Did you ever have one of those horribly irrational moments that led you to a very rational question? Just before I left work today, I read about more anthrax being found in 3 House offices. And then I got home and got my mail, not thinking even twice about it.
And one of the things I got was from the DC area. Not a handwritten message or anything of the sort; just from DC.
And I got a bit ... twitchy. Just for a second.
And then I realized that I was being silly. Took a minute though. (And I still wanted to wash my hands after I touched it.)
And then I wondered: why was it silly? What I mean by that isn't so much that my reaction was irrational, but that it shouldn't have been, given what's been happening in DC and New York and Florida and New Jersey.
Look, the working hypothesis at the moment is that either Daschle's letter leaked all over the post office, all over mail, all over postal workers ... or that there's more than one letter, which also leaked. (I'd tend to the second option, myself; nothing else makes sense.)
But the Brentwood post office in DC, or any of the other post offices, also handle outgoing mail. Mail headed to Virginia, to Maryland, to other parts of the country. If the issue is that the letters leaked all over, why aren't people in other parts of the country coming down with cutaneous anthrax? You probably couldn't get enough of a concentration to get inhalation anthrax, but it doesn't seem to take nearly as much to get a cutaneous infection. It should be happening elsewhere, and it's not. Maybe there's some nicety of mail sorting that I'm completely missing, but somehow, it sounds almost as if something else has to be going on. I'm not sure what, precisely -- any means of infecting a post office directly should produce the same sort of result, right? infected mail both inbound and outbound -- but something odd. Something seems to have been very precisely ... targeted.
Whatever is going on, it's been a very sophisticated campaign, regardless of the look of those letters. First, get the attention of the media by infecting the media itself, and then, when they're completely hyper about it all, and then go for the government -- and it seems almost certain, given how things have unfolded, that this particular attack was indeed sequenced.
I expect that within the next two months or so, all mail coming into major facilities in major cities will be irradiated ... although that won't help find the perpetrators. (And I don't even want to think about what they're going to do with the high mail volume holiday season looming.) And I would imagine that, with some justification, post office workers will demand anthrax vaccines, as well as improved gloves and filters.
@ 12:25 AM CST [Link]
With one of the largest populations of Arabs outside the Middle East, Detroit and its surrounding suburbs have become fertile ground for terrorism fund-raising and recruiting. [...] Almost every major terrorist organization has operatives in Michigan, according to the report. Citing information received from the Detroit office of the FBI, the report says “most of the 28 international terrorist groups recently identified by the State Department… are represented in Michigan. Examples include such well-known terrorist organizations as Hizballah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Egyptian Brotherhood, Al-Gama’at, Al-Islamiyya, and Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organization—Al Qaeda.” [...] Those groups, along with domestic “patriot groups” in Michigan, combine to create 374 “potential-threat elements” statewide, the report says.
So what IS it about Michigan, anyway? Why would that one state draw so many terrorist groups? (And yet actual terrorist activity -- of the poisoning/infecting/blowing things up stripe -- doesn't actually happen much there, does it?) Is it something in the water? Some spiritual link that says, "We want to blow things up ... let's go to Detroit!" What's going on here?
And let us savor the irony that one state is home to not only 28 international groups, but 346 domestic terror groups, most of whom are probably of the white-supremacist sort (well, that's most of what we have running around these days). It would just be fascinating if we could stick all of those groups in one area and let them realize who each other is/are, wouldn't it? Of course, the international groups would be vastly out numbered, so it would probably be a slaughter, but then, the internationals seem to have better weapons these days, don't they?
State Police Director Col. Michael Robinson said he will apologize today to Arab-American leaders for a State Police report that labeled the Detroit/Dearborn area a hotbed of support for Mideast terrorist groups. [...] Robinson said the report was not meant for the public. [...] "It's not that he has to apologize to us," [Nasser Beydoun, executive director of the American Arab Chamber of Commerce in Dearborn] said. "It's more that he has to set the record straight, so people know our community does not harbor terrorists, or support terrorists."
But ... in fact, the Arab-American community in Michigan does harbor them, if by "harbor" what is meant is simply that they live in that community, as the white-separatists and other domestic terror groups frequently live among the rest of us. After all, where else would they live? Out in the Michigan boonies? All of them? The only way foreign-born terrorists could reliably keep from being noticed by the authorities is to live among other people in this country of the same ethnicity. Most people in the Arab communities in the US are perfectly law-abiding, of course. The communities as such do not actively support terrorists and their causes, no; that's a separable issue. But that says nothing about where they live.
