Happy Hallowe'en On The Web!

This colorful squash is as close as I got to a pumpkin this year. And the spider web, blurry though the photo may be, is a real web, built four days ago in front of Stella's door, and since greatly expanded for the occasion of Hallowe'en. It is still up, and laden with "goodies" the spider bagged. This has been one successful spider!

Tonight, thanks to Stella's sharp eyes, I scored three boxed sets of Hercule Poirot videos at Half Price Books. I think I'll conclude the evening by watching Hallowe'en Party...

(Insert maniacal laugh and spooky organ music here.)

Steve
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Clearing The Desktop

At this hour of the morning, I'd do just about anything to avoid writing about the Democratic debate (which I was unable to see for technological reasons) or about Halloween (look around you; there are plenty of scary things). So here are a few news items:

• Our government has nothing better to do than to shut down medical marijuana clubs. I have not used marijuana and I don't plan to, at least not recreationally, but having suffered great pain at times in my life, I can understand why people in such pain need something like cannabis. But our foolish laws send our even more foolish federal law enforcement agents out on a mission to make sure no one gets any relief except through Big Pharma. Sing it, Barbra: "People who [hurt] people... are the [suckiest] people in the world."
• Apple rejects cash... and its own branded gift cards... for new iPhones, and attempts to restrict sales to two per person. Arrogant bastards! For the record, this kind of stuff is why I don't deal with Apple at all if I can possibly avoid it. I question whether rejecting cash is even legal; take a dollar bill out of your wallet (you do still have a dollar bill, don't you, despite the Bushists' best efforts?) and read the text about its being legal tender for all debts public and private.
• A third stay of execution by the Supreme Court, while it evaluates whether lethal injection violates the Eighth Amendment. There's good evidence that using the three-drug cocktail currently employed is tantamount to torture; veterinarians no longer use it to put down animals because of possible cruelty. For what it's worth, Scalia and Scalito voted against the stay of execution.
• The cost of spying: have you ever wondered what the budget for nonmilitary intelligence services is? Now you can know. Why this total number was ever thought to be the subject of great secrecy is something of a mystery. Steven Aftergood of FAS says the ruling requiring publication of the number is a Good Thing.
• Harry Potshot and the Dead Protected Birds: Prince Harry may or may not have shot some hen harriers; he is being questioned. British law enforcement officials seem to have the interesting notion that the Prince is not above the law. What a concept, that a potential monarch could be held to account for his actions. Pray that Prince Harry never meets Dick Cheney.

This is probably a busy day for me. I'll bring you more good stuff later...

Steve
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Salami Fascism Awareness Week

Josh Marshall informs us that today is the last day of Salami Fascism Awareness Week, organized by David Horowitz. Personally, I thought Salami Fascism was ended in 1943 when the Allies occupied Italy. So the entire theme of Salami Fascism Awareness Week is a bunch of baloney. Indeed, it's the wurst assessment of terrorist threats the Right has come up with. David Horowitz and his crew are just a bunch of bangers beating their Braunschweigers. To be frankfurter attention to them is unwarranted. Indeed, it is hard to imagine any other group of people as jerky as these. Horowitz claims he receives threats when he goes on university campuses, but the very College Republicans he depends on for attention are just a bunch of beer brats.

What's that? Oh. Well. That's completely different.

<emily_litella_voice> Never mind! </emily_litella_voice>

(Josh's snarky video, shot mostly at the conference, is very entertaining.)

Steve
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Dick And The Flag

In some ways I admire Rev. Al Sharpton, but sometimes he shoots off his mouth with no more consideration than Dick Cheney gives to shooting off his shotgun. Jake Tapper of ABC observes, correctly, that neither he nor a friend who has hunted at the Clove Valley Rod & Gun Club can say with any certainty that there is a Confederate flag there in a location in which Cheney might be expected to have seen it on his hunting trip. Tapper later informs us that two newspapers report that there is such a flag, "affixed to a garage door." Meanwhile, the good Rev. Sharpton (well, actually, in this case, the half-cocked Rev. Sharpton) is "calling on Vice President Cheney to leave immediately and denounce the club and apologize for going to a club that represents lynching, hate, and murder to black people." In my opinion, that's a bit of a stretch for Rev. Sharpton, at least while the facts are still unclear.

What is clear, though, is that Cheney hunts at a club which has at least one person who would go to the trouble of hanging a Confederate flag on a garage door. All issues of apologies aside, Cheney needs to choose his hunting companions with greater care. I realize that many people would like to shoot the bird at shoot at birds with the veep, but if Cheney wishes to cultivate a reputation as a straight shooter, he should hunt only with people whose lack of bias is beyond reasonable dispute, e.g., someone with the probity of a Supreme Court Justice.

(Corrected "their" -> "there" after initial posting. Sigh.)

Steve
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Consider Edwards

I have to admit, all particulars aside, this is a very inspiring speech. Give the man his due... if you have any populist aspect to your politics, and I freely admit I do, John Edwards goes straight to it.

Steve
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Irma Hurley Bates 1922-1990

Today would have been my mother's 85^th birthday. I thought I already had a picture of her online, but I am unable to find it at the moment; I'll have to dig it up and post it.

I just wanted to mention that before she lost everything to Alzheimer's disease, she was an excellent mother and a damned fine English teacher. Anything I know about grammar and spelling, I owe to her. Anything I misspell or botch grammatically, the errors are most certainly my own; Mom would have known the proper spelling or grammatical construct.

Mom grew up on a family farm in the red clay part of East Texas. Her entire family put the lie to the stereotype of farmers lacking in education or erudition. Some of them even had Master's degrees; Mom had "only" a Bachelor's, but used it to good effect, teaching English in parts of Texas in which Spanish was frequently the language spoken at home by her students. Of course she spoke Spanish.

Oh, yes, Mom was a Democrat, in an era in which "Democrat" was more or less equivalent to "liberal," for many of the same reasons I am today. I was a very lucky child.

Mom was very polite and properly appreciative the time I tried to bake her a birthday cake, which came out quite flat. "Mom, I brought you brownies!" I said, and she just smiled, knowing exactly what had happened. Here's to you, Mom; if you're still around in some virtual medium, I hope your virtual cake today rose to great heights.

Steve
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Sox In Four!

Speaking of sports, and no joke this time... congrats to the Boston Red Sox on their overwhelming World Series victory! If I recall, their last World Series victory in 2004 was also a sweep. Good show, gentlemen!

