Xerox Restates 5 Years of Revenue

You know ... you wonder what exactly is happening with the auditing and accounting profession today. Xerox itself is primarily to blame, of course, for shifting numbers around the way it did. But what on earth was KPMG doing to allow any such thing? As an auditor, it was thier public duty to not only to tell Xerox that what they were doing was wrong, but to report such problems to the SEC and other oversight agencies. I mean, if PricewaterhouseCoopers (no ethical giant itself) was able to find the errors by simply going through statements that KPMG had already audited and certified, then how difficult could it have been to find the errors in the first place?

It's becoming quite clear that there's something rotten in the auditing/accounting/consulting profession. Andersen and Enron and all their other failing clients (including WorldCom, oh yes) may well just be the worst of it all. To be sure, at least KPMG's dereliction of duty didn't make Xerox fail. (And wouldn't that have been a fun thing to watch.) But enough companies, aside from Xerox, have been restating earnings over the past few months to show that the profession has been letting money get the better of its principles.

Posted by iain at 11:54 PM

 

Bell tolls for 'Hunchback': A British theatre company has dropped references to "hunchback" in its adaptation of the famous Victor Hugo novel for fear of upsetting those who suffer from the disability.

You know ... on the one hand, it's the title of the 1920s movie (and all succeeding movie adaptations of the book), and not the actual or translated title of the book itself, so changing the title of this play shouldn't be such a big deal. If you're not going to call it "Notre Dame of Paris", then calling it "The Bell Ringer of Notre Dame" isn't all that great a change, right?

And it's not as if society doesn't have issues with the disabled, disfigurement and entertainment.

On the other hand ... doesn't it just make you want to yell, "People, get a GRIP!"

..... a spokesman for the disability charity Leonard Cheshire told the UK Press Association: "We would much rather efforts were made to ensure disabled people have full access to all theatres than to see the names of productions being changed."

Yes, that might be rather more meaningful, mightn't it?

Posted by iain at 07:26 PM

 

And even after its last day in session, the Court continued on its peculiar way:

Court Finds for Government on Racial Execution Data: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Friday the Justice Department does not have to turn over information that a black defendant says might show he was unfairly targeted for the death penalty because of his race [...] The high court ruled the defendant, John Bass of Detroit, who is black, had failed to submit relevant evidence that others in a similar situation had been treated differently and therefore he was not entitled to the information.

Now think about that. Parse that.

What the Court in its wisdom has said is essentially this: the defendant has no evidence that his allegation is true. Absent such evidence, which can only be provided by the government, he has no case. The government is not required to provide the evidence to the defendant, because there is no evidence that his allegation is true.

Nice little circle they have him running in. He's not entitled to have the evidence that would prove his case -- and of course the fun part is that if his allegation is true, then others in his situation are actually not being treated differently; they will also be discriminated against (assuming arguendi that what he says is true) and they will also not be entitled to the evidence of that fact.

Solicitor General Theodore Olson of the Justice Department said the appeals court ruling "threatens to stop federal death penalty prosecutions in their tracks. The decision requires the government to produce thousands of highly sensitive internal documents concerning the attorney general's review of hundreds of capital cases over six years."

Yes? And? Your point being?

As far as I can tell, Olson's argument boils down to: Even if the government is applying the death penalty in a discriminatory way, we can't allow defendants to prove that, because it will halt death penalties completely. Or, to put it more bluntly, We don't want to require the government to prove that it is following the law of the land in executing people, because it would be administratively inconvenient.

Because administrative convenience is always such a good reason for executing people, isn't it?

The Court also decided that Alabama's practice of chaining prisoners to hitching posts (also called "restraining bars") in the outdoor sun without food or especially water constituted cruel and unusual punishment and that a prisoner could sue the state and the guards when he was so treated.

