funds, labor unions and other activist investors demanding governance changes, which include changes to executive compensation.

"In the last decade, Coca-Cola shareholders have seen a revolving door of top executives cash in big rewards while financial performance lagged," said Thomas Keegel, general secretary-treasurer of the union that calls itself America's largest and most diverse with 1.4 million members.

Another sign

2005-12-21T14:47:00.000-05:00

Apparently even "special" judges on "secret" spy courts have morals:

A federal judge has resigned from the court that oversees government surveillance in intelligence cases in protest of President Bush's secret authorization of a domestic spying program, according to two sources.

U.S. District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, sent a letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. late Monday notifying him of his resignation without providing an explanation.

Two associates familiar with his decision said yesterday that Robertson privately expressed deep concern that the warrantless surveillance program authorized by the president in 2001 was legally questionable and may have tainted the FISA court's work.

Follow your finger...

2005-12-21T02:12:00.000-05:00

Noticed the Haloscan for my recent post on libertarianism as inherently a left (anti-status-quo) philosophy had a trackback, followed it to Logan's Freedom Democrats site. From there, spotted in his links this post from "Left In The West". THAT post linked to this one, where we finally come across (hopefully) a harbinger of things to come: conservatives stating that Bush's call to wire-tap U.S. citizens without a warrant is an impeachable offense.

Damn, I wasn't that good this year...

Yawn...

2005-12-21T00:26:00.000-05:00

Drudge: "DEMOCRATS OK'ed spying on US citizens too!!"

This has to be about as clear an example of how deeply embedded the political culture is as any. When some politician does something ridiculous it is considered somehow "brave" to point out that people with a different party affiliation do the same thing, when the entire point of drawing attention to such abuses should be that no one has liscense to do them, ever. That Bush is simply another in a long line of presidents that has openly defied the Constitution is not news to anyone with half a brain.

We know bears shit in the woods, Matt. Go away.

Correct, though never "right"

2005-12-20T00:16:00.000-05:00

A short sentence that will piss off many, then an explanation: A true libertarian will eventually sound like a "progressive".

That came to mind while watching Logan Ferre explain to democratic activists that 1) true libertarians are not pot-smoking republicans & 2) the GOP does NOT want to "dismantle government".

I respect what people like Logan are doing with the Freedom Democrats thing. Not only because I agree with it*, but because a progressive-minded libertarianism would be more in tune with what the initial history of classical liberalism was. Think about the origin of the "left/right" terminology: the supporters of the aristocracy sat on the right side, while anyone who opposed the status quo sat on the Left. This included the first libertarians.

Before there was representative government, the State manifested itself in literally one person: the King. The trappings of royalty are commonly portrayed in literature to the point where even people who have never seen royalty know what it is. Yet, there was one question that we have forgotten the answer to: Where did the King get all that jewelery in the first place?

Simple: he stole it.

Now, this doesn't mean the King personally went around with a sword demanding money, of course not. Rather, they had people who fought for them in the hopes of getting some of that gold for their own benefit. It didn't matter what they had to do, they could anihilate entire populations, raping the women & killing the men & enslaving the children, all was worth getting scraps. Either you worked for royalty or you paid tribute, there was no door #3.

That tribute -- money paid to basically grovel before someone who hadn't worked for a living -- was the original tax. Fast forward to today, and things haven't changed much, have they?

Look at many of the names that pop up among politicians. Observe what fields they largely come from, where their money comes from, how they act, how they even talk: they are not you, never were & never will be. Tick off the names of many of the Big Shots in the corporate world & you can find an alleged "Statesman" or two or twelve in their pocket. It's an assumption, but an educated one: pull the power of the State out from under them, and many of these people would go broke, and in the long run that would be a good thing. As such, there really is no need for a "left" or "right" modifier for libertarianism, as left-libertarian would be redundent & right-libertarian would be contradictory. Libertarianism rejects the status quo & cheers its downfall, so at the LEAST it is center-left**.

It is a tragic failure of american education that despite so much history showing that unearned wealth benefits from an expansive government the "progressives" in the US explicitly argue in favor of it. Promoting the idea that an institution that inherently owes its health to being able to stroke the fattest wallets is positive for the proverbial Common Man is akin to arguing that Bin Laden himself should run a daycare for Jewish children.

On a lighter note: In that thread on Kos' site, one commentor made a remark along the lines of "a libertarian is a liberal that's been mugged by the State". I would've put it more like "a libertarian is a liberal that only wants to disarm politicians"...

(* - my view of the "two" parties in the long run is that both should collapse, in the meantime the root views of each do not necessarily occupy the same depth: Economics can be argued about, "god" cannot. There are zealots of each side, of course, but there should be all possible effort to reach out to anyone who exhibits a sense of reason, and as of late I suspect the sides are not equal among the grassroots.)

(** - In the original sense of the term. The more you dislike the current state of things, the more Left you are in that way. The closest a libertarian can get to ambivalence, let alone acceptance, is a longer timeline for revolt, as anything right of ambivalence starts saying "maybe we shouldn't change". In earlier entries, when I spoke of being "on the Right" I solely referred to economics, and only in the sense of people that actually believe the standard stump speech, I'll try not to make that confusion in the future.)

Something to watch for...

2005-12-19T23:13:00.000-05:00

Yknow, we might as well just admit that the tradition of not asking nominees for their views on ongoing subjects is out the window. If we're going to be debating that type of thing anyway, then it's better to have it in the open rather than have codewords. Besides, some scenarios just simply beg for an answer.

Case in point:

A key Republican senator asked Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito on Monday about President George W. Bush's domestic spying order and whether war gives the president a blank check when it comes to civil liberties.

In a letter to Alito, Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, who will preside at Alito's Senate confirmation hearing next month, also asked what approach he would use to assess Bush's authority.

"Historically, the court has shied away from checking executive power while a military conflict was going on," Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, wrote the 55-year-old conservative in preparation for the hearing set to begin January 9.

"Pursuant to your jurisprudential framework and understanding of the separation of powers, do you believe the court's reluctance to decide these issues is justified?" Specter added.

By any reasonable reading of the issue, it is the duty of the Court to settle such questions. To not do so amounts to an arguement for dismantling the Supreme Court entirely.

There is NEVER a time when the law matters more than it does during hostilities. After all, violence is what government does, it is technically at "war" at all times. One could argue there is no real difference between the State at "peace" & when the heavy artilery is being put to more use than usual, sophistication isn't enough to consider one a different animal than the other.

The absurdity of Managed Trade

2005-12-16T16:06:00.000-05:00

Interesting bits from the World Trade Organization talks...

-CBC:

The latest difficulty arose Friday when the Group of 77 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries demanded safeguards for their commodity growers and continued preferential access to European markets. Many of these countries have subsistence farmers who rely on sugar, cotton and bananas.

"We will not be a party to any consensus that does not recognize our right to grow bananas," said Charles Savarin, Dominica trade minister. "We must preserve our traditional access to the EU markets."

If that isn't a warped definition of a Right, I dunno what is. Not recognizing one's right to grow bananas would involve criminalizing the product or poisoning their fields, what this guy is actually referring to as a "right" is a grant of privilege: not having to operate by the same rules as everyone else in the market.

-Reuters

The European Union was holding out against calls for a date for ending farm export subsidies, while the United States was resisting demands to give duty-free and quota-free access to goods from some 49 of the world's least developed countries.

"I think it is finely balanced, but we can still get something this weekend," WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell told Reuters.

Supporters of a trade deal say it could boost the global economy and lift millions out of poverty, but detractors say it will only bring more profits for rich nations and their companies at the expense of the developing world.

It's funny how each "side" on this kind of garbage portrays their case. Pro-managed-trade types like to give it a pie-in-the-sky feel as if the WTO is somehow the key to all possible prosperity -- similar to how "liberals" portray government programs -- whereas the "anti-globalization" protestors look at all the preferential deals & subsidies & erasure of sovereignty....and call it "free-trade", then balk.

The opponents have a point that an agreement -- any agreement from the WTO, due to its nature -- would screw over some countries & tilt the board towards others, but their proposed solution for the most part is ridiculous. The problem is not liberalization, it's that there hasn't been any except in name.

They shouldn't have been surprised that institutions like the WTO cater to the parts of the world that should be the LAST begging for anything, as that's how government works. You create a position of power & naturally it's going to end up in the hands of people who will abuse it. Truly free trade wouldn't allow for arguements like this because there would be no intervening institution, just open, voluntary exchange.

-Of course, it can't be a WTO meeting without crazies...ABCnews:

South Korean protesters, the most militant of the 10,000 who have come to Hong Kong hoping to block a WTO agreement, shaved their heads, threw eggs and spray painted graffiti on the U.S. Consulate General building and briefly scuffled with police on Friday.