Steve
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Sad Story

... but not in the way you think. This was supplied by Democratic stalwart Sheryl Roppolo, via the inimitable CEWDEM's email list...

Houston, TX (AP) - A seven-year-old boy was at the center of a Houston courtroom drama yesterday when he challenged a court ruling over who should have custody of him. The boy has a history of being beaten by his parents and the judge initially awarded custody to his aunt, in keeping with child custody law and regulations requiring that family unity be maintained to the degree possible.

The boy surprised the court when he proclaimed that his aunt beat him more than his parents and he adamantly refused to live with her. When the judge then suggested that he live with his grandparents, the boy cried out that they also beat him.

After considering the remainder of the immediate family and learning that domestic violence was apparently a way of life among them, the judge took the unprecedented step of allowing the boy to propose who should have custody of him.

After two recesses to check legal references and confer with child welfare officials, the judge granted temporary custody to the Houston Texans of the National Football League (NFL), whom the boy firmly believes are not capable of beating anyone.

Groooaaaaannnn...

Steve
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Boylan Attacks Greenwald - UPDATED

Noted blogger and author Glenn Greenwald is receiving hostile emails allegedly from Gen. David Petraeus's Public Affairs Officer and personal representative Col. Steven A. Boylan. Please read Greenwald's frequently updated account and see what you make of the matter. If indeed these emails are coming from Col. Boylan... and all the technological evidence from expert examinations of email headers seems to point to their doing so... one has no real choice but to take them as evidence of Petraeus's, or at least Boylan's, preference of the right-wing media and blogs, to which leaks appear to be directed, over even mainstream centrist (well, OK, vaguely right-of-center) journals such as The New Republic, which cannot get a straight answer to a simple request for nonclassified documents.

But it's worse this time. Read Greenwald's post, which includes the email conversation. Boylan (if indeed it is Boylan, as all the evidence indicates) is insulting and verbally abusive of Greenwald. The insults and abuse, as Greenwald says, would not matter, except that Petraeus has been made available for exclusive interviews by name-brand right-wing media outlets, and information is similarly leaked only to name-brand right-wing bloggers. That is simply not right.

One can make an argument... not that I do so... that military leadership in a war zone has reasonable claim to control the release or withholding of certain kinds of information to the press and media. It is a much tougher case to make that the military has any right whatsoever, given it has decided to release certain information, to release it exclusively to outlets favoring one or another political party. If the information is available to Hugh Hewitt and to Fox News, it should by rights be available to Glenn Greenwald and... well, there's no left-wing equivalent of Fox News, but you get the idea. What is released is arguably rightly controllable (though once again, I do not personally make that argument); who it is released to, especially if decided on a basis of political advantage, or of support of or opposition to the war, is not.

Of all the side effects of the war on a nation that never attacked us, the politicization of our serving military may be among the most dangerous in the long run to the republic. There is no Democratic Army or Republican Army: properly, there's only the U.S. Army. Partisan actions by the serving military, in its official role as the military, are pernicious in a representative democracy.

UPDATE: Bryan of Why Now? offers considerably more insight, in this comment thread and this post. Note in particular that Noah Shachtman of Danger Room (link at Bryan's post) is also attacked by Boylan for his position, though not as personally as Greenwald. Bryan also conjectures that Boylan is not himself writing the emails, but farms them out to subordinates.

Steve
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Rummy In Trouble In 'Old Europe' - UPDATED

Via Whig, on a comment thread at ellroon's place, the International Herald Tribune is reporting that Donald Rumsfeld, who is or was in France at the time, has had a complaint lodged against him in a Paris court by a group of human rights organizations:

The group, which includes the International Federation for Human Rights, the French League for Human Rights and the Nork York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, filed the complaint late Thursday and unsuccessfully sought to confront Rumsfeld as he left a breakfast meeting in central Paris on Friday.

Jeanne Sulzer, a lawyer for the group, said the complaint was filed with a state prosecutor, Jean-Claude Marin, who has the power to pursue the case because of Rumsfeld's presence in France.

     ...

In France, the group is seeking to press charges against Rumsfeld for authorizing torture at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq under the 1984 Convention Against Torture, which France has used in previous torture cases.

As part of their complaint, the group submitted 11 pages of written testimony from a former U.S. army brigadier general, Janis Karpinski.

     ...

(Emphasis mine.)

Rummy apparently fled the premises of his French breakfast meeting (with croissant flakes on his face?). I do not know his current whereabouts. This could get interesting. I don't believe for a moment that Rummy will end up behind French bars, but the Bushists may come to regret all the nasty remarks they've made about France.

UPDATE an hour later: I'm a bit late to the table with this. Here's a Reuters article from Friday with a bit more info. As I don't know anything about the French legal system, it's hard for me to tell exactly what the legal action is, but it appears more like a lawsuit than a criminal charge at this point. Here's an article on RINF (?? I don't know them), dated today, that says that Rumsfeld has fled France. Raw Story says Rumsfeld was "slapped with a criminal complaint charging him with torture," but then refers to a "suit" or "lawsuit" for the rest of the story. Surely we'll hear more.

Steve
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Senator Craig, One More Time

I was going to leave well enough alone, but Sen. Craig himself keeps coming back for more. I'm sure the LGBT community wishes he would simply quit stalling... um, I mean, flush the whole business... ah, tap-dance away from it... but Senator Craig is now making the interesting argument that the law under which he was arrested and later pled guilty is unconstitutional:

     ...

This puts Craig with an odd ally for a conservative Republican: The ACLU, who argued in an amicus brief that foot-tapping and hand gestures alone, absent a real sexual act, were protected by the First Amendment.

     ...

You know what... I believe he is correct. The First Amendment has long been viewed by courts as applying to any form of message transmission, and restrictions on message content are few. In other words, Craig has a constitutional right to tap out a proposition. Even in circumstances in which a sex act between consenting adults may itself be illegal, talking about it isn't: it is almost certainly constitutionally protected speech.

The young Mr. Kleefeld is incorrect about the ACLU's being an "odd ally" for anyone. Talk to any of their lawyers in person... I have done so occasionally... or listen to their very few public appearances; you'll find that no matter what their personal politics, it's all about the Constitution for them. There may indeed be some discomfort on the senator's part; he may not like having the amicus brief filed for him by the ACLU. But that's his problem, not the ACLU's: they are here for everybody.

What will happen in Senator Craig's case? Again, Mr. Kleefeld provides an answer:

Craig's lawyers will file their briefs by mid-December, and have asked to make oral arguments before the appeals court in St. Paul.