The dissent in the 6-3 decision came, rather predictably, from Scalia, Thomas and Rehnquist. Curiously enough, depending on the facts of the case -- they do seem somewhat murky -- I don't entirely disagree with the first part of the dissent. (Syllabus and opinion for the case {PDF format}) Only one of the guards is alleged to have participated in the egregious mistreatment of the prisoner in the incident which is so appalling -- the first time, they were actually comparatively kind (Comparatively) and yet that is the incident for which qualified immunity was being stripped. There's also a dispute over the facts at issue; beyond his being chained to the bar, there's the question of whether he did or did not get bathroom breaks and whether he was or was not shirtless; evidence seems to point in both directions. That said ... if it was illegal the first time, it was illegal the second time, just with more enthusiasm, shall we say.

Unfortunately, Thomas goes all wonky in the latter part of the dissent. At one point, he comes perilously close to advocating torture when it serves a "legitimate penological purpose". (Then again, he's said such things before.) He also gets needlessly picayune; why on earth would the prisoner need to know that someone was specifically responsible for supervising him on the hitching post when that person put him there in the first place? Why would he be expected to know prison staff work assignments at that level of detail, either then or later? He also notes that a Court of Appeals decision supports the guards as long as measures weren't done "maliciously or sadistically"; I fail to see how taunting someone with water and then dumping it on the ground in front of them is neither malicious nor sadistic. Oh, well. At least he "respectfully dissent[s]", instead of having a plain dissent hissy fit.

The problem is, I suspect what the majority wants to do is to say that the punishment itself is illegal, however gently done, and the guards should have known that. Unfortunately, given the murky nature of the case, they're stuck having to rule on the lesser of the two offenses, which is really the only one at issue. (That said, the Supreme Court is not typically where the facts of a case are first established; that's done at lower levels. Unfortunately, with the issue of immunity intervening, findings of fact for the rest of the case haven't actually taken place as yet.) The hitching post/restraining bar as a punishment is easily subject to abuse, as Alabama's history shows. However, given that the restraining bar has been in use for some years, and qualified immunity has been upheld in other cases involving it ... I hate to say it, but within strict limits, the dissent is correct here in saying that there is no reason for the officers involved in the first incident -- where the prisoner was treated about as humanely as he could be, given the situation -- to be stripped of qualified immunity for that incident. Basically, the Court majority is saying, When you followed the rules you knew precisely as written -- including offering water, bathroom breaks, and keeping a written log of everything -- you forfeited your immunity by participating in a form of torture. The later incident, with actual, relatively clear sadism, that was just the lagniappe.

I can't say that I disagree with the majority in trying to find some way of removing a form of punishment so subject to abuse, and in doing so with a relatively clean, clear statement: Use of the hitching post is in and of itself cruel and unusual punishment and you may not use it at all. (The previous advisory opinions from the Department of Justice having been as clear as mud.) But they did rather torture the law in getting to that result.

Posted by iain at 06:37 PM

 

High court blocks judge from opening detention hearings for alleged terrorists: The Supreme Court on Friday blocked a judge from opening immigration hearings for foreign terrorism suspects, granting the Bush administration's emergency request for a stay.

And this, I suspect, is an indicator of what will happen once the actual cases -- as opposed to the right to have a case heard in open court -- start reaching the Supreme Court. The Court will decide that wholesale suspension of chunks of the Constitution is just fine and dandy with them. The problem is, of course that the War on Terror, such as it is, is not likely to be something that starts and ends quickly. Assuming that the government is serious about prosecuting it until terrorists get the message and turn their attentions elsewhere (they won't, after all, simply disappear), the process is likely to take many years. Apparently, we'll have to make do without many constitutional rights in the meantime. Oh, well. Such is life in Shrubya's America.

Posted by iain at 01:35 PM

 

So. Remember this little bit from a couple days ago? (Or, well, really, not so little, all things considered.)

A reporter from the Lewis and Floorwax show on the local Fox radio station found Mr Finlay and was able to confirm that it was, indeed, what it appeared to be. (Reportedly, he allowed her to take pictures for confirmation and showed that he had two healthy ones. Unfortunately, although the Lewis and Floorwax link currently shows you pictures of the reporter interviewing Mr Finlay, a Fox station actually had a spasm of taste and didn't display his ... confirmations.)

