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So this is something I've been wondering if my "progressive" healthcare-reform-loving friends would be able to answer: What are you going to do when the healthcare reform bill destroys the healthcare industry? And it will, and it's not hard to sort out how... Here's how it works:

The healthcare reform package bills, currently awaiting conference committee, both include provisions which require insurance companies to take on high-risk customers, and customers with pre-existing conditions. In other words, customers who will cost the insurance companies billions of dollars in outflow, but only generate minimal income (in relation to their expenses anyway).

Now, anyone can see that this situation isn't tenable for the insurance companies, taken by itself. If I can force any company to sell things to customers, at a loss that's measured in several orders of magnitude, per customer, then even a child can understand how they'll go broke. (To demonstrate with a child, have a child buy a bunch of toys at $10 each and then be forced to sell those toys to "kids who really need toys" at $1 each. Require that the kid go buy more toys when they run out, and keep selling toys to any other kid who asks to buy one... they'll understand it really quick).

Now, the healthcare reform bills' answer to this dilemma is to force everyone to get healthcare coverage from some provider, regardless of how little you might need it.

There's an absolutely sick number of young adults who, every day, have done the math to realize that their healthcare expenses, per annum, cost FAR less than their healthcare PREMIUMS would cost, and so they ride the "risk train" and pay as they go for services they need. (Some of these folks will hedge their bets by buying less-expensive healthcare insurance with high deductibles just in case something million-dollars-heinous happens in their lives).

With those folks, who will generate far more income than outflow on the insurance-providers' books, the insurance companies will in effect subsidize the losses they are forced to take on the aforementioned high-risk customers.

But, you see, here's the trick, and the part where "progressives" miss the boat. Congress' ability to write laws is based on the Constitution, and the powers enumerated to it in that document. In the absence of a specific grant of power, their authority falls to the Interstate Commerce Clause, a wholly overused bit of legal art which says that Congress has the right to regulate commerce between the states.

However, refusing to participate in commerce (e.g., refusing to buy insurance) isn't something that Congress can regulate. If you were participating in some sort of interstate commerce, then certainly Congress would be within its legal jurisdiction, but there's nothing in the Constitution which says that they can force you to participate in commerce, which will then be regulated.

So, as soon as something passes which requires John Doe #s 1...500 to participate in commerce they don't want to, you will see it go to the courts. And the Courts, having more than a First Grade understanding of ConLaw, will throw out the part requiring people to buy insurance, because it doesn't have a constitutional leg to stand on.

But the trick is -- the part of the law requiring insurance companies to cover people, since they are interstate entities for the most part, will stick. The insurance companies will be forced to carry people who will cost them far more than they bring in, and they won't have the people who bring in far more than they cost to cover the losses. They'll eventually start to go belly-up, and you'll have a crisis far worse than the banking crisis ever looked.

So, my questions for my Democrat friends are:

(a) How do you intend to get around the clear-cut Constitutionality issue, and
(b) What do you intend to do for healthcare when there's nobody left around to cover you at all?

"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it."

K, Men In Black

CNN is running a story, or rather a fear-mongering piece of tripe, about how "people on the terrorist watchlist are managing to buy guns and nobody's stopping them."

Now, there's two things wrong with the story. The first is the premise itself is flawed, and the second is how blatantly slanted the story is.

On the first part... we live in a nation of laws and principles, and one of those principles is "innocent until proven guilty." When someone is convicted of a crime, they give up some of their rights, but if they're just suspected of a crime, well, they get to keep on walking and talking and going about their business. That's how it's supposed to work in a free society.

Also, seriously, the "Terrorist Watch List"?!?!? THAT's what we should be using to stop people buying firearms? The list that everyone knows is flawed? The list that is no more complicated than "your first and last name", so if you happen to have a common Arab name, you are going to be shit-outta-luck because there's undoubtedly some terrorist who's used your name as an alias? The list that has banned freakin' Congressmen from flying? The one that has banned 6-month-old children from flying? THIS is the list we want to use to curtail peoples' rights?

Seriously, I don't fuckin' think so.

And, of course, to the second part - the thinly veiled agenda of the article itself. When I was taking Journalism classes, we were taught some of the "basics" of Journalism. The most important parts of the story, the things you want your reader to take away from the article, you put in the first paragraphs. Many readers won't read whole stories, so you put the things you, as a writer or as a news agency, think the reader should care about in the top paragraphs, and put the rest, in descending order of importance, down through the article.

The "least important" aspects of the CNN article? The failings in the watch-list, how ineffective it is at even identifying terrorists, the fact that using it would be so overbroad as to be unconstitutional, etc.

Not mentioned at all in the article is the most crucial (because, as Journalism rules go, the least important things to the agency are the things that get cut for space), and that is "what it means to be a terrorist". In the world of terrorism defined by the United States Department of Defense? PROTEST is a form of "low-level terrorism". So, technically, as far as the DoD is concerned, if you protest -- if you exercise your Constitutional right to freedom of speech, or to petition your elected government for redress -- you are classified as a "low-level terrorist", and thus are eligible to have your right to own a gun infringed upon.

In Soviet Russia, terrorism defines you....

So Obama took the podium today to talk about the Chrysler bankruptcy announcement. CNN writes:

The president also blasted a group of investment funds and hedge funds for holding out for an "unjustified taxpayer bailout."

Several financial institutions, led by J.P. Morgan, agreed to reduce Chrysler's loan repayment obligations by as much as two-thirds, Obama said.

But "a group of investment firms and hedge funds decided to hold out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout" Obama said. "They were hoping that everybody else would make sacrifices and they would have to make none."

Heyyyy, welcome to the real world, buddy! Why should they take the risk if you've made it quite clear you're willing to have everyone else (e.g., the taxpayers) assume the risk. This is exactly what fiscally conservative folks were predicting would happen. Once you make it clear that the government's going to step in and bail people out, there's no reason for private investors to bail themselves out. They'll just wait for Uncle Sam's tit to be presented and suck it dry.

If Obama and his predecessor weren't both so completely ridiculously stupid when it comes to economic realities (and the human/social realities that go with that), then this could all be avoided. Instead, they both set a precedent of "you don't have to actually TRY to succeed, we'll bail you out with taxpayer funds if it gets too bad", and now you and I, the taxpayers, foot the bill.

President Obama said, in his inauguration speech:

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath.

Except that's not true. Only forty-three Americans have taken the oath.

Grover Cleveland was both the 22nd and 24th President. Meaning that while Obama is the "44th President", there have only been 43 distinct people who have taken the oath.

As we wind down into the morning hours, I'm glad to have been awake to watch it all. While I didn't vote for Obama, it was not for any lack of wanting him to win. (He was definitely my second choice, behind Bob Barr).

I'm proud to be an American today. In 76 days, we will finally escape from the tyranny, yes tyranny, of a crazed psychotic leader who had probably the most callous disregard for the laws of our nation that any sitting President has ever had.

To a certain, certainly lesser, extent I can understand what it must have felt like for the French to see American troops for the first time in June of 1944. You were well aware that it wasn't over yet, but there was definitely an end in sight, with freedom and liberty on the other side.

I was listening to NPR this morning, and they were discussing the candidates "economic reform plans" and how they've recently revised them in preparation for tonight's debate, where they'll surely come up.

You hear McCain in a sound bite talking about lowering the Capital Gains tax to try and stimulate investment in companies, etc., etc.

And then they go to a sound bite of Obama saying, and I "quote/paraphrase", that he doesn't know anyone who's had gains in this down economy, and that because of that, frankly, a capital gains tax decrease is useless.

Barack, you fucking moron.

The point isn't "who's had gains so far", the point of a capital gains decrease is to increase the incentive to potential investors, who may be understandably skittish about putting money in the market now. The point is to make it more attractive for people to get in now in what could be described as a "buying opportunity", while the market is low. Putting that money into the market now, would shore up the equities market, improving the economy.

That Obama doesn't "get" that fundamental concept, and just sees it as a "tax cut for people who don't need it", tells me that Obama is just as fundamentally stupid on economics as McCain showed himself to be with that crazy "let's buy up all the failing mortgages with your tax dollars" idea he pulled out of his ass at the second debate.

Whichever one you pick, America, they're going to drive you into ruin, it's just a matter of which road they take to get you there.

Bob Barr's my man, I tell you. Since Ron Paul didn't do an independent run.

CNN has a story about the proposed $700,000,000,000 bailout of the financial industry. There's a great quote in there:

Paulson said that the bailout plan is the only way to unfreeze financial markets, giving firms the confidence they need to start lending to one another once again.

Y'know what? I'm not sure I want them to be confident right now. They shouldn't be confident. They should have the same insecurities about decision-making that we all do right now, mostly because it was their bad decision-making that caused this mess in the first place. Sure, you can point to people who borrowed more on mortgages than they could reasonably pay back, but the counterpoint to that argument is that these lenders lent money they should have known couldn't be paid back, or they bought mortgages from lenders without investigating fully the thing it was they were buying.

At the end of the day, the corporations gambled on their ability to predict the future and came up short.

If corporations get a free do-over, at taxpayer expense, then I for one am fully in favor of Phil Hellmuth walking into the Treasury Department, saying, "I flopped a set of Queens, and some idiot who didn't know the odds held on until the river and cracked my set with a straight. I got busted out of the tournament and lost my $50,000 entrance fee. Can I have a check, please?"

Because that's EXACTLY the same goddamned thing. These corporations gambled and they gambled badly. If they don't suffer, they will not learn a damned thing other than "we're considered too important to ACTUALLY lose money, so we can gamble however we want to and the taxpayers will come in and cover our losses... but obviously, we don't share our wins with the taxpayer."

Yes, it will mean tough times if these companies are allowed to fail. We need tough times.

My grandparents' generation lived through a Depression. An honest to goodness "I'll work for food" depression. They learned the importance of savings. They learned to save up for what they wanted to buy before they bought it, and the only debt most of them carried was a mortgage.

We've grown soft since then -- and make no mistake I count myself in that "we". We've accumulated far more per-capita debt than ever. Our annual personal savings figure has declined to the point where, each year, we save negative money. Why shouldn't we live on deficit spending? The government's been doing it for years with no problems....

Let the economy fail. And my generation, and the generation to come will grow up with the hard lesson that apparently needs to be re-taught every so often, on how to handle their finances.

So I've had some time to read the Heller decision, and my biggest concern with it, as a gun rights supporter, is this verbiage:

... It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service--M-16 rifles and the like--may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment's ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large. Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and tanks. But the fact that modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right.

The court's writing here is essentially that "M-16s aren't covered, because they're not the sorts of things people have lawfully got around the house."

But the fundamental problem with this logic is that the reason people don't have M-16s around the house (in any numbers) is because they've been told by the government since 1939 that they can't.

The Court's logic here is circular. They don't want to override the 1939 prohibitions on automatic weapons and such, while still saying it's an individual right. But if it's an individual right to have "militia" weapons, the number of lawfully owned automatic weapons surely would have grown over the years.

In other words, the only reason there aren't a number of those types of weapons in place, is because there have been laws of questionable validity over the years preventing them. But now that they're "not common" (because of the government influence), they're not covered, which makes no sense whatsoever.

Yahoo!!!!! You got some 'splainin' to doooooo!!!!

Via Reason: Hit & Run:

This is what happens when you try to videotape your neighbor's warrantless search and arrest in Portland:

The moral to the story? I'm not sure... but the complete and total abuse of force by the State (see previous post on Blackwater, see the "Don't Tase Me, Bro!" kid a week or two ago) are starting to get more and more common.

It's worth pointing out, at the very least, that these sorts of abuses of authority, attacks on civilians by the ruling powers-that-be, attempts to control foreign lands, etc., were pretty prevalent in the late eighteenth century. And it didn't turn out so well for the bastards, then, either.

I'm not, at all, advocating violent overthrow of the government (that, my friends, would be a crime). However, I'm not ashamed or afraid to predict it. Neither party has a great track record on this front (the Red Team has Iraq, the Patriot Act, and Guantanamo Concentration Camp X-Ray... the Blue Team had Waco, Ruby Ridge, and others), so don't look to "the 2008 Election Cycle" to solve all your problems. It's not going to.

It's going to come down to, eventually, the population getting seriously pissed off at its leaders in both parties, and voting the bastards out whenever they try that crap, or it's going to come to an American Revolution style showdown... and the verdict really isn't in, for me, as to which outcome is more likely.

(Title is a reference to the paint job on the Decepticon "police-car" named Barricade from the Transformers movie)

As Jack Bog notes... forget everything you thought you knew about the currency conversion rate between the US and Canada, because the Canadian dollar is now worth more than the U.S. Dollar.

That's right, as of September 21, US$1.00 will only get you CAN$0.997 ... that money we've been making fun of for years is now a better investment than our own presidential flashcards.

But remember, folks, the shrub's doing a great job leading our economy. He's got a plan, and it's workin' great.

Anyone who knows me knows I'm a libertarian at heart. I want the government to stay the hell out of my life, and yours too. That includes my wallet.

I grew up in the Reagan years, and was always a fan (as a centrist) of the "pendulum" mindset of modern politics... the Democrats dragged the pendulum to the left, the Republicans to the right, and my how swell it'd be to have an alternating of leadership to try and keep the pendulum close to the center as possible.

I had pretty much resigned myself to voting "blue" for the next several election cycles in an attempt to drag the pendulum back from the crazy place the Republicans dragged it to during King Bush II's reign. I looked at the GOP candidates and didn't see a single one that actually represented their core values of small government, etc., etc.

Which has been sad, because I'm not convinced that any of the Democrat front-runners are electable. Hillary carries all the baggage of being Hillary. Obama (right or wrong) carries the baggage of trying to be the first black President. And the only guy who really stands a snowball's chance in hell, Al Gore, is the guy in the corner who tried to ask the prom-queen to dance, got rejected, and is so hurt he can't stomach up enough courage to ask again.

But then, curiously, people mentioned Ron Paul to me.... I was dismissive at first. "He's a Republican... duh, we need to go the other direction now!" But, the people who were telling me about him kept reminding me of my libertarian leanings, and implored me to check him out.

Wow.... aside from his abysmal stand on abortion, his views on the issues are very libertarian-minded indeed. (And, I remind everyone out there, Reagan had the same stand, and that man was pretty much a god among men, and it didn't signal the end of the world...) Also, the Supreme Court really could use a nice centrist Justice to balance things out a bit more, which is extremely likely to happen... two swing votes instead of one would make the Supreme Court a lot more interesting.

I think I need to change my party affiliation so I can vote in the GOP primaries this year...

If you ever needed proof that the people in Miami have absolutely no class whatsoever, CNN reports that the city of Miami is planning an official celebration for when Cuban president Fidel Castro dies.

Sure, they're trying to be all like, "it's a venue ready for people, if they wish, to speak to the media, to show their emotions," and they're trying to claim it's not to celebrate the death of a world leader, but c'mon, who the hell do they think they're kidding with that line of bull?

Regardless of what you think about Castro, planning a gala party -- big enough that it needs the frickin' Orange Bowl (capacity 74,476 people) -- to celebrate the death of another human being is simply inexcusable.

Without a doubt, this is quite possibly the funniest web-comic I've ever read.