(Must. not. touch. that! Must. restrain. myself!)

Steve
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Saturday Signs

I don't know quite what to make of this... sign? multimedia artwork? joke? all of the above?

Whatever it is, it sits on LaBranch, a couple blocks south of Houston Community College (where Stella has her saxophone lessons). If you know this work, I'd be grateful for information about it.

(Afterthought: do you think the obliterated name might be "Vogon"?)

Steve
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Latest Battle In Bush's War On Science

They're at it again. The short version, extracted from hekebolos's diary:

Seriously. Come on. How many times does the Bush administration need to get hammered in the media for doing the same frikkin' thing again and again and again and again before they finally...stop doing it.

Apparently, the answer is: not enough. Once again, the MisAdministration has been caught red-handed redacting information about global warming.

This time, CDC Director Julie Gerberding was scheduled to give prepared testimony to the Senate concerning the health effects of global warming. Her 14-page written testimony, was, in the words of an anonymous CDC official, "eviscerated" [warning - Fox News link! - sb] by the White House.

     ...

Maybe you think this is an exaggeration. If so, here's what ABC News tells us:

Scientists Denounce Global Warming Report 'Edits'
Public Health Experts Say Edits Represent Censoring of Science
By RAJA JAGADEESAN, M.D. and CARLA WILLIAMS
ABC News Medical Unit
Oct. 25, 2007

Environmental and public health experts overwhelmingly denounced editing by the White House of a federal health agency head's testimony to Congress Tuesday. Significant deletions were made from the testimony, concerning global warming and the potential impact on human health.

The original, unedited testimony presented to Congress by Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and obtained by ABC News was 14 pages long, but the White House Office of Management and Budget edited the final version down to a mere six pages.

Scientists and public health organizations called the move "frustrating," "terrible" and "appalling." The edits essentially deleted all sections that referred to climate change as a public health concern -- including the risks of increased food-borne and waterborne diseases, worsening extreme weather events, worsening air pollution and the effect of heat stress on humans.

"Dr. Gerberding is the lead of the premiere public health agency in the U.S.," said Kim Knowlton, a science fellow on global warming and health at the National Resources Defense Council in New York. "It's shocking that she was not allowed to say in a public discussion some of these vital details.

"One has to wonder why was this is so threatening to the White House."

     ...

There's more interesting material in the ABC News article, but what if that doesn't persuade you? Well, there's this original draft (.pdf) supplied by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which got it from Physicians for Social Responsibility. The portions redacted by OMB are yellow-highlighted. What do they contain? Virtually every bit of science in the original testimony. That's right... they didn't edit the science this time; they simply deleted it.

This must end. Combined with the administration's endless wars, this assault on basic environmental science and public health information is a threat to every living thing on Earth. Indeed, in my opinion, if the Bushists succeed in concealing this information from the majority of the public, more people will die in events related to global climate change than are being killed in all of Bush's wars put together.

This is far beyond the merely political. But there is a political process required to begin to solve the greater problem:

Impeach. Them. NOW!

Aside: I kept a local copy of the unredacted draft, in case it "disappears" from the web. I hope a lot of you will do the same. It doesn't take much imagination to see what the Bushists will do now that a draft original is out there.

Steve
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Stripped SCHIP Passes House

A compromised SCHIP passed the House ... but no more Republicans voted for it than voted for the last one. Texas mean man Rep. Joe Barton (R) had this to say:

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig.

Yes, Joe, though I can't imagine what you'd look like with lipstick.

I have two observations:

1. No Republican minds were changed, yet the bill is significantly weaker than the first one: "Democrats had systematically addressed earlier complaints that the bill failed to place a priority on low-income children, did not effectively bar illegal immigrants from qualifying for benefits and was overly generous to adults." D'ya think House Democratic leadership might, just might, learn something from this about the inevitable results of attempting compromise with the GOP? I'm lookin' at you, Rahm.

2. If there were ever any question in anyone's mind about the real intent of the GOP regarding health care for children in America, this should answer it. Making poor children die for lack of medical coverage is now a publicly demonstrated matter of policy for them. Democrats should take a hammer to that policy until the GOP changes it, or until the GOPers are gone in the next election. (Bryan can advise them on what kind of hammer they should use.)

Steve
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Badly Worded Statement Of The Day

From a NYT article titled States Set to Sue the U.S. Over Greenhouse Gases:

Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, in a statement on Tuesday, said, “New York State is moving forward on all cylinders to take aggressive action to curb global warming from both power plants and cars.”

Um, General, do you think you might find a less appropriate cliché?

The article is otherwise worth your time to read, especially if you were as unaware of the states' actions as I was.

Steve
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That's One Way To Do It

FEMA has found a solution to the problem of all those pesky reporters calling in for information about the California fires: fake a press conference at which their own employees "play reporter," asking softball questions:

FEMA workers masquerade as reporters
Agency Employees Play Role of Reporters at FEMA News Conference
Staff
AP News
Oct 26, 2007 10:32 EDT

One way to get decent coverage in this rough-and-tumble city is to arrange to have your own employees interrogate you at your news conference.

That would seem to be the strategy of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, much maligned for its sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina over two years ago.

FEMA scheduled an early afternoon news briefing on only 15 minutes notice to reporters here Tuesday to talk about its handling of assistance to victims of wildfires that were ravaging much of Southern California.

But because there was so little advance notice for the event held by Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson, the deputy FEMA administrator, the agency made available an 800 number so reporters could call in. And many did.

     ...

Y'know, softball just doesn't seem the appropriate game for this week in particular...

Steve
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Gershwin On Warrantless Surveillance -- DOGGEREL!

We attended a second concert in as many evenings tonight, this one performed by the band our friend Catherine plays in. (I hope to blog on the other concert soon.) Tonight they had an Andrews Sisters style trio called Alli and the Cats, wearing W.W.II-style outfits, sporting the right hairdos, and doing a generally respectable job of rendering those old songs the Andrews Sisters made famous. After we listened to the old George and Ira Gershwin favorite, "Someone to Watch Over Me," I leaned over to Stella and whispered, "I feel a parody coming on." And so it was.

Here is a period recording by Gertrude Lawrence (as a YouTube, but without video) of the original song. I know we don't hear a lot of the Gershwins, George and Ira, these days, but they were among the most sophisticated songwriters America has ever produced... as this song demonstrates. Scant apologies to Ira for transforming his excellent rhymes; who knows, he might have been amused.