Could someone explain to me why Koreans are acting like a bunch of Berkeley neo-hippies all of a sudden? I thought the culture over there discouraged that kind of unstructured rage?

"Defense"? No, Offense

2005-12-16T15:50:00.000-05:00

The Department of Defense should be renamed what it originally was: the War Department.

When you think of the word "defense", you don't think of damaging people that hurt you, that's called retaliation or revenge. Nor do you think of aggression against unsavory types that have already been declawed for the most part. Why do we call the sector of the State that attacks the "defense" department when they play offense?

Shocked...

2005-12-16T15:46:00.000-05:00

The Senate is growing some balls:

The U.S. Senate on Friday rejected attempts to reauthorize several provisions of the nation’s top anti-terror law as infringing too much on Americans’ privacy, dealing a major defeat to President Bush and Republican leaders.

In a crucial vote early Friday, the bill’s Senate supporters were not able to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a threatened filibuster by Sens. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and their allies. The final vote was 52-47.

Hi, Dave

2005-12-14T22:03:00.000-05:00

Stumbled into this 3rd hand: David Friedman has a blog now.

Cool...

Art of the backhanded sorry

2005-12-14T21:05:00.000-05:00

Oh my gawd....did President Dumbass just admit error?

President Bush accepted responsibility today for the decision to go to war with Iraq despite faulty intelligence but said the decision to oust Saddam Hussein was still correct.

“It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As president I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq,” the president told The Woodrow Wilson Center...

How fitting that he speaks at a location named for the father of American Foreign-Policy Idealism. One soft-headed all too powerful man-boy to another.

But then he brings forth the same crap he was saying before: "so what if there wasn't a credible threat, we did GOOD, dammit!"

“We are in Iraq today because our goal has always been more than the removal of a brutal dictator,” Bush said. “It is to leave a free and democratic Iraq in his place."

That's the key to the problem with Iraq. The way that the culture is there, democratic representation could actually strengthen the hand of oppression. What foundation is being laid there that would actually lead to freedom? Is democracy OK there if it leads to a democratically elected Islamist government? If not, then by what authority do we have a stake there if it is to revert to a sovereign nation? If so, then how is that not worse than what we got rid of?

Spineless peons

2005-12-14T13:06:00.000-05:00

...and these are "conservatives":

By a 251-174 vote Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives agreed to renew 16 of the act's provisions that were set to expire at year's end. The bill now heads back to the Senate, where a fiercer battle is expected.

"The Patriot Act is essential to fighting the war on terror and preventing our enemies from striking America again," President Bush said in a statement praising the House vote. "In the war on terror, we cannot afford to be without this law for a single moment."

I swear, for every time I hear a comment from this administration like that last line, the conspiracy theorist crowd gets a little closer to not-crazy...

Site news

2005-12-12T00:53:00.000-05:00

I decided not to bother moving the blog permanently to Blogswith.us after all. It took this long for the people that do show up here to find it, moving doesn't really serve me a purpose. Only benefit to wordpress was categories, and most of what I post here isn't categorized anyway.

So, keep coming here. Forget about the other address, it's going to be here. Blogspot is working just fine for me.

Updated 121205 @ 10:54 EST: I've also rectified the error of not blogrolling a site that I look at a lot. The Agitator is in.

Squeaky wheel

2005-12-11T22:13:00.000-05:00

Cory's situation is spreading...

This WILL be rectified, the whole thing is too screwed up to let rest. Keep it up, y'all.

Can we torch the South again, please?

2005-12-08T16:15:00.000-05:00

Radley Balko spots a fantastic example of the typical Southern authority-loving, bigoted, small-minded hillbilly cracker wankery we've come to expect. I'll summarize, but do read the whole thing, wouldja?

Prentiss, Mississippi. Night after Christmas. An anonymous tip sends the police hunting down an alleged drug dealer. A SWAT team busts in the house on a "no knock" warrant, their minds focused on tearing ass.

Problem is, the house they're in is a duplex.

One of the cops, throwing caution to the wind, busts down a door & is met by gunfire. Apparently a lucky shot, it enters below his vest, killing him. The shooter? The scared owner of the duplex, who doesn't live in the side they had a warrant for, who fired out of fear for him & his daughter's life. Obviously the kind of response to be expected when you rip into someone's room in the middle of the night.

The shooter? Black. The dead cop? Not only white, but the son of the town's chief of police. As if the man wasn't already behind the 8-ball...

Did the cops find any drugs? No. Well, they claimed to have found the slightest piece of a joint later, but 1) evidence brought up this long afterwards is a red-flag for tampering, & 2) the response was disproportionate anyway even if there was a joint there. They approached this as if they were encountering Tony freakin Montana.

Long story short, an overwhelmingly white jury convicted the man & sentenced him to get the needle. Not because they felt he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but because they didn't like his lawyer & felt he was a spoiled brat.

This deserves outrage, and I'm talking tons. Any kind of activist group you could possibly think of that would have a stake in something like this, flood their goddamn inbox until they get this man back to freedom.

People that violate your liberty deserve to be shot, I could care less if they're wearing a badge. Call it "extreme" all you want, understanding takes too long, and in the environment this guy was in it's a ticket to a body bag. They would've killed him AND his daughter if he hadn't pulled the trigger, cops have done that before. There is no logical reason for cops to be able to get away with murder while civilians get locked up for exercising their RIGHT to defend themselves against aggression.

The bias of the mind

2005-12-08T15:22:00.000-05:00

U.S. attention spans lost.

I remember a study done not too long ago showing that most people that read the paper don't read the entire articles in the important sections. For example, if Joe Average reads the Washington Post, he probably flipped to the sports section right after this

The House passed three separate tax cuts yesterday and plans to approve a fourth today, trimming the federal revenue by $94.5 billion over five years -- nearly double the budget savings that Republicans muscled through the House last month.

GOP leaders portray the tax bills -- for the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast, affluent investors, U.S. troops serving in Iraq and taxpayers who otherwise would be hit by the alternative minimum tax -- as vital to keeping the economy rolling.

"Our economic policies have done the trick," said Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio). "We are in the middle of one of the strongest economies this country has ever seen."

Now, on one note they actually nail it: rarely do you see it mentioned that spending is never cut enough to actually make a dent in the deficit, if it is even in the real world realm of a "cut". However, the way this is worded one could easily think that this was a straight party-line vote, that the GOP wanted this while the Dems were being "responsible" (as if one could only do so by avoiding tax cuts religiously...ha!).

Read further:

The three measures passed overwhelmingly, with virtually all Democrats voting with Republicans, and with hardly a mention of their impact on the deficit, which is projected to reach $331 billion in fiscal 2006 and remain above $300 billion a year through the end of the decade, when most of Bush's tax cuts are set to expire. The Senate has already passed similar measures, indicating that all the measures are likely to become law.

The House voted 414 to 4 to spare 17 million individuals and families from paying the alternative minimum tax next year. Democratic Reps. Jerry F. Costello (Ill.), Collin C. Peterson (Minn.), Martin O. Sabo (Minn.) and Robert C. "Bobby" Scott (Va.) voted against the measure.

In a highly partisan atmosphere, tax cutting without regard to the growing federal debt appears to be one area that both parties can agree on, said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. "Everybody's losing credibility right now," she said. (emphasis mine)

No surprise that the AMT delay wasn't even a close one, enough people are genuinely concerned about that that to do nothing would've pissed us off. Clearly not far enough, but this is D.C. we're talking about, looking good is better than truly doing good.

Far as I'm concerned, if you're too lazy to read past the first paragraph or so, then you shouldn't even bother reading the paper at all.

"That's nice, but who cares?"

2005-12-08T15:16:00.000-05:00

He might as well be president of Iraq:

President Bush offered a mildly upbeat assessment of Iraq's economic reconstruction Wednesday, saying the country is making slow progress against a host of big problems.

Speaking with new candor about the difficulties in Iraq, Bush tempered his optimism with acknowledgement of past mistakes and a description of the remaining hurdles to economic development. He said Iraqis were beginning to see the benefits of freedom despite uneven progress in the rebuilding effort.

"Iraqis who were disillusioned with their situation are beginning to see a hopeful future," he said in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations. "It doesn't always make the headlines in the evening news. But it's real, and it's important, and it is unmistakable to those who see it up close."

Uh, yeah whatever G. Now about that structural defecit at home....

Viral accountability

2005-12-04T18:11:00.000-05:00

Found this interesting:

John Seigenthaler joins Google Watch protest site creator Daniel Brandt in his claims that their bios on Wikipedia are not accurate. USA Today published an op-ed by Seigenthaler on November 29 calling a Wikipedia entry alleging that he was involved in the Kennedy murders a "character assassination."....