To be sure, I can understand the desire to keep people from attacking Arab-Americans by not making incendiary material public. But wishing that something weren't so doesn't make it not true, regardless.
@ 01:11 PM CST [Link]
I really really really REALLY wish that Dubya would stop using children for propaganda purposes. It's amazingly distasteful and appalling of him to keep pursuing this path. It's easy, of course, which is why they do it: "Aw, how cute! The children want to help!" And I understand that having children contribute somehow helps make them feel that the world is a little more safe and secure. But this is NOT the way to do it. (And purely as a side note: how do you get children to become pen pals when the one thing that is being said, over and over these days, is that the mail is NOT safe? If I were a parent in Indonesia or Arabia or Oman or wherever, and my kid got a letter from the US from some stranger or some government facility, I might well pick up the thing with some sort of tongs and burn it. And what sane parent in this country will now say, "Oh, look, a letter from Indonesia! Sure, go ahead and open it! Such fun!")
Speaking of such pursuits, note at the bottom of that article that the White House has now received over $266,000 from its previous request that children send a dollar for Afghan relief efforts. (Somewhere in the White House, there is a low level staffer cursing Dubya's very name every time they see a dollar bill.) I wonder how they plan to square this effort with a request to people to stop sending physical mail to federal facilities. "Just scan your dollar bill and send a jpeg", perhaps?
UPDATE, 10/27/2001, 12:30am: According to CNN Headline News, "America's Fund for Afghan Children" has raised over $580,000. That low level staffer no doubt has a voodoo doll of Dubya that they're sticking pins into right this very moment ...
@ 12:46 PM CST [Link]
You know ... you do wonder what constitutes "bearable humiliation", given these five tales of utter horror. (Although I must say -- yes, I must -- that my reaction to the gum story and the church story is, "You know, the child just ain't right ..." I mean, why would you stick gum there? and what would posess you do do such a thing in church?)
@ 12:31 PM CST [Link]
What IS it with people trying to weasel out of things they actually said on the record? Or somehow indicating that it's someone else's fault? in a written appeal for funds, Falwell Ministries accuses "liberals, and especially gay activists" of launching "a vicious smear campaign to discredit him." [...] The Falwell fund-raising letter says donations to his ministry have plummeted, saying "we have lost more than $500,000 in income since the terrorist attacks."
You know, there are two things that are notable there, flipsides of the same thing: (1) That somehow, they feel that the drop in donations is due to the criticism, rather than that Americans' charitable giving has been extraordinarily focused in the past seven weeks (I'd imagine that donations to all non-attack related charities are off badly right about now), and (2) Falwell apparently normally takes in about $100,000 per week in donations normally, or just a bit less. $5.2 million per year or something like. Apparently, some aspects of the Religion Biz pay startlingly well.
Gives you just a bit of pause, doesn't it?
@ 12:13 PM CST [Link]
Well, this ought to be an interesting fight. IBM/Intel/Compaq versus Disney/Fox. A whole lotta dollars being flung.
It would do wonders for the hackers, wouldn't it? coming up with ways to defeat the hardware. And it would do wonders for the ancillary parts industry, making and supporting pieces for older computers, since many people wouldn't want to touch tne new ones. (Buy now! You never know what a year will bring!)
I still can't figure out what copy protection and broadband have to do with each other. The people who want protection and the people developing broadband aren't the same businesses. They aren't even all owned by each other. (Remarkably enough.) The only way they could be related is if the media companies tell the broadband companies, "We will not release our product to you unless you use hardware that verifies that the equipment on the other end complies with our standard." Which, I do believe, would be an illegal use of cartel powers. Might even get Dubya's administration to pursue a new antitrust suit.
@ 12:51 PM CST [Link]
Um ... OK, that's ... surprising, to say the least.
