Recently in Media Relations:
Fame and Punishment - as the American cult of celebrity reaches even lower lows.
Jerry Springer: the opera. (No, I am NOT making that up.)
Posted by iain at 10:37 PMlouima case continues...
Appeals Court Overturns 3 Convictions in Louima Case: A federal appeals court overturned the convictions of three police officers in the Abner Louima torture case today, finding insufficient evidence they obstructed justice.
What I don't understand is why it matters that Bruder didn't know his false statements would be repeated to a federal grand jury as long as he made those statements to federal investigators. How is it not obstruction of justice to lie to investigators in the first place? It would seem clear that lying under those circumstances is, in and of itself, obstruction.
I also don't understand why having a lawyer who also worked for the police union would prevent you from deflecting blame to another officer, especially since all of those accused were on trial for some aspect of this case. Why would that be an inherent conflict of interest? For that matter, tackling it from another angle, surely the conflict of interest, such as it was, was known from the start. So why on earth would you take on a lawyer in that position, if you thought it would compromise your defense? And why, once you had done so, wouldn't a judge say, "You know what? You knew the situation going in. You deliberately created a situation with potential conflict of interest; therefore, since this was done with intent, there is no conflict."
It will be interesting to see what having this case in the public eye again does to the newly warm and fuzzy feelings between New York and its police department. The problem is, reactions to everything there have been so incredibly polar. Not all police are scumvermin like these, and not all police are incredible heroes. Most are somewhere in between.
Posted by iain at 11:15 AM
Sparrows are pests, wrestling coach says: Aron D. Bright said he grew up on a 390-acre farm, and killing a sparrow is no different than setting a mouse trap. On Tuesday, the 31-year-old teacher and head wrestling coach at Avon High began a two-week suspension without pay for biting the head off a live sparrow in front of team members in December. "It's the same thing as a rat or a mouse. They are pests. They're a big nuisance. They spread disease from farm to farm," he said Tuesday, adding he would like to put the incident behind him.
Sparrows are pests like rats or mice. OK, I can buy that opinion. Especially in cities, most birds tend to have fleas and mites and other nasty things, just like rats. I'll even buy that they spread disease from farm to farm. (Within a town, I suppose it would go from bird to bird. Not a lot for them to affect in a town. But anyway.)
However ... nothing on this planet but prolonged starvation would get me to bite the head off a rat, because it's a disease ridden pest. What sort of idiot thinks that biting the head off a supposedly disease-ridden sparrow is a cool or safe thing to do? I'm not even thinking about the animal cruelty aspect; after all, sparrows are low down on the food chain and what he did is pretty much what will happen to a lot of sparrows. I just don't get why he'd do it. At the ripe old age of 31, you're supposed to be beyond taking up stupid dares.
The school board didn't make the coach undergo counseling -- it is a fairly minor incident in the scheme of things. I can't say as I'd make him do that either. However, the temptation to make him wash his mouth out with very hot water and very powerful antibacterial soap would be very strong, indeed.
Posted by iain at 03:47 PMwithheld evidence
A former prosecutor who has brought six terrorism cases in Manhattan since the 1993 World Trade Center bombing said she withheld evidence and witnesses from juries so sensitive information would not become public. Mary Jo White, who stepped down last month as U.S. attorney in Manhattan, told a group of lawyers Tuesday that withholding the evidence apparently did no harm, since prosecutors won convictions against all 25 defendants.
So ... this means that the evidence and witnesses were almost certainly withheld from the defense, right? Which means that the defense never had the chance to cross examine them and never had the chance to poke holes in their stories in ways that could help their clients, right? And they were almost certainly weak witnesses; even with security issues, if the prosecution had needed them, they'd have used them.
You know, I just don't think I'd brag about that, somehow.
Posted by iain at 03:37 PMaids vaccine
Proposed AIDS vaccine shows promise: The first human studies of a highly anticipated proposed AIDS vaccine indicate that it produces a response in the immune system that may help keep HIV infections in check, researchers said Tuesday. If the vaccine ultimately is proved to work--something that won't be known for several years--it would be given to people after they are infected. The aim would be to limit the ability of the virus to replicate itself, keeping it at a manageable level and slowing--perhaps blocking--the onset of AIDS.
If this does work, this could be a low-cost -- or lower cost, anyway -- method for Africa to stem its ongoing depopulation in some areas. It would also be a lower cost alternative to protease inhibitors and other drugs in the developed world; using it could delay or prevent use of drugs that the virus is developing an increasing resistance to. Unlike a traditional vaccine, this actually can be used in the US, since use would be restricted to already infected individuals. (A standard vaccine carries with it, especially in the early years of use, an not-inconsiderable infection rate. That is, for a certain number of people, the vaccine will give them a full virulent form of the disease, rather than giving them a very mild form to provoke an immune response. A typical infection rate can be as much as 5%, which would send AIDS cases in the developed world soaring. Since the population at large in some parts of Africa already has infection rates approaching 30-50%, the benefits of a traditional vaccine are quite clear.)
I must admit, I'm startled that Merck is developing this. I suppose it's a cynical view of drug companies, but in general, disease is better business than vaccines, especially vaccines that can only be given to limited populations. Merck will make far more from its protease inhibitors than it will from a vaccine, even if it requires somewhat regular booster shots. (Unless they're monthly or weekly boosters, which I rather doubt. Even so, monthly or weekly boosters would be some considerable improvement over several-times-daily multipill regimens.)
Posted by iain at 02:35 PM
Dignity, always dignity. That's all we expect from our politicians, right? Just a bit of dignity, decorum and common sense every now and again.
But in place of dignity, decorum and common sense, you can always just tell people, "Give us big bucks NOW before reform kicks in and we're not allowed to get them any more. It's your last chance to get something out of us until the case makes it through the Supreme Court."
Mind, not that we didn't know perfectly well that this would happen. Nonetheless, watching such craven greed from our elected officials and their parties is extraordinarily distasteful.
In the meantime, while they court the wealthy for their campaigns (and, essentially, a quid pro quo for everyone's particular pocketbooks), the unemployed are left hanging, largely because the House wants to do one last big deal for the wealthy by giving them Yet ANOTHER tax cut.
You remember that old Bloom County strip? One where Milo is trying to persuade Senator Bedfellow to let him do another interview or some such, or he's trying to get a response to an article and eventually the senator consents to listen. And Milo declaims, "Leaving a trail of slime wherever he goes --"
That's what Congress seems like more and more these days.
Posted by iain at 04:57 PMisrael and religion
You know, watching Israel flounder about the issue of religion is fascinating, in a kind of horrifying way. To be sure, since the Israel Supreme Court decision is specifically nonbinding on the rabbinate, all this does is say that if people identify themselves as Jews on their application for an identity card, the state has to accept it if they have the proper supporting documentation. Nothing more. And yet, it seems be a decision that infuriates many people over there. The general opinion seems to be that the Orthodox rabbinate decides what makes a Jew, and the state should accept their decision. The state itself should have no voice in the matter. (In the US, the issue of why the state should even care would render the matter somewhat moot; religion would not normally be considered a relevant item to put on a drivers license or ID card. Except by Ashcroft and friends, of course.)
At the same time, the Israel Supreme Court seems to be the only branch of the government willing to recognize that demolishing the homes of uninvolved people as a matter of policy is inhumane. (And, one might add, counterproductive, depending on the desired goal.)
The first decision provides a pointed example of the tension between the mechanisms of a secular state and a society based on ethnicity and religion. Given that both majority and minority in Israel define themselves almost purely in those terms, it's no wonder that the secular state is spinning apart. The only way it can sustain itself under these circumstances is by becoming repressive to the point of absurdity (vide the destruction of houses just because they're there).
Posted by iain at 02:01 PMsleeping with the enemy
Sleeping with the enemy: After nuns kissing rabbis and wolves necking with sheep, Ezra and Selim could feature in Benetton's next advertisement campaign. Ezra, an Israeli Jew, and Selim, a Palestinian Muslim, live, sleep -- and hide together. The gay couple faces arrest at any moment: Selim for being illegally on Israeli soil, Ezra for helping, hiring and sheltering him. They took time off, on Valentine's Day, to describe their personal hell. [...]
And a hell it is ... although more so for Selim than for Ezra. I can understand that they both love their country ... or countries, whichever ... but I can't see how they would see a future together there. At least, not a future that anyone sane would want. Even if they wanted to emigrate, Selim's criminal record would bar him from coming here (and no sane Arab would want to come here, now, either) and might pose difficulties for Canada and Europe, as well.
[Ezra] was scandalized when an Israeli policeman took him aside once and asked: Aren't you afraid Selim will kill you? "The relationship between Jews and Arabs can only be one way. We are the masters and they are the servants," says Ezra. Most Israelis "can't imagine an equal relationship. Palestinians are like Indian immigrants cleaning the floors at Heathrow airport -- they're transparent." Ezra also dismisses the suggestion that right wing Jews might target him for publicly revealing his love for a Palestinian. "I may be gay, but I'm not a sissy," says Ezra.
I dare say these days that the one thing Palestinians in Israel are not is transparent.
And he's a fool if he thinks that bullets give a damn whether or not he's a "sissy".
If they get caught together by the extremists on one side or the other, they'll be tortured and killed as collaborators; they may not even care that they're gay. (Except that it would probably lead to them being raped along the way.)
Posted by iain at 12:49 PMbritney spears, physicist?
Britney Spears guide to Semiconductor Physics: semiconductor physics, Edge Emitting Lasers and VCSELs: It is a little known fact, that Ms Spears is an expert in semiconductor physics. Not content with just singing, in the following pages, she will guide you in the fundamentals of the vital laser components that have made it possible to hear her super music in a digital format.
My goodness. Who knew? I mean, Who Knew?
And what an ... interesting search engine she's got, too!
Posted by iain at 11:51 AMhell freezes over, news at ten
Helms admits 'shame' over inaction on AIDS
I swear to god, I have no idea what to say about this. My jaw still hurts from where it dropped to the floor. (Wait 'till you get to the part about U2. No, really, it's in there.)
Helms on Wednesday also praised the efforts of Janet Museveni, the first lady of Uganda, a nation in east central Africa, for her efforts to stop the spread of AIDS through a campaign based on "biblical values and sexual purity."
OK, see, THAT I understand. THAT sounds more like the Jesse Helms we all know and loathe. Nonetheless, despite everything else, I can't imagine that the various bills he's sponsored on the subject -- he's sponsored bills!? -- would contain the phrase "biblical values and sexual purity", if only because any such bill would be blatantly unconstitutional on its face. He's apparently actually done one or two things that were ... good. (You know, the one thing I find mildly distressing about that sentence is actually the "a nation in east central Africa" part. Not that it isn't, of course, but ... don't most newspaper readers already know that?)
Posted by iain at 10:41 AM
... OK, that's different. I'm guessing that the lesson there is, if you're going to be a criminal, don't wear those baggy style pants. You'll just come to a bad end even faster than you might expect.
Posted by iain at 03:22 PMthe court
Meanwhile, back at the Supreme Court .... my, but they've been peculiarly busy little beavers, haven't they?
The case of Atkins v Virginia is fascinating in that it makes plain the some of the reasoning going on behind the state's defense of capital punishment generally: O'Connor, again the swing vote, feels that it's intuitively obvious that states who oppose executing people also oppose executing the retarded. Still, Virginia Assistant Attorney General Pamela Rumpz makes an impassioned argument for those states' right to change their minds. Indeed, she makes an impassioned argument for executing even 5-year-old murderers, so long as they are capable of deliberation and premeditation and of assisting their counsel. Indeed, Rumpz offers the most passionate defense of a jury's right to erroneously convict and execute a retarded person that I have ever heard.
In other words, Virginia's position can be reduced to the following proposition: We don't care if they're retarded. We don't care if they can really understand what happened. We don't care if they haven't even made a vague approach to puberty. In fact, we don't give a damn if the retarded sum'bitch even commited the crime. We just want to KILL someone for it. My, what a haven of sophistication, mercy and enlightenment Virginia seems to be. Remind me NEVER to live anywhere near it.
In any event, although some are predicting a 5-4 decision in favor of Atkins, I suspect that he will be executed. I suspect the breakdown of the court is exactly as this author describes: 4-1-4. And unless O'Connor signs definitively onto one side or the other, without a firm consensus on the Supreme Court, the lower court decision stands. I also cannot imagine that, absent firm treaty obligations, the Supreme Court cares one jot about international opinion; if they did, the death penalty would never have been reinstated, now would it?
The Court also refused to hear the VoyeurDorm case. To be sure, Tampa was trying to illegally extend its zoning laws in a way which had clearly not been intended. However, I should imagine that Tampa will now simply go back to the drawing board and rework not their zoning laws but their business permit laws so that they are more restrictive on adult businesses. The Court has long held that although you can't simply forbid a type of legal business to operate, you can lumber it with increasingly onerous restrictions that have much the same effect. I'm surprised that Tampa didn't try this before going the legal route; it would have been a damn sight cheaper, at least initially, and had a stronger chance of success. Nonetheless, you would have expected the Court to hear this case, even if they generally agreed with the result, because there's a long line of cases from other jurisdictions poised to follow it. Although other circuits are generally advised to follow precedent from each other, it's not specifically required. You'd think the court might want an actual blanket decision that specifically says, "Look, here's what we think."
The Court also refused to hear a Ten Commandments case out of Indiana. However, in this case, unlike the VoyeurDorm case, it's clear why they refused to hear it: the justices are so badly divided over this issue that they've now decided to run madly away from it as long as they can. The archconservatives feel that the Ten Commandments should be shown everywhere, anywhere, under any pretext that can be made to fit. The liberal justices feel that no time, anywhere, should the Commandments be displayed on state property. The moderate middle doesn't know what to think, and can't get itself together enough to decide to hear the case; it seems that the Court divides 3-3-3 on this issue, since only four votes are needed to hear a case.
And in another case that will, most assuredly, reach the Court in one to three years, a federal district court judge has decided that fingerprint evidence is inadmissible as currently used in most courts. Since that knocks 91 years of jurisprudence on its head, the decision will certainly be appealed, no matter which way it falls out. Given the circumstances, I can't imagine that it wouldn't reach the Court. Depending on how the Court of Appeals decides, I would also expect the Court to refuse this case if possible; I can't imagine that they want to overturn such a long history, especially since so many people are in jail based on not much more than fingerprint evidence. The courts would suddenly become a nightmare of habeas corpus requests.
Posted by iain at 03:11 PMbankruptcy
Bankruptcy Reform Bill in Trouble Again: ... there are substantive reasons why bankruptcy reform has bogged down, officials say. "The longer it's out there, the more people are reading it," said a Democratic critic. "That isn't good for the bill."
You know, it's a sad commentary on the government when it's actually bad for legislation to be read. I mean, yes, in the case of bad legislation -- which this most assuredly is -- then it's a good thing for more and more people to have the chance to examine it and realize what it says. But as a comment on the process ... it seems to say that Congress relies, as a normal means of doing business, on the fact that things move fast enough that we simply don't know what they're doing. And that's just sad.
That aside, I am surprised that the weak economy is grounds for business support to fall off. You would think that the weak economy, which has brought with it a sharp spike in both business and personal bankruptcies, would strengthen business support. Get that puppy passed now! before too many people get out of their debts! After all, this bill is primarily driven by the credit industry, and secondarily by banks generally. You'd think they've bought enough votes in Congress to get this through. The Shrub has already said -- many many many times -- that he'll sign any sort of reasonable reform, and he doesn't seem to think that any bill passed by both houses is UNreasonable.
Posted by iain at 02:41 PM
According to poll, more blacks support Bush after Sept 11 than before. [...] According to some polls, Bush's support from blacks more than doubled after the Sept.11 attacks.