"I have no idea whose sick mind conceived the false, malicious 'biography' that appeared under my name for 132 days on Wikipedia, the popular, online, free encyclopedia whose authors are unknown and virtually untraceable," Seigenthaler wrote in his USA Today editorial. "At age 78, I thought I was beyond surprise or hurt at anything negative said about me. I was wrong."

So an awkward claim goes in an article & all of a sudden Wikipedia is terrible. "It's just a bunch of random yahoos!" "No central authority to verify!" "Anyone can edit!" "It's mad I tell you, MAAAD!"

Oh, really?

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, told TechNewsWorld he is just as upset as Seigenthaler. Seigenthaler's erroneous bio was removed immediately *snip* (emphasis mine)

If that site were organized any other way, it would've sat like that for a long time. Instead, someone sees it and yanks it right away. That's the benefit to not having a traditional organizational structure, errors actually get addressed rather than waiting for the top brain to approve something.

I recall a time where I was on there looking around at various articles (sorta a lame hobby of mine to pick a starting point there & clickthrough links in each entry until I reach a stub), and I spotted the bio entry for Fareed Zakaria. It had a biased part in it where someone who edited it was giving their own view of him. I commented about it in the discussion page for it, and within the next minute someone swooped in & the entire entry was fixed.

WTF?

2005-12-04T17:16:00.000-05:00

I'm looking for a stronger word for this than "incompetance":

The 100,000 pages of documents that Blanco sent to Congress on Friday include a series of letters starting with one Blanco sent President Bush a day before the hurricane hit.

"I have determined that this incident will be of such severity and magnitude that effective response will be beyond the capabilities of the state and the affected local governments and that supplementary federal assistance will be necessary," Blanco wrote.

Three days after the storm, Blanco wrote Bush asking that the 256th Louisiana National Guard Brigade be sent home from Iraq to help. The governor also asked for more generators, medicine, health care workers and mortuaries.

Five days later, Bush assistant Maggie Grant e-mailed Blanco aide Paine Gowen to say that the White House did not receive the letter. "We found it on the governor's Web site but we need 'an original,' for our staff secretary to formally process the requests she is making," Grant wrote. "We are on the job but appreciate your help with a technical request. Tnx!" (emphasis mine)

....huh?

Peeing in a black hole

2005-12-02T01:58:00.000-05:00

Saw one of those interest groups ads opposing Alito the other day (specifically, the one referred to here, on Factcheck.org). I have a question: Who do those kind of ads actually convince?

Matter of fact, let's extend this even further. Someone, ANYONE out there, if you have been influenced to do something based on one of those 30-second political group ads, or you know someone who has, gimme a holler. Given the type of inflammatory rhetoric & distortion usually used in those kind of ads (I've even seen ads for groups and/or causes I support that made my blood boil), I'm inclined to assume that they are a severe waste of money.

Mod the business model

2005-12-02T01:42:00.000-05:00

Interesting article about the Playstation Portable:

The moment Sony's handheld game console, PlayStation Portable, went on sale in the U.S. on March 24, Auri Rahimzadeh got one....While Rahimzadeh had been waiting for his preordered console, he had read rave reviews by technophiles who had scored a PSP in Japan months earlier. He knew this was no ordinary gaming gizmo.

But Rahimzadeh had a hunch that the PSP could do far more. And from the instant he tore through the packaging, the 30-year-old software designer from Indianapolis knew exactly how to unlock all that untapped potential: hacking.

"I always try getting more out of a device, if it appears it can do it and I can enjoy the device more," says Rahimzadeh, whose book, Hacking the PSP, is due out in December.

So far, Rahimzadeh has written software for his own PSP and downloaded, or "homebrew," games written by other techies. He's even found a way to watch the hundreds of movies and TV shows he has on DVD by ripping them onto the PSP's tiny, removable 1-gigabyte memory cards.

Rahimzadeh wasn't alone. On Web bulletin boards, the word was out. Hackers were discovering that it didn't take much to modify -- "mod" in hacker parlance -- the PSP's Firmware version 1.5 software. Web sites were soon offering tips on how to write new programs in languages such as C++ or Lua and run them on memory sticks....

Read the whole thing, of course.

My thought based on it is this: with these people wrenching capabilities out of their PSPs that Sony hadn't even dreamed of, and it becoming so popular, perhaps rather than fighting off modders they should hire some? IMO, your business model is kinda weak if the amount of people willing to void your warranty to get better capabilities out of your product is large enough worth an article.

Cynicism is good for you

2005-11-29T16:16:00.000-05:00

We're about to hit a symbolic milestone:

The United States will this week carry out its 1,000th execution since the death penalty was reintroduced in 1976...

This is actually a revelation to me. Because I thought for the longest we'd executed way more than that...

Not making a pro- or con arguement on the death penalty itself with that one, since I'm personally on the fence about it (IMO, some people deserve death, we just do such a terrible job of determining who that we might as well hold it until that system is fixed). Just a show of how one's expectation of the worst can make what normally sounds like dark news oddly relieving. So...have a nice day.

Roundup: things I don't get

2005-11-26T15:15:00.000-05:00

-Why is 99% of the talk about Alito STILL about abortion, as if that is all that defines a judge? Furthermore, why is it seen as some kind of shock that someone who applied for a job with the Reagan administration said on the application that they opposed abortion?

-What exactly is it that posesses people to stampede, shove, & fight in the name of something so trivial as "christmas shopping"?

-"Counter-protests"....huh?

-To the people surprised that Microsoft is willingly taking a loss on each Xbox-360: do the words "internet explorer" ring a bell?

-Also, why is anyone shocked that the blue-screen of death is rearing its head?

-Someone got robbed at gunpoint for a freakin video game system....wtf?

-Just how dumb do you have to be to believe that the CIA would TELL you that they were monitoring your computer? If you fell for that you deserve a virus IMO.

-Jihadists are winning elections in a muslim country. Why is this even news? Who didn't expect that?

-how stupid do you have to be to go dumpster diving and brag about it?

-Why can't I get fried chicken delivered like pizza?

At the last possible second...

2005-11-22T23:14:00.000-05:00

"Alright alright already! You want us to charge him, FINE, we'll charge him!"

Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen held in a Navy brig as an enemy combatant for more than three years, was charged Tuesday with being part of a North American terrorist cell that sent money and recruits overseas to “murder, maim and kidnap.”

However, absent from the indictment were the sensational allegations made earlier by top Justice Department officials: that Padilla sought to blow up U.S. hotels and apartment buildings and planned an attack on America with a radiological “dirty bomb.”

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales wouldn’t say why none of those allegations were included in the indictment, commenting only on the charges that were returned by a Miami grand jury against Padilla and four other alleged members of a terror cell.

So basically the initial sensationalist claim used to justify this crap is being neatly scooted towards the Recycle Bin icon on the national desktop. "Dirty bombs! Mass contamination!" *click*

But yes, even this gesture of suddenly following the Constitution for once has a self-serving purpose...

The charges are the latest twist in a case pitting the Bush administration’s claim that the war on terrorism gives the government extraordinary powers to protect its citizens, on one side, against those who say the government can’t be allowed to label Americans “enemy combatants” and hold them indefinitely without charges that can be fought in court.

By charging Padilla, the administration is seeking to avoid a Supreme Court showdown over the issue. In 2004, the justices took up the first round of cases stemming from the war on terrorism, and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who is retiring, wrote, “A state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation’s citizens.”

How convenient. Charge him at the last minute, but only to avoid having a precedent (re-)established that this line shall not be crossed.

Hey America: Where was the outrage? How come there wasn't so much as a peep over this garbage? This guy ended up in limbo for 3 goddamn YEARS and no one cared! This was a fucking US citizen having his rights magically stripped away by the whims of an overzealous panic-mongering worm of a man who takes offense to the idea that he could eeeeeever be wrong, and what did we do? We sat on our fat asses watching "reality" TV, that's what we did. We stuffed our faces & watched Fear Factor while our fucking president wiped his ass with the Constitution.

Seriously, what is wrong with us?

If we had any sense, then this would be read as an acceptance of precedent, a realization that there are things that the political sphere simply canNOT do, period. We would make damn sure that this line is never crossed again. Will it be read that way?

Jenny Martinez, a Stanford law professor who represents Padilla at the Supreme Court, said, “There’s no guarantee the government won’t do this again to Mr. Padilla or others. The Supreme Court needs to review this case on the merits so the lower court decision is not left lying like a loaded gun for the government to use whenever it wants.”

I dunno, you tell me...

That had better be milk...

2005-11-20T22:11:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Radley Balko's penchant for well-timed obscure references, breakfast will never be the same...

"Damn those doors!"

2005-11-20T21:32:00.000-05:00

You couldn't possibly make this up...

President George W Bush tried to make a quick exit from a news conference in Beijing on Sunday - only to find himself thwarted by locked doors.