In any event, he doesn't seem to mind having displayed himself on the front page of the Rocky Mountain News. I suppose in the middle of everything else, a bit of public exposure probably doesn't seem like that much of anything, really.

Posted by iain at 01:24 PM

 

The Martha Stewart Show before a live audience (NOTE: Not quite what you'd think the title would make it.)

Martha Stewart's tips for gracious big-house living.

You know ... I'm actually starting to feel vaguely sorry for The Martha.

Vaguely.

It's not just that everyone (including me, of course) is piling on, ever higher and deeper, in the absence of many actual facts known to the public. That's just the way things happen, distasteful or not, especially if you're a celebrity. It's the outright glee with which people are piling on that I find mildly remarkable. It must be a combination of that Practically Perfect in Every Way approach, and her known control freakishness which seems to have alienated a remarkable number of people. Plus, of course, the general snickering that follows when the high and mighty are brought low. Not that she has been, to be sure; it's not even really threatened as yet. That said, it turns out that one of the reasons that the SEC is so interested in what is, by their terms, a startlingly small peculation (we're talking $200,000 of stock; the SEC typically investigates transactions involving millions and billions of dollars) is because The Martha is, as it turns out, a current director of the NY Stock Exchange itself. It simply does not do to have a stock exchange director, who should be a model of probity itself, to be involved with these sorts of things.

And the stories are just ... weird.

Stewart may become liability for Kmart. I mean, ponder that. One of the biggest retailers in the country, fighting desperately to keep from going belly-up, and one of its biggest selling brands may now be so tarnished that they can't sell it. The Martha. How on earth can that be?

Supposedly, both The Martha AND her daughter once dated Waksal, the ImClone executive who now stands accused of insider trading. To put it in a word: EWWW! Martha, what were you thinking?.

And now it seems that The Martha's stock broker may be turning state's evidence against her. (The side story about him avoiding the press is a most remarkable piece of innuendo; more along the Post's line than the Daily News, I'd have thought. They do everything but call him a weak nelly gayboy in print.)

A great many people are envisioning Martha Stewart in "the big house" with a great deal of glee. To be sure, if convicted and the judge wanted to make something of an example of her, she'd probably get sent to a minimum or medium security prison for a short sentence, if such exist for women (the population of women in federal prisons is so much smaller than men that there may actually be many fewer options in terms of level). Even so, to say that she would be in for a strikingly unpleasant time in jail would be putting it mildly; imagine all this glee translated into the bodies of people who can express said glee upon The Martha herself. As I said, "unpleasant" is too mild a term. (And if she were a man who had done the same thing without being such a public person, they'd probably fine her to the maximum extent of the law, give her a suspended sentence, and be done with it. Such are the penalties of being The Martha.)

Posted by iain at 12:37 PM

 

The Most Unlikely Story Behind a Gay Rights Victory

Just when you think Shrubya and his administration are hopelessly irredeemable ... but I freely admit, I do not understand how this got through. Not at all. You know Rowe and everyone else had to be telling Bush that signing this bill would further alienate his conservative base. He's getting to the stage where they won't forgive him. Usually, very conservative people will vote faithfully for Republicans when they feel it's the best chance to get any of their agenda passed. (Democrats frequently won't vote for other Democrats under the same circumstances. Ah, liberals. But I digress.) However, there are core issues on which you're not expected to compromise. Abortion, for example, and those Evil Evil EVIL HoMoSEXual peoples. He may be pushing his core really hard with this one.

One can but hope, anyway.

Posted by iain at 06:05 PM

 

Study Finds Church Schools Racially Segregated: Private religious schools, particularly Roman Catholic ones, are more racially segregated than public schools, according to the first analysis of federal data on private school enrollment, by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University. [...] The report did not contend that religious schools were intentionally discriminating against minority students but said they were reflecting a failure on the part of religious schools to overcome patterns of residential segregation. (NY Times, registration required)

You know, that's a remarkably unfair assessment. (Yes, I know. I'm defending the Church. Just run with it.) The purpose of Church schools never was to provide that sort of integration; it was never any part of their mission. Church schools are there for education and indoctrination. Period. Catholic schools also tend to be much more neighborhood based -- kids from outside the neighborhood wind up there because it's convenient for their parents in some way, typically, but by and large, Catholic schools have no time or money to pull in people from outside the neighborhood.