I believe the proper reaction to this is ... oh, what's that word I'm looking for ... oh, yes.
DUH.
You're the political leader at the end of the initial stages of a war in which you take out the government that protected the people who attacked you. I'm thinking that the only place you wouldn't have sharply higher support would be among people who are contrary just because.
However.
You notice how they don't actually stick any numbers on anything? The Shrub's support "more than doubled". Um, yes ... so that means that somewhat less than 20% of blacks think he's not doing a horrid job.
In any event, wait a year until his policies really start to kick in. Assuming no more major attacks on the country, we'll see how well he's doing then.
Posted by iain at 01:26 AMmassachusetts
Quoted in large part because the Boston Globe articles go away with blinding speed:
SJC limits prosecution for sodomy: In a ruling hailed as historic by gay rights advocates, the state's highest court yesterday gutted longstanding sodomy laws, ruling that people who engage in sodomy in semipublic places such as parking lots, wooded areas, and public beaches cannot be prosecuted as long as they make sure they cannot be seen by others. [...] In the unanimous ruling written by Justice Roderick I. Ireland, the court technically threw out the case on the grounds that none of GLAD's plaintiffs were currently facing criminal prosecution for violating the two antisodomy statutes, first codified in 1697. Before it dismissed the case, the court gave GLAD some of what it wanted by extending to the antisodomy laws rulings from 1974 and 1981 that decriminalized other forms of private, consensual sexual acts between adults. [...] The SJC declined to revisit the definition of what is a public place and what is a private area, ruling only that acts of sodomy are legal as long as they are done in private or out of public view.
Good heavens. You know, I'd have bet good money you couldn't get a decision like THAT out of any court in this land. Not as such, in any event. But the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) said otherwise.
That leaves you wondering exactly what it is that the Massachusetts sodomy laws do cover. Surely nonconsensual sodomy would be covered under sexual assault laws -- beyond a certain point, you don't generally need to reach specific acts.
Also, could someone explain prosecutor logic? Whenever a case like this comes up, the state always seems to make these two arguments simultaneously: (1) the state wants the right to prosecute consensual sodomy, just because; (2) the state generally does not prosecute consensual sodomy. Um ... what? If you never do something, why on earth would you want the right to do so? I understand that law enforcement is loath to lose any tools whatsoever, but what is the purpose of keeping a tool you not only don't use but don't really want to use?
Posted by iain at 01:17 AMqueer penguins
The male penguins, each about 14 years old, can't get enough of each other. The couple have been together for the past eight years, and [have] sex whenever they can, which is often. Presumably penguins can tell the guys from the gals, but zoo official apparently can't. For years they thought the pair were one of each. The truth didn't come out until staff carried out a blood test.
I gather that boy penguins don't have particularly prominent genitalia.
Penguins. Hmm.
You realize, of course, that the fundies will say that one penguin was recruited into this immoral lifestyle by the older. Surely he wouldn't have thought about this had he not been seduced! If it hadn't been for the immoral temptations of that wily Wendell, Cass would be a Bible-reading, god-fearing, happily married, heterosexual ..... penguin.
Although apparently they haven't been shunned by their fellow penguins in the colony. I gather that the others are terribly accepting of the heathen in their midst.
Yes. Well. Moving on ....
Posted by iain at 01:00 AMelectoral college
I will admit that this piece on electoral college reform utterly and completely baffles me. Not so much because he advocates the retention of the electoral college -- it's a fairly standard conservative position -- but because his arguments are so wretchedly bad. I'd expect better from the National Review.
Though some dismiss states' rights and their role in the federal system, the fact remains that states counterbalance the federal government.
OK ... but what has that got to do with the electoral college, as such? Yes, its members are chosen by the states, through various methods, but precisely what aspect of the federal government is the electoral college counterbalancing? It's designed to counterbalance the people, not the government itself.
States gained a voice in presidential selection as states because "The State governments may be regarded as constituent and essential parts of the federal government; whilst the latter is nowise essential to the operation or organization of the former" (Federalist 45). The constitutional counterbalance would be radically upset without the electoral college, thus leaving our rights less guarded.
OK, but if that's true, then the argument anhilates itself. If the state governments are components of the federal government, then likewise the electoral college, chosen by the state governments, must be a component of the federal government. The government can't counterbalance itself.
Also, the electoral college moderates competing factions, which would certainly flourish under a popular election scheme. At present, a simple majority of voters ? whether of a political party, a special interest, or a few large states ? cannot force its will on the nation. That is, the electoral college protects minority rights.
Ah. Well, I'm sure that the ethnic minorities of this country feel ever so protected right now, what with minority voting rights having been trampled in Florida and Tennessee during the recent unpleasantness known as the 2000 election. (And yes, I'm perfectly well aware that this isn't what Edwards means. That said, he should look to the actual situation. Political factions, as such, aren't the only minority to consider. For that matter, how does the electoral college protect against faction when factions were able to manipulate the vote count itself to gain control?) And all of that said, surely the one group the electoral college did not protect were the 500,000 people who provided the majority margin for Gore, whose votes were essentially nullified by the decisions regarding one and only one state.
The electoral college fosters moderation and compromise. A candidate who could win the presidency by popular election alone would look very different from one chosen by a majority of all the states' electors. Not only the winner, but all presidential candidates would look less like Bush and Gore and more like Ralph Nader or Lyndon LaRouche.
And that statement is utterly nonsensical. For one thing, the candidates are moderated more by the party than by the electoral college -- after all, it is true that if you can appeal to the most people, you will generally win the election. And if you can get the most votes in a state, you win ALL of its electoral votes; therefore it behooves the candidates to tailor themselves to appeal to the most people, regardless of the existence of the electoral college. If we destabilized the two party system, then it is true that we would have more extreme candidates and a more fractured electorate, but again, that is nothing to do with the electoral college as such. (That said, an electorate that highly fractured would render the electoral college irrelevant; no single candidate would be able to gain a majority in the college, which would throw the election to the House. That would be vastly entertaining, but given the rules under which House elections operate, hardly more representative.)
In our over two hundred years' history, the four presidents who won by a majority of the electoral vote while losing the popular vote each governed legitimately. So did the several presidents who won office with less than a majority of the popular vote. The electoral college guaranteed that they would.
Not only nonsensical, but a flat revision of history in some respects. Martin Van Buren, the last president to be elected with a majority of the college and a minority of the vote, was referred to by the public and press during his presidency as His Fraudulency. To whom does this sound like accepted legitimacy? To say that the people accepted the results because they did not rise up in rebellion is not quite the same as saying they accepted the legitimacy of a particular presidency. The presidents who won less than a majority of the popular vote had countervailing arguments brought up time and again: (1) in their favor, that they got more votes than any other single candidate, and (2) against them, that more people collectively voted for the other candidates combined than for the winner. That first argument, however tenuous it may seem, gave them their thin strand of legitimacy. (Given that we have relatively few one-term presidents in our history, I would also suggest that performance granted them enough legitimacy in people's eyes that they won outright majorities to go on for a second term, as did Clinton, for example.)
The other thing to think about is the fact that, absent the sort of mess that we had in the recent unpleasantness, the electoral college does not intrude onto the popular mind. At All. When people cast their votes, they're generally not thinking, "Now I'm voting for my elector so they can vote for president." They're thinking, "Well, I just voted for president." People argue about the Shrub and his minority because it is an actual minority. People argued about Clinton and his plurality because it was a plurality. The fact that both of them had electoral college majorities is entirely irrelevant to how people think of the process.
The other thing to note about the electoral college itself is that it actually inflates the importance of heavily urban areas and states, and not the rural ones as generally thought. Yes, hypothetically, seven states could give a candidate a majority of the popular vote. (The reasonable argument to make is: if that's where most of the people live, why on earth shouldn't a relatively restricted area be able to determine the outcome? That's where the people actually are. Arguing the number of the states versus the number of the people is a rum game, in that respect.) However, no matter what you do, it's possible for a very small number of states, and even a small number of cities, to determine the outcome. Let's say, for example, you had a candidate who formed a powerful appeal to urban interests somehow -- in general, the residents of large cities across the country have more political interests in common with each other than with the rural areas of a given state -- advocated the cause of cities everywhere. The candidate could carry the election by carrying the following cities by a significant margin (say 60-65%, which is not an unreasonable assumption; we also assume the candidate takes only 30-35% of the nonurban votes):
According to these calculations, a candidate could carry 22 cities in only eight states (just one more than Edwards cites), carry well over half the vote ... and still only have 225 electoral votes, leaving 313 electoral votes outstanding. To be sure there are regionalisms and other issues that would perhaps prevent such a constellation of votes -- although Clinton took all but Texas in 1996. You would also end up pulling in other states through other factors -- for example, New Jersey, for all that it is a separate state, essentially has populations that function as suburbs of either New York City or Philadelphia.)
Basically, no matter what you do, you're going to have some sort of disproportion possible. You can have a majority of the actual people voting one way, while a majority of states votes another, and wind up with a minority-votes president. You can value the votes of some cities and states over others. There is no way in which the electoral college doesn't promote some sort of disproportion. Although electors are technically allowed to exercise discretion ("rogue electors", indeed), they never do in practice. So given all that, why should the electoral college continue to exist? Perhaps it had more point when the country had fewer people, and they were more distributed in some areas ... but these days, it has really served out whatever purpose it had. It's time to retire the thing.
Posted by iain at 12:58 AM
You know, I'd wondered about the answer to this question myself. (Well, ok, not so much about the blood vessels thing at the end, as that's only of extremely academic interest, but the rest of it, yes.)
Posted by iain at 06:11 PMcondit
TheKCRAChannel.com - Condit: Re-Election Could Help Levy Case: "Well, I don't know what the public does and I don't know what you guys do, you probably won't even report it again if I'm not around. But I intend to make sure there is a closure and resolvement of the case, and I think the fact that I would be in Washington, D.C., I would be able to at least have some contact with law enforcement to see that they don't let the thing sort of die out."
I do not believe he said that. Surely the one thing he should want above all else is for that thing to sort of die out. After all, if it fades, maybe people will stop thinking of him as a possible murderer. As it stands, he's well behind his party's annointed one in fund raising, which means that even if his constituents like the job he did he'll have a hard time getting re-elected in the first place.
And does California really need a representative who doesn't speak the English language? The word is "resolution", Mr Condit, not "resolvement". You might want to get one of them dictionary thingummybobs; I understand that they have, like, words and stuff in 'em.
Oh, yes, and his wife is suing the National Enquirer.
Nothiing like a nice, calm campaign, is there?
Posted by iain at 05:37 PMguantanamo case dismissed
Suit on Detainees' Behalf Is Dismissed: A lawsuit demanding that Afghan prisoners at Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba be given access to U.S. courts was dismissed Thursday by a federal judge in Los Angeles. U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz [...] wrote, U.S. courts lack jurisdiction because the prisoners are being held on Cuban soil over which America has no sovereignty. USC law professor Erwin Chemerinsky, who argued the petitioners' case before Matz on Thursday, said the ad hoc group will appeal the ruling to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
Well, like that's a surprise.
I am surprised, however, that he based the denial of jurisdiction on Cuban sovereignty; typically, that's not how such cases are dismissed. (Also, it baffles common sense to say that Cuba exercises anything resembling sovereignty over Guantanamo.) The typical dismissal comes because US bases overseas exist in a sort of neverland, where nobody's rules apply to anyone but US military personnel. And the last statement in the article is entirely disingenuous: how can you contact relatives if you can't contact prisoners themselves? The US isn't allowing any real outside contact, aside from the Red Cross.
Posted by iain at 05:27 PManderson and enron and cheney
Settlement idea floated by Andersen: A spokesman for the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit by shareholders confirmed that a New York law firm representing Andersen indicated last week "that Andersen would like to talk settlement." Some sources say Andersen has offered as much as $800 million to settle all Enron-related claims against it.
Indeed. Not surprising, although perhaps a shade early. However, if they're willing to float a figure of $800 million at this stage, that means they're expecting quite literally billions of dollars in exposure at this point, almost all after the malpractice insurance pays out. (And, as a side note: anyone want to bet that Anderson loses its malpractice insurance after this? No insurance company is going to want to touch a company where the settlements will hurt them this badly.)
In the meanwhile, the General Accounting Office sued Cheney, as threatened. The timing, of course, puts Cheney and His Fraudulency in a horrible situation. It's difficult to argue that your arrangements with people should remain secret when secrecy led to the largest bankruptcy in history, the loss of thousands of jobs, the loss of pensions and investments ... it's just not reasonable to expect anyone to accept this argument at this point, with active investigations spring up everywhere.
Bush administration officials see the suit as a political weapon being wielded by Waxman to paint Bush and Cheney as trying to conceal their links to Enron.
Well, if they're not, then it would be easy to deal with, wouldn't it? Disclose, and all will be seen.
Posted by iain at 05:13 PMjudging protest AGAIN
Russians want gold for Slutskaya
Oh, for the love of freakin' god.
Why not? Give 'em a gold. Give everyone a gold. It can be the Winter of Everyone's Content.
I would like to point out, however, that there is at least a definitional difference between bias, which is unavoidable in a judged event no matter how hard you try, and misconduct, which is what the French judge confessed to of her own volition in front of witnesses (no matter how hard she tries to take it back).
Posted by iain at 02:52 PM
Oh. The. Agony. Oh. The. Poor. Mistreated. People.
Would someone please bitchslap the Russian and Korean delegations? They surely do need it right now.
The fun part was the Korean press conference in which they asserted that the medal should go to the person who crossed the line first, and not the most photogenic or predestined one or something like that. Leaving aside the fact that I mostly agree with them ... People, it's short track speed skating. Outside the individual sports federations and the families and friends of the competitors ... nobody cares. Really. It's just not that big a deal.
That aside, according to commentary, when you race in short track, you apparently have to sign an agreement stating that you will abide by rules regarding "race calls" by the referee. There IS no right of protest, no means for filing an appeal of such calls.
As for their threats to take their toys ... er, pardon, their athletes and go home ... fine. Go. It's been nice. Of course, it would be a slightly more meaningful threat if there were more than just two days of competition left, and if they were actually doing it before the big Russia-US hockey game. And despite the fact that the figure skating mess did not actually hurt the Russians -- they did not have to forfeit their gold medal -- the Russians are still in a snit over that.
The general thinking is that the Russians are trying to place pressure on the figure skating judges at tonight's womens event, and on the referee in tomorrow's hockey game. I don't know about hockey, but figure skating judges tend to get awfully bloody-minded when you put that sort of overt public pressure on them. It's not likely to be all that helpful, especially since there are very few judged events left. In fact, there are very few events left. Really, Russia and Korea just need to get a grip.
Posted by iain at 09:04 PMjudging, scandals two, three, and four
Well, let's see ...
Lithuanian ice dancing protest denied. Check. (Gotta love that "terse" in there.)
France and Japan sniping at each other over this. Check. (And nobody sniping at us. Curious, that. Not that we did anything, but they've all been sniping at us all week over this, and now they stop? Not that I mind.)
Korea near operatically furious over a disqualification that strips them of the gold in the 1500 meter short track speed skating; this after a disallowed Korean protest that Ohno's previous race wasn't rerun or that Ohno himself hadn't been disqualified instead of getting the silver medal. Check.
The ISU must just be wanting this week to end, and SOON. It's pretty solidly become the Olympic stuff of nightmares for them, and the sad thing is, it's largely of their own making. Leaving aside the issue of whether skating belongs in the Olympics, it's been apparent for years that the judging of various events needed a sharp overhaul, and the ISU has been reluctant (to put it mildly) to monkey with tradition, and so Tradition has been making monkeys of them with great glee and wild abandon.