Some Spy to Watch Over Me

Steve Bates

Steve
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Friday Cat Ellipses Practice

No, not catalepsis; they're anything but rigid and insensitive to pain. Instead, the girls are practicing their cat ellipses:

CHEEK TO CHEEK

"CHEEK" BY JOWL

Um, girls, the second one needs work...

Steve
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Sometimes You Win One

This is new enough that I haven't seen it on the web yet, so I'll reproduce the body of an email alert from the Galveston-Houston Association for Smog Prevention (GHASP):

BP Pays for Violations to Clean Air Act
Contact: Matthew Tejada, (713) 528-3779 or (512) 934-8661

(Houston, TX - Oct. 25, 2007) Justice was served on Thursday when the largest criminal fine in corporate history for violation of federal environmental regulations was handed down to BP Products, North America.

BP has to pay $60 million in criminal fines for violations against the federal Clean Air Act in Texas and Alaska. BP must also pay $400 million for safety improvements and equipment upgrades to prevent more chemical releases and spills.

"This is an important day for the history books for environmental regulations," said Matthew Tejada, executive director for the Galveston-Houston Association for Smog Prevention. "It sends a strong message to industry and shows the EPA's commitment to going after serious environmental offenders."

BP also pleaded guilty to felony charges and fined $50 million for not having proper safety procedures in place that lead to the 2005 Texas City explosion that killed 15 people and injured hundreds more.

"What happened in Texas City is still very emotionally raw for our communities," said Tejada. "These were our mothers, fathers, and spouses who were killed."

In order to comply with the charges for the Texas City incident, BP will be required to spend an estimated $265 million to renovate its flare system and repair safety valves to prevent excess emissions, according to the EPA.

###

GHASP is a regional nonprofit clean air advocacy. For more details, visit www.ghasp.org.

It's astonishing to me that it came to this. What happened? did BP fail to donate enough money to GOP campaigns? If you spot the news online before I do, please leave me a link in the comments; thanks in advance.

Steve
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Dropping MOPs

Via Fallenmonk, we learn that the emergency war funding request contains an unusual item: $88 million to modify the B-2 stealth bomber so that it can carry a MOP. What? what's a MOP? and what needs MOPping?

A Massive Ordnance Penetrator is a 30,000-lb. "bunker buster" bomb, apparently developed over the last four years since the successful test of the MOAB, the Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb. (Some say the acronym stands for Mother Of All Bombs; forgive me if I do not love that Mother.) The MOAB is a "mere" 21,000-lb. bomb, and is several times less powerful.

Of course, America needs a conventional (non-nuclear) bomb with which it can blow up any damned thing. That goes without saying, doesn't it? well, doesn't it? And America needs a delivery system that can deploy the thing in secret, so that there is no value in the threat alone... doesn't it? I mean, what coercive value would it have merely to announce, "we've got a 30,000-lb. bomb we can drop on your butts if you don't do what we say"? That wouldn't be any fun. No, it has to be deliverable with no advance warning. <snark />

This is all about attacking Iran, something President Cheney seems determined to do no matter what. And thanks to him, America is invulnerable to any similar threats from its enemies: hardened command centers are under development that are shielded with cloned tissue from Cheney's thick skull, which is said to be impenetrable by anything... conventional, nuclear or commonsensical.

Afterthought: maybe Cheney had Bush approve this because he thought the weapon was a Massive Ordinance [sic] Penetrator, something that could rip through any law ever made.

Steve
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Gravatar: Software So Stupid...

How stupid is it? Stupid enough it might as well be a product of a Bush administration effort.

Haven't been seeing your Gravatar lately on your favorite comment threads? Well, Gravatar was acquired by a company named Automattic, which purports to offer a bunch of formerly extra-cost features for free. What it really delivered instead is a nonworking Gravatar for a large number of us. But there is hope, as I discovered by trial and error. Try the following:

• Go to http://gravatar.com/ and login.
• Click the "Manage" link near the top of the page.
• Presuming your desired email is selected and has your Gravatar displayed next to it, click the image under "Choose a gravatar for the selected email...". Yes, I know, that image already appears next to that email. Do it anyway.
• Wait a few seconds for the page-post to complete.
• Wait a few minutes for the change to cause a database update.
• Note that your Gravatar reappears on the usual comment threads... e.g., WordPress and HaloScan.
• Shake your head in dismay at the stupidity.
• Remind yourself that at least Gravatar costs you nothing, unlike HaloScan, to which some of us paid good money for a premium membership a few years ago. But that's for another post.

Steve
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The Accidental Terrorist

You cannot persuade me that Mitt Romney "misspoke" in referring to Barack Obama as "Osama." To this sorry state has our public political conversation degenerated. Get ready for more of this, and much worse. You only thought 2000 and 2004 were bad; now that GOPers are desperate, who knows what they will do next.

One thing they won't do is engage in elevated discussions of issues of war and peace, global climate change, poverty and economic fairness, health care funding and the destruction of our civil liberties. Why? because they would surely lose debates on all those subjects. But they are masters at calling a major Democratic presidential candidate by the name of a well-known terrorist, mocking another major candidate's laugh, etc.

Of course the candidates are tough enough to take it; that's not the issue. The real question is whether that's all Romney has to offer. (Well, that, and torturing his dog.) You know what I think.

Steve
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Edifice Complex - Esperson Buildings

I need a break from the tedium of necessary detail regarding the local election (see last three posts), and I'm sure you do as well. This is an early Houston skyscraper called the Esperson Buildings (yes, it's plural; look it up). I snapped the picture earlier this month, during the Bayou City Festival for 2007:

The pun in the post title is courtesy of my high school English teacher, Mrs. Berndt, as she noted my preoccupation with large buildings at one point in my life. Bless you, Mrs. Berndt, wherever you are! ("Edifice Complex" may become an occasional feature of the YDD; I do have a few pics of buildings...)

Steve
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Mikal Watts Withdraws From Senate Race - UPDATED

UPDATE: Watts now has a statement on his own campaign web site about his decision to withdraw:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
CONTACT:
Kim Devlin, 210-757-4240

Statement from Mikal Watts

October 23, 2007

For the last five months I have been exploring a race for the United States Senate because I believe that our junior senator, John Cornyn, has let Texas down and is more concerned with his cronies and friends in Washington than with what’s best for Texas.