If only it weren't all true.

While talking to a friend tonight about the impending Saddam Hussein execution, they pointed out that the other two guys from his trial were also going to be executed. The interesting quote from the conversation was:

Hmm, three people executed - one considered a martyr by some - where have I heard that one before....

So that makes the local judge Pontius Pilate, trying to keep the peace among the natives by executing the guy who's pissing everyone off, all in the name of the big bad power way far away. That would make Bush into Augustus Caesar.

So if that's the case, our local Caesar should probably remember how that story turns out in the end.... Augustus was the last of the "elected" leaders, with the Roman Empire following shortly thereafter.

So the current hysteria is that women should leave their gel-padded bras at home when they fly because, after all, they might be explosives, blah blah blah.

So now it occurs to me... In most cases, there's not a lot of functional difference between "the gelatinous padding in vanity bras", and "the gelatinous padding in breast implants". Even more curious, from a security standpoint, is that there's really no way to scan the breast implant for explosives the way you could a bra (by taking it off and passing it through the x-ray machine that also shows up explosive materials, etc.)

It seems to me that it would be trivial for a doctor to both "implant a 'pacemaker'" (or some similar electronic device, maybe like an insulin pump), as well as gelatinous explosives conveniently located inside a female traveler's breasts as implants. Next thing you know, we'll be saying that if a woman's breasts have been ... augmented ... she's going to be denied passage.

Diabetes is common enough that I have to believe hundreds of people a day travel with insulin pumps or pacemakers, maybe more, and it would be fairly hard to detect that sort of bomb design with all but the most invasive of airport screening procedures.

Heck, you don't even need an extrernally accessible set of electronics. Bluetooth chipsets are cheap these days. There's a hell of a bluetooth device to try and mate your Treo to.

What's the point of my little thought experiment? The point is that it's trivial to get explosives on board a plane, along with the electronics you need to set them off. Keeping padded bras off of airplanes isn't going to make anyone "safe".

It reminds me of a conversation I had with a TSA rep on the way back from GenCon on Monday. He was setting up his little folding table at the gate for the "random liquid searches", and he made a comment to the effect of "I know a lot of people may disagree, but this is definitely the right move to make."

I had to call "bullshit" on him, and told him that was the biggest crock of shit on the face of the planet. "No, really!" he says.

I told him, "If you really thought there was the slightest chance that anything you were randomly removing was dangerous, you wouldn't be dropping it unceremoniously into a large wastebasket filled with other might-be-explosive liquids, you'd be waving everyone out of the terminal area, and a bomb squad would be here to take care of it. This is just smoke and mirrors level misdirection to make everyone feel warm and fuzzy because 'You're doing something about it', even if that something is just forcing people to buy more shampoo."

He looked at me with a calm, steady eye and said, "I'll be honest, I'm not senior enough to explain it well enough, but if the people above me think this is the right thing to do, then I have faith in them that they're doing it for a legitimate reason."

And thus, I began to have flashbacks to History class, and began to achieve a whole new level of understanding of "the mind of the World War II German Foot-Soldier". Blindly obedient to "whatever crap got shoveled their way", and naïve enough to believe anything, there's a whole lot of similarities to the German grunts and TSA lackeys.

Although, in fairness, he was nice enough to "randomly search my bag" before the Southwest Airlines boarding cattle-call started, so I didn't lose my spot in line. Being the #2 person in the "A" line, and losing that spot for a random search would have been highly annoying, but he had compassion enough to do it in such a manner as not to screw me. Even naïve idiots can be nice, it would seem. :-)

From Larry King's Bush interview last night....

KING: Doesn't it hurt to say more people are -- don't like what I'm doing than like what I'm doing?

G. BUSH: Well...

KING: Does it bother you?

L. BUSH: Not really. I mean, the polls are just...

KING: But it's a sign.

L. BUSH: It's a sign, but it's not necessarily really what we see. I mean, when we travel around the country, when we visit with people, that's not what we hear all the time. When they're good polls -- I think I told you this the last time I interviewed with you, you don't see them on the front page.

I dunno, kids, maybe if you didn't force protestors to be several blocks away from you where you can't see them, and if your public appearances were actually open to the public and not just people who are known to support you, and if you didn't pre-screen in advance "random questions from the public" so as to ensure that they were going to be Bush-friendly... maybe, just maybe, you might see and hear something different from what you presently hear "all the time".

If you're going to surround yourself with yes-men, and only visit echo chambers, and use the Secret Service to keep dissenting opinion miles away from you, then -- go figure -- you're not going to hear much in the way of "dissenting opinion".

OK, so North Korea test-fired some missiles today. They, theoretically, could be outfitted to carry nuclear warheads. The world is in an uproar.

My question is: Why?

I question the whole practice of "non-proliferation" in the first place, I guess. You'll notice that the biggest supporters of non-proliferation are folks who already have well established nuclear programs -- the United States, Britain, Russia, etc., etc.

I believe that countries support non-proliferation not because they believe in a peaceful world -- if they did that, they'd destroy their own weapons as well -- but because the more people who have nuclear weapons available to them, the fewer people there are that they can push around diplomatically. Furthermore, there become more voices for third-world nations to have to pay attention to (e.g., a non-nuclear country pretty much has to do what a nuclear country says, because we can obliterate them if we wanted to... the more nuclear countries, the more people nuclear countries have to share that authority with).

People can mock MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) all they want to, but here's the summary you'll keep coming back to with it, are you ready?

It works.

Right now, we are the only superpower left in the world. If the Commander-in-Chief of the US of A was to go off his gourd (and, to be fair, there are many people who would say that this has already happened, but that's a different discussion), we could obliterate the world and there's nobody who could stop us. Heck, with the dismal failure rate of Russian nuclear weapons, there's not even really anyone who could pose a retaliatory threat these days.

That, of course, is a position that we like. We can push people around, and they have to do what we tell them, because -- in the end -- we can raise their ambient temperature to several million degrees Celsius in thirty minutes or less. Given that option, people will cave. The best part is that it's so unspoken that you don't even have to flex those nuts to get the results. If you're a non-nuclear country, why bother going through all the hassle to reach an endgame you know will eventually be summarized as "we can kick your ass, so do what we say"?

I'm all for nuclear proliferation. I believe it puts countries on an equal footing, and requires countries to actually listen to one another. Can you imagine how the "Cold War" might have gone slightly differently if we weren't actually afraid of the Soviet arsenal? The realization that we were on an equal footing in terms of ability to inflict damage on one another forced us to communicate, to attempt to understand one another.

Likewise, a nuclear-capable North Korea, or Iran, brings legitimacy to the bargaining table. Like it or not the ability of a country to rain nuclear death on people commands a certain amount of respect. I wish it wasn't the case, but them's the facts, and until nobody has nuclear weapons (and let's face it, that genie isn't going back into the bottle, good luck with that), I respect the right of any country that wants them to be able to have them, so they can defend themselves equally against other countries that already have them.

I'm so sick of this debate. Why is this even talked about? It seems so patently obvious. Here's the executive summary:

Being anti-illegal-immigration is not being anti-immigrant or racist.

Lots of people all over the world "do the right thing". They go to the US Consular Office in their country. They fill out forms. They wait. They get background checks performed on them. They wait. They pray to whatever deity they prefer to help speed along the process. They wait. And, eventually, their number comes up, and they get a visa and work permit, and life is good.

Any sort of amnesty program is a slap in the face to the many many hundreds of thousands of law-abiding immigrants everywhere. It says, in no uncertain terms, that they were a dumbass for waiting, when they could have just slipped across the border and waited for an amnesty program.

As far as a guest-worker program... I'm uncertain how this is going to help in any way that the Shrub-In-Chief says it will. Sure there's a lot of jobs Americans simply won't take, but they won't take them because we're too conceited about what our salary should be. We simply don't want the "$1.00 per hour" or whatever pittance it is that illegal aliens get paid to pick fruit in Southern California.

Are guest workers going to be immune from minimum wage? My guess is no. Which means -- guess what -- guest worker programs are either going to cost America more money (because employers will have to multiply by a large factor what they pay their immigrant workers) or, much more likely, employers will just stick to the underground workers who get paid squat.

So basically, amnesty - won't work. Guest-worker program - won't work.

What will work? Making it a felony to be an illegal immigrant. (Although, I'm sure one could already find laws that already make it a crime, like the New Hampshire town who decided that trespass laws' verbiage applied to illegal immigrants)

If you're not legally here, I'm not convinced you should actually have a "full set of rights and privileges" the same as people who played by the rules.

I was reading a story on Jurist talking about how Louisiana's law about primary elections was ruled unconstitutional.

It led me to wonder something -- how in the world does a primary election fall under any sort of governmental jurisdiction? A primary election is part of how a political party -- a non-governmental agency -- determines who it will put up in a general election to run for a seat. Some political parties don't even have primary elections, they simply have a convention and choose a candidate, or maybe even the party elite simply decide who the candidate will be.

So, clearly there's no requirement for a primary election. Why is there any government involvement at all? Shouldn't it be the responsibility of, say, the DNC or the RNC to pay for their own primaries, and run them however they see fit?

The state shouldn't have any say in how the parties select their candidates. The federal government shouldn't be telling the state (or anyone else) how to run an election that doesn't actually elect a government official.

What's the legal justification for this? How can it be legal, other than by apathy and nobody fighting it?

So this morning, in case you hadn't heard, the Transit Workers Union has gone on strike in New York City, an act which pretty much paralyzes a city dependent upon its subways and busses.

The overwhelming response from both the city and the MTA, though, is to point out how the Taylor Law makes it illegal for public servants to strike, which means the TWU's strike is illegal.

In essence, the Taylor Law turns public workers into indentured servants. They are forced to -- even when the contract which says they must show up each day has expired -- continue to come to work every day.

City officials have said a transit strike could cost the city as much as $400 million a day.

Ya know what? If the transit workers are directly responsible for 146 billion dollars in annual revenue, maybe that means they deserve a larger slice of the pie than you're giving them? Offering up 3% annual cost-of-living raises is a slap in the face when cost-of-living increases usually at around 4-5% annually.

It is disingenuous to, on one hand, talk about the sheer volume of revenue that the city makes on the backs of these people, and then try to stiff them because you don't make enough money.

It is, frankly, unamerican, for there to be a law that says "you have to go to work, even though the contract that says you will has expired, and if you don't, we're going to actually make you pay double for it, docking you two days pay for each day you stay home." If the strike lasts ten days, then the TWU employees really will be slaves for the following ten days, working for the MTA for free just because they had the gall to stand up and show in no uncertain terms how dependent upon them the city is.

Now, that's not to say that if people stay home that they should be guaranteed a job when they return. Lest something think I'm the pinnacle of union solidarity or shit like that, if the MTA can hire and train a bunch of replacements, I think it should work just like it does in any other job. If you don't show up to work anywhere else in the world, you might find yourself not needing to show up any more. The same should hold true here. Nothing should stop the MTA from hiring a crapload of workers, toot-sweet, and replacing workers who stay home. If there are people who are willing to do it for less, that's economic darwinism showing its place in the world.

TWU members need to know to weigh the "I know my value to the city in terms of revenue that is dependent on me" factor against the "how likely would someone else be to take this job for the same money or possibly even less if they fire my striking ass?" factor and make their decision based on those things.

All I can say, though, is that I'm really really glad I don't work in New York City this morning.

I was reading this article which talked about various states re-examining of how slavery was taught about in public schools.

As I read the article which talked about Cesar Chavez day, and various other curriculum-additions that activists have made in different states' education plans, I realized something, two things actually:

• Most of the things you, the rest of the world, find important to teach your kids, I could give a rats ass if my kids knew about. In fact, half the things you want to teach them are flat-out wrong (see there "Intelligent Design")
• Most of the things I would want my kids to know -- things like personal responsibility... that standing up for yourself against "the system" is not wrong, but something to be admired ... that the entire Bill of Rights is applicable to citizens, and not "every amendment except the Second" ... that forcing someone to swear an oath of allegiance before a non-existent deity to a piece of cloth is absolutely the most stupid thing ever ... are all things you absolutely want to shield your kids from.

The reality is that people simply can't agree on what to teach kids with public funds. It's as clear as can possibly be to anyone who is willing to open their eyes and see it.

So why do we continue to have public schools?

Remove the taxation, and let parents teach kids themselves. Or let them group together and pay someone to teach their kids what they want them to learn. Why don't we just get the government out of this equation entirely? We can't agree on what the public funds should be used to teach, so why not just stop using public funds entirely? You pay to teach your kids what you want them to learn. I'll pay to teach my kids what I want them to learn.

So over a thousand firefighters answered the call from FEMA to come help out in the wake of the New Orleans disaster.

And by "help", I mean be public relations flunkies for FEMA's braindead response.

Some of them, perhaps, didn't read the fine print. The call for people did after all say it was going to be for public relations.

Some of them might be excused since they were told to prepare for austere conditions, and to bring with them military-style MRE (Meals Ready-to-Eat) rations. So you would excuse them for thinking "hmm, I'm going to be in the field eating out of a plastic bag," and not "I'm going to be living in a shelter with access to the same food and facilities as the refugees have."

Some of them hoped beyond hope that FEMA would see the error of their ways. After all, when 1000+ HazMat, Search-and-Rescue, etc., etc., trained personnel showed up, FEMA would have to realize that the best use of this resource was to put them in the field saving fucking lives and not to (and I'm not making this up, it's in the article) have them spend an entire day in sexual harassment training.

But, regardless of how much blame you can point at the firefighters who misunderstood the call for help, you can point a thousand-fold more blame at FEMA who -- despite hearing the calls of help from the dying people -- chose to squander a precious resource... yet again.

Truer words were never spoken..

So Rehnquist is dead.

Just what Bush needs. Something political that he can use as a distraction from his administration's incompetence in the south.

I call for a sixty day moratorium on even talking about the concept of thinking about who might be capable of being nominated to fill that seat. Let's get through the important crisis before we distract ourselves with political chest-thumping.

Here's what will happen, though, it'll be delayed -- but only until the "immediate" issues of NOLA are dealt with and people start poking into the various points of blame for the situation (some of which is Bush and his administration, some of which is NOLA's own fault). But as soon as that news starts to turn its eye towards DC for finger-pointing, then "Filling Rehnquist's seat" will take center-stage, drowning out the NOLA issues, and anyone who tries to talk about NOLA first will be accused of "getting caught up in the past, we need to move on, etc., etc."

Bets? Any takers? <injoke>Come on, D, I know you've got five bucks. :-)</injoke>

So the ACLU, among others, sued the US Government for allowing the Boy Scouts to use Federally owned military bases, and having the support of government-paid personnel for their activities (such as the Scout Jamboree currently going on right now).

The logic went, and it's quite sound, is that since the Boy Scouts are a religious organization (their rules of membership specifically require that you believe in some sort of deity, explicitly prohibiting atheists) and also a discriminatory organization based on gender-preference (you cannot be gay and be either in scouts, or a scout leader, according to their rules). The ACLU won the case, got a Circuit court to say that "yes, it's unconstitutional for the military to support an organization that promotes religious discrimination."