Posted by iain at 01:20 AMisrael vs ... somebody
"I will respond to the Palestinian terror, but I will not drag this nation into all-out war [... ] I will not accept detrimental advice to start an all-out war, bring down the PA, and recapture West Bank cities," Sharon said in the inner cabinet, according to Channel 2 television. "Arafat will remain the address."
Ah. Well, that's good to know, I suppose. Somehow, I'd assumed that twice bombing the headquarters of the person whom they have been dealing with, in their peripatetic way, as a functional head of state and government was more or less a very direct declaration of war. So good to discover that I was mistaken.
Sharon also denied reports that he is under pressure from the United States to delay an escalation of the conflict in order to avoid interfering with an imminent US attack on Iraq.
IMMINENT? Um ... yes, well, I'd be rather startled if we did anything more than the usual sorts of attacks we've been doing over the no-fly zones and going after radar and whatnot, at least in the short term. It seems that the Shrub's strategy to make everyone, allies and enemies and US, nervous about this country's intentions and actions has been wildly successful.
Speaking of intentions and actions ... what the hell is up with Israel? Their actions are diverging so far from their stated intent that it's beginning to look quite odd. They state, over and over, that Arafat is irrelevant to the peace process. Fair enough; it would be hard for even the most partisan observer to conclude much else at the moment. Then they state that it's Arafat's responsibility as head of what the Palestinians call a government to rein in the terrorists. Um ... OK, but if he's irrelevant, then how do they expect him to ... Whatever. So, "Arafat will remain the address." Fine. But in that case, if you're expecting him to rein in the terrorists, hadn't you oughtn't to better leave him something to rein in with? Israel, in its putative "wisdom", has been making sincere and pointed attacks on Arafat's command and control abilities. Assuming that he had had either the volition or the ability to control the terrorists at any point when this latest spasm began, he certainly doesn't have either one now.
Assuming that Israel's actions reflect some sort of policy consideration (about which there seems to be considerable doubt), the only thing that seems possible is that Israel is trying to push the Palestinians in two directions simultaneously. By showing Arafat to be as powerless as he is, they're hoping that some of the people underneath him will kill him (thus sparing them the effort and opprobrium and massive retaliation by terrorists and others) and demonstrate some ability to control the terrorists if they really want peace. By showing Arafat to be powerless, they're also hoping to start a Palestinian civil war, which will thoroughly distract the terrorists. (Jordan, with a Palestinian majority, will be ever so pleased.) Mind, only the desperate or the insane (and at the moment, I suspect Israel's government is both) would be making such dedicated efforts to start a civil war in the countries next door; such things have a nasty habit of spilling over. (Think I'm exaggerating? Look at Liberia. Depending on whom you believe, either Liberia's 17-year civil war has spread to Sierra Leone, or Sierra Leone's totally independent civil war spilled over into Liberia, and both countries say that Guinea has been interfering, while Guinea says that both countries have been trying to foment civil war in that country. And a situation like this is what Israel is trying to provoke. To be sure, Israel feels they could stay on top of it -- certainly they're both better organized and better armed than all three African countries combined -- but to believe you can control someone else's civil war takes either amazing optimism or amazing idiocy and a stunning disregard of world history.)
More interesting is the fact that the Palestinians and the terrorists, so far, are refusing to be drawn in. Part of the reason is that Israel's escalation, while incremental, seems almost unrelated. Leaving aside, for the moment, the incident of the Karine A, in general, Arafat's government hasn't had anything to do with the attacks, and Israel knows this perfectly well. Why would you attack someone whom you know was not involved? To turn the situation around, if the terrorist groups from Israel's own far right (which do exist) decided to carry out bombing attacks against, for example, Jordanian targets, I think Israel would find it rather puzzling to be held directly responsible the way they've held the Palestinians responsible. I think they would also consider it an unjustified act of war should Jordan decide to bomb the Knesset in retaliation, yet this is what Israel themselves have essentially done.
Eh. Eventually, Israel will get one of the things they want, I suppose. Either some young radicals will decide they're tired of only attacking Israel and they want power NOW, or one of their bombs will hit somewhere that Arafat actually happens to be, or their intelligence services will simply assassinate him ... something will happen.
I'm pretty sure that ultimately, it won't be anything good, however.
Posted by iain at 12:48 AM
Justices Indicate Choice Crucial in Vouchers Case: The Supreme Court heard oral arguments today in a case that could decide the constitutionality of programs that provide taxpayer-supported vouchers for students to enroll in church-affiliated schools. [...] Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who is widely perceived as the swing vote in the case, [asked]: "Do we not have to look at all the school choice options?" Beyond vouchers, Cleveland students can attend a range of charter and magnet schools as well as receiving as using a $500 voucher to purchase tutoring. When Chanin protested that charter schools, which generally have independent boards and curriculums but are overseen by public school systems, are just public schools, O'Connor suggested that the only thing that made them public was their funding source.
I believe the thing to say at that point is : DUH! And also: she's quite wrong there. Charter schools are subject to more than nominal public school system oversight. But functionally, what makes a public school a public school is the use of public funds as its principal source of money. If the justices are going to try to draw that particular line in the sand, then there's no point in even waiting for the decision; they've already decided to support these school vouchers no matter what. After all, you don't actually use the vouchers for the charter and magnet schools; they're just higher end public schools. Functionally, because no other private school will take them, vouchers constitute an improper support of religion. It's not deliberate or by intent, necessarily, but you do have to look at effects as well as intent.
I wonder if they have made up their minds, why they didn't just announce a per curiam decision. It may well be that they want to hash out the issues. Unfortunately, the Post doesn't go into a lot of detail; with a bit of luck, Litwick from Slate may do tomorrow, but she's also got the execution case, which is a tad juicier.
Posted by iain at 04:52 PM
Well, that figures. Frankly, given that you've got people working eight hour days at a job that's truly painfully boring most times, I'm only surprised that it doesn't get noticed more often. (That last clause was most carefully phrased, thank you very much.)
Posted by iain at 06:30 PMalabama vs practically everyone
I feel terribly sorry for this poor woman, being denied access to her children by a bigoted father and another bigoted judge. Assuming that the Court decides to take the case -- and, to be quite honest, I would be utterly shocked if they did -- it will be an interesting marker for how DOMA would fare, should any such case get to the Supreme Court. The central issue is also one of those things that comes up fairly rarely, and has special applicability to homosexuals: how is the law to be dealt with when behavior or actions that are not only legal but condoned in one state are flatly illegal in another? How do you determine who is right? You'd think federal law would then supervene, and federal law is utterly silent on homosexuality, aside from the military. However, this Court being what it is, I can't imagine that they want to go anywhere near this case, no matter how ripe the controversy (as the saying goes). They don't want DOMA to come near their courtroom, and they have to know that this case might just prime the pump, especially if they find any grounds for overturning the state courts.
Unfortunately, I can't see as there are grounds for an ethics complaint to succeed against Alabama's chief justice, either. Homosexual conduct is in fact illegal in Alabama (along with vibrators, certain sexual positions, and in fact just about anything that doesn't have to do with missionary sex between men and women -- because Alabama is Just Like That) and it is not entirely unreasonable to describe someone who engages in illegal activity as either unfit or immoral. That said ... to say that he demonstrated judicial bias against the defendant would be vastly understating the case. In a 9-0 decision, it is also quite irrelevant.
Posted by iain at 04:32 PMjudging, sport deux
This time, Russia claims judging bias. Hmm. Gee, I wonder if this has anything to do with being (a) a judged sport without something objective to grab onto and (b) a way to get back at Canada for the ice skating mess.
Anyone want to bet that, absent people falling on their faces, there will be some sort of brouhaha over the women's figure skating? All the top people are either from the US -- which is somehow being blamed for the Canadian pairs skating stuff because our media publicised it -- or from Russia (Kwan, Hughes and Cohen versus Slutskaya and Butyrskaya). Alas, no Canadians to make it truly nice and juicy.
And may I just add that I find it vastly amusing that in all this, it's suddenly become the North American media? I mean ... no offense intended, but basically, this is a way to lump together two disparate types of coverage in order to say "USA Sucks!" It was not, after all, the US media with headlines like "ROBBED!" with the exception of the Olympic commentators on NBC, who could have been ignored. The Canadian media, on the other hand was almost operatically irate. The ISU is not remotely a US image problem -- they're headquartered in Lausanne, for heaven's sake. ISU judging had nothing intrinsically to do with the USOC, Salt Lake organizing committee, or even the running of the games, really. Yet this is a US image problem, caused by American self-centeredness and arrogance in an issue in which we had no stake whatsoever. Right. Yes. Whatever. (And it's a US paper making that bizarre argument, although reporting on how foreign officials view things. ) And somehow, the fact that a judge reportedly admitted to collusion in front of four witnesses, including an official bound by regulation to report such things, has nothing to do with anything. (Apparently, our horrifically powerful American media forced that French judge to confess her sins in an open meeting; FORCED her, do you hear?! The fact that the woman couldn't keep her mouth shut is All Our Fault! That said, focusing on her was somewhat ridiculous. After all, it was a 5-4 vote. What about the other four people who somehow felt the Russians won? Her collusion would have been meaningless without their vote. Actually, it's really only three people, as Russia could have reasonably been expected to vote for their person, given any sort of decent performance at all, which was exactly what they got. So what about those three people, hmm?)
Posted by iain at 03:57 PMcoping
"If you can't laugh at life you might as well check out," says Peggy Neff, "and I'm not ready to check out yet." Peggy Neff lost Sheila Hein, her partner of almost 18 years [in the Sept. 11 Pentagon crash]. A house with four cats, two college students, a newborn and a turtle are keeping her busy. [...]
Three years ago, the couple agreed to take in a pair of cats owned by a friend's daughter, who was moving into a University of Maryland dorm near their home in Hyattsville, Md. That made four.
A year later, the girl moved in with Hein and Neff.
Then her boyfriend joined them.
They had their baby girl in December.
"I guess the moral is never take in anyone's cats," jokes Neff.
navigator
Speaking of browsers and websites ... OK. I give. I surrender.
You may think I'm speaking of abandoning Navigator 4 support. Au contraire! I'm abandoning the attempt to figure out (1) why the style sheet for this site, despite validating, breaks in Netscape 6/Mozilla, and (2) why, despite my best efforts to do so, it doesn't break in Navigator 4.X. (Rather, it breaks in only insignificant ways. This despite the fact that I've functionally abandoned Navigator 4 support since it's only used by 8% of the people who surf by here.)
I ran across the Navigator 4 issue when I first redesigned the site to work with CSS. Basically, everything I read said that Navigator 4 couldn't handle a three column CSS layout, just don't worry about it, the browser won't be able to handle it so the style sheet will break and it will degrade gracefully.
Only ... it didn't break. In fact, in its original version, it was substantially the same layout across all browsers and platforms. This is not to say that Navigator 4 liked the layout, you understand -- if you surfed to this site and Navigator was having a bad day, it crashed immediately. It was also considerably more finnicky about closed tags than any of the other browsers. But still, as long as I remembered to do that, it essentially displayed as desired.
Recently, I decided to get rid of the left column. Redesigned the logo block slightly. And that's it. (Seriously, compare the front page to this one and you'll see that it's just a design tweak rather than some sort of substantial change.) For some reason, this affected the way that the DIVs line up in Navigator; the right sidebar is now inside and at the bottom of the main content section. Eh. Whatever. The content displays OK, and that's the important bit. I actually included an invisible block, as recommended, to break Navigator 4 display; I also upgraded certain aspects to CSS2, which isn't supported at all in Navigator 4. It cheerfully ignored the invisible class block, mangled the CSS2 in a way which is actually somewhat interesting to look at and displayed anyway. Weird.
Netscape 6/Mozilla, on the other hand, has broken quite badly. I'm guessing that it has inconsistent support for CSS2, since the old style sheet, which was pure CSS1, generally displayed without issues.
I'm definitely never going to be a high end web site designer, I can tell you that right now.
UPDATE: OK, even weirder? Now, for no apparent reason, Netscape 6.2.1, built on a Mozilla base, renders the site, no problem. Mozilla 0.9.8, however, is still AWOL on the style sheet.
Posted by iain at 11:34 AMafghanistan
In a Shift, U.S. Uses Airstrikes to Help Kabul: American forces appear to have opened a new phase in the war in Afghanistan with two bombing raids over the weekend that Afghan commanders in the area said were aimed at clashing militia forces rather than the Taliban or Al Qaeda.
Well ... it had to be expected, really. It's not reasonable to assume that we could just set Karzai up and abandon him, especially since he hasn't yet got a military and we've set up other warlords with which he must deal. As long as Afghanistan remains this uncontrolled, it can be a haven for terrorists, so it's only in our interest to make sure that the government is stable and that those opposing it are controlled.
At the same time, you wonder if it will be worth it, or if we have the endurance for it. While most of the ordinary people of Afghanistan would seem to be interested in peace, the other warlords wandering around are only interested in power. The Shrub's administration has already sent thoroughly conflicting signals: that we want out out OUT! and that we'll stay and support Karzai, but that we won't take part in any peacekeeping. So where does this leave us or them?
Posted by iain at 10:38 AMwilliams v georgia
Killer's Sentence of Death Debated
So let me get this straight: he admittedly committed a gruesome and heinous murder. He was a juvenile at the time. He was abused by every adult to whom he was related. He was, quite clearly, incompetently represented by a lawyer who brought none of this up. The state's own doctors, who can be presumed to have a bias in favor of the state, diagnose him as a chronic paranoid schizophrenic. He thinks Sigourney Weaver is God. The only reason that he's even vaguely sane is that the great state of Georgia is forcibly medicating him.
And the great state of Georgia thinks that executing him would be reasonable.
You know, this is the sort of case that gets me into trouble with people. Frankly, I think executing him would be merciful. He will never understand what he's done. The diagnosis is that he will never be competent. And even if the magic medication is discovered that makes him sane ... what then? To paraphrase something I read once, What is done in insanity cannot be remembered when sane without causing greater insanity.
So, no, executing Williams is not precisely reasonable. But it may ultimately be humane.
Which is the last thing any state committing an execution is actually interested in.
Posted by iain at 09:50 AM
ISU plan calls for 14 judges, end of 6.0 scale. OK, fine -- sort of -- but what on earth do you do with the ice dancing? Under this scale you could never EVER get a perfect mark in dancing, because you'd never have enough difficulty, as long as it was a continuous scale.
In any event, I fully expect that by the next ISU Congress, this will have faded somewhat. In any event, under current ISU rules, the final proposal would need to be presented at the next ISU congress, and then adopted at the following congress.
In 2004.
This, you understand, assumes that all member federations read the proposal, understand it, make comments, and come to a consensus on how the final proposal should read before the next ISU Congress in Kyoto this June. Which is not terribly likely.
The ISU, she is not what you would call terribly responsive under normal circumstances.
Posted by iain at 10:37 PMpoindexter
Government Hires Poindexter for Defense-Related Job: Retired Rear Adm. John M. Poindexter, once national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan, returned to government last month as head of a new information technology unit at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). [...] Poindexter, 65, was convicted in 1990 on five felony counts stemming from the Iran-contra scandal. His conviction was overturned by an appeals court in 1992 on grounds that tainted evidence had been used against him.
I must admit to being astonished that His Fraudulency has rehabilitated this particular scion of Reagan's government, for all that the Shrubbery seems bent on restoring Ronnie and his father to their wonted glory. (Seriously, doesn't the administration sometimes feel exactly as though the crown prince has conquered the forces that drove his father from the throne, and now he's bent on restoring their reputation?) Granted that Poindexter's conviction was overturned because of the use of tainted testimony. His own. Poindexter had been use-immunized against the testimony he provided to Congress, so that he could provide them with frank and forthright testimony ... and he lied anyway. Then, when he was convicted of perjury before Congress, the conviction was thrown out because, lies or not, the testimony couldn't be used against him.