Even recognizing that, yes, perhaps US policy could stand some re-examination, and that, yes, the Israeli authorities do torture Palestinians (one or two of whom, you know, throw the occasional bomb or go on the odd shooting spree) ... why in the name of heaven would a US Representative say any such thing to him? Dunning him for money? Any organization guided by a person with even one functioning brain cell would conclude that it simply wouldn't be worth the horrendous publicity. Any politician -- representing an Atlanta suburb, for heaven's sake -- giving it any thought at all would conclude that the response to such a letter would be brutal and, if she's not in a safe district (and I don't believe she is) would hand your future opponent an issue that would almost certainly lose you your seat.
And, yes, some of the criticism in Atlanta has been both pointed and acid. And, yes, some Atlantans think we should examine our Middle East policy ... but that's not quite the same thing, is it? (Why on earth is Philadelphia's paper looking at Atlanta's opinions?) And, yes, a recent "Letters" column in the Atlanta Journal Constitution had a few letters showing some support for McKinney [waaaay down there at the bottom, down past the one equating her opinions with support for the Klan, yes] ... although, for the most part, the support is remarkably specific: about her right to say what she said -- which is, of course, unquestioned; anyone has the right to make a fool of themselves in public -- and the fact that US policy in the Middle East needs examination. To be sure, there is that one person who says that we should be looking to McKinney and people like her for guidance. (Um ... No. Thanks, but, you know, no. If I need to, I can alienate a great many people on my own; I don't need an object lesson. Although, to be sure, she's a very good one.)
Representative McKinney's initial letter and her response to the criticism are quite ... interesting, in their own peculiar way. She displays a positively Clintonian talent for shading the facts here and there. For example, in her letter, she says, "Whether he agreed with you or not I think [Giuliani] should have recognized your right to speak and make observations about a part of the world which you know so well." Well, he didn't deny the prince a right to speak, did he? The prince spoke loud and clear. What Giuliani said was that he and his council found those words repugnant, and for that reason, they were returning the check; surely if the prince has the right to speak, New York has the right to respond to it. In her response, instead of the various minority issues she cites in her original letter, she talks about the families of the rescue workers who were killed in the attack, and the small businesses devastated by it. Now, let's just be real, shall we? Given the circumstances, the organizations trying to serve those people would be damn near apoplectic at the very thought of accepting the prince's money, and she did rather just pull them out of a hat, didn't she? She said not one single word about those people or businesses in her original message.
She says "my point was simply that the $10 million donation should have been accepted whether or not we, as Americans, agree with every position taken by the Prince." Leaving aside the fact that this is not precisely what she said -- she apparently equates giving money with speech, as if the prince were a candidate and this were a political campaign; the prince managed to express himself quite thoroughly, I thought -- I don't understand how Representative McKinney does not see that sometimes, money, however much it may be needed, comes with strings you don't want pulled or prices you don't want to pay. Surely she has declined a campaign donation on principle, as opposed to simply on political considerations, once or twice in her day. (If she hasn't ... that might explain a great deal.) They may not be her strings or her price ... but they were apparently New York's.
There are some things that even the prince's billions can't buy. And there are some things even a well-intentioned member of Congress can't sell.
@ 12:03 PM CST [Link]
Taliban said to use human shields.
Not only storing weapons in mosques (!) and schools, but using people as shields. I suppose that shouldn't be a surprise -- it's what Saddam did, after all, so we've seen it before (although, as I recall, even he didn't stoop to hiding weapons in mosques). I wonder if hearing about such behavior might lessen the distress in other Middle Eastern countries about the bombing.
Given the behavior described in the article, it looks rather like there will be a battle for Kabul. And it will probably be extraordinarily gruesome. (And then we'll have to sit there and figure out some way to restrain the Northern Alliance from behaving as they did before while the UN gets itself together and composes a peacekeeping force. Drawn principally from other principally Muslim countries, it is to be hoped; I suspect Afghans would tolerate that slightly better. But unless we actually have major forces on the ground and involved in the battle, I can't see how we're going to prevent Kabul from being sacked. Not that there's much to sack, but there are, after all, still a few people to abuse.)
@ 10:46 AM CST [Link]
Bowdlerized by Microsoft (NY Times, registration required): Oh, for the love of ... (Sorry. Can't say what it would be for the love of. It'd be culturally insensitive.)
But we are talking a serious lack of brains on the part of The Evil Empire. Political Correctness taken to rampagingly stupid extremes. What earthly use is a thesaurus without synonyms? (I wonder if they've made Word XP all brain-damaged in quite the same way?....)