Tennessee Senator Bill Frist, apparently unaware of how Constitutional Law works, has pushed for (and gotten support for) a Bill that would permit the military to allow the Scouts to use their facilities.

But you see, Billy-Boy, your law is meaningless. All it means is another lawsuit, which the government loses, because -- say it with me, Bill, "The Constitution trumps your petty little bill."

One more time: "The Constitution trumps your petty little bill."

It wasn't just that the Circuit Court said, "Oh there's no law authorizing this," they specifically said "You can't do this under the Constitution of the United States of America."

Thus, if you want the scouts to have access to the military facilities, you have to either change the Scouts, or change the Constitution. One of those two has to happen.

Of course, I shouldn't say things like that, or BillyBoy will probably get a mind to trying to add an amendment that permits religious discrimination.

I feel so ashamed to have contributed to putting Bush in power in 2000. Seriously, I regret that more than anything I've done wrong in my life, and there's a lot of stuff in my life I regret. I thought it would mean that the balance-of-power would swing "a little to the right" after eight years of swinging to the left. Little did I know there was a superconducting-electromagnet on the right ready to drag that pendulum all the way over to the ultra-extreme edge.

Please forgive me.

I'll take reasons I'm glad I no longer take the subway for $600, Alex?

As spotted by Baggage Carousel 4....

Justice O'Connor's resignation is worded extremely oddly. In fact, according to the way it's worded, she isn't actually retired at all. She's still on the bench, and -- more importantly -- she'll not be coming off the bench until someone else retires first.

This is the resignation letter as reported by CNN:

"This is to inform you of my decision to retire from my position as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, effective upon the nomination and confirmation of my successor [emphasis added].

"It has been a great privilege, indeed, to have served as a member of the Court for 24 terms.

"I will leave it with enormous respect for the integrity of the Court and its role under our constitutional structure."

Sincerely,

Sandra Day O'Connor

Bush cannot nominate someone to the bench until there's a vacancy. According to this resignation letter, there isn't a vacancy until after someone has been nominated. In programming terms, this would be a deadlock, and no progress is made beyond this point. A cannot proceed unless B happens first. B cannot proceed unless A happens first. Thus, neither A nor B can proceed.

The only way for O'Connor to retire now would be for someone else to retire. This way, Bush (or whomever is president then) could nominate a replacement (legally) and say "this is O'Connor's replacement", at which point she retires, leaving a new vacancy to be filled as well.

You know, seriously, for someone who writes legal documents all day long, and is well versed in the exacting science of legalese (and is, by definition, considered one of the top nine experts in the country on the topic), this is a pretty glaring error.

Right now, as it turns out, if Bush begins the appointment process, he's doing so illegally (admittedly, on a technicality), but if someone in the Senate wanted to make waves without using the filibuster, this would be an interesting way to do so...

I've ranted my share about housing associations, and about zoning in general. I think both of them are basically ways for fascist people to dictate to other people what they can do with their property.

In fact, I only recently got into a really long argument with a friend who's trying to use zoning to prevent a neighbor from doing what they want to with their own property.

But for anyone who thinks that housing associations aren't fascist scumbags intent on telling you what you can do with your own house, I say that you need to visit Franklin, TN, where apparently garage doors are now the latest focus of ire.

Right, because all these years of garage doors that faced the street, dad outside washing the car on a summer day, kids playing basketball or riding their Big Wheel in the driveway... those are all nasty ugly things which absolutely must be stamped out.

But remember kids, us libertarian-minded folks who have been telling you that this is the sort of thing you had to look forward to, we're just paranoid. Nobody would really think to do shit like this. Honest.

In a 6-3 ruling today, The Supreme Fucktards ruled that the Federal Government has the ability to regulate an entirely intrastate transaction, namely medical marijuana.

Here's the facts, laid out very simply:

• The patients are California citizens
• The doctors are California doctors
• The marijuana is grown in California
• The marijuana is distributed in California
• The marijuana may never leave California
• Nowhere in the Constitution is the Federal Government granted the right to regulate intrastate commerce
• Amendment X to the United States Constitution says, and I quote, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
• Thus, the right to regulate intrastate commerce is reserved specifically to the States. In this case, that is California.
• California voters passed, with an overwhelming majority, a law which permitted this intrastate commerce.
• The Supreme Court said, nope, even though none of us have M.D.s, we're going to override lots of smart people who do have medical licenses, and we're going to violate the Constitution to do it, and say that we think marijuana's bad, and you can't use it.

You want to know what makes people want to get up on top of buildings with high powered rifles? This is the sort of thing that does that. And, to be clear, I'm not saying that people should or that I'm going to do that, or any of that crap (so please, let's not send Federal agents to my door, I'm not at all threatening anyone). I'm simply saying that the next time the Secret Service arrests some nutjob for running around on the White House lawn with a gun, or threatening a Justice, or any of those other certifiably whack-job things, and all these people want to know "what could possibly drive that guy to think the system has been perverted and corrupted?" that this is the sort of thing they can very easily point to and ask simply, "If the Supreme Court is going to piss all over the Constitution, then who exactly is going to defend the people against a tyrannical Federal government?

I'll take Why I think we should let the Libertarians run the country for $400, Alex?

... and stupid.

This story is fucking hysterical because:

(a) The bleeding heart liberals that are complaining are the ones that obviously don't even read the bills that they sign into law
(b) It's somehow perceived as a problem that people who come to this country should be asked to assimilate enough to speak the fucking native language
(c) The ACLU doesn't realize that "punishing people who don't speak English" does in fact promote the learning of english. (one would presume that, unless he wants to debate that the entire psychological concept of "negative reinforcement" is bunk)
(d) The change in question was actually proferred by a Democrat
(e) Said Democrat's epic understatement “I just told the members that the amendment clarifies the way in which documents are produced."
(f) All of the Above

If you thought you had a right to present evidence at your trial, that might, say, exonerate you... that might, say, keep you from being fucking executed, well, nope, not in the good old US of A, so sayeth the Supreme Court by refusing to hear an appeal that would have demanded such.

Seriously, if you can't smell the fascism, it's time for decongestant.

Can someone point to me exactly where in the Constitution the United States Congress has jurisdiction over how a private enterprise (like say, Major League Baseball) handles its players doing things which were not (at the time) illegal?

Can someone point me to where in that fine document they find the Federal jurisdiction to get involved in a marital decision of "how long to prolong one's spouse's life via extremely artificial means"? Maybe in my skimming over of the document, I didn't see that, but I can't seem to find anywhere that it's any of Congress' goddamned business.

There are so many problems Congress should be working on - a war in another country, a massive budget deficit, a Social Security program that would be better named "Social Insecurity" - and yet these are the things they choose to ensure get coverage on C-SPAN. THIS is what we sent them there to do?

Well, I didn't, that's for sure.

Who's Alexander Bulay you ask? In this area, if you want to see a movie, you have three basic options....

• The mall mega-cineplex owned by Regal
• The rare arthouse theaters in Woodstock and Rhinebeck
• A small chain of three theaters that are owned by the same guy

Alexander Bulay is the gentleman who owns the latter. There are local townsfolk threatening to boycott his theatres because he ran ads espousing how proud he was he wouldn't show the Michael Moore film.

While I don't necessarily think I agree with Bulay's political leanings in general, I'll be damned if I don't feel proud to know that there are people who are willing to stand by their convictions and not give a rat's ass about who they offend in the process. Frankly, why do I care about the politics of someone who runs a theatre, I go there for entertainment, not to discuss politics with the owner.

I think the best quote from the entire article was:

"I was going to let the thing die down, but these clowns have annoyed me," he said. "Do I care if they never set foot in one of my theaters again? No. Let them stay home and watch the Michael Moore movie another 12 times."

Seriously. This guy is great. Plus, the important part, is that he's a locally owned business who sells the same product - seats in front of a silver screen - for cheaper than the megacorp down the road does.

He'll be getting more of my business in the future. If he's not carrying the movie I want to see, then ok, maybe I'll go see it elsewhere, but hopefully I can offset for him the potential loss of at least one of these boycotters that are threatening him.

Keep up the good work, Alex!

I was watching West Wing tonight and something occurred to me.

Why is it that we'll invade a foreign country, commit a metric assload of troops to fighting, consider reinstituting a draft even, all for a war that essentially boils down to "I'm going to attack you cuz you tried to kill my daddy," but we aren't willing to stand up as a country and say, "Yes, Taiwan deserves the right to self-determination guaranteed to it under the United Nations charter, and we're willing to defend their right to do so."

I mean... Christ, the Taiwanese want us to help them be free. If you did an opinion poll over there right now, it'd be like a bajillion-to-one in favor of freedom. Why are we wasting human lives on people who really don't want us to help them towards anything resembling freedom, when there are people who really do want to be free, begging for us to do so?

I was reading that Cheney was in the hospital today after shortness of breath, etc., etc., and something made me stop to wonder.

Let's assume for the moment that, today, Cheney was to step down, citing his health, etc., etc.

What happens on January 20th? Nobody else was elected to be the VP. He probably has to formally resign again.

Make it even more interesting. Suppose that he resigns, and "John Doe" is nominated, approved, etc., and takes his place, serving out the remainder of Cheney's term. Cheney's current term ends at noon on January 20th. John Doe, then, has to go through the whole nomination and approval process again, doesn't he?

Does the constitution account for that sort of thing somewhere that I'm missing? What difference is there, if any, if Cheney was to say, die, between now and then? Is there some special provision for "you were appointed to replace someone who'd already been re-elected, during the sorta-lame-duck period between their election and their acceptance of the second term, so you serve out the full term of the guy you're replacing" clause?

Via The Register. This is a classic read, and a concept I could really get behind, when it boils down to it's final points.

Click the link to read the whole letter....

A couple questions have been recurring, both in comments and in IM conversations, so I figured that I'll answer them once in public and call it a day.

Didn't you donate to Bush in 2000? Didn't you go to the Inauguration even?

Yes, I did. I'm a centrist. We'd had eight years of leftward swinging politics and needed a swing back to the right. I did not expect W to be a singularity off to the right edge of the spectrum drawing the entire country into fascism.

Do you think the problems would all suddenly go away if Kerry had been elected? Are you that naive?

No, not at all. What's important here is that the majority of my fellow citizens don't think there's a problem. They're happy with Bush's leadership. They're happy with his attacks on minorities. They're happy with the way he's treated the populace like we're all suspected criminals. I'm not.

Moving to another country won't solve the problems America has!

Solving America's problems is America's problem, and the majority don't want to solve them. If you suddenly realized that a club you belonged to was full of racist assholes, or full of bullies who liked to beat up people they didn't like, or whatever, and you realized that you were clearly in the minority, you'd probably simply stop being a member of the club, so as not to associate with people you found distasteful. That's sort of how I view America right now.

You're not going to find Utopia you know. Other countries have problems, too!

Yes, but there are far more countries where the population is more in line with what I think than the present population of the United States. If 50+% of the populace wants a religious nanny-state, who am I to get in their way. I'll go find someplace to live that is a little less offensive to me.

OK, now this is too funny. Gotta believe someone at CNN is going to be unemployed over it, but if you're gonna get run out, this is as funny a way to go as any other...

Spotted on a AIM status message:

You get what you fucking deserve, assholes. This country is going to be annihilated under the sheer force of its own stupid citizens. "Go America!" half of you shout, but you don't know anything. Anything at all. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of England, but I guess you all are. By the time four years is up, we'll have a white christian country with a consistently low IQ, no health care of any kind, and no economy. Congratulations. If you're a Bush supporter, delete me from your list. You're no friend of mine. Frankly, I hope you die, slowly, painfully, and that your family goes with you, for spawning you.

Classic.

I fell asleep on the couch around 11:30 last night, and retired to bed shortly thereafter, with things still up in the air. It looks like, right now anyway, unless a miracle happens in Ohio, that a good 50% of my fellow Americans actually prefer living in a near-fascist state.

Which, I must say, saddens me greatly.

If there is no miracle in Ohio, then I'll be "outta here". I've said it before, and I make no bones about it. The level of freedom Americans enjoy has suffered greatly over the three years since 9/11, and if Bush thinks he's won a popular-vote victory, there's no reason to believe it won't simply get worse over the upcoming four.

I can't guarantee, obviously, that I'll be able to find employment in some other country, but you can bet your sweet bippy that I'll be opening up a number of job-search accounts on foreign web sites. Getting the heck out of the country is going to be my top priority. :-(

OK, I don't really know what $POSITION is going to be yet, but next election cycle, presuming I've been liberated by a much-needed Regime Change on the home front and haven't fled to Canada to escape, I'm going to find an office I want to run for and do it.

Why? Because uncontested elections suck.

The only significantly contested races in my area were for President, US Senator, and US Representative.

Supreme Court Justice (Pick Two):

REP-REPUBLICAN  	Anthony V. Cardona
REP-REPUBLICAN 		William E. McCarthy
DEM-DEMOCRATIC 		Anthony V. Cardona
DEM-DEMOCRATIC 		William E. McCarthy
IND-INDEPENDENCE 	Anthony V. Cardona
IND-INDEPENDENCE 	William E. McCarthy
CON-CONSERVATIVE 	Anthony V. Cardona
CON-CONSERVATIVE 	William E. McCarthy

State Senator:

REP-REPUBLICAN  	William J. Larkin, Jr.  
CON-CONSERVATIVE 	William J. Larkin, Jr.

State Assembly:

DEM-DEMOCRATIC	 	Kevin A. Cahill
IND-INDEPENDENCE 	Kevin A. Cahill
WOR-WORKING FAMILIES 	Kevin A. Cahill

I'd include the similarly worthless county-level positions, but the Ulster County Elections Board is just this side of useless, providing absolutely nothing on their web site about which elections are happening in Ulster County.

No, actually, they're not "just this side of useless", come to think of it, they're way the fuck on the other side of useless.

The County-level ones were similarly obscene, though, with lots more of those "every single party has the same people on the ticket" deals. Reminds me a lot of the former Soviet Union. "Yes, Comrade, you have the right to vote... you can vote for me on line 'A', or you can vote for me on line 'B', or you can vote for me on line 'C', or...."

So next election, there will be a choice. Again, provided I haven't fled the country in terror at the prospect of another four years of political prisoners held in violation of international law, etc., etc.

Tera wouldn't stop complaining that I hadn't said anything yet about the Presidential Debate last week. Now that I've finished what I needed to get done for my paper that is due tomorrow, I have a little bit of downtime to get some of that sort of thing done.

But, in reality, there isn't much I can say that hasn't already been said. While the Republicans claimed "their guy did well", very few people on the right side of the spectrum used the word "win" in their reviews. It's clear as to why the candidates (or, more specifically, one candidate) wanted no views of the candidate who was supposed to be listening. I could almost accept that he repeated the same (albeit inaccurate) rhetoric over and over again ("we invaded because he wouldn't disarm" -- wait, he HAD disarmed!) ... but watching him get mad, flustered, etc., while "off" camera was worth the price of admission.

I don't really think it changed many peoples' minds, but I think the debate at least showed that Kerry isn't necessarily a joke. A lot of the fence-sitters are of a mind that "they don't like Bush, but aren't (or weren't) convinced that Kerry is any better". I think for those people the debate at least showed that Kerry is capable of forming sentences beyond the soundbite, which is something his opponent has trouble doing.