And now we are to trust this man to analyze all the communications of this country, truthfully determine which are threats and which are not, and provide information to the appropriate authorities about what they should do.
Yeah. Right.
Even Florida swampland salesmen wouldn't try to sail this one past anyone. Frankly, I fully expect to hear that Oliver North has been made undersecretary of a cabinet department at any moment.
Even if the war on terrorism justifies the creation of this creepy new surveillance entity, it's hard to imagine that the Pentagon couldn't have entrusted its management to someone with a record of honesty. It hardly inspires confidence that the man now in charge of "information awareness" is best known for his cover-ups.
A side note: I like to think I can occasionally froth at the keyboard with the best of them, but even I can't compare to the Guardian. As far as I can tell, the British newspapers seem to break down this way: the Times tries to be the voice of neutrality and reason, the Independent and the Telegraph have somewhat more strident opinions -- somewhat -- and the Guardian just wants to fulminate. Not simply anti-American fulminations, you understand; just fulminations in general. If you're in power, they don't like you. Doesn't matter who you are or where you are, or whether or not you're any good at what people want you to do; they just don't like you and that's all there is to it.
Posted by iain at 10:03 PMenron attacks!
Acting chief of Enron vows rapid legal attack: Enron Corp. is planning a broad legal assault against those who helped bring down the company, according to acting Chief Executive Stephen Cooper, the corporate rescue artist who was selected three weeks ago to put the company back on the road to solvency.
Oh, THIS is going to be vastly amusing to watch. The executives who cashed out will be getting sued from one side by irate employees and shareholders, and from the other side by the shell of the company they were running when they told themselves that this con game was a fun thing to be doing.
Mind, it's only going to be amusing from the outside.
In the meantime, the judge has recused herself without explanation. It would appear to be because she was lobbying the Shrubbery to be appointed to the federal Court of Appeals, and Enron was on her side. I should think that would be a conflict of interest, yes.
And in the meantime, the Texas State Archive has -- reluctant, one assumes -- released the Shrubbery's correspondence with Lay from when the Shrub was a mere governor. (One does wonder under precisely what grounds the papers of a governor of Texas could be transferred to a federal presidential library, even Daddums' library.) In any event, apparently the Bush Library and Texas State Archive have been as responsive as they can, all things considered. (I'd imagine that the Shrub wishes they'd been considerably less responsive. Mind, there's no evidence of anything except a relationship what was some closer than either party has been saying that it was, especially in recent days.
You know, I just have a feeling that this really will wind up being much like the impeachment mess, only with even less result. Both parties have ample reason to want this thing to go away -- although with cases clogging the courts for years to come, the best they'll get is "less visible". Both parties will come out of this with a thin film of contributor scum all over them, no matter how hard they try to wash it off.
Posted by iain at 05:06 PMcompliance
Well, it can't really be a surprise, now can it? We've known about problems with medication compliance for years.
And fear -- even fear of death -- will only motivate people so far. After a while, you get tired of being afraid, and if you're taking a medication with particularly pernicious side effects, you get tired of medications that make you feel sicker than the disease. (Had to take a cough medicine called Hycodan last year. Just Say HELL NO! if you're ever asked to take it, that's all I can say. Between the constant vomiting and the nightmares, it was pretty much four days of hell. Never again.)
detainee go home! not
Though Not Linked to Terrorism, Many Detainees Cannot Go Home. (NY Times, registration required.)
So let me get this straight: we arrest them for essentially no real reason -- the visa violations (and traffic stops, for heaven's sake!) for which they were picked up would normally have been handled administratively. We hold them for months without allowing many of them to consult lawyers or see their families. We then order them to leave the country. They agree, because at this point they want to be almost anywhere but here. And then, when they're near leaving, we say, "Oh, wait. Not yet. Why don't you just stay in that jail cell just a bit longer, thanks?" (And also apparently lying to them in order to extract information we're fairly certain that they don't have in the first place.)
My, my, my.
Well, I dare say that immigration, students and tourism from the Middle East will drop to all-time lows for the foreseeable future. Which will make the administration happy, to be sure; the fewer people there are to vet, the fewer chances there are to get it wrong.
Violating the rights of people already in the country is just the lagniappe, of course.
Posted by iain at 04:05 PMbiometric id cards
CNN.com - States eye high-tech drivers' licenses - February 17, 2002 ... Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin in the Senate and Virginia Democrat Jim Moran in the House are preparing bills that would provide funding to update and standardize drivers' licenses. Moran's proposal would also provide funding for states to develop smart-card capabilities, an aide said. Congress has also directed the United States Department of Transportation to develop a set of standards on its own. But the proposals have raised the hackles of a wide range of advocacy groups, from the American Civil Liberties Union to the American Conservative Union, organizations that say these measures could erode privacy and lead to the creation of a national ID card in all but name. "What you're really looking at is the infrastructure of a national system of identification and a national system of surveillance," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). [...] States are only looking to boost the effectiveness of the current system, an AAMVA spokesman said. Private businesses, such as airlines, would be welcome to use the biometric data to verify identity, but not to tap into the underlying databases.
You know, part of me says, "National schmational. We already have a state ID. If they just make it uniform and decide on some other identifier besides the social security number, what's the diff?" On the other hand, part of me says, "Oh, yeah, let's just give our Lord High Minister of Injustice access to all that personal data and just see what he does with it, shall we? ... Nah, let's not." (To be fair, although I suspect he'd be worse than many others, I can't imagine any Justice department head -- or even an FBI agent working on a moderately thorny case -- not wanting to take a tiptoe through the database, can you?)
That latter part baffles me, though. To say nothing of the underpinnings of making it work. I mean, you're going to have a database with 280 million initial records, growing by at least three to five million records a year or something like. (US population went from 248 million to 281 million between the 1990 and 2000 censuses -- and that's with substantial undercounts in both censuses.) To some extent, the technical load side could be handled by mirroring and distribution of the mirrors to various sites ... but who wants to deal with maintaining a mirror of a 280 million-record database? For that matter, in order for the mirror to fulfill its function, the data has to be both backed up and mirrored every single night. New data -- births, deaths, immigrations, emigrations, etc. -- would likely be input into one mirror site, and then slowly updated across the network. during the mirroring process. (And there will be woe if there's a glitch in the update process that keeps one day's records out of the database. Then you have to make certain that the mirror sites do a database comparison to realize that they need to pull more than one day's data, or you need a human operator to deal with the parameters.) In order to be workable from a national point of view, you will need to be able to search the entire database for each and every search -- although a yes/no verification would be fairly simple, assuming no corruption in the database, properly formed queries, etc. In that case, you'd just need to do a one-to-one match. But how does a business handle this? In order to make this work, the business in question needs to be able to take and send the biometric data to the database -- they have to have a fingerprint reader or retinal scanner or whatever the various biometric markers are. Then they need a fast connection -- because if there are any errors, they will, in fact, need to work with the entire database in order to see what's going on. I don't care what Larry Ellison says; from a pure database point of view, this is a nightmare waiting to happen.
Posted by iain at 03:39 PMoutlook express and viruses
Heavy sigh. Just ... sigh.
lindows
Lindows moves to head off Microsoft: ... the suit has given Lindows new ambitions. "There's a strong chance that Microsoft may lose its trademark on Windows," said Vice President of Marketing John Bromhead. He also said the company has some backup names prepared in case it loses. In the latest court papers, which were made public Thursday, Lindows said it conducted a survey of 750 of its registered users and found that not one confused Microsoft with the start-up.
OK, is it just me, or does this product name sound like it ought to be some bizarre dance where you go lower and lower as people hold a lovely colonial-style double-glazed over you? ... No? OK. Aaaaanyway ....
It's interesting to read the above section in the article. On the one hand, you feel you should cheer for them, because Microsoft should lose its trademark on the word "Windows", if the Patents and Trademark Office follows its own rules (no trademarks allowed on common words or phrases). On the other hand, given the software mess that USPTO is currently embroiled in -- several conflicts entirely of their own making -- I can understand if they'd rather not go down that road; if they do, just to pick a for-example from the air, they'd also have to revoke the trademark given to Coca-Cola, Inc., for the word "Coke", which is not only slang for cocaine, but which also has several other dictionary definitions, all of which predate the trademark. (Some by literally centuries.) In any event, Microsoft has very little ground on which they can defend this trademark. If they try to say that they're in fact defending a copyrightable phrase -- Microsoft Windows, Windows98, Windows2000, WindowsNT, etc., all of which are marginally allowable under USPTO rules -- then Lindows wins because Microsoft then effectively concedes that they hold no trademark on the simple word "Windows". If Microsoft does, in fact, assert that they hold such a trademark as regards computer software, then Lindows can simply assert that the trademark was granted in error, because under USPTO rules, it should never have been granted. (In fact, if the case is as Lindows.com asserts, and Microsoft has never filed a claim against other companies using the term "Windows" as relates to software, their case should be badly compromised. Should Be. Considering that their initial trademark should never have been granted, it's hard to tell what the outcome would be.)
Then again, the Lindows company makes claims that make you want to slap them as well. I mean, if you're already using Lindows, then what chance is there that you'd confuse it with Windows? EVER? Of course, this is one of those battles neither side can win. Assuming that they're seized by a spasm of common sense, Lindows would go out and survey non-users of their product who use Linux. (In fact, that seems to be exactly what they've done, assuming that "potential users" is "anyone running Linux" -- which isn't really a safe assumption, but whatever. Note that there's rather a sharp difference between the number of people surveyed in the ZDNet article and the Register article; either ZDNet lost 13,000 people somewhere along the road to their report, or Lindows found 'em.) Microsoft, assuming they were minded to do any sort of survey at all, would then go out and survey non-Linux users, most of whom would probably say, "Lindows? What's that? Some weird dance?" The audiences are largely mutually exclusive at the moment; most Linux geeks hear the words "Microsoft" and "Windows" and either spit or scream and run away very fast.
It will be interesting to see where this goes. (Frankly, I half expect Microsoft to just buy them out and either promote or bury the product. It'd be cheaper in both the long and short run to do it. Buying them would give Microsoft a way into the Linux market, if they're looking for one -- if you can't beat 'em, either take 'em over or collapse their market being Microsoft's motto.)
Posted by iain at 11:22 AM
Lesbian partner is a parent, court says: A lesbian being sued for child support by her former partner should be considered a parent even though she has no biological connection to the child, a Family Court commissioner has ruled. In a decision that expands the definition of a parent in Delaware, Family Court Commissioner John R. Carrow ruled that both women should be considered mothers to the 4-year-old boy that they chose to have together through in-vitro fertilization. [...] The Delaware decision follows a Family Court ruling in Wilmington last year that for the first time gave a gay couple the right to jointly adopt children they had been raising together.
It will be interesting to see exactly how the decision in this case was worded. Functionally, the judge would have to be careful not to write a decision that would make stepparents responsible for children they had nothing to do with creating.
That said, I can't imagine that a man in this situation wouldn't also be held responsible. By that I don't mean two gay men; I mean that in the case of a heterosexual relationship where the man was sterile and they agreed that the woman should try artificial insemination to become pregnant, he'd still be considered the father of the child for most legal purposes. (Although I suspect that in some jurisdictions, since it would be an absolute fact that he was not the child's father, he might have to adopt the child after birth.)
That said, if the Delaware court system hasn't overruled the decision allowing gays to adopt by the time this one hits the system, I can't imagine that this case would change the results.
Posted by iain at 03:18 PMo canada
CNN.com - Canadian skaters get gold; judge suspended: The International Olympic Committee reversed a judges' panel decision Friday afternoon and awarded a gold medal to the Canadian figure-skating pair who initially won the silver in a hotly contested performance ruling Monday night.
You know, I fully expected the judge to be suspended. The second gold medal is ... something of a shock, really. At least, having it happen so quickly is something of a shock. Mind, I also expected the Russian judge to be suspended, and I'm surprised that they didn't announce that at the same time. At the very least, they'll need to exclude the Russian judge from any of the ice dancing panels.
I would be willing to bet anything that the sequence of events over the last three days was more or less like this: (1) After the scandal erupts and looks to overshadow the entire skating competition, the IOC demands that the International Skating Union settle the situation quickly -- by which they mean before the end of the week; (2) Cinquanta, head of the ISU, gives truly horrible press conferences stating that nothing will be resolved before Monday, leaving time for the scandal to continue annoying the IOC; (3) Much to its surprise and displeasure, the IOC starts getting pummeled by email, so that they know directly how displeased people are by this decision (the IOC has never before been and never wanted to be quite THAT publicly accessible, since access brings a certain expectation of actual response with it); (4) The judge involved actually leaves Salt Lake and goes back to France, further pissing off the IOC, which feels that the ISU should have directed her to remain to resolve this case; (5) Off camera, the IOC tells the ISU that either they settle this by Friday, or it will be settled for them, and they may not like the outcome; (6) The ISU and IOC announce their resolution, in which everyone gets to appear as gracious as they possibly can, under the circumstances. And both pairs of skaters get medals that all four of them can only feel were not really earned.
Tune in again next month for the World Championships (yes, the ISU holds world championships in an Olympic year, directly after the competition), when we get to do this All Over Again!
Posted by iain at 12:35 PMfetal mistake
The abortion rights crowd squanders a victory: ... the liberals have forgotten the lessons taught by that master political tactician Bill Clinton, while the conservatives in the White House political operation have absorbed them [...] In simple positive language, Clinton framed the pro-choice position in a way that was firmly liberal yet appealing to voters uncomfortable with the inescapable reality that abortion involves ending a potential human life [...] HHS "clarified" the program's definition of child to cover persons from "conception" onward. Michelman was not wrong to argue that this language might someday become a footnote in an anti-abortion legal brief. It is indeed possible that a conservative Supreme Court could cite this language to justify a decision outlawing abortion. But what are the chances of that happening, given the precedents of the court's pro-choice rulings? As the Chicago Tribune sensibly pointed out, "To suggest that the administration could overturn [Roe v. Wade] … by monkeying with regulatory language in a health-care program is wildly at odds with reality. The first time a law or regulation defines a fetus as a person in a way that actually curbs abortion rights the court will undoubtedly toss it out."
You know, I have to admit, I was suckered. The political tactic of distracting prochoice people with the language, which did nothing more than throw a relatively irrelevant bone to the antiabortion right, was impressively successful. It wasn't only NARAL that was distracted; the liberal left as a whole was so absorbed by the language and its possible legal implications that they were blind to the tactical approach.
I do think that Manley is wrong about his contention about how abortion rights advocates view the connection between reproductive choice and public health. At least, I think that his contention is incomplete. That said, I don't think the antiabortion advocates are any better about articulating a connection, either: how is it better for public health to make poor women have unwanted children when they are unable to pay for the child's upbringing, and the state is unwilling? From a pure public health expenditures point of view, the liberal left has a certain point when they say that it would be considerably less expensive for the state to pay for poor women's abortions than it would be for the state to pay to raise poor women's children.
Despite the fact that it's a throwaway point, I do wonder how either side could "persuade nonbelievers" of its virtues. There's relatively little middle ground.
A related difficulty is that the language is so polar as not to actually describe either side's position. For example, the left is described by the right as pro-abortion, but that's not really true, is it? Ideally, you'd want people to make choices beforehand such that abortion would only occur in cases of rape, incest, or where the health of the mother is at stake, or when the fetus has unsurvivable defects. NOBODY likes abortion. The antiabortion side prefers to describe themselves as prolife, and are described by the left as antichoice, but again, neither description is really quite true. The advocates on that side tend to take stands on weapons and the death penalty that make a "prolife" assertion somewhat puzzling, to say the least. And it would perhaps be more accurate to say that they wish, as well, that women would make choices before conception as to make abortion an unnecessary evil. (There is, to be sure, considerable disagreement between the sides as to what those choices should be, and what choices should be available.)