Besides, I would imagine that segregation in private nonreligious schools is considerably more pronounced. They do, after all, tend to be for the alarmingly wealthy.

Posted by iain at 05:54 PM

 

And on the last day of its 2001/2002 session, the Supreme Court gives evidence that, yes, a mind is a terrible thing to lose to drugs. And unfortunately, when it comes to drug policy, the Supreme Court has clearly lost its collective mind.

Supreme Court Upholds School Drug Tests (washingtonpost.com): A divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday that public middle and high schools can require drug tests for students in extracurricular activities such as choir or band without violating their privacy rights. The high court by a 5-4 vote upheld a program in Oklahoma that required students who want to take part in after-school activities to submit to random urinalysis. The tests, required without any suspicion of drug use, covered students in grades 7 to 12 who sign up for such activities as cheerleading, choir, band, the academic team and the Future Farmers of America club.

Now ponder that. These students have done no wrong, as far as anyone is aware; were never even suspected of having done wrong. Yet, because the school wants to instill in them the terror of drug tests, they have to go pee in a cup. The school would say, of course, that it wants to instill the terror of drugs, but what do you really think the net effect of this will be? For the most part, of course, students and their parents will just put up with this. Most students don't use drugs, after all. (The marginal economic utility of this testing policy is almost zero; the cost of the test will far outweigh either the number of students caught on drugs, and most students will be caught with marijuana traces -- and a great number of that will be from contact, and not from smoking. Even in the case at issue, of over 500 students tested, only three tested positive. At a big-city school, the rate would probably be higher, but then, a big-city school could probably not afford to test on that wide a scale.)

However, a not-insubstantial number of students will decide that if they have to participate in a drug test, they won't participate in extracurricular activities, or their parents will make that decision for them on philosophical grounds. Fair enough; after all, extracurricular activities, be they sports or chess or speech or whatever, are a privilege, not a requirement. Seeing that these tests are reducing participation, schools will not then rescind the tests, although it would make far more economic sense. They will seek to expand the test to cover all students. And in their wisdom, Shrubya's administration has already argued that they feel any such test would be constitutional. (I suspect that Shrubya and his Department of Injustice feel that nobody in the country is entitled to real privacy -- besides them, of course; damn those press leaks!) And there's nothing in this decision that indicates that the Court's majority would be at all unfriendly to that concept.

There was also that lovely school vouchers case, but actually, there's not much to say about that. School vouchers are pernicious in any case -- they withdraw money from school systems that can least afford it, and typically leave behind those that can't afford to pay any additional tuition (if you think vouchers actually cover full costs, I've got some swampland in Florida you'd just love!) in an even more impoverished school, so there's no love lost there. The policy is technically neutral with regard to religion, however ... although, once upon a time, the rule was that if a neutral law had an entirely nonneutral effect, then the law was an impermissible support and would have to fall. Wonder what happened to that rule? In any event, since the law was not designed on its face to support religion, the fact that most of the vouchers go to the Catholic Church is largely irrelevant.

Mind, I'm not sure how sanguine I'd be about that these days, either. Thankfully, not a decision I'll have to make.

Posted by iain at 10:35 AM

 

Everything old really is new again.

Federal appeals court rules Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional because of words `under God'

We've done this before, haven't we? The words were taken out once before, and then reinserted.

In any event, this decision will never survive the Supreme Court, and Congress would certainly never change it, so the Ninth Circuit can look forward to being summarily reversed yet once again.

In point of actual fact, the original case should have been covered under the Supreme Court decision that says that students can't be compelled to recite the pledge in the first place. The school district should have been told to cease and desist, and that should have been the end of it.

Posted by iain at 03:07 PM

 

... Santa Fe? SANTA FE?