@ 12:17 AM CST [Link]
Huh. Looks like Maryland's antidiscrimination law may go into effect after all. It may well be that too many of the signatures are invalid.
Mind, that doesn't change a lot. The Mississippi organization (and how is it that Mississippi has standing to interfere in Maryland?) will just try again next year, I expect. The law will eventually have to be supported or defeated via referendum to stop these attempts.
@ 06:32 PM CST [Link]
Attack on gay may cost fireman his job: Franchot Opela, 27, was convicted of misdemeanor assault in July in what prosecutors called a hate crime, beating a 21-year-old man bloody and unconscious after repeatedly yelling "faggot'' at the man. [...] Fabian Padilla was found in the parking lot in a pool of blood when deputies from the Pima County Sheriff's Department responded. Opela and his friends, including firefighter Todd Thompson, did not render aid and fled the scene before deputies arrived. [...] Opela was sentenced to 12 months of unsupervised probation, 40 hours of community service and eight hours of anger counseling.
Hmm. Misdemeanor assault. Really. That's all. Unsupervised probation and ONE WORK WEEK of community service. That's it. Yes. Well. Oh, and Anger Counseling. Right. Well.
Moving on a bit ...
Let's see: person certified to treat medical emergencies not only doesn't do so, but actually causes the emergency in the first place. And somehow, there's actually a debate about whether or not he should lose his job. Right.
I'd have thought being convicted of a crime against another person would pretty much take care of that automatically. Surprise, surprise, surprise.
You wonder about that Thompson guy. No mention of him losing his job for being at the scene and not rendering aid. Granted, the article wasn't about him. But you get the impression that if he'd been punished, they'd probably have mentioned it; else why mention him at all? To be sure, the punishment for simply refusing to help might well be different for someone who didn't cause the situation in the first place ... except that helping is what the man is supposed to do, isn't it?
@ 06:23 PM CST [Link]
All right. Rudy has to stop this. I've spent years loathing the man, and in just over a month, he displays impressive leadership (ok, yes, there was the backsliding over the "maybe he should have a third term" dealybob, but he didn't actually do anything with it), and now he's agreed to do drag on QAF to raise money for the gay and lesbian survivors of the September 11 attacks. It's a challenge grant type of thing; if they can raise $100,000, we get Rudy in makeup and dress on camera.
I want my world view to stand still for a minute, dammit!
@ 06:10 PM CST [Link]
You know, Farrar, Straus and Giroux must be some serious pissed-off right now. One of the most powerful bookmaking things in the country, and he says, "No, thank you." (Although not until the publicity was done.) I didn't even know you could turn down an "Oprah's Book Club" pick, although it makes a sort of sense; why would she pick a book by an author who wouldn't come on the show for the coffee klatch bit?
@ 06:00 PM CST [Link]
Apparently some parents in Denver think that kids getting beat up is A-OK!
Wes Ashley was stunned by the reaction of parents when he abolished the practice of older students punching and kicking freshmen while they lay on the ground outside East High School. "The parents defended (the beat-down game) as a tradition," said Ashley, East's dean of students. "They said it's finally their kids' chance at doing it."
Well, all-righty, then! That's a great reason to continue the tradition, isn't it? I was beaten, my kid was beaten when he was young and now that he's older, he should have the chance to beat up on some other kid whose only sin is being younger and smaller!
To be sure, the article isn't about that; that's simply the McGuffin. The article is actually about the efforts that some schools are making to end, or at least reduce, bullying behavior. (Some of the efforts sound rather bizarrely like Alcholics Anonymous.) You do wonder about some of the efforts, though. "You bully, therefore, we make you lead," seems to be the theme. And I'm not sure how making bullies into leaders keeps them from setting the tone, or how it deflects attention to their victims. Or how effective it is to teach bullies how they've done wrong, and make them teach against it; they're highly unlikely to actually believe what they're saying, after all.
The Denver Post also has a bulletin board feature at the end of their articles. One person equates bin Laden with bullying. I suppose I can see where you get the analogy, sort of, but I'm not sure about the conclusion: We had to quit talking and take hard physical and military action! Some like Mr. bin Laden just need to be slapped around to get their attention! I guess this means that we should slap the bullies around enough for them to absorb the lesson that slapping people around is wrong ... right?