Posted by iain at 12:18 PMoh no, miss cleo!
Miss Cleo! No! Say it isn't so!
Mind, the only truly bad outcome I can see coming from this -- aside from Miss Cleo no longer being present on our very late night television (and let's face it: hearing her say, "Well, if you want to get rid of him, you got to stop answering his 2AM booty calls" is kind of fun, in that very late night, can't sleep way) -- is that it will lead FTC officials to make truly excruciatingly bad jokes every time the case is discussed: "I'm not a psychic but the only crystal ball I have says the FTC will continue to stop unfair and deceptive practices," said J. Howard Beales III, the director of the agency's bureau of consumer protection. "It's a mystery to us why Miss Cleo and her employees haven't seen this coming."
Posted by iain at 11:20 AM
USS Clueless - Judging scandal: Ostensibly skating events are scored on a scale of 0-6 in 0.1 steps, which is a lot. But unless someone blows it big time, no-one ever gets a score lower than 5.8 from any judge. [...] In gymnastics it's little better; the scale is 0-10 in steps of 0.5, but no-one ever gets below 9.85.
Exaggeration in the service of making one's point is one thing. But when you stoop to making up facts about gymnastics and skating -- two things about which I know a fair amount, one by choice, and one by the unfortunate circumstance of living in the right house with the right people at the right time -- well, sir, one can but take up the challenge!
To go from the bottom up: the statement about scoring for gymnastics is factually incorrect. First, the scoring steps are 0.05, not 0.5. Second, the gymnastics federations realized themselves that they were inflating scoring, and about ten years ago they put in several factors that mean that, although technically you can still get a perfect score of 10.0, in actual practice, scores tend to top out around 9.8.
As for skating, it's quite easy to get scores below 5.8. Happens all the time, and no screwups, major or minor, need be involved. Take, for example, scores from the recent European Skating Championships -- the pairs event, as it turns out. People were, to put it mildly, uninspired -- with only a month before the Olympics, nobody wanted to put too much effort into an event that doesn't really count for anything -- but there were fairly few screwups in the final group (the last four pairs).
To be sure, I don't deny that there's an inherent problem in judging events at all, let alone trying to judge an artistic component. That said, skating had tried to address this type of issue before, by telling judges that for things such as a step-out on a jump landing, even in the artistic program, mandatory deductions must be taken. The skating judges, being a fairly bloody minded lot (well, clearly) cavalierly ignored this requirement ... except when it suited them. You'll see this sort of thing again in the women's skating, when Michelle Kwan does what they call a "flutz" -- that is, she takes off incorrectly in one jump. Technically, the judges are required to take a 0.2 deduction on the technical mark for that. Lately, either they take no deduction at all, or the deduction is so heavy that it exceeds the error. But I digress. Again.
As for the current brouhaha, it's extraordinarily unlikely that this mess will "take the wind out of the Olympic movement". It won't even get skating ejected from the Games -- although the head of the IOC is expressing the IOC's official exasperation which is strikingly unusual. (Mind, it's not at all certain what the IOC would do, or even could do. It's patently unfair, if not precisely unreasonable, to strip the Russians of the medal for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with them. Similarly, regarding the Canadians' demand for another gold medal: not bloody likely, even if collusion is proven. The ISU has no formal provision for either rewarding or penalizing the skaters for judging collusion, precisely because it never has anything to do with them. Besides, even if collusion is proven, four other judges voted for the Russians, or has everyone forgotten that? But I digress.) The IOC will keep skating around for several reasons. First, skating is one of the oldest disciplines in the winter games. Second, it's a cash cow and the glamour event. Nobody wants to see it go. Third ... well, it's not precisely positive, but things like this get people stirred up, which makes them pay attention. Fourth, the various networks and television services from various countries will say to the IOC, "You take this event from the games over our dead bodies AND your empty wallet." Money does, after all, talk. LOUDLY.
(A moment of thundering irony from just a week ago: [Russian figure skating chief Valentin Piseyev] argued the rest of the world had become increasingly frustrated by Russia’s success in major international competitions and that the judges would be merciless if his skaters slipped up. [...] "Any error, even the slightest one, could lead to them being unfairly judged.”
You know, it's rare that unintentional irony comes with its own anvil.
(Actually, one of the odd things about this has been watching the Canadians get loud and pushy. I mean, they're normally so polite and quiet.)
Posted by iain at 02:43 AM
Court Case After Sperm Smuggling Bid Fails.
Apparently, today is sperm day over here. All sperm, all the time!
Aaaanyway.
I must admit, I don't see any convincing reason to destroy the sperm other than that the federal prosecutor is being bloody minded. Oh, yes, sure, there's the whole "criminals should not profit from the fruits of their crime concept." But really, it's not as if there's any filthy lucre at stake. They've both been caught and penalized. Why not let 'em breed, for heaven's sake? After all, Maria will be 52 by the time her husband gets out of prison. In theory, at least, the punishment for the original crime was meant to punish him, and not her. Will our ardently pro-family government condone forcing people to divorce in order that they may go forth and multiply? Horrors!
(OK, I do get a snicker out of the concept of the federal government getting up in court and saying, "It's our sperm, dammit, not hers!")
Posted by iain at 12:46 PMashcroft on the rampage still
Ashcroft Disputes Report on Islam Views: The Justice Department yesterday denied a syndicated columnist's report that Attorney General John D. Ashcroft had characterized Islam as "a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for him." Justice Department spokeswoman Susan Dryden said Ashcroft's statement in November to conservative columnist Cal Thomas referred only to the views of terrorists and was not aimed at mainstream Islam or the majority of Muslims. "The attorney general made reference to extremist suicide terrorists who have hijacked the religion," Dryden said. "The reported remarks do not accurately reflect the attorney general's views."
Yeah. Right. Sure. Whatever you say, ma'am. I'm absolutely certain that a man who literally hides Justice (OK, yes, a statue, but the symbolism, people!), who leads prayer service with government employees in a government facilty, who has defied Congress to promulgate rules that allow for indefinite detention of noncitizens without cause or due process ... I'm sure that man wouldn't say anything agains the Muslim religion.
No, really, I am. Really.
What, doesn't anyone believe me?
Posted by iain at 12:34 PMcomcast
Comcast tracks users' Web browsing.
Hum. And Comcast just bought my cable television provider. Hmm.
I'm thinking that this is a truly fine reason not to shift to Comcast, even if I were so minded. I mean, I can't get DSL in my neighborhood -- it's scheduled to be upgraded for DSL in 2003, but SBC Ameritech being the disaster that it is, I'm not holding my breath -- so if I wanted a high-speed connection, I'd have to get a cable modem or shift to satellite (which has problems of its own). (For the record, I'm actually perfectly happy with 56K dialup. Imagine that. Mind, if I didn't have relatively unrestricted high-speed access at work, then I might have Issues. But I digress.) It's not even that I do anything that I mind all that much if they notice; I just don't see any reason for Comcast to follow anyone around like that. (Hmm ... I wonder if constantly calling our glorious president "the Shrub" or "the Shrubbery" or "His Fraudulency" or if calling Our Lord High Minister of Injustice by the title he has so richly earned is the sort of thing that would trigger FBI/CIA/Secret Service observation. A puzzlement. Good thing those things are out in public and not in the Comcast cache, eh?)
Posted by iain at 11:31 AMiraq and balancing
Bush has decided to overthrow Hussein: President Bush has decided to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein from power and ordered the CIA, the Pentagon and other agencies to devise a combination of military, diplomatic and covert steps to achieve that goal, senior U.S. officials said Tuesday.
No military strike is imminent, but Bush has concluded that Saddam and his nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs are such a threat to U.S. security that the Iraqi dictator must be removed, even if U.S. allies do not help, said the officials, who all spoke on condition of anonymity.
Yes, I should think they would only speak under condition of anonymity.
It'll be interesting to see if this is one of those leaks that so troubled the Shrubbery in the early days of his administration, or if this is a more deliberate leak. After all, the UN is slated to take up the issue of Iraq's arms compliance again in the near future. From a purely political point of view, it may be in the Adminstration's interest to have Iraq thinking of the US as dangerously unbalanced. (This is not to say that we aren't, although I would argue that on the whole we seem to be finding it again.) This might provoke Iraq into greater formal concessions than it would otherwise make. In other words, this item has been put out there to make Iraq nervous.
Of course, the flipside is that the rest of the world, including various erstwhile allies, already think we're dangerously unbalanced, and not in a way that they think will be good for them. They're already nervous.
It is strikingly unusual to have one government talking so publicly about disposing of another's leader by quite illegal means. (Notwithstanding Israel, of course.) What fascinates me is that, terrorists aside, we don't hear other countries talking about doing in our leaders. You'd think some of them would be so aggravated or fearful these days that it might be something that crosses their mind.
Then again, perhaps they have better sense than to say such a thing where they can be heard. Even anonymously.
Posted by iain at 01:45 AMitaly
Italy's current fascist parties identify with hobbits and elves. They study Tolkien to help give their party a sense of identity.
OK, I think that takes the political weirdness oscar for this year, don't you? Can you just imagine the celebration should Fellowship of the Ring actually win something big? "We've won an oscar! We are the party of destiny!"
Posted by iain at 01:34 AMsperm banking
US: Ban On Gay Sperm Donation Considered: The US Federal Drug Administration has been considering a ban on gay sperm donation for sometime and is expected to reach a final decision by the end of the year. Gay sperm bank owners are worried that the FDA will base its decision on research carried out by the Centre for Disease Control between 1994 and 2000 which showed that more men between the ages of 15 and 29 had the HIV virus than in the heterosexual community.
... There are sperm banks which specialize in gay men's sperm.
Um ... OK. Whatever. Anyway. (And yet again, I have an entry which will make my search hits from Google go all wonky. But anyway.)
Let's just separate this into its component parts, shall we? Let's shall.
Part One: The sperm banks are getting all squiffy about the fact that the FDA is basing its decision on somewhat old research. First ... it's a whole two years old, people. It normally takes a whole year after data collection and analysis just to get the stuff published. As data goes, this is damn near fresh off the burner! That aside ... do they honestly expect that if the CDC conducted its survey this year, the results would be noticeably different? The principal vectors for HIV in this country are gay men and minorities. That's just the way it is. In Aftrica and Asia, the principal vector is heterosexual. It will do absolutely no good to assail the research on these grounds; not only will you lose, but you'll look stupid and uninformed in doing so.
Part Two: this constitutes unnecessary discrimination against gay men. Now, there, the sperm bank owners may be on firmer ground. It's easily possible to test people for HIV, and to wait long enough to see if they're going to seroconvert. Moreover, most sperm donations are frozen, and the virus tends not to withstand temperature extremes terribly well. Sperm donation isn't like blood; you will generally not need to use the donated cells immediately, especially if you're in a banking situation.
All THAT said ... does anyone believe that Shrubya's FDA won't recommend any such ban? Does anyone believe that he won't embrace the ban with open arms? Anyone? Anyone? No?
Posted by iain at 01:24 AMscouting
The National Executive Board of the Boy Scouts of America has reaffirmed its traditional leadership standards, as recommended by its appropriate committees. [...] The BSA reaffirmed its view that an avowed homosexual cannot serve as a role model for the traditional moral values espoused in the Scout Oath and Law and that these values cannot be subject to local option choices.
... WHEREAS, the national officers further agree that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the traditional values espoused in the Scout Oath and Law and that an avowed homosexual could not serve as a role model for the values of the Oath and Law, and
WHEREAS the national officers reaffirm that, as a national organization whose very reason for existence is to instill and reinforce values in youth, BSA's values cannot be subject to "local option" choices, but must be the same in every unit, and
WHEREAS the Boy Scouts of America respects the right of persons and individuals to hold values and standards different than the Boy Scouts of America, the national officers also agree that Boy Scouts of America is entitled to expect that persons and organizations with different values and standards will nevertheless respect those of the Boy Scouts of America, and
THEREFORE, the national officers recommend that the National Executive Board affirm that the Boy Scouts of America shall continue to follow its traditional values and standards of leadership.
So now the local Scout branches will not even be allowed to consider allowing gay scouts and scout leaders.
It's this interference at the local level, more than the affirmation of their bigotry (which, after all, the Supreme Court confirmed their right to express) that may produce another exodus of branches and funding organizations. It's one thing to say "We have the right to discriminate against you if we so choose." It's another thing altogether to say, "YOU do not have the right NOT to discriminate. You are a member of this organisation and you WILL do as we tell you. You WILL expel all gays because they are ungodly in Scouting's eyes."
Scouting has never sought to impose its values on anyone. We welcome all who share them, and we respect the right of others to walk a different path. We don't expect everybody to agree with our standards and values ... but we do think it's fair to expect others to respect them.
Hmm. Yes. Well, I dare say that the branches which will find themselves caught between local nondiscrimination laws, more liberal local attitudes and Scouting's dictates may feel rather "imposed" upon.
And I shall give their values precisely the respect which they give mine. I respect their rights to believe what they do and act in accordance.
I just think they're scumvermin.
I dare say this regard is mutual.
Oh, and on the selfsame day that the Scouts made this pronouncement, His Fraudulency met with scouts and their leaders in the Oval Office. Boo-yeah!
Well, I feel all warm and toasty and fully accepted today, don't you?
ESPN.com - Sources say Russian and French judges made deal: Sources within the International Skating Union have told ESPN/ABC Sports figure skating reporter Christine Brennan that a collaboration between the French and Russian judges helped spark the controversy that has the skating world and the Winter Olympics abuzz.
Well, well, well.
If this is true, the net result will be that both France and Russia will be stripped of their right to judge events for the next two to four years. To the best of my knowledge, it's only happened once before ... also involving the Russian (then Soviet, I believe) judge. Any road, according to NBC, the French judge has stated that she was "forced" to downgrade the Canadians in exchange for the Russian judge voting for Anissina and Peizerat, the French dance team which could easily win on their own merit.
The story could grow if the United States were to get involved because it's conceivable that if Sale and Pelletier should have won gold, Americans Kyoko Ina and John Zimmerman could have won bronze, Brennan said.
OK, let's get a grip here. Yes, it's possible, but it's not really probable. Shen and Zhao were, in fact, better -- the most any such collusion could really have accomplished was to move Ina and Zimmerman down one whole spot, from fourth to fifth. (Mind, if it does result that France and Russia were in collusion regarding ALL of the top five pairs, the penalty could be truly severe, extending even to stripping both federations of qualifying berths for the next several world championships.
To be sure, at the moment, there is no hard evidence of any of this. I should imagine that the French and Russian judges will deny, deny, deny that they did or said any such things. (If they have a lick of self preservation, anyway.) The International Skating Union is investigating the charges, but I would be truly shocked if they're able to find anything incriminating.
The truly sad thing is that now all medals from the event are tainted, either unwarrantedly low or undeservedly high, and it has nothing to do with any of the skaters, really. They didn't have anything to do with making these arrangements. All they did was to skate the best they could at the time. Because of the judging, because of the people's reaction, because of the media speculation, none of them will ever feel unqualifiedly good about what is, in fact, a really very good result. Being among the top three in the world in any given year isn't easy, and being in the top three in that competition really should be something special. And of course, now it will be ... if not quite in the way that anyone would want.
Posted by iain at 10:28 PMarmy selectivity
Army won't discharge bisexual officer.
How very ... odd.