Well, that's unexpected.

And Albuquerque in the women's top ten as well. How weird. Although it would explain a few things. (Although I would point out that a city with about half a million in its metro area is not precisely small, but whatever.)

Posted by iain at 12:49 PM

 

Well ... the editors say that what people thought was ... something else was only a shadow.

I suppose it could be ... but somehow, it still looks like ... what they said it wasn't. I mean, look: direct sunlight headed straight in to the ... region, OK? What is there in the ... region that could cause that sort of shadow? The shadow from his hand is clearly above ... that.

On the other hand, I hope they're right. I mean, it would just be one more gratuitous hit, wouldn't it? Lose everything, and oh, yes, get exposed in the newspaper.

Posted by iain at 12:15 PM

 

Starbucks yanks ad.

On the one hand ... possibly being oversensitive. I can see that. Yes.

On the other ... WHAT were they THINKING?

Posted by iain at 12:09 PM

 

The New World Trade Center 2002 :: Proposal for a new beginning (Flash required. Lovely and delicate orchestral accompaniment. Except when it goes into the Twin Peaks theme, which is perhaps not the best choice when you're trying to sell someone on a concept like this.)

Well, that's ... spectacularly ugly, really.

... Biosphere? In New York?

The security aspects sound either so outlandish as not to be possible, or as if the architects have created their own internal Department of Precrime. (Shrubya's administration would no doubt be thrilled.) Somehow, for example, I'm not sure you could get the city of New York or the federal government to sign on for a five-mile no-fly-zone around Manhattan, or what good it will do. The law-abiding will ... well, abide, and the nonlawabiding will just happily fly airlines into the new CyberCity. They also envision using the 50 elevators to help evacuate people in case of explosion or catastrophic emergency. (Um ... no. Really. No. First, assuming that another jetliner goes into the building, the cables of several of them will be severed. The brakes should keep them from plummeting to the bottom, but they won't actually go anywhere. Second, most cities require elevators to actually stop during major emergencies, just in case they do fail catastrophically themselves.) All that said, it's a good thing the support tower is the central one; given all the crossbracing it'll need to do everything they talk about, the central tower would be spectacularly ugly if you could actually see it.

Posted by iain at 11:31 AM

 

FEDS OPPOSE SUITS vs. AIRLINES By JOHN LEHMANN

What the hell is the government thinking? These are suits against the airlines; the only way that national security could be at all implicated is if the airlines themselves say, "It's all the gub'mint's fault!" and produce documents stating that the government knew, in detail, all along and failed to warn. And if the airlines have any such documents, that would logically mean that they knew all along, and that would be somewhat improbable, don't you think?

The government is also trying to engage in prior censorship of documents in a suit to which they are not a part. I mean, let's get real, shall we? Any documents being subpoenaed will be those that were in the possession of the airlines at the time of the attacks, and maybe a few afterward. The government is highly unlikely to have released important information to the airlines and not expected it to become public -- after all, that's kind of the point. So all this can be is the administration's ongoing shameful efforts to keep any and all information from the public, no matter how unimportant it could be.

I hope the judge in this case give the administration the public bitchslapping it's so desperately demanding, but it's more likely to roll over and say, "National security? Of course we'll do what you want!" Because that seems to be the atmosphere these days.

Posted by iain at 11:14 AM

 

Martha! You said it ain't so, but it looks like you might have been fibbing! Oh, how could you, when a nation turns its domestic eyes to you?

Investigators look at information contradicting Stewart's statements on stock sale: ... A House committee is interested in a widening circle of Stewart acquaintances. The latest is a doctor who also sold shares of the biotech company shortly before the government announced it had rejected ImClone's approval application for the cancer drug Erbitux. [...] Investigators say Stewart's telephone log shows that Bacanovic called her on Dec. 27 and told her, according to her secretary's entry, that he "thinks ImClone is going to start trading downward."