@ 04:22 PM CST [Link]
Posting in full because it's quite short and may not persist long ...
Kansas supreme court to hear gender identity case
The Kansas Supreme Court intends to hear an inheritance dispute between a transgender woman and her late husband's family.
When Marshall Gardiner died, his wife J'Noel Gardiner thought she would inherit the $2.5-million estate. But Marshall Gardiner's son by a previous marriage sued, alleging that his father's marriage was not legal because J'Noel Gardiner is a male-to-female transgender. A district court found in favor of the son, but in May the Kansas Court of Appeals reopened the case. "We can no longer be permitted to conclude who is male or who is female by the amount of facial hair one has or the size of one's feet," the court ruled.
I mean, aside from the shock that such a case could have come from Kansas ... well, OK, that is pretty much the thing, isn't it? From the land that wanted to abolish evolution, from the state that is trying to jail a teenager for 20 years for having gay sex (which, to be sure, is illegal in Kansas, but still ...) -- from this area, we get a decision that says, "Maybe gender is more than the sum of our physical parts. Maybe we should look at this issue."
Mind, I don't expect this to go anywhere. This IS Kansas, after all. Any decision in favor of J'Noel Gardiner would have to do a delicate tiptoe around their antigay marriage laws, and the Kansas Supreme Court is not known for its delicacy. (Actually, if they simply rule that J'Noel Gardner's legal sex is female, they don't even have to reach the antigay marriage laws -- and a good thing, too. I'm surprised that such a case hasn't risen in Kansas before, but this litigation suggests that the issue of the legal sex of postoperative transsexuals hasn't come up.) And more detail on the facts of the case suggests that things are not as clear as they may seem. (A 40-year age difference plus a late-life marriage tends to make courts ... twitch, whether justified or no.) And somehow attorneys fees are in the mix.
@ 03:34 PM CST [Link]
Well, that's just what the world needs right now, isn't it? Israel vs Syria by way of Lebanon, the Sequel.
And if they think the US would do much more than shake its finger -- OK, shake its finger LOUDLY! -- at Israel when they've been attacked .... they seriously think we'd sit there and say, "No no no! Let them bomb you!" right NOW? (If Hizbullah keeps up with the shelling, we might not even shake a finger.)
@ 02:53 PM CST [Link]
OK. I'll buy irradiation or electrons. I mean, that doesn't really do anything to the gross physical structure, after all. But how the heck do you steam mail? Envelopes popping open right, left and center, checks to pay bills having the ink run so that your creditors get a literal blank check ... that just doesn't seem quite sensible, does it?
@ 01:49 PM CST [Link]
In interviews last week, current and former intelligence and military officials portrayed the growing instability of the Saudi regime—and the vulnerability of its oil reserves to terrorist attack—as the most immediate threat to American economic and political interests in the Middle East. The officials also said that the Bush Administration, like the Clinton Administration, is refusing to confront this reality, even in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks.
Well ... exactly what should they do to confront this reality?
Mind, it's rather more urgent that Saudi Arabia confront it than that we do. With an increasingly fundamentalist and startlingly young population, if they don't do something (other than hiding from the US, that is), the royal family will be overthrown, and we'll not do a thing to help them. (I daresay we may have learned something from the fall of the Shah of Iran. To the House of Saud's detriment.)
And purely as a side note ... it will be fascinating to see how Saudi Arabia reacts not only to publication of interpretation of these intercepts, but the intercepts themselves. Of course, they have to have known, or at least suspected, that the US was monitoring their communications; you don't have that much influence over Great Powers without being a Great Powers and not expect them to watch you closely. (Which is to say, they're probably being monitored by Europe, and possibly Russia, as well.) But most governments can't tolerate such monitoring becoming known, certainly not in this kind of detail.
Another interesting side note: Saudi Arabia as a financial backer of the opposition in Afghanistan in the 80s. Much the position they find themselves in now, in fact. They have to be hoping that the go-between people get themselves killed pretty soon, I'd think.
According to someone who saw the report, it concluded that with only a small amount of explosives terrorists could take the oil fields off line for two years.
Well, DUH. I'm sorry: what thinking person did not know this? How long did it take Kuwait to come back together after the Iraqis deliberately destroyed many of its oil wells? An object lesson isn't enough any more?