After answering just six questions from a group of US reporters, the president strode away heading towards the door. President Bush tugged at both handles on the double doors before admitting: "I was trying to escape. Obviously, it didn't work."

This man has access to "the button".

Try to sleep with THAT bouncing around in your skull...

In case anyone is wondering

2005-11-19T01:33:00.000-05:00

I haven't been posting because things haven't been worth writing about. I speak when there's something to be said, not merely to hear myself talk, and as of late the game has been laughingly simplistic.

Take this for example:

The House on Friday overwhelmingly rejected calls for an immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq, a vote engineered by the Republicans that was intended to fail. Democrats derided the vote as a political stunt.

"Our troops have become the enemy. We need to change direction in Iraq," said Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a Democratic hawk whose call a day earlier for pulling out troops sparked a nasty, personal debate over the war.

The House voted 403-3 to reject a nonbinding resolution calling for an immediate troop withdrawal.

"We want to make sure that we support our troops that are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. We will not retreat," Speaker Dennis Hastert, R- Ill., said as the GOP leadership pushed the issue to a vote over the protest of Democrats.

^^^^Typical predictable politics. The GOP incorrectly tries yet again to tie in the war in Iraq with the "war on terror", and the Dems pull short on the wave of discontent they hope to ride to victories in 2006. Me making a pithy comment about this would be akin to bitching that there are insects outside, it's pointless, there is no benefit my thoughts could possibly give to understanding this, it's the most basic of the basic.

Give it a few more days.

Keep this in your head

2005-11-14T16:36:00.000-05:00

Tim Cavanaugh, in the course of an analysis of Ah-nold's initiatives flopping, reminds us the problem is the game itself, not the players:

It's tempting to holler about greedy unions and power-mad Democrats who refuse to give an inch for the common good, but in the economy of political benefit, they're simply rational actors, protecting benefits that will almost certainly go to somebody else if they don't get them. Union leaders made much of Schwarzenegger's refusal to take a chunk out of "corporate" special interests, but this sort of blame-shifting misses the point: We are all special interests, participants in the game of taking government largesse in one form or another. It's not a paradox that we all love political reform in the abstract but almost always reject it in the flesh. That behavior is built into the system.

Popular government as we currently imagine it is nothing more than a war of all against all, fought with implications of violence rather than the classic bloodshed. Makes it no less idiotic.

"So, how's life on Mars?"

2005-11-13T20:37:00.000-05:00

Matt Yglesias makes your eyes roll:

I've been trying to come up with the right thing to say about the current cover story in The Weekly Standard. It's by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, two guys I know personally and like a great deal, probably the best conservative writers out there today. And it's advocating a project I'm interested in -- transforming the Republican Party away from its late twentieth century libertarianism-plus-racism roots into something more like a continental Christian Democratic Party.

Waitaminute...."No Child Left Behind", "faith-based initiatives", the bone-headed medicare bill, trade barriers, subsidies, passing the Incumbent Protection Act (aka "campaign finance reform") -- all that encroachment at the hands of the GOP & he thinks THAT is "libertarianism"?

Well goddamn, I'd like to know what he would define as "moderate" then.

A sign of insanity

2005-11-12T12:53:00.000-05:00

You would think that by now this wouldn't even be attempted. But nope, Bush yet again equates criticism with wishing death on our troops:

Knocked on the defensive over allegations that he launched the Iraq war based on faulty intelligence, President Bush accused his critics today of trying to rewrite the history of how and why the war began.

"Allegations"? More like fact: the central point was "Saddam is making WMDs", we invaded and found out he was not, and have since found the intelligence to be laughable. That isn't an allegation, the only open question is whether or not he KNEW the intelligence was bad. IMO, he did: the intel was full of holes, but his crew has this paranoid view that everyone who disagrees with them is just undermining their authority, so anyone who pointed out how bad it was got ignored.

Launching a White House offensive to counter growing criticism of the war effort, Bush told soldiers and civilians that Democrats should reassure American troops that the nation stands behind them rather than revive a divisive debate over the war's origins.

So according to Bush, the nation = the government. By this logic, it doesn't matter what regular people who have nothing to gain politically think, as long as the other "side" of opportunistic parasites happens to fashionably disagree with him as well it can be dismissed. Convenient -- and wrong.

"While it is perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the story of how that war began," Bush said in a Veterans Day address inside a military warehouse at Tobyhanna Army Depot in northeast Pennsylvania.

Actually this would make sense....if you reinterpreted it.

It is not only legitimate but an important DUTY for people to criticize, power unchalleneged can only be destructive. Yet what the Democrats -- who signed on with this war -- are doing is cheapening dissent by trying to warp it to their own self-interest. The Dems weren't "anti-war" until election time rolled around.

So yes, it is irresponsible to rewrite how the war began. As a service, here's a summary of the real story:

The administration got bad intel, entertained unwarranted apocalyptic visions, and called for a war. Democrats obliged. The threat revealed itself to be nonexistant, yet by then it was too late. Dems rewrote history by claiming they opposed it from the beginning, Bush is rewriting history by claiming people gave a flying f**k about "liberating" Iraq rather than neutralizing what they thought was a threat.

I don't expect a Freedom Medal or whatever for that...

This is too easy...

2005-11-08T20:11:00.000-05:00

Apparently not all leaks are created equal:

Top U.S. Republican lawmakers on Tuesday called for a congressional investigation into leaks of information used by The Washington Post in an article on the CIA's secret global prison system.

So blowing the cover of a CIA operative & their partners is something to be ignored, but revealing that we're being two-faced about torture is a major breach of national security?

Has the staff of The Onion taken over D.C.? Seriously, WTF, they used to try with their bullshit, this isn't even worth further comment. There's basketball tommorow, politics can F-off until Thursday far as I'm concerned, this isn't interesting it's just retarded.

Me on Alito so far...

2005-11-04T18:42:00.000-05:00

I've been combing through this guy's background, looking at rulings he's made & what his arguements have been, and I must say I'm shocked:

So far I see no reason to oppose Alito.

I'm not saying he's the type I would personally nominate, hell no. There's a couple things that are somewhat questionable, but they end up being nitpicky upon closer inspection. For example:

-"C.H. v. Olivia et al.". Spotted in summary form in Wikipedia's listing on Alito, that had me raising an eyebrow thinking his view in this was a sign of religious nuttery. Then I took a look at the details of the matter (summarized fairly accurately here in case you don't have all day) & saw that the point being made was less "how DARE you keep Jesus out of the schools!" and more like "y'know, insulting some kid's parents is probably not a good idea regardless of what they believe". So, question mark dropped.

-"Doe v Groody". Saw this one first on a news site, don't remember which one. Alito argued that searching a mother & daughter during a search of a residence didn't violate their rights. Obviously, my first impulse was to cry foul. Then I saw that though they weren't referred to explicitly in the warrant the request for it included searching all occupants -- which would cover them. If anyone is in the wrong on that one, it is whoever authorized the warrant in the first place; such a blanket grant of authority is troubling to say the least, but it was not Alito that granted it. No sense in blaming him for that one.

Add to having cleared up those bits that much of what interest groups are complaining about are issues where he's actually correct (i.e.: stating that the commerce clause doesn't give congress the power to ban machine guns) or are incidents that were created by screwy interpretation to begin with that he didn't have the power to clean up then (i.e.: ACLU v. Schundler), plus sufficient proof that the Bible-Thumping class isn't exactly getting what they expect (his rulings on abortion are actually a mixed bag), and his background actually stacks up to be decent. Again, I am shocked.

Unless he shows himself to agree with Luttig on US citizens being "enemy combatants", I'll have to just accept this one. He's not the fire-breathing Bringer of the Congressional Handcuffs I would've wanted, but he's qualified (read: not Miers), not an open Jesus freak (read: not Owens), & pretty even-keeled.

Disproportionate response

2005-11-04T16:45:00.000-05:00

After the shit in the national soup that was the Kelo ruling, the House of (alleged) Representatives has brought a knife to a gunfight:

Conservative defenders of private property and liberal protectors of the poor joined in an overwhelming House vote to prevent local and state governments from seizing homes and businesses for use in economic development projects.

The House legislation, passed 376-38, was in response to a widely criticized 5-4 ruling by the Supreme Court last June that allowed eminent domain authority to be used to obtain land for tax revenue-generating commercial purposes....The bill would withhold for two years all federal economic development funds from states and localities that use economic development as a rationale for property seizures. It also would bar the federal government from using eminent domain powers for economic development.

It now goes to the Senate, where Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, has introduced similar legislation. (emphasis mine)

Don't stroke yourselves just yet: this bill doesn't actually do much if anything. Note that it refers to "federal economic development funds": national taxpayer dollars going to state & local projects. Yet most eminent domain doesn't involve federal-level tax money.