Posted by iain at 10:23 PM

 

N.C. spends settlement on tobacco, not health: When North Carolina won a $4.6 billion settlement from tobacco companies, officials said they'd use the money to break tobacco's grip on the state. They would help smokers quit and stop kids from starting. They would wean farmers off the golden leaf. But since the money began flowing in 1999, not a dime has been spent on new health services, and only a fraction has gone toward moving tobacco farmers into other crops. Instead, about 73 percent of the $59 million spent so far -- about $43 million -- has gone toward production and marketing of N.C. tobacco, an Observer investigation has found.

Ah, yes. Ol' Lady Irony and her big ol' anvil strike again.

I suppose it's not terribly surprising that North Carolina's attitude to the whole thing would be, "For God's sake, DON'T STOP SMOKING! ANYONE! ANYWHERE! Noooooooooooo..." That said, it's not as though Carolina (either one) is unique in not spending the money for its intended purpose. Blaming budget problems is entirely sophistical, however, as those didn't appear until the current fiscal year. States just thought that there were other things more important than the purposes for which the money had originally been earmarked. (You know ... in private industry, that sort of thing is sometimes called "misappropriation of funds." Aren't state governments lucky that they're not private industry? Then again, they'd just have gotten Andersen to do the audits, and they'd be fine.)

The moderately amusing part is how much the state is working to keep tobacco farmers in business. I'd imagine that if pressed, the federal government -- the one that was, I mean, since I can't imagine that Shrubya's government would think anything of the sort -- would say, "You know, we kind of meant for a lot of you to pick some other business. Propping you up with the settlement money was absolutely the last thing we had in mind." (To that, Shrubya's admininstration would add, "Here, take our generous farm subsidies instead!")

Posted by iain at 06:00 PM

 

Congress leaders cautious on Iraq Urge Bush to seek input before attack: Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress are skeptical about the need for quick military action against Iraq and want President Bush to seek congressional approval first. [...] ''An attack on Iraq would involve untold consequences,'' says House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, R-Ill. ''As a practical matter, the president would not and could not undertake such a dramatic move in foreign policy without congressional approval.''

You have GOT to be kidding.

Oh, not about doubting the wisdom of attacking Iraq pre-emptively. Many people have doubts about that, for many, many reasons. But who on earth seriously expects Bush to talk to Congress about it first? The man is all about Executive Privilege and Prerogatives, and whatnot. Attack first, ask permission later, if at all. ("As a practical matter", if troops are in the field under fire, it will be immensely difficult for Congress to say, "Well, no, we don't agree that they should be fighting this war, and we demand that they withdraw at once.")

Mind, his hand may be somewhat forced. It will be impossible to put enough troops into position for an invasion without it being visible. What's likely to happen if he tries any such thing is that the Senate will demand its constitutional powers to declare war be respected. (Shrubya will laugh endearingly at the very concept.) Congress may well demand that the military stand down until it has made some decision, which will produce an interesting clash to be decided by the courts, about the limits of executive power versus Congress' mandate in these things. (The courts, to the extent possible, will probably be scrambling to get away from this one, as any sensible person would. Unfortunately, I don't think they'll get out of it that easily.)

To be honest, my suspicion is that Bush is doing the public drumbeat about Iraq -- which would normally be kept quiet for all sorts of reasons -- as a provocation of the sort that Mearsheimer fears. After all, if Iraq is eventually provoked by the rhetoric into doing something colossally stupid, thinking that it's the only way to preserve itself, then Shrubya's administration is free to act, isn't it? If Iraq continues to act with relative restraint (the key word is relative, people) and if Shrubya continues to refuse to provide actual evidence that Iraq is doing any of the things he says it is, then the more it seems that Shrubya wants to attack, the more intransigent Congress is likely to get. It's also likely that, the further we get from September 11, the more the American people as such will want to see actual evidence before sending troops into that type of war. Shrubya actually has a very small window of opportunity while public sentiment is on his side in this matter; by December, absent another major attack, it will be completely gone. (If there is another major attack, then it won't matter. People will just want him to kill someone, anyone, no matter who.)

Posted by iain at 02:27 PM

 

Well, the Supreme Court had a nicely schizophrenic morning, didn't it?