After spending the last several months putting everything into this campaign, I have seen the toll this effort has taken on my young children. For these reasons, my wife and I have made the decision that I will not be seeking the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate in 2008. I was brought up to believe that public service is a noble endeavor and I will continue to be involved at some level in the future. However, I realize that my time now should be devoted to serving my children so they may grow up in a healthy environment with both parents at home to meet their needs.

The reasons for creating my exploratory committee still exist. As I have criss-crossed the state and met and talked with tens of thousands of good Texans, it is evident how much the people of Texas want and need a Senator who will fight every day for their interests and not the special interests. We need to elect a new Senator in Texas and I will personally do everything possible to support the Democratic nominee.

It is hard to express the gratitude I feel for all the support my family and I have received as we have pursued this effort. I know that our vision for the future of Texas is one that all of our friends and supporters share. It’s been one of the greatest blessings of my life for their faith in me, and for all of their hard work over the past months. While the decision not to seek the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate has been a difficult one, I know that it is the right one for my family at this time.

A classy withdrawal... good reason, right tone, and a promise to support the Democratic nominee. Well done, even if I didn't support him in the primary.

(Original post follows.)

Quorum Report Buzz for 10/23/2007 (please forgive the weird navigation on this site; you may have to search by date):

     ...

Mikal Watts statement:

"For the last five months I have been exploring a race for the United States Senate because I believe that our junior senator, John Cornyn, has let Texas down and is more concerned with his cronies and friends in Washington than with what's best for Texas.

"After spending the last several months putting everything into this campaign, I have seen the toll this effort has taken on my young children. For these reasons, my wife and I have made the decision that I will not be seeking the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate in 2008.      ...

     ...

Read the rest over there; Kronberg appears a bit touchy about his copyright. This is a shocker. Everyone always assumes the wealthy, self-funded candidate will automatically take the prize. It is our good fortune that the better candidate (in my opinion), Rick Noriega, can step in. Those who know Noriega understand that he is better equipped, in every way but money, to confront John Cornyn. Game on. Let's roll. Choose your favorite cliché.

Steve
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Local Elections - Endorsements

Despite my fond hopes of researching and writing a real post about local candidates, I don't have the time or (especially) the energy to do that at the moment. I'll point you instead to some sites with endorsements that often align with my own. I have met many of these candidates, heard quite a few of them speak, and in a few cases actually interviewed them some years back as part of an endorsement committee. For the rest, you will simply have to decide who has your trust, or skip some races on your ballot. (I'll be doing that in a couple of cases myself.)

Without further ado, here are the organizations and their endorsement pages:

• Harris County Democratic Party
  This is a resource page, not an endorsement page. HCDP does not endorse in the nonpartisan City of Houston races, and lists all candidates for whom info is available. But you can easily tell by inspection which candidates are Democrats.
• Harris County Democrats
  This is the local more-or-less liberal Democratic club. (I am always asked to emphasize that it is NOT the Democratic Party itself, but rather a large club of like-minded Democrats.) Although my membership is lapsed, I still like their recommendations. Endorsements are the result of formal interviews with candidates by a committee, followed by a vote of the club's rather large membership. This is my primary source, though in my case it serves more as a reminder of candidates I already know about.
• Houston Black American Democrats (HBAD)
  Speaking of "lapsed," HBAD's web site has vanished, but I'm putting up a copy of an email I received from them, secondhand through a reliable source. I have not verified the content of this email, but I have no reason to doubt its authenticity, either. I offer it as-is. Read it for what it's worth. (I disagree with their position on the HISD school bonds: I support the bonds.)
• Dos Centavos (Stace Medellin) provides a narrative account of the Harris County Tejano Democrats endorsement meeting. (This club has no web site of its own, but you can find contact information on HCDP's Local Clubs page.)

Houston is a geographically vast city, and has many more Democratic organizations than are represented here. There are literally a few dozen of them. I do not mean to disparage the endorsements of any of them omitted from this list; this is just a sample.

This is my third and (I hope) final post of local pre-election information; see the two posts immediately preceding this one. Thanks to my many non-Houstonian readers for bearing with me.

Steve
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Local Elections - Ballot Propositions

Sixteen ballot propositions... amendments to the Texas Constitution... will appear on the 11/6 ballot. Texans are aware, as most of the rest of you are probably not, that one practically has to amend the Texas Constitution to take a leak in a new bathroom. OK, it's not that bad, but it's damned close. Many, many things that would ordinarily be dealt with through legislation in any other state require a constitutional amendment in Texas because of the faulty structure of the state Constitution. A few decades ago, a constitutional convention was called to clean up the mess. They were unable to do so: a lot of special interests liked their own amendments, figured they'd duly bought and paid for 'em, and forced everyone to go home empty-handed. So be it; that's how we do things here. I feel a bit awkward even making recommendations, because each and every proposition almost always passes. But you should at least read 'em on Rep. Scott Hochberg's personal site, and take your best shot. My personal list is keyed to Rep. Hochberg's presentation of the amendments:

 
 1 - N - May result in tuition increases.
 2 - Y - Student loans an excellent long-term investment for any society.
 3 - Y - No 'sticker shock' for homeowners.
 4 - N - More prisons are the last thing Texas needs.
 5 - Y - ... but it's a close call; read it yourself.
 6 - Y - One's only personal car should not be taxed for business... ever.
 7 - Y - Unused eminent domain property should not become a state investment.
 8 - Y - Some consumer protection is better than no consumer protection.
 9 - Y - 100 percent disabled veterans need all the help they can get.
10 - Y - Hides and animals? who are we kidding?
11 - Y - Public info on Lege votes on the web is good.
12 - N - Pay-as-you-go for highway funding is greatly preferable.
13 - N - Another close call: denying bail is a serious burden on defense.
14 - Y - Ageism against judges is just wrong.
15 - Y - Cancer research is a good investment, a long-term taxpayer benefit.
16 - Y - Vote against sewers? ya gotta be kidding me!

Your mileage may vary depending on your circumstance; read 'em and decide for yourself. My candidate endorsements will appear sometime later today or perhaps Wednesday.

Steve
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Local Elections

Harris County and City of Houston elections are underway. Election Day is November 6, but you can vote early as soon as TODAY; see Harris Votes! for more information. Note that early voting polling places are NOT the same as your regular polling location.

Here's the short version of the early voting schedule for Harris County, courtesy of an email from Councilmember Melissa Noriega:

Monday-Friday, October 22-26, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Saturday, October 27, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Sunday, October 28, 1 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Monday-Friday, October 29-November 2, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Note that some City of Houston residents are in Fort Bend County; if you are one of them, click here for more voting information.