So what exactly IS this legislation? Simple: a threat to withhold from the state & local level money they do not deserve in the first place, as punishment for an act that usually doesn't involve national tax dollars. It'll really make no difference.

The only real benefit to this is that the vote serves to expose the most craven of the political class. If you're so obsessed with power that you won't even co-sign to such a piddling empty expression, even though it has nothing but benefit to you politically, then it is a shame that we cannot legally do more harm to you than to merely vote for someone else.

Click here for the Yea/Nay/Too-busy-for-the-people's-work list. Efforts need to still be made to do away with this naked aggression i.e.: a constitutional amendment AT LEAST revoking this ridiculous power to take one person's property and hand it to another in hope of getting more taxes out of it, if not the most preferable move (IMO) of realizing that "eminent domain" is an awkward relic of the proto-industrial age and abolishing it entirely. In the immediate term though, it can't hurt to target everyone not listed in the "yea" column for a landslide defeat.

(Props to Hammer of Truth for the link)

The point?

2005-11-02T16:00:00.000-05:00

If I didn't look at something like this -- an anti-state.com blogger's definition of anarcho-capitalism -- and think to myself "what's the difference then?", I'd be an anarchist.

Anarchy is really a misnomer if you think about it. There is still hierarchy in any ordered society, all we are arguing over is how to protect it and/or what the source of that order is. The definition given at that site sounds to me more like a homeowner's association on steroids than a state of anarchy, and I can't stand homeowner's associations (since they tend to override the principle of He Who Pays The Bills Makes The Rules: if I'm paying for a house, no force on earth should be able to dictate to me what I can and cannot do with it, period). If there is still going to be an organization that can tell you what you're allowed to do, and your only recourse -- barring a lucky break w/ the "court" -- is to leave, then how is that not a government?

"That mud don't make itself..."

2005-11-02T15:53:00.000-05:00

Kevin Carson spots someone asking the question that never gets asked: "once we get the oil out of the ground, what about the junk moved around to get it?"

Market externalities suck, yais...

Lightning strikes twice

2005-11-02T14:59:00.000-05:00

Once in a blue moon the media actually does its job. I'll happily acknowledge it when it comes up. for example:

The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.

The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents....

While the Defense Department has produced volumes of public reports and testimony about its detention practices and rules after the abuse scandals at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at Guantanamo Bay, the CIA has not even acknowledged the existence of its black sites. To do so, say officials familiar with the program, could open the U.S. government to legal challenges, particularly in foreign courts, and increase the risk of political condemnation at home and abroad.

But the revelations of widespread prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq by the U.S. military -- which operates under published rules and transparent oversight of Congress -- have increased concern among lawmakers, foreign governments and human rights groups about the opaque CIA system. Those concerns escalated last month, when Vice President Cheney and CIA Director Porter J. Goss asked Congress to exempt CIA employees from legislation already endorsed by 90 senators that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoner in U.S. custody.

Now, think about this for a moment. We have secret prisons across the globe, run by the CIA. It's claimed that we're only using them for al-qaeda operatives. Yet 1) the cries of not-so-fast are very public & 2) the accomplishments of the "war on terror" (if there are any) are an enigma.

This can only mean one thing: they're lying. Most of those people being waterboarded (a method of torture) and whatnot can't possibly be al-qaeda, otherwise who would oppose it? Al-qaeda isn't covered under the Geneva Convention, what are we hiding?

Best. Opening. Lines. Ever.

2005-11-02T14:45:00.000-05:00

Jake Sullum owns your soul:

When Chief Justice John Roberts was nominated, Democrats worried that he was willing to overturn the Endangered Species Act. Now they're warning that Samuel Alito, President Bush's latest Supreme Court pick, is hostile to federal gun control.

Together, presumably, Roberts and Alito would bring us two votes closer to an America where Congress is powerless to prevent the machine-gunning of arroyo toads. I wish. (emphasis mine)

If it's any indication of how long I've been a proud nut, I recall awhile back I considered me & a few friends going into wooded areas with Tec-9s & destroying as many animals as we could find -- big, small, didn't matter -- and lamented the passage of the "assault weapons ban" for denying us such an excursion.

I was 12 at the time.

Ouch...

2005-10-31T18:32:00.000-05:00

In the real world...

As if the Vikings didn't have ENOUGH problems:

An already dire situation got worse for the demoralized Minnesota Vikings with confirmation Monday that quarterback Daunte Culpepper will miss the rest of the season with a devastating injury to his right knee.

Culpepper, a three-time Pro Bowl pick coming off a career year whose effectiveness had fallen off dramatically this season, tore his anterior cruciate, medial collateral and posterior cruciate ligaments in Sunday's 38-13 loss at Carolina. (emphasis mine)

Damn, usually ONE of those tearing means your season is over. All three?

If I were him I'd just retire now.

Here comes the Info-flood

2005-10-31T16:00:00.000-05:00

More information about Sam Alito than you can deep-throat:

SCOTUSblog on Alito

Law.com profile

Wiki (w/ links to other sites)

A US News profile, w/ material not mentioned in the others

Anything else important as it comes...

Was only a matter of time

2005-10-30T01:02:00.000-05:00

Miers was a blip:

Rebounding from the failed nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, President Bush is poised to select between two of the nation's leading conservative federal appeals court judges - both experienced jurists with deep backgrounds in constitutional law - for what promises to be a bruising Senate confirmation battle.

With an announcement expected Sunday or Monday, administration officials have narrowed the focus to Judges Samuel Alito of New Jersey and Michael Luttig of Virginia, sources involved in the process said. (emphasis mine)

Figures. The people that Bush actually listens to aren't actually concerned with following the Constitution, oh no. The alpha & omega of their "philosophy" -- if you can even call it that -- is for their politicians to have absolute power, period. Notice the difference between what the complaint of bloggers was about Harriet Miers and what his foot soldiers were saying?

No doubt that Luttig would be acceptable to his crew. He's an authority loving jackass always willing to ignore the Constitution when it suits the whims of Bushophiles, they're gonna love him like monkeys love bananas.

Of course, they'll be putting the final nail in the coffin, but since when did they care about liberty?

Update @ 12:56 PM 103105 -- eh, off by one:

Stung by the rejection of his first choice, President Bush on Monday nominated appeals court judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court — mollifying his conservative base but angering Democrats who said Alito could divide the country over abortion and gun rights.

“Judge Alito has served with distinction on that court for 15 years, and now has more prior judicial experience than any Supreme Court nominee in more than 70 years,” Bush said, drawing an unspoken contrast to his first choice, Harriet Miers.

As usual, the barking from Dems is nowhere near what's relevant. Irrational appeal to authority? Nope, they like that. They're more concerned about the typical "liberal" interest group garbage -- note how quickly they whip out their opposition to the 2nd Amendment?

I reserve judgement on this guy, as I don't know as much about him. But if I spot a Luttig-like redflag then he will be opposed. The Constitution is much more specific about holding US citizens without charges than it is about abortion, that's one "litmus test" that actually makes sense to use.

Normalcy returns quick

2005-10-27T15:33:00.000-04:00

Pseudo-cons are back to being stupid. For example, Jonah Goldberg:

Conservatism in America begins in the 1950s with National Review. If you hear someone talking about the Old Right of the 1930s, and how that's what defines “real conservatism,” you’ve either met a very grumpy agrarian poet, a cape-wearing anarchist with oddly pro-Belgian tendencies, an angry Prussian socialist of some kind, a fusty Whig — or, most likely, someone who simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

The memory hole is humming away as usual. Yay!!!

What the hell?!?

2005-10-27T14:04:00.000-04:00

Either I'm misreading this comment, or Steve Green is recognizing National Exaggeration Day:

Here's the headline:

BBC to launch Arabic channel to counter Al Jazeera

Uh... isn't that a bit like Aryan Nation announcing that they're starting a new 'zine to counter KKK propaganda?

Think about the two: BBC is essentially a government-funded broadcaster that has in order to avoid charges of favortism veered in opposition to the ruling government -- which happens to be somewhat friendly with the US. Al-jazeera is a f&^$ing Arab-run news network -- and the closest arabs come to being friendly to the US is that they may be spotted wearing a Nike shirt or drinking Pepsi while they burn a US flag & chant "death to america!!".

They're biased against US policy? NO SHIT, Sherlock!

Comparing the two to neo-nazi garbage basically serves to label all opposition as insane. If anything, al-jazeera is the arab world's Fox News -- if you can filter through the slant and sensationalism you still come away with information, if you can't then you consider it a tool of the devil. I haven't seen the network itself much (I don't speak arabic), but I've actually read their english website fairly often, and it doesn't come across as anywhere near as harsh as others they're getting over there -- al-jazeera even occasionally gets complaints that they're slanted in our favor, I don't agree with that but it being mentioned is an indicator that they're pretty much as close to "balance" as you're going to get in such a whacko factory. You have to play the cards you're dealt.