Why is it that sometimes people who are otherwise really smart tend to hold onto, and repeat mercilessly, really dumb ideas?

No, Tom, Gore didn't win. He lost. There wasn't a single official Florida vote-count which he won. Even a couple newspapers who did independent counts afterwards said the same thing, he still would have lost (oh, he'd've won if you only recounted the precincts the DNC wanted recounted, but that's not quite fair, now, is it?)

Personally, I can't believe that people still continue to "insist" that Gore won. They must really have sad and empty lives if, literally, that is the boneheaded mantra they choose to repeat over and over again.

Via The Paper Chase:

House Republicans managed to push through the Pledge Protection Act, which says, essentially, "No, Judicial Branch, you don't get to rule on whether the stuff we wrote as a law is legal or not."

It's not expected to pass the Senate, but even if it did I think it'd be funny to watch even the conservative Scalia piss all over that law's constitutionality.

California used to have a tax-credit for teachers who paid for school supplies and such which the district could not or would not provide for them. It appears now that they've discontinued that tax-credit.

This quote from the article summed it up completely:

"What are we going to do, tell the kids, `Sorry, there's no paper today,' or tell them they can't print because there's no ink?" Seelig asked. "I know I couldn't do it."

Yes, Ms. Seelig, that's exactly what you need to do. As long as there are teachers like you -- who will happily foot the bill for the entire class instead of letting the taxpayers shoulder the burden like they're supposed to -- the school will continue to take advantage of you.

The district itself was able to take advantage of you for years, because they knew the State was going to reimburse you instead of them. Now the State is getting out of the game as well. You need to stop and say "No! This is it! I'm done!"

When little Johnny goes home and says "I need paper, pens, crayons, a copy of this textbook, etc., etc., etc." and rattles off a long list of stuff, many of which should be provided by the school, that's when his parents will get involved, and that's what you want, because unlike little Johnny, they vote (or at least are capable of voting).

If you want to sit there and keep bending over for the government and being its banker, that's your own business, obviously, but don't have the balls to bitch about it.

Why is it illegal for people to sell their vote, but perfectly legal for companies to buy the votes of elected officials already in office?

Doesn't seem to make much sense to me.

Via Tom:

There's an excellent editorial that does a remarkably coherent comparison of "George Bush's New York City For The RNC Convention" and "Snake Plissken's New York, The Maximum Security Detention Facility".

Makes for excellent reading.

I've long been a proponent of giving people the right to refuse service to any person for any reason. The government shouldn't be able to tell me that I have to do business with someone I don't want to do business with.

An article that Fark linked to takes this to a whole new level.

A doctor was approached to do some (elective) cosmetic surgery to get rid of some burn-scars. The potential patient was the daughter of a lawmaker. The lawmaker in question had voted to oppose the limits on damage lawsuits against doctors.

The doctor refused to take the patient.

Now, the doctor is taking the firm "conflict of interests" line, and if that's what defense he has to use to stay out of trouble from a legal perspective, I'll happily take his word for it. The reality is obvious, in that he was taking a moral stand.

"If you're going to make my life rough in my profession, there's absolutely no reason whatsoever I should be forced to make your personal life easier."

And, you know what? I have zero problem with that. If you're an asshole, I should have the right to refuse to do business with you, and so should everyone else you're an asshole to. In the end, you'll find that nobody wants to do business with you, because you're an asshole. And if refusing to do business with your friends and family (who are "associates of assholes"), then maybe they can convince you not to be an asshole.

More power to ya, Dr. Kanosky!

(I do believe that this post contains more uses of the word "asshole" than the entire history of this blog combined)

Like any kid growing up in the 80's, Ronald Reagan's in-your-face defiance of the Soviet Bloc during what would become the last years of the Cold War was something that helped define me. I didn't necessarily understand all the political implications at the time, but he seemed to exude a "confidence in our success as a country" that was sorely lacking, especially after the Carter term.

He wasn't afraid to do what really needed to be done to end the Cold War, and while a lot of Democrats will get all pissy about the national debt's defense-budget-driven meteoric rise during his terms in office, it brought about the events necessary to give us the ability to massively cut the defense budget (spend a shitload now, save a bigger shitload later... which is basically a sound investment).

A lot of people will point to his complete mismanagement of the AIDS crisis, but I think it's important to remember that (a) the why's and how's of AIDS weren't nearly as well known then as they were only a few short years later, and (b) gay and lesbian activism in the early 80's wasn't nearly what it is today.

In fact, one could argue that Reagan was the best thing to ever happen to that constituency, since he gave them a cause to rally in opposition against. If Reagan hadn't completely alienated them, and basically said "AIDS kills queers, so what?" they probably would not have had as great an impetus to organize as they did, and would quite possibly still be ten or fifteen years behind where they are today in terms of social equality.

Above all, though, Reagan was the last politician who simply didn't smell like a politician... everyone since then has had that duplicitous smarminess we associate with the professional politician, something which Reagan either didn't possess a lick of, or did a remarkable job in hiding from nearly everyone who surrounded him. He simply wanted to do "a good job", and often put his foot in his mouth precisely because he really wasn't the typical politician ("The missiles launch in ten minutes," anyone?)

May you find in death what the last ten years of your life couldn't provide you ... peace and tranquility. You'll be missed, Dutch.

So... today's the day the number of viable presidential candidates dropped to two.

And thus begins the real question... who is Derek more likely to vote for, seeing as how I've already stated many times I can't stand Kerry...

So let's take a look at the issues...

The allegations from Aristide that the United States made him leave at gunpoint would seem -- at a quick glance -- to be ludicrous.

But, it makes you wonder.

The day before he "decided to leave", Aristide vowed he would not leave.

Powell claims they spent several days "trying to meet Aristide's demands so he would leave".

And McClellan's response was "I've seen some of the reports [and they] do nothing to help the Haitians move forward to a better, more prosperous future."

So put it all together and what do you have? The United States obviously wanted him gone, that's obvious from what Powell said. McClellan's comment implies that the country would be better off without its democratically elected leadership. The spin machine is already in motion, about how much better that country is now that we've stepped in, etc., etc.

Aristide contacted some congressmen directly as it was happening, talking about how "the coup d'etat has been completed", and that he had been basically forced out by Marines.

I find it amusing that Powell would believe -- after lying to us for nearly two years -- that we would take his word that "That's what happened, notwithstanding any cell phone reports to the contrary."

You're right, Colin, why should we accept Primary Sources for news information, when we have you, an infinitely credible Tertiary-at-minimum Source with a history of lying when you think you can get away with it so you can get what will make your master over on Pennsylvania Ave. happy?

I especially liked his quote: "it might have been better for members of Congress who have heard these stories to ask us about the stories before going public with them so we don't make a difficult situation that much more difficult."

You're right again, Colin. They should definitely have checked with you to see if the story they were getting from the victim did or did not match the prepared fiction you were releasing to the press.

Here's how I think it went down, and I'm just speculating based on the testimony. We wanted Aristide gone. It would not surprise me if we .. convinced .. the rebels to lead the charge, but I won't even presume that happened, but just that we took advantage of the situation. We used the situation to try and convince Aristide to leave. He told us to sod off, that he wanted to stay. Powell spends time trying to convince him to "do it our way, buddy". He doesn't. We send some jarheads with M16A2s and MP5s to see if they can change his mind. He does, but he's not happy about it, and pisses and moans to some congressmen friends of his, not giving a damn what fiction the U.S. State Department is going to weave.

Anyone want to take bets?

Lest Brian think I've been spirited away for reprogramming by the liberal side of the political spectrum...

Greenspan's comments today, that Social Security might be a good place for cuts, is spot on.

I don't know anyone who is approximately my age who actually believes they'll receive Social Security benefits when the time comes.

Here's Derek's plan for Social Security:

If you are less than 35 years old, you are officially on your own. Go sort it out, man.

If you are 35 to 50 years old, you will receive 50% of your projected Social Security benefits. Use your remaining time to set aside good chunks of money.

If you are 50 or over you will receive your normal benefits that we, your country, promised you.

And that's it. Maybe those specific age-points need to be tweaked a bit or what-not, but that's the reality. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, and like all Ponzi schemes in the end, the people who pay in are the ones who get screwed.

The Democrats could put a corpse on the ballot, and they'd have my vote, rather than the blatantly homophobic Bush.

The political "buzz" this morning is that Nader announced he's going to run for president.

"After careful thought and my desire to retire our supremely selected president, I've decided to run as an independent candidate for president," Nader said during an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Hey, Ralph, I got a reality check for ya. If you had been smart enough to pull out of the campaign last election cycle, a large chunk of the people who voted for you would have voted for Gore, and we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. If you run, you're simply going to divide the votes from the left, leaving the right untouched, and guarantee Bush another term. If you really want Bush gone -- if that is really and truly what you want -- then you should be throwing your support behind one of the Democrat candidates that's left, because you running is going to have the exact opposite effect from what you claim you're after.

Hopefully, the left will be smart enough to realize that voting for you instead of the Democratic candidate is, essentially, voting for Bush, especially after the 2000 election cycle.

UPDATE: I should clarify, I think Nader has a lot of smart ideas, but the way the electoral college system works, he hasn't got a snowball's chance in hell, and it's just going to screw up everything else.

Following up the comments section of a post on Soup Is Good...

If you accept the statement below as true:

If you think discriminating against {RACE} is ok, then you are a racist against {RACE}

... which I think most people would accept IS a truthful statement... then why oh why do people not see that inserting "caucasian" for RACE is just as truthful?

The College Republicans at Roger Williams University set up a scholarship fund only for caucasians, and have been branded racists.

If it's racist to only give money to white people, then the United Negro College Fund are a bunch of white-hating racists as well, I hate to break it to you.

Racism is wrong, and it doesn't matter at all what race is being discriminated against. And it saddens me to see smart people suckered into thinking it's ok to discriminate against white folks. After all, there's NO poor deserving white folks around. Every one of us is issued our fucking BMW in our junior year of high school by the State as part of our share of the Trust Fund Earned On The Broken Backs Of Minorities that us white folks all get to share.

Gimme a break.

Via Brandt:

Talking Points has what has to be the funniest, or at least among the funniest, transcripts of a White House press briefing yet. I wish I had seen this on video.

Go Read It For Yourself

I recently purchased a copy of Season 5 of SG-1 on DVD. Included in the box-set was a promotional DVD of the Pilot for Jeremiah.

Today, since I hadn't yet bought the Jeremiah box, I decided to watch the first episode to refresh my taste for it, only to find this as the first screen:

This videocassette/DVD is a promotional copy and shall remain the property of MGM/UA and must be returned upon demand. It has been distributed on loan, free of charge, for promotional purposes only and under no circumstances may any person copy it or sell or rent it to anyone, including any member of the public. Any such copy, sale or rental gives rise to civil and criminal liability.

Apparently, MGM/UA believes that the DVD I purchased with my own hard-earned money doesn't belong to me, and that I can't do what I want with it.

Although I did just narc on the Best Buy. If they're going to put stupid messages like this on there, it's my duty to try and screw that system up as best I can. I bought it, they sold it, therefore Best Buy must be pirates, right? After all, I was directed in the next screen to:

If you have rented or purchased this videocassette/DVD, please call the ANTI-PIRACY HOTLINE at 1-800-NO-COPYS in the USA) or 1-800-363-9166 (in Canada). All calls confidential.

But, as my small bit to screwing over The Man, I am hereby offering for sale my wholly legitimately purchased DVD of the Premiere episode of Jeremiah. Make me an offer, and it shall be yours. You may or may not get the $5.00 coupon that was attached to the paper sleeve the DVD came in. Probably not. You'll probably just get the DVD itself, and I'll keep the paper sleeve, because I think I'll want the coupon.

That's the question being asked at Westside High School, where Trevor Richards, 16, was nominated for the "Distinguished African American Student" award.

The controversy stems from the fact that Richards is of caucasoid descent. He hails from South Africa. He is an American of African descent.

I'm kinda chuckling at how the usual "Politically Correct bullshit" bit people in the ass this time around... I won't claim to be a big fan of the now-outdated terms for people with increased levels of melanin, but whoever came up with "African-American" obviously forgot that there *are* people in Africa who aren't as dark of skin as others. That the further north you go in the African continent, the more you tend to end up with genetic characteristics commonly associated with folks of Middle Eastern, or even European, descent.

The problem with this is that the school actually had the stones to punish the kids who (quite rightly) pointed out that Richards was, in every point of fact, an African-American.

I wonder if anyone else thinks it'd be a good idea to give Dr. John Crook, Principal, a piece of their mind on the topic....?

As people who know me know, I've been a big fan of Howard Dean for a while ... not because he was the first candidate to really embrace the net, but because it was encouraging to hear a Democrat say that gun-control should be left to the states... that as he pointed out once, "what works for Vermont [no gun control whatsoever] may not work for other states".

It was, frankly, refreshing common-sense. I still disagree with gun-control completely, but at least he was open-minded enough to realize that the "no control whatsoever" was working pretty OK by Vermont folks (with the second-lowest crime rate in the nation), so obviously "guns" aren't the problem, it's "bad people with guns".

But now, after his dismal placing in Iowa, I'm left questioning something -- what am I going to do if he completely flops and doesn't get the nomination?

Kerry? Please, this is the guy who wants to make the rifle in my closet illegal. This is the guy who doesn't get that an "assault weapon" is no different from a hunting rifle in function or power.

Edwards? The guy who thinks the illegal-under-international-law invasion of the sovereign nation of Iraq was a good thing? Yeah, I'll pass, thanks. His gun-control voting record stands for itself as yet another nail in his coffin for getting my vote.

The Republicans are embracing how right-wing they are, the only Democrat who seemed to be able to get my respect is looking pretty dismal in the polls, and every other party stands No Chance At All[tm] because of our ludicrous two-party system vigorously opposes viewpoints it can easily shut out -- unless you've got Ross Perot dollars under your belt to be able to out-spend the two major parties, the official position of the debates, etc., seems to be to just shut up and go play in the corner, no matter how much your political leanings may agree with pollsters' figures on that of "typical americans".

Welcome to disenfranchisement....

So yesterday, the passengers of a British Airways passengers sat on the tarmac and waited three hours to deplane. Today that same flight was cancelled altogether. On tonight's news, a government official indicated that (paraphrased) "americans should get used to frequent disruptions of their travel schedules".

Mind you with all the flights that the government has cancelled or quarantined over the last couple weeks, they've yet to actually catch anyone. So, basically, it seems like it's the government's assertion to completely fuck with peoples' schedules, not care about it too terribly much, and do it in such a broad net that they're not actually going to even be sure to "catch the bad guys".

I mentioned about a year ago the effect this type of attitude by the government (and the complicit airlines) would have for me, and in light of the recent further-screwage of the consumers, I reiterate those effects.

I have - literally - hundreds of thousands of frequent flier miles. Until I can go through the airport without being treated like a criminal, and can trust that the schedule I'm on isn't going to be disrupted at the whim of some underpaid government agent who isn't even really sure that there's a "bad person" on-board, you're not going to get a penny from me. I may fly, but only when it is travel that I have to do for business, and it won't be paid for by me. Further, I'll do whatever I can to actually drive instead of fly.