Frankly, I can't see how the current regime can possibly "make a transition" of any sort, or how we could help. We don't want the people who would likely take over, and the House of Saud would likely not tolerate becoming a purely symbolic monarchy -- with the restriction in influence and funds that such a transition would imply. A democratic monarchy of some sort would be nice, yes, but a functioning democracy requires education of the general populace at a level that doesn't exist there.
Basically, all current positions for both the US and the House of Saud are thoroughly untenable. It's not likely that the people who would take over the government would destroy the oil fields -- although they are likely to drive the foreigners out. After all, what good does it do to take over the country and then cripple it economically and ecologically? How long would you last, especially if the military is as weak and indolent as it might appear?
@ 12:12 PM CST [Link]
Liberals are up to their old tricks again. Twenty years of treason hasn't slowed them down.
OK, I'll admit it: I am impressed and I was mistaken. I hadn't thought Coulter could stoop lower than her recent screeds on forced conversion of Muslims and the stunning racism she'd displayed. I hadn't thought you could display less logic and more revisionist history. Apparently, you can go lower, you can be more racist, you can be more revisionist.
What impresses me is that everything since Vietnam was apparently the liberals' fault. Everything, you understand. That 12 years of Republican conservative rule in there? Apparently, liberalism in disguise. Who knew? I mean, really, Who Knew? For example, apparently, the fact that the Shah of Iran fell is Carter's fault. The Iranians themselves -- you know, the ones who had the revolution, who held people hostage for a couple years, those guys -- they had nothing to do with it! I never knew that! And apparently, noticing that the military is part of the government, and that Republicans have in recent years been opposed to government's growth, is (a) insane exultation and (b) somehow leads to subsidising the arts. I'm not sure how, exactly, but then what would I know? And apparently, in the calculus of things, it's not possible to be in favor of both a strong military and Head Start -- or to think that at that point in time, Head Start might have been more valuable to the country than a cruise missile. I'm not sure why, but there you go. (I'm also trying to figure out how "regressive" equals "tax cut" in "Times-speak" -- I thought it was an ever-so-slightly more sophisticated position than that, but then, what do I know? Apparently, I must be a liberal traitor! Who knew!)
Of course, it's not going to be possible for her to lose this gig because she's so offensive that even the right wing doesn't want her; after all, that's why Horowitz hired her. But it will be interesting to see if she reaches a point where her fulminations are so embarrassing that Horowitz finds people paying even less attention to him because his judgement in doing this was so demonstrably in error.
I wonder sometimes if she isn't meant to be a distraction. That somewhere, there's A Deep Republican Conspiracy that sticks her out there to be massively distracting while the real policy analysis and development happen elsewhere.
Then I realize that this is the sort of thing that she would think, and I get over myself.
@ 09:49 PM CST [Link]
Oh, my. The NRA is going to have a snit fit again. Mind, it's clearly a case of closing the barn door after the horse is LONG gone, but still ... It'll be interesting to see if this has a ghost of a chance of making it out of committee. After all, at the current time, I don't imagine the Pentagon would like it widely known that they were selling stockpiles of armor piercing ammo to the public.
@ 05:17 PM CST [Link]
Um ... YOW. Now THAT is an aging workforce. You wonder how the government wound up with 45% of its workers in only four agencies within such a tight age range of each other. I mean, if they'd just opened up at the same time and hired all at once and so on, then it would make sense, but State is one of the original departments, FEMA one of the newer ones ... it's very peculiar that it's hitting all at once like that.
Just looking at the sorts of things they want to do, you get the impression that the Budget is going to get a MASSIVE jolt. And under a Republican, too. That's going to thoroughly complicate the issues come campaign time. Especially since revenues will be in a precipitous decline.
@ 04:54 PM CST [Link]
Leaving aside the HORRENDOUS title of the article, it is an interesting piece on how the DC police department is trying to improve relations. I think that the Chicago PD was once trying that, but they've had such literally gruesome encounters lately that you wonder how it's going. They had horrible attrition with their out-gay officers, due to unceasing harassment within the department, and I don't know if that's gotten any better.