I'll have a list of my endorsements up in a day or so.

(Now this is amusing... googling "harris votes" also sweeps up a link to an old article,
"Scoop: Bev Harris: Vote Fraud, Volusia County On Lockdown" ... let's hope that doesn't happen here!)

Steve
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Planned Parenthood Has Had Its Phill

That would be Kansas prosecutor and anti-choice crusader Phill Kline, who is attempting his second bite at the apple after Planned Parenthood was found, in an investigation by the state attorney general in June, to have broken no laws.

The basics

ABC News:

     ...

"Phill Kline continues to further his political ambition of making abortion illegal by using unethical tactics in his role as District Attorney," said Peter Brownlie, CEO of Planned Parenthood in Kansas and Mid-Missouri, in a statement on the organization's Web site.

The Charges Against Clinic

The prosecutor's latest salvo against the abortion industry began Oct. 17, when he filed a 107-count criminal complaint against Brownlie's Comprehensive Health of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, located in Overland Park, Kan. Twenty-three of the counts are felony charges.

The clinic has denied any wrongdoing and has called the complaints "baseless."

In addition to facing charges of performing illegal late-term abortions, Kline charged the clinic with false writing, failure to maintain records and failure to determine viability.

     ...

Planned Parenthood Federation of America has been around under that name since 1942 (warning: this wiki appears to me to be suffering from a POV, but that's another issue). How likely is it that their activities and record-keeping have run afoul of the law at this late date? It appears to me that Kline is using the law to harass a group he doesn't like. I believe there are words for that, and I believe repeatedly pressing false charges is a criminal act.

The grand jury petition group

There is an organized effort to press a grand jury investigation of Planned Parenthood's activities. Kansas City Star:

     ...

“What we have are people who repeat the same falsehoods on the hope that if you say it enough times people will believe it,” Peter Brownlie, president of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, said in an interview before Kline filed the charges last week.

Those leading the grand jury effort disagree.

“There’s been way too much controversy surrounding that big abortion clinic up there in Johnson County for way too long,” said Troy Newman, a leader of the grand jury effort and president of Wichita-based Operation Rescue, a group that opposes abortion.

“I say where there is smoke there is fire and this place is brimming with smoke.”

     ...

Paul Morrison, who succeeded Kline as attorney general, did his own investigation and announced in June that Planned Parenthood had violated no laws.

Abortion opponents are not satisfied with Morrison’s findings.

     ...

Where there is smoke there is fire? No. In our local clinic, there wasn't smoke (though I believe that's been attempted too). Rather, where there's a sulfur-smelling compound somehow inserted into the clinic after hours, there's criminal behavior. But some of these people are sure their cause is so noble that they may ignore a little matter like the law.

Possible penalties

From The Bulletin, "Philadelphia's Family Newspaper" (which finally deigns to quote someone from Planned Parenthood in the very last paragraph of their article):

     ...

The complaint lists 23 felony counts of Making a False Information, 26 misdemeanor counts of Unlawful Failure to Maintain Records, 29 misdemeanor counts of Unlawful Failure to Determine Viability for a Late-Term Abortion, and 29 misdemeanor counts of Unlawful Late-Term Abortion. If convicted on all counts, the abortion provider could be slapped with $2.5 million in fines.

"Planned Parenthood is accused of falsifying records to cover up numerous violations of state law against aborting late-term babies," said Wendy Wright, President of Concerned Women for America (CWA). "Now we know what Planned Parenthood means by 'privacy' when it refuses to release information on the abortions it commits on pre- born babies - it is claiming privacy on its own alleged illegal actions."

     ...

Peter Brownlie, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri stated the charges were politically motivated and pledged "Planned Parenthood will meet this attack head-on." The first hearing in the matter is set for Nov. 16.

In one way, this is comparable to the US Attorney scandal: a powerful political force has decided that the justice system is just another device to be used in pursuit of an agenda. But there is a difference. When a public official is corrupted by a bribe, or by the prospect of greater power, there is some hope of rectifying the situation and punishing the public official. But in this case, when a prosecutor is motivated to harassment because he is in possession of "God's own truth," nothing will dissuade him. Kline should be investigated and probably tried for bringing false prosecution; if found guilty, he should be disbarred and imprisoned.

Boilerplate full disclosure: About 20 years ago, I did some computer work for the local Planned Parenthood. Yada, yada, yada... I challenge Phill Kline to disclose fully his potential conflicts.

Steve
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Full Of Ships

Actually, the Houston Ship Channel, as we viewed it yesterday from Brady's Landing on an island in the channel, didn't have all that many ships. For a popup window of photos of what we saw, click here.

(Total size of pictures about 220k. I know the bandwidth of this site has grown lately.)

Steve
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Saturday Signs

I've eaten at some mighty crowded tables in my life, but really, this beats all...

Steve
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Comcast Shown To Violate Net Neutrality

Those who opposed "net neutrality" ... the concept that network providers must treat all internet traffic impartially across content providers... are coming face-to-face with a real-world example of discrimination:

Comcast blocks some Internet traffic
Comcast Actively Hinders Subscribers' File-Sharing Traffic, AP Testing Shows
PETER SVENSSON
AP News
Oct 19, 2007 09:15 EDT

Comcast Corp. actively interferes with attempts by some of its high-speed Internet subscribers to share files online, a move that runs counter to the tradition of treating all types of Net traffic equally.

The interference, which The Associated Press confirmed through nationwide tests, is the most drastic example yet of data discrimination by a U.S. Internet service provider. It involves company computers masquerading as those of its users.

     ...

Comcast's technology kicks in, though not consistently, when one BitTorrent user attempts to share a complete file with another user.

Each PC gets a message invisible to the user that looks like it comes from the other computer, telling it to stop communicating. But neither message originated from the other computer — it comes from Comcast. If it were a telephone conversation, it would be like the operator breaking into the conversation, telling each talker in the voice of the other: "Sorry, I have to hang up. Good bye."

     ...

Comcast's interference affects all types of content, meaning that, for instance, an independent movie producer who wanted to distribute his work using BitTorrent and his Comcast connection could find that difficult or impossible — as would someone pirating music.

     ...