I used to fly to Las Vegas at least once or twice a year. No longer (although, admittedly, the dot-com bubble-burst helped that decision)

but, take next November... instead of flying back and forth to Atlanta for LISA, I'll probably drive, or maybe take the train. The train costs half as much by default. It takes a little longer, though, so maybe I'd grab a sleeper bed for the night, in which case it costs me $100 more to be treated like a real live human being (and get a relaxing ride in the process).

Don't blame "the economy" for your financial woes, airline industry executives, blame yourselves, for not putting up a fight when your customers get treated like shit at government command. We'll only put up with it for so long.

We are now at Terror Alert: Orange

Now, seriously, wasn't the whole point of the "threat chart" was to try and indicate to the public realistically what the "imminent threat" was of being attacked by those Men Of Evil.

But we've been into "high risk" several times already, with nothing in sight. In other words, I don't buy it. It's not doing it's intended purpose. I see "orange" as "ooo, pretty color", and not that there's a real threat of harm because we've been here so many times already.

In other words, it appears that the "scale" they're using is way off. If, in real life, you do something "high risk" a bunch of times, you'd expect that the risk would catch up and something happen one of the times. We've yet to see that with Threat Code: Orange.

So this member of the populace has reached the point of ignoring the colors. They're meaningless.

I think it's just an excuse TSA people, et al, can point to during the holiday season, when people are most likely to complain about the jackbooted-thug treatment at the airports. After all, the heightened alert statuses do tend to coincide with the peak travel periods all the time....

Was I the "random selectee" on my return flight? No.

However, after I was all the way through (and past) the metal detector, it went off. Even though I was several feet past it, I was subjected to the "you set off the detector" search (which is admittedly not as intrusive as the "KY and latex included at no extra charge" random selectee search).

Thankfully, I think my next scheduled flight is next July's OSCON, so I don't have to put up with this again for some time to come...

CSR: Thank you for calling the Transportation Security Administration, this is name, how can I help you?
DB: Yes, hi, I was the subject of a random bag inspection this weekend, and I had a couple questions.
CSR: Sure.
DB: I noted that the paperwork you put in my bag says, and I quote, "If the TSA screener was unable to open your bag for inspection because it was locked, the screener may have been forced to break the locks on your bag."
CSR: That is correct.
DB: How can you do that?
CSR: It's our policy to do cut the locks on a bag in order to search the bag.
DB: How can I get compensated for a destroyed lock?
CSR: We do not compensate for broken locks. We advise people not to lock their bags.
DB: You're a government agency, correct?
CSR: Correct.
DB: Part of the United States Federal Government, correct?
CSR: Correct.
DB: So how can do deprive someone of their property, in this case a baggage lock, without compensating them for the property thus deprived, at fair market value, as the Constitution of the United States requires of you?
CSR: Sir, it is not our policy to compensate travelers for broken locks.
DB: Correct, but as a government agency, your policies must obey the Constitution. In a legal contest of "your policy" vs "the Consitution", the Constitution -- which legally sets the bounds for which your petty policies may and may not apply -- will be the victor. So I ask you this very simply: Is it it the policy of the Transportation Security Administration to ignore its constitutional requirement to compensate people for property destroyed by the government?
CSR: Yes sir, it is.
DB: You are aware that you have now admitted to a Constitutional violation, and made the TSA liable for civil damages and punitive fines?
CSR: That may be sir, I'm not a lawyer.
DB: But you do acknowledge that the TSA policy and the Constitution are in direct contradiction of each other?
CSR: Yes sir, but these are different times.
DB: And in those different times, the Constitution is ignored? Did I miss the legal process wherein the many states either voted to ignore the Constitution or amend it to allow your policy?
CSR: We do what we must to keep travel safe.
DB: But you don't. Look, I'd like to know the name of the individual who broke my lock.
CSR: Why would you want that, sir?
DB: Because he is about to be named as a defendant in a criminal and civil lawsuit. Destruction of Private Property, for starters. Then there's the whole battery of civil lawsuits that will follow.
CSR: There wouldn't be a record of that sir.
DB: The seal on my baggage has a unique serial number. You're indicating to me that there's absolutely no record at all of who does what work? If you had a rash of people saying things had been stolen, how would you know who to look more closely at in-house?
CSR: I don't know sir.
DB: I'd like to speak to a supervisor.
CSR: I am a supervisor, sir.
DB: OK, then I'd like to speak to your supervisor. What is her name and telephone number.
CSR: Her name is womans_name
DB: ... and her last name?
CSR: We don't give out last names.
DB: Is there an idenfitier, operator number, something to identify her?
CSR: She is the only womans_name
DB: Bullshit, in the 20,000 TSA employees there's more than one womans_name
CSR: No, sir, she is the only one.
DB: And you're, apparently, personally privy to the hiring and firing of all TSA employees nationwide?
CSR: Yes sir.
DB: Riiiiiight. And what address should my attorney send paperwork to?
CSR: address
DB: And what number can my attorney contact womans_name at?
CSR: number
DB: Thank you very much. I hope you have a good day and that your jackboots fit nicely. Do they make you goose-step down the halls?
CSR: Is there anything else I can do for you?
DB: Nope. Later.
*click*

... Me.

Guess someone somewhere decided "He rants about the US too much, make sure he's given the full body cavity search."

No, it wasn't that bad and I'm not that paranoid... But still...

China just launched their first manned space mission today (well last night EDT, but today China Time).

This is a perfect opportunity to kick NASA in the ass, and get them back on track.

It has been noted a couple times that China is not a signatory to many of the space treaties, including the one that prevents claiming the moon as sovereign territory.

In other words, while the US and USSR agreed "nah, the moon belongs to everyone", China didn't and could happily go up there tomorrow and start strip mining it as an unclaimed natural resource. (Random thought: the old USSR signed that treaty, not Russia, is Russia even bound by that?)

So... NASA needs a vision. A defining "path" to follow. They need to re-learn skills they've forgotten (many NASA engineers have indicated that going to the moon, today, is not a slam-dunk only because of the engineers who designed/built the stuff dying, etc.)

Maybe this is what it will take. Maybe it is enough to say "we can't take a chance that the Chinese will get to the moon and start raping it for its resources". It can provide a purpose to a manned space program that has been seeking a coherent vision for a while.

Are you in California or Oregon, where your state has granted you permission to grow marijuana prescribed to you by a doctor in your state for your own use within your state?

In other words, are you doing an entirely intrastate act, and being unjustly harassed by a Federal government whose sole constitutional authority is over interstate affairs?

I have the solution to your problem.

Proposition THC for your next election:

"The state of _______ shall authorize law enforcement or civilians to use deadly force against the Federal Government in the defense of rights granted to them by the state of _______. The arrest or detention of a citizen of ________ who is exercising his state-granted right by the Federal government shall be deemed to be kidnapping, and all parties will be subject to arrest and prosecution therefore."

Make it a dangerous crime for los federales to interfere where they have no legal jurisdiction. Make it so that the Feds really have to think "is it worth risking agents' lives to arrest an 85-year-old cancer patient?" Make it so that an FBI agent who arrests that marijuana user can suddenly find himself arrested by a group of LAPD officers and tossed in a State Correctional Facility for an obscene quantity of time (tying the length of the sentence to the length of the marijuana-user's sentence would be a nice touch).

You can't trust the Federal courts to cede jurisdiction to the states, that much has been proven. The states need to stand up to the Federal government in the strongest possible terms: "Overstep your constitutional authority at the peril of your life and your agents' livelihood."

Mock it all you want, but this is exactly the reason for the Second Amendment... to guarantee that in the presence of a federal government that was exceeding its authority, and a federal court system that refused to keep it in check, that the people would have the ultimate ability to keep it in check via the use of deadly force.

The National Do-Not-Call list, set to go live October 1st, has been put on hold pending a court case. The Direct Marketing Associations claims free-speech will be impeded, blah blah blah.

Free speech guarantees you the right to say something, it does not guarantee you the means to say something. I've got every right to choose to not have my service, which I pay a monthly fee for, used to carry your telemarketing crap.

I'm sick of phone spam (telemarketers) and I'm sick of e-mail spam. My snailmail mailbox is filled each day with 95% junk mail. Pretty much the only communications medium that's still usable in any sense of the word is face to face communication, and that doesn't really scale well.

I'm about ready to move to Montana, live in a cabin somewhere in the middle of freakin' nowhere, and live solely off the game I can kill.

Once upon a time,... well, many times actually, I've lamented to folks that we have the "United Negro College Fund", which only gives money to black students, but that if I was to form the "United Caucasian College Fund", which would only give money to white students, only one of those two organizations would find itself labeled "racist".

Kudos to Lisa McClelland in Oakley, California, for attempting to start a Caucasian Club in her high school.

Her theory goes: "If there is a Black Student Union for African Americans, a Latinos Unidos for Latin Americans and an ALOHA Club for Asian Americans, then why can't there be a Caucasian Club at her school?"

And that's a pretty good theory. Why can't the caucasians get together, and perhaps discuss issues that are relevant to them, such as "why everything white people seem to do that is related to being white is considered racist".

In fact, the first topic of discussion at the Caucasian Club meeting could be the topic of the reverse racism that threatens their club's existence to begin with.

In a fit of stupidity, one of the detractors, whose complaint seems to rest on the name of the club, said, "I mean, why not? But couldn't she call it a White Heritage Club? That sounds more politically correct."

What!?? Calling it the "White Heritage Club" doesn't sound more like a Southern Klan Rally name than calling it the "Caucasian Club"?!

Good luck, Lisa! Stick to your guns!

In this morning's local newspaper, was a story about Los Federales cracking down on local activists who have visited Iraq on humanitarian missions, bringing relief supplies, etc.

It has this great quote: Griffin said the letters do not signify a government crackdown, but are a routine matter for the agency, which he said sends similar letters each week to an average of six Americans suspected of violating the ban on travel to Cuba.

I feel like there's very few people who even remember the past... do you remember the days of US Presidents pointing at the Soviet Union, who restricted travel of its citizens only to countries deemed "politically pure"?

I think people have to wake up and realize that the U.S. has erected its own "Iron Curtain", they just painted it really pretty in red, white and blue, so nobody's really noticed yet.

Want to travel? Show your papers.
Want to travel to somewhere deemed "inappropriate" by the State? Prepare for punishment.

We are becoming that which we have always claimed to despise, and the majority of the people don't even realize it.

So the sports world is all abuzz about Kobe Bryant. What really seems to have it abuzz lately, though, is a talk-show host revealed the identity of the accuser. People are berating the talk-show host, etc., etc., for doing it.

The host is taking flak for daring to state publicly that maybe the accused might be innocent. I'm not saying Bryant is or isn't innocent, I wasn't there, but basically he's being taken to task for trying to be sure that both sides of the story are out there for the public to hear.

I'm still trying to figure out why this is considered "wrong". Her accusation has pushed Kobe Bryant into the spotlight as a "bad person". If the case is going to be in the public spotlight, and it is, the public has a right to be able to know the identity of both the accused as well as the accuser, so as to weigh the relative credibility of both parties.

If the woman was indeed raped (and it's not for a talk-show host or a blog to decide that, it's for a court to decide), I'm sorry that it happened, and on behalf of the entire gender I'd say it's wrong. But, at the same time, you don't get to publicly besmirch someone and then hide in anonymity. That means that the defendant gets to be grilled day in and day out about where he was before, during and after, but the alleged victim is not subject to the same scrutiny. That's not "like being raped again", as a doctor in that article states. It's like having your story subjected to the same amount of scrutiny, in the same forums, as the defendant's story.

Seems to me that unless you can be shown to have one of those deadly diseases, that spitting on a government employee should not yield you a life sentence.

Certainly, it's not the most polite thing to do, but without there being actual "damage" in terms of having transferred some deadly contagion to the victim, it makes absolutely no sense for someone who spits on a cop to end up doing a longer jail term than a fucking rapist or murderer.

Seriously, where did our Bill of Rights go. I know I saw it here, somewhere.

I was reading about my former high school's budget woes, where they've basically got classes going on in the laundry room, you name it.

They proposed a fat-ass budget that reached too far, it wanted to expand the school buildings (a good thing) but also did crazy unnecessary things like build an Olympic sized pool, etc., that had no educational value.

As I watched this season of Boston Public (and I'll readily admit to cribbing these ideas from there), I got to thinking of a couple of really good ideas they had...

When you do something wrong, as a civilian, and someone accidentally dies, you're arrested. The charge is "manslaughter". You go to trial. You're prosecuted for illegally, albeit accidentally, ending someone else's life.

Unless, of course, you're a law enforcement official. Then you get "administrative duty".

As Declan points out, a recent Newsday article shows how NYC cops flash-bang-grenaded an apartment, based solely on an anonymous tip, then found out when they got inside that the apartment looked nothing like the tip, and the occupant of the apartment had suffered a heart attack after the grenade exploded and a bunch of heavily armed men busted into her apartment and handcuffed her.

Even the most rudimentary of "background checks" would have shown this was not the woman running a heroin shop out of her apartment, seeing how she'd worked for the city for 30 years, her neighbors would all vouch for her, etc. etc.

In other words, there was no due diligence performed by the police department. They got "a tip" and that was all the excuse they needed to unlock the gun-cabinet with the M-16s, MP-5s, and the cool flash-bang grenades and get to go play the latest law enforcement craze: "Jackbooted Thug".

Oh, sure "they're sorry". I bet the guy who accidentally runs over a family of six with his car is sorry, too, but you still bitchslap him with vehicular manslaughter charges.

Why aren't these people being brought to justice?

Oh, yeah, it's in New York City... the citizenry has already been adequately disarmed. They don't need to play nice any more. That's why.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refused, in an en banc hearing, to hear a Second Amendment challenge.

Kosinski, in the most moving dissent I've ever read, ripped his fellow judges up and down on their position on the matter...

The full text can be found here (pdf), but the really good bits are below...

I wish to hell I could have been coherent enough to write this rant.

Because I agree with it. Every damned word. It's the rant I've been holding inside of me unable to put together into a cohesive whole.

There's been a lot of talk about how Scott Peterson is being charge with two counts of homicide, one his wife, one their unborn child.

It's interesting that if the woman decides to terminate that life (something I believe she should have the right to do) then it is completely routine, not a crime, etc. But, if someone else decides to end that life, they're guilty of murder.

I'm sorry, but the pro-choice folks don't get to have it both ways. Homicide is a crime against a victim. Now either an unborn child is capable of being a victim or it isn't, but you don't get to pick and choose the conditions that make you feel most warm and fuzzy inside. If it's legal for the mother to end the life, it's legal for anyone else to end the life. Either it's a lump of proto-human tissue, or it it's a human baby, but it cannot be both.

Count me among the pro-choice folks who think there should be only one homicide charge on the docket.

In an interesting NY Times article, there's a discussion about how various libraries are handling the ability of the FBI to demand information from them without a warrant or anything like that. Santa Cruz has gone to daily shredding of customer requests, and posting signs and handing out flyers warning patrons of their civil liberties being potentially violated for using their services.