Besides, balance is overrated. Everyone has an opinion, even the journalists, better that they be upfront about it so we can peel it away and get to the meat.

Good riddance

2005-10-27T13:35:00.000-04:00

Miers go bye-bye:

Beleaguered by conservative critics, White House Counsel Harriet Miers withdrew her nomination today for a Supreme Court seat, and President Bush promised to move quickly to find a new nominee to fill the high court's pivotal swing seat.

Our congressmen want BLOOD!

2005-10-26T19:52:00.000-04:00

John Cole reads the NY Times so we don't have to:

Times:

If all 12 members of a jury in a capital case in federal court cannot agree on whether to impose the death penalty, a convicted defendant is automatically sentenced to life in prison.

But that may be about to change. A little-noticed provision in the House bill that reauthorized the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act would allow federal prosecutors further attempts at a death sentence if a capital jury deadlocks on the punishment. So long as at least one juror voted for death, prosecutors could empanel a new sentencing jury and argue again that execution was warranted.

John on the death penalty:

...were it reserved for the truly inhuman acts of barbarism committed by a few twisted individuals, I would be supportive. But it isn’t, it has been abused, we have made mistakes, and the ‘solution,’ at least from the House of Representatives, is to try to change the statutes so that it is easier to execute.

What the hell is wrong with these people?

I'd personally ask more along the lines of "what the hell is wrong with us that we elect people like this instead of threaten to shoot them if they get too close?", but that's just me. Close enough.

This is what politicians do, they take advantage of irrational panic to increase their power. Next thing you know they'll just do away with jury trials altogether.

Making it obvious

2005-10-26T18:30:00.000-04:00

The Bear is gathering blogosphere opinion on Harriet Miers on this page. I've already mentioned my opposition, but not very specifically since I think it's a sick joke. But here goes:

I oppose the Miers nomination. Strongly, in fact. IMO her nomination is a complete offense to the status of the Supreme Court.

This has absolutely nothing to do with her views. Someone could be virtually the opposite of me in political ideology and it wouldn't matter. If they showed themselves to be qualified -- that they had the intellectual strength for the position, & no blatant ethical issues that would impair their ability -- I would still see no problem with them gaining confirmation.

I personally saw an excessive deference to authority in John Roberts, but nonetheless I welcome him to the Court, because he is capable of backing up his decisions. That is the key, being able to argue that point regardless of if I consider it foolish. Miers' nomination to me has as its entire point deference to authority: it's not that she has the "wrong" philosophy, it's that she doesn't have one at all. Blank slates are not a good thing.

Even if someone has never been a judge it doesn't matter, it's not required that a Supreme Court justice be a current or former judge. If nothing else explains it, this will:

I'm probably young enough to be one of Miers' grandkids and I have more of a judicial philosophy than she does.

I should never -- NEVER -- be able to say that about a nominee to the highest court in the entire freakin country.

In case you're wondering....

2005-10-23T20:58:00.000-04:00

Got stuff to do. Be back Wednesday unless something really worth it comes up.

Can't laugh hard enough....

2005-10-20T00:50:00.000-04:00

LOL....

Calling her responses "inadequate" and "insufficient," the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee took the highly unusual step Wednesday of asking Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers to redo significant portions of the questionnaire she had submitted to the committee just a day earlier.

Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the committee's senior Democrat, sent Miers a letter seeking more detailed responses to a third of their original questions, covering almost every aspect of her legal work and continuing through the selection process that led to her nomination.

LOL, again...

A state court issued an arrest warrant today for Rep. Tom DeLay, requiring him to appear in Texas for booking on state conspiracy and money laundering charges. The court set an initial $10,000 bail as a routine step before the Texas Republican's first court appearance Friday.

DeLay, R-Texas, could be fingerprinted and photographed, although his lawyers had hoped to avoid this step.

Politician mugshots....gotta love it.

Seizing the air

2005-10-19T15:41:00.000-04:00

Kip Esquire notices an eerie resemblance between Kelo & this -- the FCC taking back a radio frequency from a highschool and handing it to a christian broadcasting network.

Granted, as Kip says it's not the same thing, but close enough. Far as I'm concerned it's offensive enough that the FCC has the power to decide what's a more productive use of the airwaves in the first place, among other things.

Shorter, and more accurate

2005-10-19T13:38:00.000-04:00

This is the real problem with the Democratic party: they drastically overanalyze things.

Check out that link above. Chris Hayes w/ Washington Monthly takes up paragraph after paragraph to answer the question " If Americans haven't gotten more conservative why is the GOP in charge?", and still gets it wrong. The reason is this:

The average american voter wants everything for nothing. Republicans have offered it, Democrats haven't. Kerry lost 2004 because him & Bush both offered activist government but Kerry showed people the bill for it.

He tries to say that people want more social programs & more spending on existing ones and don't care about taxes, when in reality them not thinking about taxes shows they're not making the association between the two. I'd recommend the following poll question show up on those surveys the media keeps citing:

"Would you support _____% increase in spending on X if it meant your taxes would go up by _____%?"

The result of that would say where people REALLY stand. If made to understand that what they want would be paid for out of their own pocket, most would say No, no matter what it was.

Yeah, right

2005-10-18T12:26:00.000-04:00

Apparently Michael Chertoff has never heard the phrase "gotta crawl before you can walk":

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said his department aims without exception to expel all those who enter the United States illegally. "Our goal at DHS (Homeland Security) is to completely eliminate the 'catch and release' enforcement problem, and return every single illegal entrant, no exceptions.

Tell that to all the people hiring illegal immigrants in the Gulf Coast...

Though I gotta admit, he gets the idea in one respect:

Thousands of "Mexicans who are caught entering the United States illegally are returned immediately to Mexico. But other parts of the system have nearly collapsed under the weight of numbers. The problem is especially severe for non-Mexicans apprehended at the southwest border," Chertoff explained.

"Today, a non-Mexican illegal immigrant caught trying to enter the United States across the southwest border has an 80 percent chance of being released immediately because we lack the holding facilities," he added.

IMO, this is what we should actually be concerned with. The reason so much of the immigration picture is cloudy is because the ones raising the largest fuss seem to be more worried about mexican workers who are unlikely to be a true security threat. I don't like it myself, but not because of the workers themselves, more because of what it says about our security in general -- if you can get in to work here w/o much trouble then you can get in to blow something up.

It's getting to the point where it'd make more sense to just put in place a guest worker program, so as to seperate out the ones we really shouldn't be screaming about. Border security shouldn't be seen as "labor security".

Re: that country we're occupying still

2005-10-17T17:13:00.000-04:00

A wiseman once said you can't have vote fraud without voting:

Iraq's electoral commission said Monday it intended to audit ``unusually high'' numbers in results coming from most provinces in the country's landmark referendum on the draft constitution....The electoral commission's statement came as Sunni Arab lawmaker Meshaan al-Jubouri claimed fraud had occurred in Saturday's election - including instances of voting in hotly contested regions by pro-constitution Shiites from other areas - repeating earlier comments made by other Sunni officials over the weekend.

This would've been the case no matter what happened. Why? Because shiites and sunnis don't trust each other.

The vote means zilch.

New term, new screwup

2005-10-17T15:54:00.000-04:00

Supreme Court to Missouri: "Pay for it anyway"....

The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for a Missouri inmate to undergo an abortion, saying it won't block a judge's order telling state officials to take her to a St. Louis clinic.

The woman, who is in about her 17th week of pregnancy, sought a court order after prison officials, citing a state policy that discourages abortion, refused to transport her to a clinic.

They didn't quite describe that state policy properly there. Here's what it really was:

A federal judge in Missouri had ruled that the state must take a prisoner at the Vandalia women's prison to St. Louis for an abortion, despite a policy by the Corrections Department that it cannot help a woman obtain an abortion, because that would violate state law prohibiting tax dollars from being used in an abortion proceeding. (emphasis mine)

I don't get this. Now, I'm pro-choice, but I understand why people would be offended at the idea of tax dollars going to provide abortions (her family would've paid for the procedure itself, but the location was in St Louis). Hell, I feel it'd be no different than subsidizing anything else that people may oppose. This would be offensive even if the woman weren't in prison, but it's even worse that this is a convict and people's taxes are going to making her life slightly more convenient.

Where is the rationale? Isn't the point to incarceration that the offender forfeits rights by violating those of others?

Everyone wants an excuse...

2005-10-16T21:41:00.000-04:00

Um...about that riot that broke out in Ohio over the neo-nazi demonstration? I have a question...