Mind, Parson does seem to be a bit ... misguided:
He also routinely walks through a "health club" on 14th Street where sexual rendezvous also happen in the locker room cubicles. He announces his presence over the public-address system and then walks through, shaking hands and handing out business cards. Sex in public is illegal in the District, which is why Parson makes his announcement. He is much more interested in other offenses, such as hate crimes and assaults, that some victims are hesitant to report. But, he said, if there were ever a need to raid such a club, he would want to be the one to do it. "It's the same reason why my father wanted to spank me," growing up, Parson said. "I know he cares, and I know he's not going to hurt me."
I'm sorry, but there's a difference between being spanked by your father and being arrested for having sex in public. The first does not usually carry the YO! GAYBOY ARRESTED FOR BEING PERVERTED IN PUBLIC! stigma. (If you're old enough to be doing such things, and your father is trying to spank you for it, you have many other problems to deal with in any event.)
@ 01:28 PM CST [Link]
You'd think it might have occurred to him that submitting a claim that says that the original defendant never actually made the statement for which you are suing his exwife was just a bit problematic.
It will be fascinating to see what happens if that schlemmiel really does pursue this case. If he actually pursues the financial aspect, surely the fact that everyone involved has said, repeatedly and in print, that the original statement never happened will compromise the results. What is the point of pursuing a case to such an extreme that you're almost guaranteed to lose in court? And you know if his advisors are any good, the legal ones are saying, "Yo, guy, stop while you're ahead," and the image advisors are saying, "You realize you look like a total and complete asshole right now, don't you? You're divorcing your wife, getting into what promises to be a terribly ugly custody fight, joining up with this hot-cha babe (mind, your ex is also fabulously gorgeous, so most people think you're nuts on that count by itself), and pummelling a person in court who has continuously said -- and proven -- 'I didn't say that! I didn't do that! I surrender!' You keep beating them in court like this, and you're not going to be able to go out without getting spat on. You can't stand too many such victories."
What an ass.
@ 12:38 PM CST [Link]
The best strategy in fighting terrorism, some say, is to "disrupt" the groups and cells planning future missions. One way of doing that, already practiced by the United States, is to farm out torture assignments to countries such as Egypt, Jordan, or Saudi Arabia, where they have no compunctions about extracting information from sources with violence or by threatening their family members. [...] The 700 detainees aren't being tortured here, but they aren't being treated very nice. They have been held over a month without charges, many in solitary confinement in 8-by-10-foot cells. Some report being deprived of toothbrushes, showers, and warm clothing. They have limited contact with attorneys and none with their families. The material witness statute allows them to be held only "a reasonable amount of time," and it's clear that many of these detentions are not reasonable. It's approaching Nosenko treatment, and in a few weeks it really will "shock the conscience."
You know, it's probably terribly naive of me, but it never once occurred to me that we did deliberately "farmed out" people for torture. You wonder what that request looks like: "Oh, Egypt, here are a couple of accused terrorists that are Egyptian nationals. We can't get any information out of them, but we're pretty sure they're terrorists so we've decided to deport them anyway, so you can have them back ... Oh, and if you can get some information from them, we'd appreciate hearing about it. We wouldn't even mind if they wind up a little dinged-up or damaged. (Wink wink, know what I mean? Know what I mean? But we never said that, of course.)"
“We are known for humanitarian treatment, so basically we are stuck. ... Usually there is some incentive, some angle to play, what you can do for them. But it could get to that spot where we could go to pressure . . . where we won’t have a choice, and we are probably getting there.”
It will be interesting to see -- several years hence, no doubt -- what the Court does, in fact, have to say about "getting there".
Regarding the people who are merely "detained", it will also be interesting to see what the Court says about indefinite detention that reaches "torture" status. (Technically, it should come sooner, since, as the author notes, habeas corpus has not formally been suspended at the current time. I expect that oversight to be remedied fairly soon. In any event, when such cases do come up, expect the Administration to ask for continuances, to drag its feet, to do anything possible to delay the case.) The precedent set by the Japanese-American internment cases may no longer control, given the results of various cases since then. After all, it's rather difficult for Congress to pass a law stating that Japanese Americans should be recompensed for their unlawful detentions without setting the implicit precedent that detentions based on little more evidence than their ethnicity are illegal.
@ 10:55 AM CST [Link]
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
Search entries:
12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!