However, they include a quote from someone with the Westchester, NY, library system, explaining why they don't have warnings posted:

"There are people, especially older people who lived through the McCarthy era, who might be intimidated by this," he said. "As of right now, the odds are very great that there will be no search made of a person's records at public libraries, so I don't want to scare people away."

Duh! Maybe those folks who've lived through McCarthyism (Classic) need to be woken up so they can remind the whippersnappers, who are now getting McCarthyism:The Next Generation handed to them by the political machine that impersonates representation, what it's like to live through an era like that and the chilling effect it had on all different areas of life.

The UN Security Council is having a meeting right now to discuss the ramifications of the US's illegal war. You can watch a stream of it right here (live)... good luck finding it on TV though... CNN, FNC, MSNBC? Nope, not a one of them are covering it.

If the UN isn't dancing on the end of our puppet strings the way we want them to, there's absolutely no point to giving them coverage, apparently.

Does anyone find it at all hypocritical the way the media is reporting on the Al-Jazeera POW footage fiasco?

Last night, CNN reported - very briefly - on Al-Jazeera's expulsion from NYSE and NASDAQ trading floors. The exchanges say they wanted to reserve room for "responsible journalists". The CNN folks give each other a knowing look and then move right on to the next story, their tones of voice on the story practically blowing Al-Jazeera a raspberry in the process, as if to say "Too bad, so sad, sod off you raghead network!"

No investigation whatsoever as to whether if they were to report something unpopular, would they be the next ones to get excluded from the trading floor? No reporting on the obvious McCarthyist style treatment. No real discussion about whether or not the things which Al-Jazeera is being ostracized for reporting on have some actual journalistic merit.

But then - the true irony - twelve minutes later, a "Report From The Front", complete with - you guessed it - video footage of Iraqi POWs sitting indian-style on the ground, bound with their hands tied behind their back.

How is it "irresponsible journalism" for Al-Jazeera to show the footage of the American POWs, but it is somehow acceptable for CNN (et al) to happily show footage of Iraqi POWs?

Why are news sites like YellowTimes getting shut down for running the stories the American media is ignoring, like the Iraqi civilian deaths or the POWs.

It is, to me, obvious. American media loves a good war. It's good for ratings, there's a percentage of people who will tune in to CNN and leave it on for the next week, month, or however long it takes to "win" this war. Thus, it is vitally important that the viewers - who are also the ones who vote in elections - be given a warm and fuzzy feeling about the war. It must be sanitized. And, to make the war "accessible", we have to make sure we've got someone doing a John Madden impression drawing lines and stuff all over maps like it's 4th and goal with 30 seconds remaining.

We can't be allowed to see that they have POWs of ours, nor can we be exposed to the fact that occasionally even the most high tech weaponry will go off course and slaughter or maim civilians.

Because if we see any of that, we might not rally behind the war. And not rallying behind the war is just damned unpatriotic I tell ya, and of course, bad for ratings.

Because, in this very detailed and highly footnoted report, it points out each and every War Crime is being committed by the US military in relation to its treatment of Guantanamo prisoners, even to the point of pointing out that citizen militias, etc., are to be granted POW status, and that if someone's status is at all in question, they are to be granted POW status, pending a qualified tribunal.

The report points out that while showing off a prisoner or five on TV might cause someone to get a couple years from a Tribunal, the length and breadth of the US war crimes could easily earn Rumsfeld a much harsher sentence from such an inquisition.

Even if you're overloaded on the Iraqi "Crisis" bullshit, it's definitely worth reading. Pay close attention to the parts where US Special Forces watched thousands of Taliban soldiers who surrendered get locked in box-cars, left in the sun for a couple days, and when they unloaded the corpses, one of them had the presence of mind to actually tell the people doing the cleanup got it done before the satellite overpass. Now that's a guy on the fast-track to promotion!

The Iraqi media is claiming about 200 or so civilians have been injured by the US bombing campaign.

Bush is being quoted as saying something along the lines of "they must have been placed in harm's way by the Iraqi government, as all of our bombs have been precision guided to military or government targets."

I just have one question:

What about those two Tomahawks that landed in fucking IRAN?

Dude, they hit the wrong fucking country, don't you think it's at all possible a couple might have landed a block or two off-course?

I mean, if you're going to feed us bullshit, make it believable bullshit. I don't doubt that SOME civilians are where they shouldn't be, but to dismiss it out of hand like he did is a bit much under the circumstances.

If we're "liberating" Iraq, for the Iraqi people, why are we hoisting the Stars and Stripes anywhere on Iraqi soil?

Oh, I forgot, "liberating" is the current euphemism for "Conquering". Never mind.

Now, despite the fact that I don't necessarily like what Rumsfeld's doing with the troops, I can always appreciate the way he can handle the press.

[Referring to the 'target of opportunity' attack last night]

Q: ... It's apparent that the decision to strike was not in line with what we had been led to believe about the war plan, was the intelligence you had fragile enough that you felt you had to go at that moment, and not go with 'shock and awe' or some other phase of the war?

A: Dick, er, calibrate me...First thing I'd say is, I don't think you HAVE the war plan, a fact which does not make me unhappy...

Courtesy of JWZ, a great dialogue between a warmonger and a peacenik on the current situation.

I think it sums up pretty well the various blind-spots the warmongers seem to have....

According to this article there are between 30 and 45 countries who support the war (it says 30 openly, 15 secretly).

According to the United Nations, there are 191 member states in the UN. Setting aside the fact that there a number of countries which aren't in the UN, that makes for, at best, a 23.6% approval rating worldwide for the war, and if you only count countries who will actually stand up and be counted, it becomes a measly 15.7% approval rating.

International support my ass.

Plastic has a decent thread about the conspiracy surrounding the obviously-forged documents about Iraq's phantom nuclear weapons program.

Britain and the US are both refusing to name the country where they were obtained, while at the same time pointing out that "if they wanted to forge them, they could have done a much better job." ... yet still defiantly protecting whomever it was who obviously put egg on their face in pretty decent quantity.

Makes ya wonder why they're not willing to come forward about it.

Looks like I'm not the only one who thinks a "pre-emptive self-defense" would be a war-crime. An excellent article in the San Francisco Chronicle covers the topic quite well, showing both sides' positions on the matter, but definitely coming down on the side of "Remember, this is the same thing leaders were pronounced guilty of at the Nuremberg Trials.

Shamelessly stolen from Is That Legal?:

Well, not really, but it's still quite funny, nonetheless.

NPR's All Things Considered satirists Bruce Kluger and David Slavin have put an excellent spin on the current US policy of "whatever the hell it is you want, we're willing to pay you to vote Yes on our UN Resolution we've dubbed 'Let's Kick Saddam's Ass Resolution'".

They think W should use telemarketing firms to pimp our aid packages and cash handouts.

But remember, kids. France voting in its own country's economic interests is "making the UN irrelevant", but buying up all the votes on the council is "noble behavior."

An interesting article on WarBlogging points out a number of issues with the present war-footing.

The 1991 Gulf War was a United Nations action, and the cease fire is an agreement between the United Nations and Iraq. Thus, legally, only the UN can reauthorize the resumption of hostilities.

Bush himself is quoted as saying he can't make a claim of a tie between Iraq and Al-Qaida.

Given that the UN hasn't authorized the use of force, there is no imminent threat of violence against the US from Iraq, and that Iraq cannot be tied to the September 11, 2001 attacks, what does that leave?

A war of aggression, led by the United States. The exact same type of war that earned the leaders of Germany and Japan death sentences in post-war war crimes tribunals.

There are many reasons nations are "allowed" to attack other nations, and none of them apply to us.

Further, the article points out, that since Iraq is under imminent threat of violence from an aggressive nation-state, the standard war doctrines of the world WOULD permit him to make defensive attacks against an impending enemy.

In other words, by every tenet of international law, the US actions are roughly equivalent to those of Germany or Japan in World War II.

Ponder that.

As seen here, an AP story on Newsday reported that Jose Padilla, held with bail or charges being filed for 339 days [so far], has been ordered to be allowed access to his attorney, and the government chastised to either file the charges or let him go.

A federal judge Tuesday cleared the way for a man accused of plotting to detonate a radiological dirty bomb in the United States to meet with his lawyers for the first time. U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey in Manhattan said in a written ruling that he considered and rejected a plea by the government to reverse his December decision allowing Jose Padilla to meet with lawyers. Although the judge had permitted Padilla access to counsel, Padilla was not allowed to see a lawyer while the judge was reconsidering the ruling.

Of course, the government will appeal, because that's what they do, especially since judges have also ruled today that the Guantanamo Bay detainees have no rights of any kind, basically.

So my thoughts so far:

Blix: Seems, in general, "pleased with the progress", but wants a couple individual things to go better. Points out that the Al Samoud 2 missiles were believed by Iraq to be legal, but after international experts showed them math showing otherwise, Iraq agreed and began to cooperate (not a lot has happened on that front, but these are all very recent events) ... no minders or recorders on interviews with scientists, although off-site would be better (and Bliz admits they haven't yet asked the Iraqis for that, yet.

IAEA: Wow... sticking the smoking gun up the west's ass. No attempts have been made to obtain Uranium. Documents showing such, in the IAEA's opinion, were forged. As far as the IAEA is concerned, "life is good".

Germany now seems to be asking for "milestones", e.g., asking the inspectors to specify and quantify where things seem to be lacking in their opinion, and setting specific schedules for such things. (some of these things seem to be not done yet simply because Blix hasn't asked yet, like the off-site interviews)

Should be interesting to see how Powell tries to spin this all later when he gets to talk.

Some idiots sued the country of Iraq in a US court. They were able to do so under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act ("FSIA"), 28 U.S.C. § 1602 et seq.

Yes, folks, your government passed a law (and upheld it in court) which says "other sovereign countries have to obey our laws."

I guess if the country of Iraq ever sets foot in the US, it could get arrested at customs. Maybe they'll try to extradite the Country of Iraq, and force it to come over here and pay up.

But, of course, if some American-based interests were being held to French standards or something (to wit, the oft-mentioned Yahoo case) we'd laugh them silly.

Our courts have basically set a double-standard : other countries must obey our laws, but we don't have to obey theirs.

Arrogant? No, not us.

According to this article, various tree-huggers (literally) have been told to stop camping out in the limbs of the logging-company's trees or face arrest.

What really needs to happen is someone needs to be granted the authority to say "We're cutting this tree down in 48 hours, whether you're out of the limbs or not. Whether you consider staying to be safe or unsafe is up to you, but we'd highly recommend not trying to ride it down."

This is private property, the idiots are trespassing and interfering with the property-owner's rights to do what they are legally entitled to do. At some point, as a society, we have to limit the recourse against people who want to excerise their property rights in a perfectly legal and normal manner, but are being hindered by people who don't care about said rights.

He's looking down on a list, calling on reporters in a set order, and the questions are all, obviously, pre-written.

Seems awfully... choreographed. I'm not a big conspiracy theory type of guy, but it certainly does seem a bit odd for a major press conference.

From a Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals decision:

Every day, cat owners see accidents that result when there's no kitty litter around. But it seems quite odd to have a case where a human blames his own accident on the absence of kitty litter. This, however, is such a case.

Too funny.

According to this article at The Register (which is referencing this Knoxville News Sentinel article), George Doughty decided he'd had enough of his Dell laptop.

So it's his bar. He goes into the back room, comes out with a handgun, a Dell laptop, announces to the patrons his clear intent to destroy the laptop, warns them to cover their ears, etc., etc., and proceeds to give it the scheduled maintenance routine we've all wanted to do from time to time.

But, of course, since he used a Evil Gun, he is of course a Bad Man, and got charged with "Felony Menacing" (which should get tossed, because at no time did he threaten or in any way menace the patrons), reckless endangerment (which, unless he was a complete gimp in how he was shooting, seems to be bogus since he gave everyone plenty of notice about what was going on), and "prohibited use of weapons" (he must have violated the EULA or something, because it's hard to believe there's a specific reg saying 'you may not shoot your laptop').

It was a fairly routine jury-selection process. The two lawyers were going over the Prospective Juror Questionairres, potentially eliminating jurors, etc. When they got to Potential Juror 142, there's a line that reads "list all your former occupations", to which #142 had dutifully answered "President Of The United States"... on the line that asks if the potential juror can be impartial, he answered "Yes, despite my experience with the [Office of Independent Counsel]".

Yep, Juror #142 appers to be Bill Clinton.

In the end, it doesn't look like Bubba's going to serve on the jury, though, because the gov't (And the judge involved) are concerned that the USSS protection detail and such will distract from the merits of the case, potentially leaving the defendant an appeal if convicted.

Doesn't make it any less funny, though.

US Diplomat John Brady Kiesling, Political Counselor at the US Embassy in Athens, has decided that he can't reconcile his conscience against the policies he's forced as a diplomat to defend, especially our "fervent pursuit of war".

Now, being a diplomat is already, by and large, a cushy job. Athens isn't the "primo" position, but it's definitely A-List. I'm encouraged to see it's not just "crazy anti-war whackos" who think the administration has gone off the reservation, but also people who have twenty years of diplomatic service under their belts.

Kiesling's letter follows.... (first noticed on Lisa Rein's Radar)

The UN delegates have always suspected they were under surveillance by the US government, but in this article, there is a long discussion about this memo from Frank Koza, a Chief of Staff at the NSA, basically coming right out and saying which countries to concentrate on, and what to look for.

Scumbags? Us? No, Never... next thing you know we'll be bribing other countries for their support, .. well, besides Turkey... oh wait, Ari Fleischer says that's impossible (right before the White House Press Corps literally laughs him out of the press-room).

Adam Curry's weblog has great insight on Saddam Hussein's latest (quite intelligent) strategy:

Saddam Hussein has certainly figured out that this is [so far] a media war. The challenge to a debate with Bush is nothing short of brilliant. Open dialog, broadcast live. Something we couldn't do before the second world war.

The cable companies and various folks came up with C-SPAN and C-SPAN2, which is more or less "unattended cameras sittiing in the Capitol"... We need that for the UN as well, I think.

As I watched the Colin Powell bitchfest today, they then cut away for "other peoples' commentary", while other countries' representatives were speaking, and it occurred to me that I didn't give a damn what Ari said, what Ari was going to say was predictable: "Kill Kill Kill". I wanted to hear what "the average third-world country" had to say about the mess.

And a UNSPAN would've let me do that, without some silly-ass commentator deciding what I should instead be watching.

Recently, I was accused of having "my pals on the left", a fact that couldn't be less true.

So let me take this moment to point out that the assholes on the left are just as much the enemy of a free people as the folks on the right. Apparently, Hillary Clinton has come out publicly saying "We might have to move towards an ID system even for citizens."

I'll say this now: If there's a national ID system, where a citizen is required to carry "their papers", a la Nazi Germany, or the now-defunct Soviet Union, you can reach me at an overseas address to be determined, because I'll be outta here.

... well, that's what Sen. Jim Bunning, R-KY, says. "You are once again interjecting yourself into matters in which you have no business."

Funny, I thought Alan's position basically made him the end-all-be-all of all matters fiscal. And the Republicans didn't complain about him "butting in" last year (probably because when he butted in last year, he supported the tax-cut)

I'm torn on the whole tax-cut thing, seeing both sides of it, but for a Senator to say something so clinically stupid frightens me. I mean, he is from Kentucky and all, but still...