Despite homosexual conduct being a very specific exception to the stop-loss order across all services, the army is refusing to discharge Captain Donovan. One has to wonder why. I'm sure that at a minimum, it's that they need his specialty and have few or no backups. That said, homosexual conduct IS the one exception to the stop-loss order, and I would have thought that the military's regulations would have allowed the army no choice in this matter. I mean, "don't ask, don't tell" is one thing, but he's told. Four times, already, for heaven's sake. They can accuse him of faking all they want, but unless he's independently wealthy, it would be a hideously expensive hoax.
Of course, the other consideration is that they may be holding onto him until he specifies exactly what conduct, and with whom. In other words, they may think that he's been fooling around with other servicemen, and they want to know who it was. Judging by his commanding officer's response -- "Further investigation into this matter is not in the best interest of the Army", inDEED -- his commander may know or fear exactly the same thing. (Either that, or he's afraid that the publicity would be bad for the army at the current time, although I can't see how it could be worse than the original stop-loss order exception.)
Posted by iain at 01:11 PMprosthetics
Prosthetic gives Kentucky man new face.
You know, that's just incredible. Who'd have thought that one day, medical science would reach the stage where it could build you a new face when there was so little left to build with?
Of course, the thing is, since it was purely cosmetic, insurance did not and will probably never pay for it. After all, what was left of his face was functional; it was just hideous. Under the circumstances, I find it remarkable that the medical center is willing to forego the "hundreds of thousands" in medical expenses for the time being. Granted, it's incredible research, but it's research with a sharply limited application. There will seldom be people who need such a surgery who are in a position to actually pay for it. Medical research is expected to pay for itself eventually, after all, either with procedures that will become lucrative or common, or with drugs or devices. This is the sort of surgery that will probably only ever be done as a goodwill gesture.
But still ... an entirely new face from essentially nothing.
Posted by iain at 11:28 AMpolling the public
USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll results.
You know, this poll is just fascinating, in a sort of odd way. The results of the first three questions can essentially be summarized as: we dunno, we love George! (ed. -- the nation is insane, clearly) and we dunno. The next two questions would perhaps perturb His Shrubberyness, if he actually gave two bits what the American public truly seems to want: by resounding margins, the public would strongly prefer to jettison the tax cuts and preserve Social Security surpluses so that we can afford our old age. The "War on Terrorism" questions can essentially be summarized as "we think it's at least somewhat important to kill 'em all", but then, the questions themselves were tactfully bloodthirsty. (Question 9 can actually be bundled in with this set, as it's essentially a portmanteau restatement of the same damn question. In fact, so are Questions 10-12. Why Gallup felt the need to hammer away at the same points with relatively little change, I'm not quite sure.)
Then we get the whipsaw change of direction into campaign finance reform. That has to be the sort of thing that just confuses the hell out of a respondent. One moment, we're talking about budget surpluses and Social Security and tax cuts, and then there's a relatively deft segue into the War on Terrorism, and then there's this abrupt, "do you favor or oppose Congress passing new campaign finance laws?" In any event, most people seem to have an interestingly clear eyed view that (a) campaign finance reform is necessary, and (b) it won't do any good. I'm not at all sure that it pays to have the public being that cynical about something, even if the cynicism is justified. That's the sort of attitude that tends to lead people away from voting, because they feel it makes no difference at all what they do.
And then there's the final question about Dr Evil ... er, pardon me, the Axis of Evil. Now, perhaps it's just me ... but it strikes me that a question in which the choices are "evil" and "not evil" is, perhaps, just a touch biased. I realize that this is the term that the Shrub used, but a pollster really ought to know better than to ask a question that leading.
Posted by iain at 11:02 AMresearch methods
Research throws up new theory.
... You know, there's just not a lot you can add to a headline like that.
However, nothing on this planet is making me save cat hairballs for posterity. I'm just sayin' that right now.
Posted by iain at 12:38 AM
In Ohio School Hearing, a New Theory Will Seek a Place Alongside Evolution
And the difference between "intelligent design" and creationism is .... what, precisely? OK, yes, they acknowledge that the earth is billions of years old. But then, many mainstream Protestant sects assert that the story of creation isn't meant to be taken literally, that things didn't happen in seven days. And that's pretty much the only difference between creationism and intelligent design theory, also known as "origins science."
Origins Science. Yeah. Right. Whatever.
Basically, another way to drag the Bible into the curriculum. To be sure, as long as Ohio requires evolution to be taught, they really won't be "a laughingstock to rival Kansas." Not quite, anyway.
Posted by iain at 10:57 AMall our exes die in texas ... and in georgia and alabama and florida
Race, Politics Blamed for U.S. Death Penalty Errors: Innocent people are more likely to be sentenced to die in America in areas that zealously use the death penalty, have higher black populations and where judges face political pressure, according to a study released Monday. Taking a range of risk factors into consideration, Florida, Georgia, Texas and Alabama are among the most likely states to make serious mistakes in capital cases while Connecticut and Colorado are low risk, said Colombia Law School Professor James Liebman, the study's lead researcher [...] "What our study shows is that aggressive death sentencing is a magnet for serious error," Liebman told Reuters.
Well, I can't say as I'm particularly surprised, what with living in a state that never did use the death penalty aggressively and still had more than half the sentences overturned due to demonstration of actual innocence. And while it's nice that Colorado's death penalty is the least likely to be either used or overturned, their sentencing method seems to make it likely that their death penalty will be overturned, and something more error-prone possibly put into place.
I do wonder how Virginia managed not to get onto that list, though, considering as they're up there with Texas in numbers of people both sentenced and executed. And Oklahoma -- last year's execution leader -- and Ohio, with the most heavily populated death row currently, ought to be looking at that list and thinking, "Hmm. This just doesn't look good, does it?"
To be sure, death penalty proponents will be saying that Liebman's outlook colors the research. He is an avowed death penalty opponent. But the facts are the facts, and it is easy to look at the record and see why mistakes were made. It's less easy to deal with the reforms. For example, moving from an election system for judges to an appointment system insulates them from pressure; it also insulates them from accountability for very bad decisions. (To be sure, depending on how the election system works, it may be no better.) The easiest would be the appointment of competent defense council, but states are both unwilling and unlikely to pay for that, and the Supreme Court held, long ago, that states aren't actually required to pay for a competent defense. So, studies and evidence aside, it's likely that we'll be muddling along this way for some time yet.
Posted by iain at 10:49 AM
Bias Against U.S. Arabs Taking Subtler Forms: Reports of violence and hate crimes "have dwindled to almost none" in the last few months, Assistant U.S. Atty. Gen. Ralph F. Boyd Jr., the nation's chief civil rights enforcer, said in an interview. But in schools, workplaces, housing complexes and airports, Arab Americans around the country are reporting harassment and discrimination in record numbers. [...] Fred Persily, executive director of the California Assn. of Human Relations Organizations, said: "We're hearing a lot about episodes in the workplace, [Arab Americans] who say they can't get jobs, can't get promotions. . . . What's real clear is that before [Sept. 11] incidents against Islamics were so few and far between as to be off the radar screen altogether. Now they're surpassing those of most other groups except gays and lesbians."
We're actually still disliked more than Arabs.
You know, I wouldn't have expected that. (I'm vaguely tempted to run around shouting "We're Number 1!", but I shall resist.)
Given the way in which things have been conducted, it will be a long time before things return to where they were for Arabs in America, or those who can be mistaken for them.
You wonder how the FBI can handle this. On the one hand, they're arresting and jailing Muslims and Muslim-appearing people, many of whom are still reporting that they haven't been allowed to see lawyers at all, some five months in; on the other, the FBI is also responsible for investigating crimes against these same people. Granted that most agents will conscientiously try to fulfill the requirements of their jobs ... you wonder how many of them might be tempted to think, "Oh, just a bunch more ragheads," and let the investigations slip to the bottom of their already hefty to-do pile.
Posted by iain at 08:39 PM
Still more accounting scandale, although this is fronted with more traditional straight-ahead embezzlement:
Mr. Coffee co-founder, Forbes lose millions: The two are among a core group of 25 of the Gates Mills broker's biggest victims - many of them wealthy Cleveland-area power brokers - in what investigators now believe was an elaborate Ponzi scheme. The investigators say Gruttadauria used the richest investors' accounts as piggy banks: He drained them without account owners' knowledge to cover withdrawals requested by other investors, and tapped some of the money for himself, one person close to the case said yesterday. In most cases, their accounts were gutted, investigators say. He allegedly hid his deeds by sending clients authentic-looking but fake account statements. And he shifted clients' money to Lehman Brothers accounts he controlled under fictitious names.
The fun part is that Lehman Brothers position is that they're not responsible for their clients losses. They're saying this in an interesting way, which may or may not fly: Lehman Brothers is asserting that they may or may not be responsible for their clients' initial investment and subsequent loss of that initial amount. They are also asserting, however, that they are absolutely NOT responsible for the loss of the investment income and interest on those investments, because it never existed in the first place. Of course, the clients are saying that they have statements that were issued by a Lehman Brothers employeee (or former employee) stating that the income did exist, that they made other investments and plans based on the existence of that money, and that Lehman damn well is responsible.
What I want to know, frankly, is how this could have continued for 15 years. Didn't anyone know that the customers were getting entirely different notices than the company? Didn't anyone notice that account activity under this guy was strikingly unusual? And if they didn't notice, why the hell didn't they? Isn't that what they do?
In a way, I suppose I'm lucky enough not to have enough money to actually invest anywhere. (OK, that's the wrong way to put that, but you know what I mean.) It does give me the luxury of sitting by and watching as the accounting industry essentially implodes.
And apparently, I'm not the only person viewing this as a sort of bizarre spectator sport: FX is making a movie about Enron. No, really ... No, really. Frankly, I can't imagine watching the thing. Reading about it is one thing, but how on earth can you make this interesting enough in television terms to pay attention to? I mean ... it's accounting, guys? (OK, and embezzlement, and possibly a few RICO violations, but it's not as if we're talking the Mafia, here.)
Posted by iain at 12:49 AMthey ARE all shirtless now, aren't they?
Argentina overhauls political system: The Argentine president has announced major constitutional changes to help restore political and economic stability to the country. Speaking on national television, Eduardo Duhalde said he intended to replace the existing presidential system with a parliamentary democracy.
How on earth can you just do that? Don't you have to go through at least a little more effort than that to dismantle a 150-year old system? What if the system (or rather, the people of its component parts) doesn't want to be dismantled? What will he do if, for example, Argentina's Supreme Court declares his effort unconstitutional? (Technically, I suppose, it can't be unconstitutional; he's scrapping the constitution. But still, I'd expect them to try.) Can you imagine what would happen if the Shrubbery declared, "Oh, yeah, Dad's government and I have decided that this whole presidential thing just doesn't work any more. We're going to go parliamentary!" To be sure, he couldn't ... and I'm not at all sure that Duhalde can, either. I'm not saying that Argentina doesn't need a new system ... but let's face it: what sane person would want to be the majority leader in Parliament at this time?
Posted by iain at 12:29 AMglobal crossing and anderson
FBI launches Global Crossing accounting probe.
My goodness. Those accounting scandals do seem to be mushrooming, don't they? The interesting thing is that until now, Global Crossing's bankruptcy hadn't seemed to have anything to do with accounting practices per se. It had simply seemed to be overextended. The company that wants to buy Global Crossing's remaining assets had demanded that they declare bankruptcy before they would complete the transactions. Now you wonder if they'll go through with the purchase, since there may well be less to Global Crossing than they thought there was.
And Global Crossing's auditor was ... Arthur Anderson.
You know, I think Arthur Anderson could survive being the auditors for the largest bankruptcy in US history. After all, it's apparent that there were other things going on at Enron besides deceptive accounting practices. However, I don't believe that Anderson is going to easily survive being the auditors deceived in the first AND second largest bankruptcies in history. There's bad luck, there's culpability of one sort or another, and then you reach the stage where it simply doesn't matter what the cause is. Anderson is revealed to be terribly bad at their principal business. You would have to be utterly insane to trust them at this point.
It will be interesting to see how this slops over onto Accenture, Anderson's consulting arm. Technically, they're not implicated in anything, but they are under the same corporate umbrella, after all.
Posted by iain at 12:09 AM
Ha! Can I call 'em, or what?
Father Jose Mantero, 39, was suspended on Wednesday for breaking his celibacy vows and abandoning his parish.
To be sure, the Spanish Bishops' Conference did have to add, "The church does not allow homosexuality. It considers it to be a sin and a mental disorder." However, that does not, in fact, constitute the grounds on which he was suspended. The idiot was suspended for breaking his vows.
Not that I'm even vaguely Catholic, but I certainly wouldn't support any strike or whatever this action they're calling for in Spain is. He knew what the rules were when he became a priest. If they became too odious, he could have asked to be released from his vows. The Catholic Church certainly needs changes, but this is, perhaps, not the way to convince people of that fact.
Mind, I vaguely hope that the politician does follow through with his threat to reveal names of bishops he's slept with, just to see what happens. I'm not a particular proponent of outing, but still ... Sometimes you just have a fascination to see what happens, you know?
Posted by iain at 11:55 PMpardon the dust
Just been doing a bit of slight remodeling around here. And quite the experience it has been, too. Moveable Type was perfectly well behaved, more or less; it only took 5 minutes of tinkering to get comments doing what I wanted. (You'll note that the javascript popup has disappeared; the link now takes you directly to the entry.) CSS Level 2, on the other hand ...
And the truly amazing thing is the difference between how this style sheet behaves browser to browser and platform to platform. It's still legible on Netscape 4.X (more or less). It's fine and dandy on IE/PC. IE/Mac, on the other hand, has a few issues with the positioning. (Did you know that purple is different on the Mac? According to the color code, the "GRIM" in the logo should be just a bit darker than lavender, matching the navigation bar. On the Mac, it's a lovely, rich purple. Not the least lavendery thing about it.) No matter which browser I use, the absolute positioning of the top three divisions is different on a Mac than on a PC. And getting the slogan in there turned into one of those "I'll get this working if it kills you!" things.
There's still a few positioning issues, I suppose, but basically, everything seems to be working. I'm not rebuilding the whole thing, though, because I like keeping my design history around. If you go back a couple individual entries, the old template is still there. (And my style sheet is growing and growing and growing ....)
Anyway, that's why so few updates today. Back to normal next week, I hope.
Posted by iain at 07:09 PMno erections, please, we're pennsylvanian
You know, I just want to see Locust Township enforce this ordinance. I mean, practically speaking, in order to be certain that they were seeing what they thought they were seeing, there would need to be a certain amount of ... er ... manual examination, as it were. (In other words, the police would have to feel up the alleged offender.)
To be vaguely serious about it, the specific example cited by the police chief is, in fact, pretty much one offense they could not arrest someone for. Rather, they couldn't successfully prosecute them for it. Any such law which does not allow for art or other nonlascivious purposes is prima facie unconstitutional.
What gets me is that this wasn't occasioned by anything. No lewd and lascivious conduct, no people jumping out of corners with schwanzen at the ready, no city councillors wandering the streets and pointing down and yelling, "Hey, look what I got!", nothing. The Locust Township city council just got a bug up their collective asses about stray erections.
Makes you wonder how many laws out there just sprang out of some bluenose's head, for no apparent reason, doesn't it?
Posted by iain at 03:57 PM
Following protests from allies around the world, President Bush announced today that the United States will grant the protections of the Geneva Convention to detainees who fought for Afghanistan's Taliban but will continue to deny them to members of the al Qaeda terrorist network.
Um ... OK ... huh? what?