In the days leading up to a white supremacist march, ministers pleaded with residents to stay calm and community leaders organized peace rallies. Authorities even delayed releasing the route so protesters wouldn't know where the group planned to march. It wasn't enough to stop an angry mob that included gang members from looting and burning a neighborhood bar, smashing the windows of a gas station and hurling rocks and bottles at police on Saturday. Twelve officers were injured, one suffering a concussion when a brick flew through her cruiser window....

Much of the anger boiled over because people were upset that city leaders were willing to allow the supremacists to walk through the neighborhood and shout insults, residents and authorities said. "You can't allow people to come challenge a whole city and not think they weren't going to strike back," said Kenneth Allen, 47, who watched the violence begin near his home. (emphasis mine)

How in the hell is tearing up your OWN neighborhood "striking back"??

I didn't think much of this at first, but clearly the ignorance level is through the roof. Everyone knew the other thugs in the area were going to "get theirs", no surprise there, I'm concerned about the otherwise normal folks that thought rioting at a meeting of supremecist nutjobs was going to accomplish anything. Take a look at how the whole mess was covered on the "news" -- they basically stripped away much of the context behind it. What do you think some people in the suburbs have going through their heads when they see that sensationalistic garbage burst through their fog of normalcy? As if there isn't enough racial panic floating around lately, the last thing we needed NOW was another opportunity for the media to show a sea of blacks in disarray and accompany it with a pseudo-"objective" wink and nod.

I'd be surprised if those goose-stepping jerkoffs weren't already using the incident in their propaganda.

Pointlessness

2005-10-16T21:13:00.000-04:00

Re: when Rove gets indicted:

Even before testifying last week for the fourth time before a grand jury probing the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity, Bush senior adviser Rove and others at the White House had concluded that if indicted he would immediately resign or possibly go on unpaid leave, several legal and Administration sources familiar with the thinking told TIME. Resignation is the much more likely scenario, they say. The same would apply to I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the Vice President's chief of staff, who also faces a possible indictment. A former White House official says Rove's break with Bush would have to be clean--no "giving advice from the sidelines"--for the sake of the Administration. (emphasis mine)

This would assume that Karl Rove's resignation would create some form of force-field around Bush. Like they'd suddenly stop tying his actions in with the administration simply because he would no longer be an employee.

Excuse me while I laugh...

Imagine if this logic actually applied in the real world. Gang members could walk on their crimes simply by saying "I ain't down with them no more" when caught. If this doesn't serve as yet more proof that political know-how isn't related to actual intelligence, I don't know what does.

Trying somethin new

2005-10-16T09:07:00.000-04:00

That "something new" being a different format for my blogging...

I ain't abandonin this site, no, but all new posts will be mirrored between the two. Depending on how this works, either it'll prove worthless an' I'll delete that other site, or this one will become an archive/mirror. I'll keep you posted as it goes.

BTW: Unless I specifically say to do so, DO NOT CHANGE ANY OF YOUR BOOKMARKS!

Why Miers will NOT win

2005-10-14T22:32:00.000-04:00

Here's the latest attempt at shining up this presidential bowel movement:

Stunned by conservative opposition to Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, President Bush next week will bring in former judges from her home state of Texas to trumpet her qualifications for the nation’s highest court.

The event is part of an administration effort to refine its push for Miers after its initial strategy failed to quiet vocal opposition from members of the president’s own party. The Republican critics, who suggest Bush passed over candidates with long records of conservative rulings from the bench, say that if the White House strategy continues to amount to a “trust me” message, they’ll continue to grumble.

She's not getting on the bench even if "conservatives" change their minds, for the following reason: Bush's strategy clearly shows he gets judicial conservatism (restraint & respect for original intent) and political "conservatism" (belief that the bible somehow trumps the Constitution) confused. Because of that disconnect, he's attempting to sell her to his party base by winks-and-nods that she's a religious nut -- which if they buy into will turn the Democrats sharply against & make any middle-of-the-road types join them in opposition.

You don't know paranoia...

2005-10-14T21:57:00.000-04:00

...until you've read someone accidentally stepping on your lawn as an attempt to have you overthrown:

The American ambassador to Zimbabwe has been accused of attempting to provoke "regime change" after straying into a military zone close to the residence of the country's President, Robert Mugabe.

Ambassador Christopher Dell found himself looking down the wrong end of a gun as he was held at bayonet and gunpoint for more than one-and-a-half hours by the presidential guard after walking up a restricted hill at the National Botanical Gardens. The hill overlooks one of President Mugabe's official residences, located about a mile away.

The American embassy said the ambassador had inadvertently walked into the poorly marked military area while in the gardens last Monday.

Wow. Really nothing more to say to that...

dumbest question ever

2005-10-11T17:08:00.000-04:00

Saw this on "The Situation Room" a moment ago, as one of Jack Cafferty's questions...

5 p.m. ET: Does it matter if Saddam Hussein votes on the Iraqi constitution?

Was he on crack when he came up with that one?

New links

2005-10-11T16:43:00.000-04:00

Recently added to the Blogroll:

-"Booker Rising", a site of news & views for all strains of Right-leaning blacks. Give it a looksee, wouldja?

-Brendan Nyhan, formerly of Spinsanity. This was a no-brainer.

-"Freemans Burden". That burden would be "remaining free", btw...

...and D.C. HATES surprises

2005-10-11T16:28:00.000-04:00

Orin Kerr, from Glenn, finds gleeful speculation on Miers...

To get to the meat of this all, the "process" that itself got her nominated will be the pole that broke the stripper's implants, according to John Fund:

Here's the question you have to ask the White House. Please explain to me, with specifics, how, since Harriet Miers was in charge of the vetting process for the Supreme Court nominee, since she ended up being picked herself, please explain to me exactly how much vetting was done, who did the vetting, and to what extent the vetting that was done on her was different, or the same as it would have been for any other nominee? You need to get the answers to those questions, because I have to tell you. I have gotten information on the vetting that was done with her. And frankly, it doesn't past muster for even a district court appointment.

Eh, whatever, long as she gets torpedoed.

Stuff I spotted at 2am...

2005-10-08T03:03:00.000-04:00

Anyone who hasn't at least once, take a gander at that site "Watching America" I have linked. One would think from reading most foreign media that we were living on seperate planets, for cryin out loud...

This one they had linked was especially hilarious: the Chinese criticizing the US on race relations in the wake of Katrina...

Imagine what could happen in an even larger city like Philadelphia, Chicago or Los Angeles if there was a breakdown in law and order caused by a disruptive natural calamity like Katrina, causing a major shortfall in basic amenities such as fresh water?

The authorities have frankly admitted they were incapable of dealing with such problems in view of what happened with the frantic exodus from Texas. There would be a major breakdown of law and order because social cohesion such as that which exists in the three major East Asian nations, Japan, Korea and China, is simply non-existent in many parts of the United States.

[sarcasm]Gee, I was not aware that East Asia had a significant black population...[/sarcasm]

Ficus for Supreme Court!

2005-10-07T15:54:00.000-04:00

Bush on his houseplant:

President Bush predicted Friday that Harriet Miers will be confirmed to the Supreme Court despite grumbling from conservatives that has led a few to call for the president to withdraw her nomination.

Asked he if would rule out ever seeing Miers' name withdrawn, Bush did not answer directly substituting instead words of confidence about her confirmation process. "She is going to be on the bench," he said. "She's going to be confirmed."

Either he's got indecent photos of Republican congressmen involving children, or the man is in dire need of psychiatric help.

When even such commited partisans as Ann Coulter & Michelle Malkin are storming the gates of Fort Elephant, you know it can only go bad. She shall be turned down, and loudly. At least Roberts had a past as a dork to point to...

Fingers-in-ears syndrome...

2005-10-05T17:11:00.000-04:00

Shorter Nathan Smith: "The reason the size of government keeps growing is because disgruntled libertarians aren't voting Republican!"

What he doesn't realize is, he fisked himself in his own damn article:

Yes, we all love the 1990s. But it doesn't follow that having a Democratic president and a Republican Congress will bring them back. Instead, it's far more likely that the strange and fortuitous synergy between Clinton and the Contract with America Congress that made the 1990s so nice was a one-off.

First, Bill Clinton was elected without a mandate. Ross Perot handed him the election by splitting the conservative vote. Having won only 43% of the vote, Clinton should have known the public wasn't really behind him -- though it took another punch-in-the-face from voters in 1994 to really wean him of his old liberalism. What the 1990s analogy might argue for is supporting a McCain insurgency, so that the Democrats would recover the White House without a mandate for their agenda. It gives no grounds for thinking that a liberal Democrat president with a majority mandate would benefit the small-government cause.