There are two objectionable activities here. Let's look at the technological offense first:

Comcast, by generating false BitTorrent handshaking messages pretending that they are from users' computers, is stepping into the middle of a higher-level protocol. It's hard to generalize, but that's usually a bad thing to do... rather large spanners can be inserted into the works, intentionally or unintentionally, by not maintaining strict separation and well-defined interchanges between protocol layers. *

The other problem is that Comcast is choosing to interfere with one or another piece of internet traffic based not on the legality of its content but on the technology it uses. BitTorrent is indeed used by those who share media files illegally. It is also used by filmmakers and other artists who generate high-volume digital content that needs to be transferred among individual computers. One can use an automobile to commit a crime; should we therefore build roads to interfere with auto traffic?

Of course, Comcast has its own reasons for interfering, reasons that are independent of the legality of the content: peer-to-peer file transfers can at times use up huge portions of all available internet bandwidth. But Comcast, and others that follow their path, could address the problem directly, at the level of allowable uses of their network, rather than interfering with the work of legitimate users of file-sharing technology.

Comcast has chosen unilaterally to do this without acknowledging the fact to its customers or to the public. And Comcast is a major player that affects vast portions of the internet. All of you who thought net neutrality was purely about charging differential rates for different priorities of service: have your eyes opened now?

(Aside: for the record, I have never knowingly shared files illegally. I don't have a dog in this race personally. But we all have a stake in the continued effectiveness of the internet over which we exchange all our wonderful creative efforts. Everyone should have an interest in this.)

* Protocols, the "languages" by which communications systems accomplish the passing of information, are layered, one atop another, with senders and receivers at each layer generally knowing only how to talk to others in the same layer, and how to hand off to adjacent layers. For example, your browser converses with a web server using (among other things) a protocol called HTTP, HyperText Transfer Protocol. How do requests and responses in the HTTP conversation make their way from browser to server and back to browser? Paraphrasing Tom Lehrer, "That's not my department, says HTTP." There are probably over a dozen layers of protocol below the HTTP conversation.

Steve
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Who Will Guard The Nation

... while the National Guard is drained away to fight Mr. Bush's wars? AP, via cab drollery, in turn via Avedon:

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is preparing to alert eight National Guard units that they should be ready to go to Iraq or Afghanistan beginning late next summer, The Associated Press learned Wednesday.

The U.S. military is reaching out to more Guard units in an effort to maintain needed troop levels, ease some of the strain on the active duty Army and provide security for ports, convoys and other installations.

According to defense officials, seven of the units would deploy to Iraq and one to Afghanistan. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the orders had not yet been signed and the announcement is not expected until the end of this week.

     ...

How many troops? The article contains many details, but here's the bottom line:

All together, the Guard announcement would involve about 20,000 soldiers.

So while Bush and his brass have plans to reduce the number of troops with one hand, they're putting troops in... citizen soldiers, remember, not regular Army, for what I trust are obvious reasons... with the other hand.

Unless Pelosi puts impeachment back on the table, we have well over a year left in Mr. Bush's reign. How likely is it that we will run low on Guard? There are two consequences of depleting the National Guard: one is that Mr. Bush may consider a draft; the other is that the Guard will be unavailable to address genuine national emergencies within the U.S. Why is this not receiving more media attention?

Nancy, you put that thing back on the table. It doesn't belong to you, and we need to use it right away.

Steve
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Reid My Lips - UPDATED

TPMMuckraker:

CQ: Surveillance Bill Will Go to Senate Floor Next Month
By Spencer Ackerman - October 18, 2007, 5:01PM

Tim Starks of Congressional Quarterly reports that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) plans to bring the Senate's surveillance bill up for floor debate in mid-November. That's despite the hold that Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) plans to place on the measure -- something first reported by Election Central's Greg Sargent.

The Senate intelligence committee is still marking up the bill behind closed doors, according to staffers. A joint statement from committee leaders Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Kit Bond (R-MO) will follow when the mark-up concludes, but that may not occur today.

     ...

Jane Hamsher quotes someone "with extensive Hill experience":

I’m a bit confused here. This just doesn’t happen. So I chatted with someone I know with extensive Hill experience, who said:

“I can’t think of one time when Harry Reid went around his own. It’s just not normal for a leader to do that to his own side. Sometimes you’ll go around Republicans, sometimes they’ll use holds to be “spoilers,” but that happens to the other guy. You just don’t do it to one of your own.”

Reid has some 'splainin' to do... to rank-and-file Democrats like me.

UPDATE: The comment thread to this post contains the result of additional searching on the whole matter of placing a hold on a bill in the Senate.

Steve
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A Grrl And Her Cat

There has been so much discussion of the movie "A Boy and his Dog" (derived originally from a Harlan Ellison short story... sorry, Bryan, it looks as if I'm not going to get to the mutating meme) that I thought I'd give you a picture involving no nuclear catastrophe, no genetically engineered creatures, no rape, indeed, nothing even the least bit unpleasant to upset your morning...

There. Was that so bad? Any of us would smile if Tabitha took up residence atop us.

Steve
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Have I Told You Leahy...

Sen. Patrick Leahy has expressed his dissatisfaction with the deal being cut in the Senate Intelligence Committee over immunity for past warrantless wiretapping, saying that in his opinion, the Senate was "about to cave." Meanwhile, Sen. Chris Dodd has said he will place a hold on any bill containing immunity. Between the two of them, Leahy and Dodd may be able to throw a spanner in the juggernaut (to mix a metaphor). Maybe there are, after all, a few Democratic senators with integrity left.

Steve
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Damn It All Again - SCHIP Fails

No GOP minds were changed in the making of this horror. We all know the famous quote from Gandhi, "be the change you want to see in the world"; I suppose that means GOPers in the House must all be very sick children without health care options, because that's obviously the change they want to see.

Independent voters: do all of you now see why you must vote to remove Republicans from office at every opportunity? This is not about political revenge; this is about living in a civilized society. Ours just descended a little further into the pit.

Steve
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Damn It All - Dems Cave Again

It looks likely that the telecoms will get the immunity they seek... possibly with Democratic acquiescence:

If you liked the Protect America Act -- President Bush's sweeping revision to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act signed into law in August -- you're going to love the soon-to-be-unveiled surveillance bill from the Senate intelligence committee. President Bush and Admiral Mike McConnell do, at least. A day after the White House made available to the committee "millions" of pages of material documenting how the telecommunications industry complied with warrantless requests for Americans' international communications after 9/11, the committee wrote into its bill a provision granting the industry retroactive immunity from customer lawsuits that the White House has long desired.

It's unclear what else the bill will contain.      ...

The "millions" of pages appear to be the administration's response to a demand for records of the warrantless wiretaps the telecoms did in response to Bush's secret requests. (Remember, this was not driven by 9/11/2001; the wiretaps started several months before that.)