I thought the administration position was that there was no functional difference between the Taliban and al-Qaeda. As far as I understand it, the administration doesn't admit to having any solely al-Qaeda prisoners, does it? So how can it grant protections to one group, and deny them to the other when they assert that they're actually the same group?
For that matter, how does the administration tell the difference?
For THAT matter, if there is a difference, and the Taliban can be repatriated when al-Qaeda cannot, what do we do when Afghanistan says, as it very well may, "Oh, thank you very much, but we couldn't possibly take them back. No, really, we couldn't. No, we can't. WE SAID NO!" Granted, Afghanistan's "no" doesn't mean very much to us, but nonetheless, it's usually politic to pretend that the government you've helped to install (which wants to be a client state, but we don't want it) actually has authority that means something.
Posted by iain at 03:33 PMhoward dean
Dean will press other Dems on gay issues: Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's likely presidential bid offers a heartening window into the future: We'll see White House candidates who don't just promise to advance gay civil rights but actually have strong records to tout. [...] Although Dean's candidacy is a long shot, his enthusiastic support for gay couples will no doubt push other Democratic hopefuls to actively compete for the votes of the millions of Americans who believe in fairness for those of us who're gay.
Um ... no. It would be nice, but ... no. What it will do is to push moderates into saying stupid things like, "Well, I'm in favor of equal rights for all, but not special rights! I'm in favor of marriage between one man and one woman! I think that gays should only get benefits as part of the job they themselves have!" and so on, and so on and so on. Having someone who is socially very liberal (and how you combine fiscal conservatism and social liberalism I'm sure I don't know) tends to make the moderate core positions look more reasonable, and the people who are tending to be more conservative go harder to the right to pull in the more conservative people who are being alienated. And even in the Dems, there are more moderates and conservatives than liberals, these days.
Posted by iain at 03:11 PMworld wide financial fun!
Close to anarchy: The Argentine government's latest economic plan could be undermined by growing disillusionment among the middle classes [...] Last Friday, the government appeared to be facing a banking collapse after the supreme court ruled that its two-month-old banking controls - introduced to avoid a run on bank deposits - were unconstitutional. That triggered a constitutional crisis as the country's politicans opened impeachment proceedings against the offending judges. Meanwhile, middle- class demonstrators, angered by the loss of their savings, have continued their cacerolazos - mass marches of protesters banging pots and pans - on the streets. [...] So far there has been no repeat of the food riots that brought down President Fernando de la Rua's ill-fated government in December. But with unemployment at nearly 20 per cent by the last count, and economic activity virtually paralysed, that must be a possibility. President Duhalde himself says Argentina is close to anarchy and has compared the country's situation to a timebomb.
What that article fails to mention is that apparently, Duhalde barred further lawsuits against his economic plan. Assuming that the litigious spirit of Argentina is alive and well, this will prompt lawsuits against the president himself and the government, asserting that they have no right to bar such lawsuits. The judicial branch will rule in favor of ... itself, really. The president will ignore them. The Argentine legislature will, it would seem, ignore them, since the lege decided to impeach the justices for even saying that the bank controls were unconstitutional. FT also suggests that Argentina will likely be forced ultimately to adopt the dollar as its currency. I suspect the US will resist that plan strongly; we really don't want to print THAT many of them because it will cause devaluation and inflation here, which would be a bad bad thing. (We'll ignore the fact that Costa Rica and Panama already officially use the dollar as their currency, border-Canada uses it semi-unofficially, and Cuba uses it entirely unofficially, shall we? Let's shall.) On the other hand, having the Americas as a semi-solid financial block, using principally the US currency might, in some ways, not be an entirely unmixed curse or blessing, depending on how it all works out. It would be a way of stumbling unofficially to the sort of financial union that Europe is officially stumbling to do.
China's jobless number a record 170m: The army of unemployed, around 13 per cent of the national population of 1.3 billion, is not expected to shrink soon as jobs spawned by China's WTO membership will be largely in the professional sector.
You know ... all this just makes your garden-variety semi-terrorist-induced recession with 5-7% unemployment seem almost manageable, doesn't it? I mean, China's unemployment raw number is well over half our total population. I think it's about equal to the total number of working adults in the US. Now THAT would be bad.
Posted by iain at 03:00 PM
Hopes that Bush might base his HIV/AIDS policy on science were dashed by last week's announcement that Tom Coburn, a former congressman, will co-chair the President's Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS. Coburn is noted for his advocacy of abstinence-only HIV prevention programs. This stance is contradicted by the surgeon general's report last year demonstrating that abstinence-only programs are ineffective. Coburn couples this position with opposition to the use of condoms, which have proven effective in reducing HIV transmission. He is also opposed to needle exchanges, another effective prevention technique.
In other words, Bush II Fraudulency has appointed as chair of a policy commission a man who is opposed to every known effective approach, and wedded to the one approach demonstrated not to work.
Way to go, Shrubya!
I wonder what ever happened to that gay conservative republican with massive brain damage that the Shrub appointed to oversee things a few months back. The one that had the religious right all frothy and upset. The one that's been practically invisible since his appointment. I mean, I know the administration is enormous, and you can't expect to hear about people all the time, but you'd expect someone appointed to be a political leader on a specific policy to ... well, lead.
Posted by iain at 12:57 PMBUY enron?
Can UBS Tame Enron's Wild Traders?
Someone wants to buy part of Enron.
Now.
Good lord, are they insane? I mean, yes, OK, that particular chunk of Enron seems to have actually and truly piled up the insane profits. But Enron is going to be sued and sued and sued for the next several years, as people attempt to recover their pensions, their 401(k) funds, everything. Various mutual funds may sue to recover costs. Individual executives will be sued because of their profiteering (and the SEC will almost certainly go after them for insider trading). Enron -- or what's left of it -- will have to pay heavy SEC-imposed fines. The executives themselves are highly likely to be facing RICO charges, because of the pattern of both fraudulent accounting and outright embezzlement and theft. (Heh. Watch Congress run for cover when that happens. The Houston Press has an interesting little deconstruction of what Enron did to gain access to Congress -- aside from just spending money, of course. Interestingly, their highest House Representative campaign contributions total went to Lloyd Bentsen, former vice-presidential candidate and Democrat. I dare say all sides in Congress will soon be demonstrating quite remarkable interest in making this go away. As an aside, The Press has also been having fun dancing about the embarrassed Houston Chronicle, which tried desperately for months to pretend that there weren't problems with Enron, when they were becoming patently obvious.) The situation with the company is so bad that the Houston Astros are trying to strip Enron of naming rights for their baseball field; it's reasonably certain that Enron will default on the next required payment in any event. (Interestingly, Enron has actually kept current on the contract to date. Curious. I'd have thought that the bankruptcy judge would have suspended any such payments, since it's not really necessary to the continued function -- such as it is -- of the company.)
So given all that ... why would any even vaguely sane company want to step into the middle and buy some part of Enron?
Posted by iain at 11:39 AMwarrior librarian weekly
Whoa.
Does this mean I get to carry a sword? Because I could get behind the whole sword thing. As long as I don't have to wear anything pretending not to be a skirt.
Posted by iain at 11:18 AMweb ads
When Internet Ads Attack: Jaffe said users should expect bigger, better, and braver ad campaigns on the Web, including an increased number of advertisements that are interactive and fun.
For instance, Absolut Vodka has a new ad that requires you to peel away a citrus-peel graphic before you move on. And before you log on to Playboy.com, a full-size commercial for Southern Comfort pops up for 10 to 20 seconds. Gold said the quality of the ads should improve as ads begin to mimic television commercials.
"Interactive and fun". Hmm. Yes. Well. Frankly, I'd call it annoying and intrusive. I don't want to interact with ads. I'll accept the necessity for paying for things somehow -- reluctantly -- but now you're going to actually make me touch the damn things? Ew, ew, EW! slimy people! (Actually, I'm surprised that Playboy doesn't have ads requiring you to click on a Playmate's chest. No doubt something forthcoming in the near future. We can so look forward to that.)
Posted by iain at 10:42 AM
Court rejects challenge to sodomy law: The state Court of Appeals has rejected a challenge to a Kansas law punishing young adults who have sex with underage partners more harshly if those partners are of the same gender. A three-judge panel ruled against Matthew R. Limon, who was seeking to overturn his sentence of 17 years and two months in prison for having sex with an underage boy in February 2000, when Limon was 18. Had either Limon or the other boy been a girl, the maximum sentence would have been one year and three months in prison. [...] In an unsigned opinion issued Friday, Appeals Judges Henry W. Green Jr., David S. Knudson and G. Joseph Pierron Jr. said the U.S. Supreme Court has held that states may treat homosexual acts differently from heterosexual ones. "Neither does this decision deal with the wisdom of the statute involved, as that is left to the Legislature in our governmental system, with its separation of powers," the appeals panel wrote. [...] "The argument that [the statute] is not made at homosexuals cannot be made with a straight face," the appeals panel said in its decision.
In other words, the Kansas Court of Appeals, which certainly has the authority to declare a state statute unconstitutional or a sentence inappropriate, instead declared its cowardice and declined do to what they certainly knew to be fair and reasonable. After all, had they not felt that the result in this case was unreasonable, they would have made no comment whatsoever about the wisdom of the law or the state's argument about the statute. (I'm guessing, given that interesting aside at the end, that the State of Kansas did, in fact, try to say that a massively differential result was not aimed at homosexuals. Why they would say any such thing in a state which criminalizes only homosexual sodomy, I have no idea.)
I do love that the Kansas Court of Appeals cited a US Supreme Court case (the infamous Bowers v Hardwick) upholding a law that Georgia itself has since overruled. Not repealed, you understand; it was overturned by the Georgia Supreme Court and has not been reinstated by the Georgia Legislature. (The particulars of the Georgia case, although not really relevant, are utterly hysterical. The law was overturned because a man performed apparently consensual sodomy on his 17-year-old niece. The Georgia Supreme Court wrote that they "cannot think of any other activity that reasonable persons would rank as more private and more deserving of protection from governmental interference than consensual, private, adult sexual activity." Alas, such a defense would not work in Kansas; it's entirely legal to perform consensual sodomy on your 17-year-old niece, but you damn well better not touch your 17-year-old nephew. But I digress.)
It will be interesting to see what happens with this case. What I honestly don't understand is what his juvenile record has to do with this, since he must have been a juvenile himself at the time. In any event, he's another of those less-than-perfect defendants.
I would honestly expect that the Kansas Supreme Court would uphold both the law and the sentence (that is, they'll refuse to hear the appeal). They've historically been quite hostile to any concept that a sodomy law is perhaps not a good thing (to say nothing of generally unenforceable, except in extraordinary circumstances like these).
And of course, being as Mr Limon is just 18 and developmentally disabled, they're now sentencing him to days and nights of involuntary unconsensual sodomy. That, of course, being as it is taking place in a Kansas adult prison, is entirely legal.
Posted by iain at 12:31 PMcivil rights commission v shrub
Bush appointee has no seat on rights panel, judge rules.
My, my, my. The Shrub must just be feeling like he's being nibbled to death from within. First, the Civil Rights Commission sues him to prevent his nominee being seated. Then the General Accounting Office announces plans to sue for the information from Cheney's energy commission. Then the Civil Rights Commission wins!
Of course, the appeals process is going to be fascinating. I'd expect that they will try to expedite the appeals, since time's a-wastin'! I'd also expect the Commission to resist said efforts, since, from their point of view, the longer this takes, the better. But eventually, this will reach the Supreme Court. And I'll make you a wager: the Court will swat the Commission with hardly a backward glance, depending on how the appeals court rules. Better: I'll bet that if the Court is required to actually issue a decision, rather than simply refusing to hear the case and upholding an appeals court decision, that they unanimously state that the Commission has its head up its collective ass, and that of course Wilson was only supposed to complete Higginbotham's unexpired term.
incidental terrorists
Detainees from the war on terrorism are being interrogated in compliance with U.S. laws, the general in charge of detention said Saturday.
Oh, for the love of .... Well, it's an interesting piece of misdirection, anyway, if a somewhat silly one. The issue was never that detainees would be questioned in compliance with US laws. At the moment, it would seem that they do not, in fact, apply (pending the federal judge's decision about jurisdiction). The issue was questioning and treatment in compliance with the Geneva Convention.
... there's a Taliban member from Sweden. Sweden. What on earth ....
If we're only holding 158 at Guantanamo, and 370 in Afghanistan ... what happened to the rest of them? Weren't we holding thousands of them at some point? Where'd they all go? I mean, did we just release them, even though it probably wouldn't be terribly good for Afghanistan to do that? What?
In any event, other than perfectly silly remarks made by commanders, things seem to be going startlingly well at Camp X-Ray (NY Times, registration required -- and how the hell did the prison get such a silly name, anyway?) Who knows; maybe it will prove to be unusually effective propaganda to treat people well and provide much needed medical care. Granted, such treatment may be compromised by the Shrub's tribunal plan, should it ever get off the ground. (You notice that we've been hearing about the things for ages, but nothing has actually happened? The administration doesn't actually seem to be moving forward to construct the machinery for the tribunals, but they were announced four months ago. Surely in that amount of time, they could have done something to get the process underway.) I suspect that at some point we'll have one of those wonderful ironies of the US justice system. Well, we've treated you, repaired major injuries, and you're a hale, healthy, hearty human! So now we'll just have to kill you a little! In any event, the American Bar Association has essentially come out against tribunals, attaching a list of recommendations to a document forwarded to the president. M. le Shrub had wanted them to keep quiet, because he didn't want "inflexible" conditions that could tie the President's hands. I must admit, I'm baffled as to how they could restrict him in any way whatsoever. He's entirely free to ignore them. It's entirely likely that the detainees will be appointed military lawyers, who are NOT free to decline the appointment because the conditions don't meet the ABA-requested standard. So what earthly difference does it make?
Posted by iain at 11:38 AM
Drug chief says IAAF, IOC should ban USA Track
You know, technically, the problem is that USA Track and Field is absolutely correct. Both state and federal law pretty much absolutely prohibit the release of this information, absent a specific waiver. (Which I would imagine that USATF has very thoughtfully refused to provide to their athletes.)
Of course, should IAAF decide to kick USATF out of the federation -- thus making every single US track and field athlete ineligible for international competition, and revoking the certification of all international meets held in the US -- I'd imagine that you'd have athletes screaming to be allowed to sign waivers to release the information. (Except for the ones who'd already been found guilty, who would be notably reluctant.) You'd also have foreign track promoters screaming at the IAAF for robbing them of many of their principal attractions. (Europeans actually watch track meets in non-Summer-Olympic years. Weird.) It'll be interesting to see who blinks first in that case. It's in USATF's interest to wait the IAAF out, but I don't know that they will.
Posted by iain at 06:14 PMthey sing! they dance! they kill!
college station
Of course, the one downside to all this is that it means that everyone's been looking in the wrong state and the wrong part of the country for the source for five freakin' months now! Any chance of figuring things out is probably lost. It's probable that any security holes that people might have looked at have been handled, entirely without College Station being aware that they needed to do anything special.
And it's not as if we're done with anthrax quite yet, either.
Posted by iain at 05:12 PMparenthood vs statutory rape
A Roy man who claims he was a statutory rape victim a decade ago is being sued by the state to pay support to a child he is accused of having fathered from the incident. [...] [Randall Richards, the man"s attorney] contends that this case amounts to reverse discrimination. Had the victim of statutory rape been a female, he argues, there would be no question that she should not be victimized again. [...] "He was raped, plain and simple."
Of course, the problem here is that everyone but, perhaps, the woman involved is right, as a matter of law. By any legal test in just about every state, the woman committed statutory rape. (What on earth was an 18 year old girl doing having sex with a 13-year-old boy?) According to Utah's law, the man is nonetheless liable for child support, even though he had no idea of the child's existence until the lawsuit. That said, it seems that the only way to prove his case is to submit to DNA testing ... which will also prove the state's case. If he doesn't get tested, then the state's default declaration of parenthood doesn't help him at all, because it's simply an assumed fact; it has nothing to do with the actual offenses involved.