Second, while the 1990s were great for the people, the economy, and the country, they were frustrating for the Republicans and Democrats, in different ways. For Republicans after 1994, they managed to move policy in a conservative direction, but at the expense of their own popularity vis-à-vis Clinton, who got re-elected, and the Democrats, who kept picking up seats in the late 1990s. Meanwhile, for Democrats, they had their man in the White House, but he governed mostly like an Eisenhower Republican, and presided over the greatest landmark of conservative legislation in fifty years: welfare reform. (emphasis mine)

This chunk of clarity is soon followed up by what can only be described as utter nonsense:

If Andrew Sullivan and his fellow small-government conservatives had supported Bush, Bush might have won 55-44 instead of 51-48. In that case, Bush wouldn't need to try to expand the Republican base with a big Katrina relief package. Bush would be stronger vis-à-vis the Democrats, and the conservative base would be stronger vis-à-vis Bush.

Read the part before that steaming pile again. Wouldn't this reasoning actually show that the reason government keeps getting bigger is that all potential political heirs to Ross Perot (read: Right-ish indie/3rd party types that can scare the crap out of the majors) have been strangled in their cribs?

Why does Nathan acknowledge the impact of a serious 3rd candidate in creating the atmosphere where Republicans called for abolishing entire departments & considered a balanced budget amendment and a Democrat actually said "the era of big government is OVER", passed welfare reform, and sent the National Debt clock spinning backwards, only to imply that George W Bush would've brought that back after having ran as a "moderate" candidate in 2000 and governed as a Republican FDR in the run-up to re-election?

Clearly the proper approach is not to cross our fingers and vote Republican, but for libertarians to stay as far away from Republicans as possible whilst seeking to coax genuine conservatives to abandon them as well, constantly threatening to throw a wrench in their plans from outside until they listen to us -- or we simply smash the whole thing, their call as to whichever comes first.

Showing my hand

2005-10-05T15:41:00.000-04:00

If the response to this ends up being what I suspect it will be -- an attempt at revoking my libertarian ghetto-pass -- then this will probably be my last time commenting on QandO:

Times like this I ponder if rather than approaching this pile of absurdity we call modern politics with a straight face we should switch to a strategy of subversion. After all, under a staunchly moderate (in the wrong way) government technically the reasonable people are all radicals by default.

BTW: I must say, I’m surprised someone on here actually mentioned favorably the removal of human rights from corporate entities. There has never been such thing as a "collective" right, so doing that strikes me as every bit as much of a libertarian idea as does doing away with Social inSecurity. The modern view of corporate status was actually a creation of government in the first place, to defend it in its current form is to endorse government regulation of the market.

***waits to be called a kook***

Someone with the username "Rick-D" mentioned the corporate status thing, btw. If you want me I'll be hiding in the bushes...

Sign of the times...

2005-10-03T17:14:00.000-04:00

Going-ons in my state:

Five people were shot or bludgeoned to death with baseball bats and six more were injured in a series of home invasions in South Georgia.

The attacks occurred early Friday morning within a four-hour period at four separate mobile home parks. The crimes follow a pattern increasing in this area of South Georgia where assailants — mostly African-American — have targeted Hispanic immigrant workers for robbery because they are known to carry cash and are often afraid to report the crimes. The number of attacks and the viciousness have been increasing, police say. (emphasis mine)

The US entitlement mentality gets deadly....*sigh*

As if immigrants are at fault if we're not rich. There is no claim to jobs, they do not have a name or a race or citizenship status attached to them, you compete like everyone else. You don't blame them for your situation and you DEFINITELY do not do something as boneheaded as KILL them over it! What are we coming to when we're committing murder over crumbs? People can't even do jobs we don't WANT without being threatened?

This is what we're doing to these people:

Pedro Bemol stayed awake most of the night, swapping lookout shifts in the dark with the five other Mexican immigrants who share a ragged mobile home with no electricity and a front door that won't close because of a broken latch.

"Right now, we're afraid to go to sleep -- all of us are restless," the 36-year-old said Saturday outside his home, two doors down from the trailer where robbers killed two of his neighbors. "We don't know if they'll come in and get us in the night, break in while we're asleep."....

"They're ready-made victims," said Vernon Keenan, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. "They're reluctant to go to the police. They speak very little English. What little cash they have, they keep on their persons or in their homes."

This sound familiar to anyone? With the exception of the language issue, doesn't this remind you of how terrified blacks were trying to make a living in the South? How could we possibly be this DISEASED to inflict this kind of hell on other minorities after we'd gone through it ourselves? Have we learned NOTHING?!?

Unless this entitlement mentality is put down, the next thing to come will be a national suicide. There is no true comfort without work, WAKE UP people...

(linked at Outside the Beltway)

Public Service Announcement

2005-10-03T13:37:00.000-04:00

Insulting me in my email when I don't know you gets your shit published. Especially if you insult me over something from two years ago:

On 10/2/05, fair1@cutie.com wrote:

The only long thing on you is your fucking bong habit, Sweetie. Only a g-man would get away with your asshole retentive crockery. Because YOU must be so controlling, we're now getting our asses kicked, Viet Nam style and it just spread to the U.S. Courtesy of your incompetent brethren. Asshole.

Say something reasonable, or your email address stays visible. Have a nice day...

Another nobody

2005-10-03T12:54:00.000-04:00

Who?

U.S. President George W. Bush chose White House Counsel Harriet Miers, a fellow Texan and longtime confidant who has never served as a judge, to succeed swing vote Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court.

Miers, 60, would help determine the court's direction on abortion, affirmative action, gay rights and congressional power, issues on which O'Connor often cast the pivotal vote. She would become the third woman ever to sit on the high court.

``She has devoted her life to the rule of law and the cause of justice,'' Bush, with Miers at his side, said today in the Oval Office in Washington. ``She will be an outstanding addition to the Supreme Court of the United States.''

Bush is weaker than I thought. Neither JRB (who I'd actually support), nor Luttig (who I'd vehemently oppose), not even Gonzales (whose nomination I would laugh at as it got rejected). Fear is a mutha, ain't it?

Is that a scam I smell?

2005-10-02T18:31:00.000-04:00

The American Red Cross, on distinguishing trusted donation conduits from scammers:

The websites listed below are acceptable and valid cash donation sites approved by the American Red Cross for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. Web addresses (URL) and snapshots of these donation web sites are provided below. All official sites collecting money on behalf of the American Red Cross should link to one of the approve sites listed below. If you have or are donating to the American Red Cross via a link on another website and are redirected, please check the web address in your browser to assure it matches one of the approved URL web addresses. If the web address you are about to make a donation through does not exactly match one of these websites, do not donate through that website. All of the websites listed are in compliance with the American Red Cross Privacy Policy. The American Red Cross and web sites listed below will NEVER ask for your social security number and or PIN number.

The link above shows screen captures of the sites they're talking about.

This site, linked from FrontPageMag, looks nothing like any of those images. Doesn't even have the Red Cross logo....

It gets more suspicious: The top-level domain for that page is the site of a political consultant firm. A Republican political consultant firm.

Makes you go "hmmmmm"...

(linked at Outside the Beltway)

psychopolitik

If you're reading this....

Go Google Yourself, George...

Yeah, right

States' Rights win -- for once

Reject him

Stillborn insurgency

"Stability" is in the eye of the beholder

Unexpected Truth Alert

Another thought Re: Alito

If he walks, it's on

Congressmen? Or prop-comics?

Nagin, PLEASE!

The sky has fallen

Re: measuring economic freedom

New lows every day

These morons "represent" us...

Hearings start tommorow

Immigration. Again.

Another cliche dies

Split-the-baby works for once

Well DUH...

Re: not trusting the military...

Reading between the lines

New Year predictions

Buy donuts (or the terrorists win)

Numbers

Nonsense, plain and simple

Uncle Sam in my stocking

I had a good Saturnalia, did you?

Waitaminute....

DUMB

Suicide booty

It's a start

Another sign

Follow your finger...

*Yawn*...

Correct, though never "right"

Something to watch for...

The absurdity of Managed Trade

"Defense"? No, Offense

Shocked...

Hi, Dave

Art of the backhanded sorry

Spineless peons

Site news

Squeaky wheel

Can we torch the South again, please?

The bias of the mind

"That's nice, but who cares?"

Viral accountability

WTF?

Peeing in a black hole

Mod the business model

Cynicism is good for you

Roundup: things I don't get

At the last possible second...

That had better be milk...

"Damn those doors!"

In case anyone is wondering

Keep this in your head

"So, how's life on Mars?"

A sign of insanity

This is too easy...

Me on Alito so far...

Disproportionate response

The point?

"That mud don't make itself..."

Lightning strikes twice

Best. Opening. Lines. Ever.

Ouch...

Here comes the Info-flood

Was only a matter of time

Normalcy returns quick

What the hell?!?

Good riddance

Our congressmen want BLOOD!

Making it obvious

In case you're wondering....

Can't laugh hard enough....

Yawn...