"... and there was no one left to speak out for me."

Welcome to the new order. You want to march down a public street and demonstrate against the war? Prepare to have your permit request denied simply because it runs by the UN (which is, of course, the people whose attention you're trying to get, since the UN is in charge of such things by and large, in theory at least). Then, prepare to have the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals say "that's not a constitutional problem" and have put the official stamp of approval on the jackboot treadmarks on your civil rights.

NY City's claim was that because of the "heightened threat level", they could not adequately protect the area, etc. Excuse me, since when did that become the problem of the people who want to exercise their right to protest?

Kudos to the ACLU for trying, but if anyone still believes this country has any civil rights other than what the Jackboot-In-Chief wants you to have, you need to pass the pipe over here because you've gotten the good stuff and need to share.

Despite Gilmore's lawsuit, other folks seem to be having pretty good luck with reminding airlines that there is no Federal requirement for any identification when traveling on an airline. Apparently, this individual even got one of the ticket agents to admit that the FAA has told them that they cannot hinder a US Citizen's travel simply for lack of an ID.

(via jwz)

First off, it's really annoying to listen to The Jackboot In Chief say "nucular" throughout the speech when he means "nuclear". You'd think that his handlers would, at some point, in the rehearsals he must have done, spent some effort correcting him so that he doesn't sound like a retard.

Other things that got my interest...

According to an article on nytimes.com the US is considering delaying pressing the UN for a decision on Iraq.

One has to wonder, why the US would ever press for a decision at this point? We're committed. We're going in. If we press the UN for a decision, and they say "No," then the US has its dick in its hand with a lot of countries watching the spectacle.

At that point you either obey the UN decree, back down and lose face, or you defy the UN, don't lose face, but instead lose respect from every other country in the world pretty much.

But if you don't press the UN, then the "It's better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission" adage comes into play, and since we didn't "ask and get told no", we're not nearly as disobedient as if we'd told the UN to sod off after they told us no.

Not that defying the UN would be beyond the present administration, or anything.

So this is the quote from today's babblings by The Chief Jackboot:

And there will be serious consequences for any Iraqi general or soldier who were to use weapons of mass destruction on our troops or on innocent lives within Iraq. Should any Iraqi officer or soldier receive an order from Saddam Hussein, or his sons, or any of the killers who occupy the high levels of their government, my advice is, don't follow that order. Because if you choose to do so, when Iraq is liberated, you will be treated, tried and persecuted as a war criminal.

Um, excuse me, sir. Pardon me for speaking up, because I know that's probably a surefire way to head to a concentration camp, er, I mean detention center, but exactly where in the Geneva Convention is the use of WMD covered, and if so, why exactly wasn't Mr. Truman sent off to atone for the vaporization of lots of innocent Japanese folks, or the pilots of those planes, or the crews, etc. etc.

The simple answer: Because it's not a war-crime you big dumb retard!

Or is it just "war crimes are whatever the victor says they are and since our WMD are bigger than your WMD, we'll win, so we get to dictate terms".

I keep saying to myself "I should run for office some day"... I think I'd have like zero chance of getting elected, though, mainly because both parties are polarizing themselves (Democrats are getting more liberal, Republicans more conservative, in who the parties will fund and support), and independents just get screwed by the process, can't get the money and radio/tv airtime that major party candidates can get...

I should start mulling about a platform and positions, though, so I can say "I've had this opinion forever, and here's where that's documented, so bite me you bandwagon-rider".

Then again, if I actually say "bite me" in a political campaign, I think I'd have a good idea why I didn't get elected.

So I read this on CNN.com today. Basically, this sex offender was convicted, did his time, and is now released from custody after paying his dues just like the framers thought it should be.

Except that now, thanks to Megan's Law, he has literally been run out of four states, been filmed by TV news choppers, been bought a ticket out of town by the police department, people putting up signs on the fence of his property warning people to stay away and to lock up their women, etc.

I can respect the desire of a parent to know "who that weird guy is who lives across the street", but ya know what? In a free society, it's none of your goddamn business who he is.

Here's the sick thought of the day: If people stop hounding him (or others like him) maybe he might be able to put the past behind him and move on. Instead, he's reminded day in and day out of what he's done by people who don't have anything to do with it. Eventually, they'll push him to the breaking point, and he'll go do it again not because "he's incorrigible", but because the only place he's not hounded and stalked by citizens with no life is when he's in an 8x8 with three square meals a day.

Are these people actually protecting their neighborhood, or just ensuring that something will happen in the future?

was ruled 100% legal by the US Supreme Court. Twenty years from now, Disney will buy itself a new crop of Senators and Representatives and get themselves another extension on Steamboat Willie, thus ensuring that nobody else will get to make a competitor to DisneyWorld.

Lessig's unhappy (he argued the losing side). He thinks he could have done better. I won't claim to be a world class lawyer who is admitted to the Bar of the Supreme Court, but I don't think there's anything he could have done different, really. That decision was already made before anyone sat down to listen to him. It was all a formality, giving Congress the permission it needs to sell us out a couple years at a time.

Stop fighting, y'all, and drink the Kool-Aid. You'll be a lot less disappointed.

This dog won't be chasing any postmen.

Apparently, a family was pulled over (in error) in Tennessee. They told the cops "shut the door on the car, or the dog will get out". The dog can be seen on the video happily playing, tail wagging. The cop can be seen unloading his shotgun into the dog's head, because he was "going after the cop" (errrr, in my best Dr. Evil voice.. "Riiiiiiiiiiiight.")

This must be part of some Tennessee program to make the entire state a Dog-Free zone so USPS employees can feel safe or something.

Even if this fucktard cop is penalized, how the hell did someone so incompetent get handed a badge and a gun in the first place? Don't just tell me "ok, the bad cop was fired" (if, indeed, that even happens. It's usually a nice big circle-jerk of ass-covering where Internal Affairs says the cop "acted within guidelines") No, I want to know how that guy became a cop in the first place? ... this isn't some cop who made a bad call and then regrets it. He stands by his bogus decision, claiming the dog was attacking him, and this is the kind of poor decision-making capability police academies are supposed to ferret out.

Of course, tomorrow, he might express sympathy and regret, at the behest of his superiors, but we know it's fake, because he's already defended his behavior.

Guess I'm not going through Tennessee any more (not that I did it that often anyway)...

Road Penn has a great story of Penn dealing with the jackbooted thugs at Vegas' McLarren Airport:

He reached around while he was behind me and grabbed around my front pocket. I guess he was going for my flashlight, but the area could have loosely been called "crotch." I said, "You have to ask me before you touch me or it's assault."

I said, "Finish up, and then call the police please."

and then later:

I said, "Well, it's not really the right word, but freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more of it."

I say, "Penn - If you're reading this, sue the jackbooted thug. Sue him, sue the airport, sue the FAA for putting him there, make sure that every three-letter-acronym agency in DC who has anything to do with that guy is held accountable for their slice of responsibility."

You can figure out a lot about a person by their political and professional affiliations, the places they give money to, etc.

I started thinking "what does my paper trail say about me?" ... NRA (Life Member), ACLU, RNC (Life Member), JPFO, ACM, USENIX...

It's definitely sorta "contrary" to support both the RNC and the ACLU these days (and admittedly, my reasons for donating heavily to the RNC had more to do with the "Holy crap, we've swung way too far too the left, we need someone, anyone, on the right to bring us back towards the center"). Anyone who knows me personally knows I'd back a more libertarian candidate in a heartbeat if I thought they had a snowball's chance in hell of actually taking a national election.

I have to believe that any Official Government Spook Society who is assembling a file on me these days has to be confused by my RNC membership (which would seem to imply "supports the Bush II Regime") and the ACLU membership (which would seem to imply - to THEM anyway - "radical anti-Americans who want us to surrender to the terrorists of the world")

Screw 'em.

The recommendation now, in this "post-9/11" world, for travellers with checked baggage includes:

Don't lock your luggage

As soon as American Airlines (et al) are willing to accept responsibility for full replacement value on stuff that goes through their checked-baggage system, that's when I'll "not lock my luggage". History has shown us that the reason we lock our luggage is to protect ourselves from the baggage handlers.

The TSA guy on TV this morning warned "if it's locked, the lock may very well be cut off". I'd be curious to see what would happen if someone sued the TSA for destruction of private property. The TSA certainly has a legal authority to say "Sorry, we can't search your bag, so we're not going to let it on the plane, you may not want to fly without it, eh?", but I don't see where they have the right to vandalize private property.

Don't wrap your presents

Yeah, that's exactly how this should work. Grandma and Grandpa show up at their kids house and then immediately seclude themselves in some upstairs room to wrap presents on Christmas Eve.

Don't pack film

Yup, after years of the airline industry trying to tell us that "film is safe in the system, film is safe in the system", the TSA has now mandated gear for which that isn't the case. Yet more stuff that you have to try and cram into your carry-on if you want it to be safe. The solution there: Get a digital camera, except, wait, they're expensive and will probably be stolen from your checked baggage by the baggage handler.

I so dearly wish that trains were more dominant in US society. Here's a note to the airline industry, from a guy with about 200K frequent flier miles accumulated: I quit. I'm not playing these games. You will get me on your planes only when my career requires it and when they pay for it. So long as I have to submit to Orwellian procedures and give up basically any human rights I thought I had in order to board your aircraft, you will not see a shiny dime from my wallet. Don't blame 9/11, don't blame the economy, turn your fingers upward and blame the FAA and TSA.

From today's Doonesbury:

"Is it true only 13% of American kids can find Iraq on a map?"
"Yeah, but all 13% are Marines."

In an interesting article from 2600 (via Declan McCullagh's Politech list), Photographer Arrested For Taking Pictures Of Vice President's Hotel.

If anyone thinks that this is going to be anything but normal in the coming years, think again. Your friends and neighbors have signed away their freedoms (and yours) in the name of "security".

You can try to sit there and blame Bush, or Rumsfeld, or Ashcroft, or whomever you want, but the reality is that this is just a different flavor of the type of oppression that's been building over the last decade. If I were a conspiracy-theorist, I'd point out that the Clinton years were really good for taking away the peoples' ability to stop the government, via gun control, and now the Bush years are all about taking advantage of the fact that the people are really powerless to do anything other than what the government says they can.

Who here thinks that the two-party system is just a modern-day Janus, and both "faces" are acting towards a shared goal that is coming to fruition?

According to this Yahoo!News story, the Supreme Court is going to hear a case of alleged "reverse discrimination", where a white applicant claims they were denied admission because of a school's desire to fill a race "quota" in favor of a less-qualified minority applicant.

The funniest quote was this:

Affirmative action supporters argue that without policies that encourage diverse student bodies, the top public colleges in the country would not be representative.

College student bodies aren't supposed to be "representative", they're supposed to be "the best", and it's a sad fact of life that by and large, the number of "qualified" caucasians is still much higher than the number of qualified minorities, probably by an order of magnitude. The reason for this, mostly, is that while minorities are growing in number, a good percentage of the minority population live in poverty and are subjected to often-poor, often-urban, education, where they are not at all well-prepared for post-secondary learning.

Let's choose Hispanics for the moment for the purposes of example. One could say that "25% of the population is hispanic" (a % figure I made up, I don't know what the number really is). The problem is too many "affirmative action" programs seek to make "university population" match in an even ratio to "census population", even though maybe only 50% of the minority in question might meet the qualifications.

In other words, 25% of the total population might be Hispanic, but only 12.5% might be QUALIFIED Hispanics, but because affirmative-action aims for the race, not the qualifications, more qualified candidates (caucasians or other "less-minority" minorities such as African-Americans) are passed over so as to artificially increase the Hispanic number to bring it into line with "census figures", despite those census percentages being meaningless in terms of an individual's qualifications for admission.

Are there qualified minority candidates and should they get the same chance to a higher education as non-minority candidates? Absolutely. The only way to be sure that people are getting accepted (or rejected) based on their ABILITIES and not on the color of their skin is to forbid entirely the asking of "Race" on applications. If you want to keep track of racial-makeup, do it after acceptance, on the myriad papers that freshman fill out during orientation, or the papers a new employee fills out on their first day. Have notes on the application that say things like "Don't list membership in an organization that suggests your race/nationality/religion/sexuality/whatever." I know you can do that, I've seen that applications myself.

Let people stand out for their academic merits, or their job-qualification merits, and nothing else. Because, really, that's what the decision making process is supposed to be about, isn't it?

AMC Theaters specialty is stadium seating. Stadium seating is God's Gift to movie-going. The guy in front of you can be as tall as he likes, and his head will never block your view unless he's a circus freak.

But, lo and behold, some jackass convinced a Federal court that because they couldn't get their wheelchair up into the middle seats, that they were being discriminated against, and that AMC are basically bad people because they didn't design their theater to the lowest-common-denominator. To follow this to its logical conclusion, AMC would also have to have Tactile Sign Language folks on hand in case someone was deaf and blind wanted to enjoy the movie. I mean, aren't those AMC folks cruel bastards for showing that movie that's only available via sight and sound? They're depriving deaf/blind folks of their equal opportunity to enjoy a movie.

When are we as a country going to wise up to realize that it is the job of the handicapped to adapt to the world around them, not the job of the world around them to all conform to some lower standard that they are capable of?

Reality check: If you are handicapped, there are things you cannot do without assistance and places you cannot go without assistance, and it is not the job of the rest of us to get you there, it is your job to get yourself there.

Do I think companies should not make life easier for handicapped folks? No, I think they should, but they should do it because they want to, or because it's good business and community relations, but not because some court tells them they have to.

Two years ago, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 that random traffic stops (looking for drugs in the Indianapolis area) violated the Constitution's provisions for unreasonable searches.

Today, according to this article in the Detroit Free-Press, US Customs is going to start enacting the same types of random searches in the Detroit metropolitan area.

An obscure law allows such searches within 25 miles of a border, but that law has never been tested in the face of the 2000 Indianapolis decision. It would seem, at face value, to be a very clear-cut "copy" of whatever provisions tried to allow federal agents to snoop around for drugs (which provisions were overturned as unconstitutional).

At some point, does the executive branch not have an obligation to say "this act has been ruled unconstitutional in circumstances nearly identical to this, even if this particular law hasn't necessarily been struck down, so we shouldn't do it."

Oh, wait, I forgot. That wouldn't further the Police State agenda.

(via Politech)

The next time you're thinking "wow, I'm watching cops out of control on some helpless kid, I better document this so the cop can get punished", remember that suddenly you might find yourself maced and arrested (local mirror).

Public officials need to remember that they work for us, and if we as their employer want to document what they're doing, that's our prerogative. Anyone who believes that police departments in our cities aren't way out of control has their head in the sand.

I rarely agree with Lisa Rein, but occasionally I enjoy a common position with her on some free speech issues, etc. But this time, she's gone completely over the edge and needs to be called on it, claiming Election 2002 is "fixed", citing no more evidence for this than a couple close races being "called" in favor of the GOP.

Will she be as quick to demand a recount in GA03, where the 50/50 call was made for the Democrat? Or UT02 where the 49/49 went to the Democrat?