Of course, Mr Palmer is running headlong into social assumptions, even in Utah, that sex with an older woman is a Good Thing for a teenaged boy. Mr Palmer is going to have a miserable time making a case, especially since many people will feel that he had his fun, way back when, and now he should pay for it, no matter that the law argues that this was statutory rape. (In fact, no matter what state he was in, he'd have a hard time making a case against that assumption.)
Posted by iain at 03:16 PMgay adoption
Chicago Tribune | Doctors support gay adoption: Same-sex couples make good parents and should have full rights to adopt children, the American Academy of Pediatrics says in a sweeping report that brings the influential doctors' group into a stormy social and legal debate. The report, which appears in Monday's AAP journal Pediatrics, is based on studies that show children whose parents are gay or lesbian fare as well as children raised by heterosexual parents, according to experts with the Elk Grove Village-based group.
Of course, there isn't any logical reason why children with homosexual parents wouldn't fare as well ... but then, nothing in this debate has followed logical thought terribly well, has it?
In any event, I can't imagine that this report will make much difference. People will bring suits, and judges and juries will rule based more on emotion than on law and critical thought, and there will be more suits, and so on and so on and so on ....
Posted by iain at 11:13 AMlebanon
The Times: Al-Qaeda in talks with Lebanon group: THE al-Qaeda terrorist organisation is trying to transfer its base of operations from Afghanistan to Lebanon, according to intelligence uncovered earlier this month.
Lebanon.
Syria must be so pleased. Nothing they need more than to have their client state, which they're holding together with rubber bands, string, and an occupying army, get tangled up in this mess. And, of course, it will do ever so much to improve the Palestinians' situation, wont it? Ties between al-Qaeda and the local groups can become all close and snuggly. (Well, closer, anyway. Proximity breeds an ease in coordinating strategies.)
It will be interesting to see how, and if, we decide to handle this diplomatically or otherwise. I just have this feeling that at some point, Syria will be told, "Do something, or we'll do it for you." And won't that be fun?
Posted by iain at 10:52 AMwar on waste
The War on Waste: Just last week President Bush announced, "my 2003 budget calls for more than $48 billion in new defense spending." More money for the Pentagon, CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales reports, while its own auditors admit the military cannot account for 25 percent of what it spends. "According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted.
$2.3 trillion? 25% of their total budget?
What the hell is going on over there?
Too bad this predates the Enron mess. It could always be explained away as bad oversight by accountants and auditors ... which, in fact, it is. But that doesn't explain why the money has gone missing, or what the Pentagon did with it.
It's a pity this story will be so thoroughly buried. Said burial will be due, no doubt, to massive yet discreet efforts from both the Pentagon and the White House -- after all, even this craven Congress might be given a moment's pause in voting more money for Defense if Defense is casually misplacing so much of it. Then again, what on earth would make Defense unique? Granted that they have more money to spend and more toys to spend it on than any other agency, I'd still wager that there's an appalling amount of waste and money gone missing in accounts across the government. And Congress will be reluctant to look too closely at Defense's books, lest someone decide to take a look at theirs.
Posted by iain at 10:40 AM
Just in case anyone thought things in Afganistan were winding down ...
Taliban shadow still looms as war turns against Afghan royalists: HUNDREDS of escaping elite al-Qaeda fighters have passed through the mile-high city of Gardez, where heavy factional fighting erupted this week. [...] Most of the Taliban officials haven't bothered to hide. With a crushing military victory last week against men loyal to a Pathan royalist governor appointed by Afghan leader Hamid Karzai, the remaining Taliban in eastern Afghanistan have extended their stay indefinitely. They have formed a union unthinkable to the US military a few weeks ago, linking up with Northern Alliance factions believed to be financed by Iran.
Well, at least we understand now what Iran was doing in Dubya's great "axis of evil", since the stated reason -- the ability to attack the US with nuclear ballistic missiles -- was patently ridiculous.
Some of the logic used by the Afghans is baffling, but that may just be because we don't really know the history. For example, if we think that a figurehead monarchy would be the best thing for Afghanistan, why would we be aligned with an alliance that wants to crush the royalist movement? It strikes me that the region has something of a stake in restoring the Taliban, if only to have its regional customs once again reimposed on the rest of the country.
Well, it'll be interesting to see what our government decides to do with this area. With the Shrub making "Well, we got rid of the Taliban for you, so this is all your problem" noises to Karzai, I can't imagine that the future holds anything but more long, bloody civil war for that country.
Posted by iain at 08:44 PMknives in scotland
Knife carrying rife for pre-teens: ONE in six 13-year-olds and one in eight 12-year-olds carries a weapon for protection or for use in a fight, a major Scottish crime study has revealed. Of more than 4,000 children aged 13 surveyed by researchers investigating Scotland%u2019s violent knife culture, just under 16% said they carried a weapon. Of those, half said they carried a knife, with the remainder turning to baseball bats, poles and even hammers for protection. Scientists also found that weapon-carrying begins before children even enter their teens, with one in eight 12-year-olds admitting to carrying a weapon.
... In SCOTLAND? What on earth is going on there? If Britain supposedly has such a safe and quiet society, compared to the US, what on earth is happening to make children feel that carrying knives is something they need to do?
Posted by iain at 08:34 PM
Gay Priest's Status in Question
OK, I'd just like to point out: he's an idiot.
That aside, if the church does decide to take action against him, and they have the least sense of politics at all, they will do it not because he's leaping about saying, "I'm here and I'm queer!". After all, the Church itself has said that homosexuality is tolerable as long as you live a celibate life.
Which, it seems, the good Father Mantero Garcia has not done: The priest also said he learned to combine a sex life with the priesthood: "I love both things." And that gives the Church a completely different reaon for giving him the boot. After all, the vows are for poverty, chastity, and obedience, and by running around having sex at all, let alone with men, he's broken the latter two.
Posted by iain at 10:03 PMdo you know what it means to miss new orleans
TOMORROW, the United States embraces the healing power of football – American football. But while the Super Bowl, its biggest sporting event, is being paraded as a patriotic show of fighting back against terror, it is also a bitter reminder of how much America has changed. [...] However, the 70,000 fans arriving at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans will find life a little less normal – 8ft fences and an expected five-hour wait to get through security tighter than at an airport. The happy paraphernalia of the big game has been banned: no beach balls, banners or horns, no long-lens cameras, no camera cases. No blimps, because the air space around the stadium has been closed. The Super Bowl has been declared a national special security event, meaning it will be run for the first time by the US Secret Service. The Winter Olympics, which start next week in Salt Lake City, Utah, have been classed the same way. [...] But the goal remains to look as if life goes on – to party behind the barriers. “We don’t want security to be the focus of the game,” said Jim Mackin, of the Secret Service. “The majority of what we do won’t be seen.”
Um ... five hours to get in to the stadium? Perhaps the majority of what the Secret service does won't be seen, but a fairly hefty percentage will certainly be noticed.
It all makes me incredibly glad that I'm not going to those events now. (Mind, if I were a terrorist, I think I'd have left those events alone anyway. Big event with a major audience, yes; security nightmare, also yes.) And while the world might be willing to sit there and tsk in horror if a terrorist attacked the Super Bowl, I suspect doing anything at all to the Olympics would be another one of those peculiarly unifying events. (After all, the problem with attacking the World Trade Center is that it truly and genuinely was a center for world trade, not just ours.)
And what brilliant person's idea was it to have all of the surviving presidents -- including the Senior Shrub -- at any given event at the same time? On the one hand, I suppose it simplifies security, up to a point -- they are all in one place, so you can cut back on the individual security details and let the coverages overlap -- but can you just imagine the nightmares the Service is having about anything happening? The symbolism of needing to protect not only two of the nation's largest events (Mardi Gras gets caught up peripherally in this mess), but all those former presidents ...
Posted by iain at 02:40 AM
I would like to point out that the man's sexual orientation had nothing to do with anything. If he'd been straight, it wouldn't even have been reported. (Of course, then it would have been assumed, and we could all have gone on for weeks about all them straight pervs out there. Because, you know, most pervs are, in fact, straight. It's one of them numbers things. But I digress.)
That said ... isn't 23 a little old to be doing something THIS stupid? I mean, 14, 15, 16, 17, sure, fine, whatever. (Well, OK, not fine, exactly, but, you know, hormonal, libidinous, young, stupid. People are more likely to understand.) But usually, by the ripe old age of 23, even the most drunk guy has usually figured out that this is not socially approved behavior. And doing it during the daylight in public is even less approved, if possible. So ... why?
Update: I knew I'd seen this story somewhere else, but couldn't remember at the time.
Posted by iain at 01:49 PMtyson
This whole Tyson mess has just gotten incredibly loopy. Take this, for example: Report: Pro boxing official says no Danish license to Tyson: Mike Tyson, who was denied a boxing license to fight Lennox Lewis by the Nevada State Athletic Commission, should not expect to hold the bout in Denmark, an official said, citing legal reasons. Apparently Denmark will honor a valid license from another country, but they won't issue one to someone whose license has been lifted. Britain not only won't license him, they won't even let him enter the country. (Tyson attacked a referee. He attacked a referee in the ring. Good god.)
So now people are scrambling to rule themselves out of a Tyson fight.
And then there's the State of New York, and there's Lennox Lewis. New York has also said "No, thanks" to a Tyson fight, which has rather more meaning; no Madison Square Garden for you! Lennox Lewis, in the meantime, would appear to have been ... well, let's use his representative's word (which is legally safer than the words that immediately leapt into my mind). He wanted "compensation" for the bite that Tyson laid on him during that insane press conference. In the meantime, he's gotten a tetanus shot, which makes perfectly good sense ... and Lewis is also taking a course of antibiotics, which is just stupid. (Might as well make sure it's cipro while he's at it, kill two birds and all that.) Oh, and apparently Texas thinks that a Tyson fight might be fun, which just figures, really. ("We don't hold church in our boxing arenas." Well, thank you for clarifying that. I mean, I always thought that they had boxing matches in the Crystal Cathedral, didn't you?)
It also appears that Nevada had other reasons for denying Tyson a license, not including that mess.
Last week, Las Vegas police said they had found probable cause to charge Tyson with sexual assault in an earlier case. According to police and prosecutors, a woman they said had been in a six-month romantic relationship with the former two-time heavyweight champion went to a Las Vegas hospital in mid-September with injuries she said she suffered when Tyson raped her at his Las Vegas home. The newest allegation concerns a November 2000 incident with a woman police identified as an out-of-state resident in her 20s.
So the man attacked his opponent at a public press conference, bit him (what IS it with him and biting?), and has not one but TWO rape investigations pending.
And Texas wants him and doesn't mind that he's "not an altar boy".
Yeah. Right.
Posted by iain at 01:29 AMdetainee petition
Prosecutors Dispute Detainee Petition: As expected, federal prosecutors chose to take a two-pronged approach to this petition. First, they argue that the people bringing the petition lack standing, which is pretty much undeniable. It's also undeniable that, unless the court exercises jurisdiction, the people who do have standing lack the ability to bring the suit themselves, what with being in Cuba and all. Second, the government argues that the federal courts lack jurisdiction, because federal courts have traditionally lacked authority over extraterritorial bases. As previously mentioned, also undeniable, but a thorny argument for them to make.
Tune in next Friday for the case for the defense!
Posted by iain at 01:08 AMimmigration judges
Immigration Judges Call for Independent Court.
Well, well, well. Our Lord High Minister of Injustice must be right pissed off over this type of public assault on his much vaunted polibies. Mind, the situation with the immigration courts started under Clinton (spineless git), but have rapidly accelerated in the past few months.
Being as the hero of His Fraudulence and Our Lord High Minister is Reagan, I fully expect all immigration judges to be fired, just because they'd think it was a peachy keen cool thing to do!
In any event, there's nothing that you'd expect to happen from this petition, besides a little public embarrassment. After all, Ashcroft is their boss. If he can endure the public scorn of several nations over draping the breast of the statue of justice, he can certainly endure this.
Oh, also, note in the article the mention of "Ashcroft's Oct. 31 rule that allowed the INS to override immigration judges' decisions to release Sept. 11 detainees on bond." It's worth noting that Congress explicitly denied Justice the right to hold people indefinitely under the USA Constitutional Abridgement Act ... er, pardon, the USA PATRIOT Act. He asked for the right to hold people without presenting cause, Congress said no. And then he promulgated an executive rule that effectively overruled Congress, who said ... nothing whatsoever. (Spineless gits.) And this is the same Congress that the immigration judges will be lobbying to move them into a different agency. At a time when Congress is fearful that anything they do to defend the Constitution will be seen as "soft on terrorism."
Right.
Posted by iain at 01:04 AMbankruptcies and consulting
VP warned Global Crossing about accounting practices: A Global Crossing vice president questioned his superiors about aggressive accounting practices less than six months before the telecommunications provider filed for bankruptcy, the company confirmed Wednesday.
We're no Enron says NTL chief : NTL, the cash-strapped cable company, began its negotiations with creditors yesterday in a bid to reduce its debt and avoid bankruptcy. If the company fails, it would be the biggest-ever corporate collapse. With $20 billion outstanding, NTL has twice as many debts as Enron, the defunct US energy trader. [...] NTL - which originally stood for National Transcommunications Limited - has its headquarters in New York and is quoted on Nasdaq, despite having most of its assets in Britain, where it has 3m customers.(London Telegraph, registration may be required.)
PricewaterhouseCoopers to spin off consulting: PricewaterhouseCoopers, the world’s largest accounting firm, announced plans today to spin off its consulting arm as concerns about the independence of auditors mount in the wake of the Enron scandal. [...] PricewaterhouseCoopers executives decided to speed up plans for the stock offering for PwC Consulting following disclosures that Enron’s auditor, Arthur Andersen LLP, acknowledged destroying documents and e-mails that were sought by federal and congressional investigators. "We recognize that there is a crisis of confidence in the profession and that there’s a concern over the scope of services that firms such as ours provide,’’ PricewaterhouseCoopers spokesman David Nestor said.
My my my. What interesting fallout this Enron mess is having.
Pricewaterhouse (didn't those used to be two separate words?) aside, the easiest way to prevent future messes of this sort -- aside from having a board and executive that actually paid attention to what the accountants were doing and, you know, being honest and stuff ... the easiest way to prevent this from happening again would be for Congress to pass a very simple law: Companies that provide consulting services to another company, institution, organization, or other body, are barred from simultaneously providing auditing and accounting services. Period, end of bill, send it to His Fraudulency to sign.
This, of course, will never happen. Consulting is big money, and accounting firms -- which mostly consult about business practices and accounting and money issues, after all, when they provide consultation services -- do not want to cut themselves out of that type of cash flow. In general, consulting seems to pay a good bit more than accounting ... which isn't cheap, either. Perforce, consulting and accounting firms have what you might call a hell of a lot of money on hand, and are not terribly lax about throwing it at Congress when it's in their interest. Congress, will, of course, graciously accept the money and the attached quid pro quo, being stuck in a zero sum game regarding campaign finance. (Accept money, and you're a money grubbing whore, but the public won't pay for public financing, but campaigns cost buckets of monty, but if you have your own fortune and use it then you're accused of buying your office ... there's just no way to get out of that mess.)
Posted by iain at 12:44 AMweekend in mississippi
Nothing political, nothing topical. I just wish I could write like Richard, some days.
We now return you to your regular fulminations.
Posted by iain at 12:25 AM