What exactly is different now? No one could have read the "millions" of pages between yesterday's dump and today's bill markup. But even if someone could have accomplished such a superhuman feat, they never had the opportunity:

     ... Either way, it's unknown as yet if the Senate bill will actually include a retroactive immunity provision: that's a lot of material to review in advance of a Thursday mark-up. But the White House play seems to be to release the documentation in limited fashion -- committee staff read the documents in an "undisclosed location," but were permitted to take notes -- and use the disclosure as justification for retroactive immunity.

So far, neither the Senate Judiciary Committee nor any House entity has been permitted to view the documents. House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) said he was "extremely disappointed" in a letter last night to White House legal counsel Fred Fielding. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said yesterday that "we're going to make sure that in the process, the House is ultimately able to see" the documents.      ...

(Emphasis mine.)

So... what exactly is different after the document dump? Is there indeed a retroactive immunity provision in the marked-up bill? Why all the secrecy? Why can't the House Democrats read the documents in an ordinary way? What's the problem with House members reading something before they agree to a deal? And my biggest question... why aren't Dems exacting a greater price in exchange for apparently going along with some sort of an immunity deal? To what degree is the Democratic leadership on board with immunity?

I'll wait a day or two for the outcome... if we're permitted to know that... but it looks as if the Dem leadership has caved again. That's our Democratic Party™ -- snatching defeat from the jaws of victory since 2006.

Clarification after initial posting: the second quote is from yesterday's TPM post, the one linked on the word "millions" in the first quote.

Steve
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Bush Appoints A Right-Wing Orr

Mr. Bush, shoving aside his one-in-four approval rating, has once again extended a sharp stick toward the eye of his political opponents, appointing Susan Orr to run family planning at HHS. Ms. Orr has as her primary qualification a track record of extremist right-wing pronouncements on behalf of Family Research Council and Regent University. This is Bush's second consecutive appointment of an indisputable extremist to this position; the previous appointee, Eric Keroack, another opponent of contraception, stepped down in March over ethical problems. Here's what Think Progress notes about Ms. Orr:

• In a 2001, Orr embraced a Bush administration proposal to “stop requiring all health insurance plans for federal employees” to cover a broad range of birth control. “We’re quite pleased, because fertility is not a disease,” said Orr.

• At the 2001 Conservative Political Action Conference, Orr cheered Bush’s endorsement of Reagan’s “Mexico City Policy,” which required NGOs receiving federal funds to “neither perform nor actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations.” Orr said that it was proof Bush was pro-life “in his heart.”

• In a 2000 Weekly Standard article, Orr railed against requiring health insurance plans to cover contraceptives. “It’s not about choice,” said Orr. “It’s not about health care. It’s about making everyone collaborators with the culture of death.”

• Orr authored a paper in 2000 titled, “Real Women Stay Married.” In it she wrote that women should “think about focusing our eyes, not upon ourselves, but upon the families we form through marriage.”

This appointment must not stand. If Senate Democrats are worth anything, they'll put an end to it.

Correction: this appointment appears not to require Senate approval. Damn.

Steve
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Watch For Falling Drones

This is bothersome...



... to say the least:

Safety Fears on No-Pilot Airplanes
BY MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: October 17, 2007

WASHINGTON, Oct. 16 — The plane crashed near Nogales, Ariz., because the pilot had turned off the engine and never noticed, the National Transportation Safety Board ruled Tuesday.

Normally that would be an unlikely cause of an accident. But in this case, the pilot was sitting at a control panel in a windowless trailer at Libby Army Airfield in Sierra Vista, Ariz., about 30 miles away from the plane he was flying — a U.A.V., or unmanned aerial vehicle.

The U.A.V., a 10,000-pound Predator, crashed before dawn on April 25, 2006, while doing surveillance work for the Customs and Border Patrol. Nobody was hurt and no property was damaged, but the plane, roughly the dimensions and weight of a midsize corporate jet, missed a house by about 100 yards.

The accident, which had been under investigation for more than a year, has raised concerns among aviation safety experts about U.A.V.’s, particularly as the number of such remote controlled aircraft grows.

More than 100 are now in operation around the continental United States — all four branches of the armed services fly them, and civilian agencies use them to look for lost hikers and illegal aliens, to fight forest fires and to conduct meteorological research, among other purposes.

     ...

The author of a recent Air Force report on its U.A.V.’s found that they were crashing at three times the rate of manned aircraft, mostly because of errors of the pilots who were flying the planes remotely.      ...

     ...

Do they have to call it "Predator"?

When I was a kid, I flew model airplanes on control-lines. Friends with more money flew radio-controlled jobs as well. Those RC planes ended up anywhere and everywhere; the control systems were less than reliable. But this is 50 years later, and these new remotely piloted planes are nothing like those old toys; oh, no, not at all...

Steve
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Warrantless Wiretapping And The Telecoms

Christy Hardin Smith has details and observations about the current status (as of yesterday) of attempts to obtain for the telecoms a free pass on violations of law they may have committed to this point. This quote in particular struck me:

     ... Add in the fact that, as ex-Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio says, the Bush Administration was already pushing for these legal end-runs a full six months prior to 9/11/01... and you have a recipe for an Administration who could give a rat’s ass about the rule of law, and which still didn’t keep America safe from attack even with their end-run of FISA.

Not only was the warrantless wiretapping illegal, against the FISA law... not only was it likely a Fourth Amendment violation... not only was it premeditatedly implemented BEFORE the big event of 9/11/2001... it didn't even work. It didn't help to prevent 9/11. Why should either the Bushists or their tame telecom corp's get a bye on this? While they're handing out get-out-of-jail-free cards in Congress, there are a few I'd like to see... actually, no; I'd like to see fair, reasoned implementation of laws that apply to everybody... and every corporation. Sorry; no "patriotism" exceptions.

Steve
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Cheney's Law

You may as well watch the Frontline episode. There is little in it that will be news to most readers of the YDD, but it is well constructed, and taken as a whole, it is a good compendium of indictments against Cheney (unfortunately not in the legal sense), together with a chronology of his attempt to remake our government into something our Founders never imagined it should be.

My primary complaint: I could have done without the largely inessential ominous background music. Well, actually, I have another complaint, in the form of a request: could we please set a date certain after which the famous "Ken Burns effect" is officially regarded as retired? (I'm willing to cut an exception for, um, Ken Burns, of course.)

Steve
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