Why is it so hard for the Democrats to actually accept the will of the people? I'm not the biggest fan of either party, but the reality is that Bush enjoys ENORMOUS popularity numbers, and those numbers drove GOP victories all over the place. There are close races in every election, and some of them were "called" for the GOP, and some for the Democrats. By far, though, are the GREATER number of races where a district clearly chose one side or the other, putting large gaps between the two parties, for example, CT05, where both parties enjoyed incumbency due to redistricting, but the democrat was soundly trounced by an 11-point margin, or IL19 where the two incumbents battled and the GOP won by 10 points.

The constant whining by the liberal supporters is going to earn them no friends in the world, and can even cost them some supporters. They wanted to change the rules of the FL election law, mid-election, in 2000, they managed to convince the NJ Supreme Court to undermine election law during an election-cycle in 2002, and now there are some liberals using very harsh words like "fixed" for 2002 simply because they don't like the outcome.

I don't like the outcome either, I'd've preferred to see independents and/or libertarian candidates winning far more of the elections than they did, but you're not going to see me crying that the election is "fixed" or "rigged". (I would say that the process for getting your message heard is skewed towards the two major parties, but that's a different discussion entirely).

Your party lost, Lisa. Accept it and move on. For every "really close race" you don't like the call on, there are a bajillion more where the GOP firmly and unquestionably ousted the Democrats.

Southwest Airlines doesn't have to revamp their web site for blind people. You can read the actual summary here.

Now, I despise the ADA in general. I don't believe it's the job of society to adapt to the disabled person, it's the job of the disabled person to adapt to their environment.

Telling companies they have to install ramps, elevators, braille, whatever, it's all cost-shifting, moving the cost away from the person who needs the change, to what are perceived as fat-pocketed corporations, but what are often mom-and-pop operations who can't afford to make the changes.

I'm glad to see the ADA being slowly whittled away.

So Rumsfeld's going to let the FBI use military surveillance planes to search for the DC Sniper.

Never mind that the use of the military hardware and the military personnel flying it directly goes against the law. They'll throw an FBI agent onboard in the jumpseat and "poof" it's magically OK.

Except that the addition of FBI agents does NOT eliminate the use of military people and hardware. And those are still explicitly forbidden by law.

What's next? IRS agent in the jumpseat while they look for tax evasion suspects? FBI agents in the back while they look for hate crimes? Once the hard and firm line between "military" and "law enforcement" is broken, there's absolutely nothing to stop the military from "assisting" in all levels of law enforcement.

Welcome to the Police State. Do you feel safe? I hope so, because you're certainly not free any more.

When the Supreme Court won't bother to enforce it.

Here's the facts. The election law in NJ states there's a deadline after which the ballot may not be changed. It's after that deadline. The democrats are doing it anyway. The democrat-laden NJ Supreme Court happily allowed that change to go through. The US Supreme Court, by refusing to hear the case, is essentially saying "that's ok".

This is my official "why bother voting" rant. If we can't count on the government to obey the election law, there's little point in participating in the system.

Makes me want to quit my job and go get a ranch somewhere in Idaho and just set up my own little country.

According to this article the Iraqi V.P. suggested that Saddam Hussein and Bush settle their countries' differences in one fell swoop, with a duel.

The article doesn't mention it, but the news this morning mentioned that the White House had replied to the effect of "we can't take seriously something that stupid".

And it occurred to me: Why is it stupid?

Is it stupid because it would mean Bush putting his own ass on the line for the policies he claims are so important?

Is it stupid because it would, in fact, save a lot of teens and twentysomethings from getting shot at for Bush's latest power-grab?

Is it stupid because if Saddam won, he'd probably have significantly less reason to hate us, since the son of his arch-enemy wouldn't be in power any more?

I think the real reason the administration thinks it's stupid, is because it doesn't allow them to just walk all over the opposition. Such a solution moves us away from being the overpowering bully on the playground, and we can't have that.

I'm not saying such a solution is without issues. What I'm saying is that overcoming those issues and letting these two pissants beat each other up without endangering young soldiers seems to be a much better solution.

I'm not usually a big supporter of the usual tripe that comes out of newspaper editors, but this one seems to agree with me rather nicely.

I love how the UN (well, the French too, but they've always been fairly pompous, second only to the US) thinks they have a right to tell this guy that he can't allow himself to be thrown around for money.

"The United Nations : Protecting You From Yourself!"

Dan talks briefly about this article here, about the "lies of the Bush administration".

Now, I'll say up front... I contributed to GWB and the RNC in the 2000 election. I wanted the Democrats out of office. I really would have preferred a Libertarian Party candidate make it, but I knew that Satan would ice-skate to work before that would happen, so trying to play metronome with the balance of power was the best way to try and keep the policy trending towards the center, and the Democrats had been in power for long enough, it was time to start leaning back the opposite way.

I don't necessarily think we're being told the whole truth about "the war on terrorism", but this article says some stuff that is just way off-base.

The Bush regime has already said they don't need Congress' approval on Iraq. So much for checks and balances.

Congress already gave their approval, to GWB's father, but with typical Congressional stupidity, they never put a sunset clause on the permission. The way they wrote the resolution, if it was the year 2092, and Iraq still had UN resolutions that weren't met, whoever was president then would still be authorized to use military force, because of the existing resolution. The checks and balances are well in force. Congress could, today, enact a resolution revoking the previous authority-granting resolution. It's that simple.

Latest polls indicate that nearly half of all Americans believe the First Amendment "goes too far," proving that Stepford Citizen Syndrome is now a national crisis.

I don't disagree with this statement. I find it ironic that the author is probably (and I don't know this, but given the tone of the article, I strongly suspect it) the type of person who would completely fail to see the similarities between how people are reacting to "First Amendment" issues at the moment, and the Second-Amendment bashing that us gun-toting folks have been talking about for years. You can't defend one without defending the other (not the least of which reason is because the latter guarantees the ability to defend the former).

The guy is just plain out of control.

The "Iraq Regime Change" was planned before he even took office. Everything we've seen in the last twelve months has been posturing and pretext, trying to grease the wheels so that the typical US-centric bullying we're famous for would be accepted by the populace.

And I especially love the bit about "it's time to increase our presence in southeast asia"... yeah, like we didn't get our asses handed to us ghetto-style the last time we thought we were ready for jungle warfare.

sigh....

Iraq says OK to inspectors

So now that that opportunity to distract the public has vanished, who will we turn our Axis Of Evil^TM eye to now?

So, that thing in Florida with the three "terrorists"... It was all a hoax.

Turns out the three men of middle-eastern descent were eating in a Shoney's, the woman in the booth next to them started looking at them really suspiciously, and (playing on that) the three men started speaking in cryptic tones about (possible, fictitious, intentionally vague and non-committal) impending doom.

The woman (who admitted wondering 'if she was being played') decided that it was better to be safe than sorry, commenting "what if they really are doing something and I caught them"

Note there. Not "what if it was real and lives were saved".

What if they really are doing something and I caught them?

The concern here isn't "for the people", it's folks hoping to cash in on their fifteen minutes of fame by playing "Middle East Terrorist Lotto". There's a couple million people of middle-eastern descent in the country, SOME of them are likely terrorists. If you just start reporting them to law enforcement randomly, your odds are actually probably better at picking a terrorist from the entire U.S. population of middle-eastern foreigners, than if you plunked down a dollar on Powerball.

Cheaper, too. If you're wrong, well, you get partial reward in that your vindicated for trying. You'll get interviewed by the Miami Herald, asking you what happened, what you were thinking, why you were scared, etc. etc. etc. ... then it's "You did the right thing, good job, go back and play again."

I want these guys to walk. On the whole fucking thing. The ticket they got for blowing through a tollbooth, everything. I don't want to reward the entire process that had people looking at their fellow citizens suspiciously simply because of the color of their skin or the accent in their voice. ReiToei disagrees with me, but that's ok. :-)

Let me say this up front. I have no problem with homosexual people. I know several, am good friends with them, and get along well. It's not "my cup of tea", so to speak, but I'm a firm believer in "if it's what makes you happy, it's what's right for you". Homosexual, bisexual, try-sexual, a-sexual, I don't care, if it's what gets your particular rocks off, it's alright by me, so long as you don't necessarily ask me to participate. ;-)

OK, that said, take a look at this.

Apparently, Derek Henkle, a gay high school student managed to win a settlement against his school because they didn't protect him from people who called him mean names and said mean things to him.

Do I think people should gay-bash? Absolutely not. It's ridiculous.

The reality is, though, kids have been coming up with mean things to say about each other, and inventing excuses to justify it, for years. Maybe you were a math-geek, or you didn't wear Jordache Jeans during the 80's, or you were into computers, or you were a preppy who got razzed by the stoners.

Kids make fun of other kids. It's a crappy deal all around.

Should the school punish people who bully and abuse other students? Maybe, but to paint it with the "gay rights" brush does everyone involved a disservice. It annoys the myriad other "weird kids" who got just as harshly abused by their classmates, because it does nothing for them, when the problem is largely identical.

Luckily, it's a settlement, not a decision, so there's no precedent, but we should try to be sure that things like this don't continue to happen. We need to ensure that future decisions are based on what they rightfully SHOULD be about - a right to an education free of abuse of any kind for ALL kids - and make sure that every case of bullying is acted upon, not just the ones that pick on gay kids. Either apply the same litmus test for everyone, or don't do it. I'm not sure schools are staffed to handle that role, nor am I entirely convinced that it is appropriate for them to do so ... part of that bullying process is what toughens kids into adults, but by the same token, taken too far, you get things like Columbine where the "weird turns pro" as the saying goes.

A very interesting editorial compares the Party in 1984 to the present day politics, noting way too many similarities.

Just think Emmanuel Goldstein == Osama Bin Laden and you'll be on the right track.

Via Plastic.

Did FBI Bungle E-Mail Evidence?

Looks like the Hotmail account that Zacarias Moussaoui was using from the computers the FBI 'searched thoroughly' was completely un-discovered by the FBI..

Retards.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday said a secret court had limited the ability of investigators to coordinate surveillance against terrorism suspects and announced plans to appeal the ruling.

Is it just me or is everyone so happy that the Justice Department had limitations put on it that nobody is remembering that the entire decision took place in a "secret court"... I remember being taught in Politics & Government, in high school, that secret courts were "bad", and only fascist regimes made use of them.

Oh yeah, I forgot, that's what we live in now.

Via Plastic,

What the heck is this independent business man supposed to? Lodge his thumb up his ass and not work for the entire month of August because he "might get called up for jury duty"?

I'm a firm believer that the jury system needs complete reform. Here's how.

Twelve jurors are selected randomly (plus alternates). You MUST show up. If you are a W2 employee, your employer MUST pay you full wages for the duration of your jury duty. The court must provide child-care facilities for children of jurors. If you are an 1099 or contract employee, provide documentation of your average hourly rate for the last calendar year, and the cour must pay the average rate for any business day they expect you to be on call and available for jury duty. Lawyers get NO ability to weed out jurors. A jury of your client's peers is going to have biases and personal opinions. They're going to have preconceived notions. Nothing in the Constitution says you get to have a collection of idiot savants for jurors.

Too often, our jurors are poor, uneducated, folks who simply have nothing better to do than to show up for jury duty. Everyone who is smart or wealthy has gotten themself excused via a trumped-up "economic hardship", or is smart enough to sound biased against a defendant (without sounding like they're obviously faking it), etc.

We need to get back to "twelve random folks", and make sure that those twelve random folks don't pay the price for some frivolous lawsuit. The court's time is reimbursed in the way of realistic (often outrageous) fees, so why aren't the jurors guaranteed to not take a loss on it as well?

Ask has a wonderful story over at his site called The New McCarthyism & .org icann politics... anyone who thinks this is "just a phase" should consider rewiring their head and their nether-regions.

Show of hands, anyone who didn't see this coming a mile away, please step forward. I especially like the bit where Tom Ridge says its "unlikely, but we should investigate it anyway", that's jackboot-speak for "this is the next thing we're going to do, and it's going to be tough convincing you to accept this, so we're going to mention it now so it seems like we spent the whole time in painful deliberation as to whether or not it was really necessary, when we knew all along it was going to happen."

Color me frightened.

*sigh*

Where has their soul gone? Anyone seen it on eBay? Next month, they'll probably be turning over the user database to the Chinese government in exchange for the "privilege" of letting the Chinese government pretend like it's becoming a modern free society.

At first glance, a law forming a watchdog agency to investigate high-rise collapses seems like a good idea in the wake of the problems investigators had when it came to getting answers about the "how?" and "why?" questions of the WTC collapse.

But take a step back for a moment and ponder this... where does the Federal Government get any authority to meddle in local affairs like that? There is no "interstate" issue in a building collapse, even one as big as the WTC. This is, again, another example of the Federal Government seizing upon an opportunity to grab itself a little more power and authority where none previously existed.

Will be interesting to see if (should this agency ever need to be used, something else I don't really see as too terribly common) some state and local agencies told the Feds to pound sand for lack of jurisdiction, states' rights, and all of that jazz.

But they won't, cuz we're all a bunch of sheep... Baaaaaa

I was watching Dazed and Confused the other night, and would like to share with you the deep July 4th thoughts in that movie (paraphrased)....

'Just remember, while you're being inundated with this July 4th patriotic brouhaha this year what you're really celebrating.... that around 225 years ago, a bunch of aristocratic, white, slave-owning males didn't want to pay their taxes.'

The Ad Council has started running some interesting ads... they show a christian church being run secretly in someone's basement, and then follow with the tagline "What if America... wasn't America? Freedom, protect it, love it, etc. etc." It's very inspiring. I'd like to see a couple more of them, though, here's my ideas for one, tell me what you think...

A man of Middle Eastern descent is sitting at his breakfast table. His kids and wife are there with him. There is a knock at the door, and some men in suits ask him to come with them. He asks what he's done, they say nothing, they'd just like to ask him a few questions. He refuses, he has to go to work, he has a job to do, he's productive member of society, and asks why he's being hassled. The men in suits then grab him, take him by force, and drive away with him, leaving his family sitting in stunned silence. As he's walking out the door, he's asking for his lawyer, but is told he doesn't have a legal right to one anymore as an "enemy combatant" and that he will be detained at an undisclosed facility until such time as the government sees fit to release him. Then the tagline "What if America... Wasn't America?" but instead of the second line being about how great freedom is, it can just be "It isn't."

I think that might really make it sink in how deep down the slippery slope we've gone...

So I was reading that, apparently, the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court ruled that saying the Pledge of Allegiance, in schools, violates the First Amendment's "separation of church and state" because the "under God" bit is an endorsement.

Good, I say. I always had problems with the pledge as a kid in school. First, because I viewed it as the school telling me I was wrong for being an atheist (I've been one as long as I can remember, despite having a nice devout Catholic upbringing). Second, because a Pledge of Allegiance is something that is given WILLINGLY, not something that a child is forced to say like an automaton every morning in the hopes that they'll become good little mindless consumers who agree to believe their country is always right, etc. etc.

I know I'll take heat for this opinion among my more conservative friends, but dem's the facts as I see them.