Court Overturns 150 Death Sentences (washingtonpost.com): The Supreme Court overturned the death sentences of at least 150 convicted killers Monday, ruling that juries and not judges must make such life-or-death decisions. The 7-2 ruling means that executions ordered in at least five states must be reconsidered. Monday's ruling concerned instances in which juries determined defendants' guilt or innocence and judges alone decided their punishment. The court held that such a sentence imposed by a judge violates a defendant's constitutional right to a trial by jury. [...] Ginsburg was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, David H. Souter and Clarence Thomas. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote separately to agree with the outcome.

I have to admit, this was a surprise. I thought the court would vote to reverse Apprendi -- the Sixth Amendment case this one is predicated on -- rather than overturn all those death sentences. And the particular alliance of justices -- the far right wing and the far left wing joining together, leaving moderate O'Connor and archconservative Rehnquist in dissent. How thoroughly odd.

Mind, it's the right decision, Apprendi aside. If the state requires the jury to determine any part of the sentence, it should require the jury to determine the whole of it. It's one thing to have a jury determine guilt or innocence, but have no voice in the sentence at all -- although I understand that's in the next wave of cases -- it's another to have the jury say, "Well, we think he should be given life imprisonment," and to have the judge say, "Well, I find aggravating factors, so I top your life imprisonment with a death sentence." I expect that Justice O'Connor is quite right when she says that inmates in states where the jury has no role in sentencing will now challenge under this decision. It will be interesting to see if the court feels that it's bound by this decision to require the jury to make all sentencing determinations when there's any statutory flexibility. (I suspect a 5-4 decision in favor of the state is headed down the pike, depending on how long it takes to get there.)

And just when it seems that the Court is headed toward some sort of consistency in its sentencing cases, it pops up with this gem:

A sharply divided Supreme Court ruled Monday that judges can lengthen the prison sentences of people who use guns while committing other crimes, even if the defendant hasn't been convicted of any charge specifically involving the weapon. With the 5-4 decision, justices avoided a ruling that could have threatened prison sentences of thousands of inmates and put in doubt sentencing laws in nearly every state. [...] The Supreme Court said judges can decide whether defendants used guns in their crimes, using a lesser proof standard than juries. [...] Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said "not all facts affecting the defendant's punishment are elements" which must be proven by a jury. [...] Justices ruled two years ago that allegations that bring harsher penalties must be put in an indictment and proven to a jury.

So let me see if I understand this: judges are required, when all the facts have been presented to the jury and the jury has a role in sentencing, to let the jury determine the appropriate sentence. However, when all the facts have not been presented to the jury for sentencing consideration, and are not even a part of what the person has been charged with, the judge is allowed to assume them and use them as sentence enhancements.

Well, that's clear as mud.

This decision is utter nonsense. On its face, it would seem to allow a judge to say, "Oh, and I think you used a gun, so I'm adding ten years to your sentence" (or whatever the state guidelines for that are) if, say, the gun belongs to the victim, was on the other side of the room from the criminal and said criminal never knew the gun was there. To be sure, the case at issue is less fanciful -- the criminal did have a gun. It was on his hip the entire time, and he never touched it or used it in the commission of a crime. (In this case, selling pot.) It was, in fact, something he wore all the time in the store, and so the prosecutors didn't think to request the sentencing enhancement when he was charged, as the gun formed no part of the crime. The judge, because he could, thought otherwise.

I have to admit, I didn't think I'd agree with Clarence Thomas on many cases, but I agree on this one; the original prosecutors were wrong not to bring the weapons charge in the first place, and absent the original charge, the judge should not be allowed to suddenly yank it in for no apparent reason. (And yet again, one of those bizarre alliances of the right and left for both the decision and dissent.)

Anyone looking to the court for guidance in how sentencing works would be thoroughly confused after that set of decisions.

UPDATE: In commenting on the Court's decision against executing the retarded I wondered whether or not "cruel and unusual" is always to be measured against public opinion. It turns out that in Eighth Amendment jurisprudence, it's pretty much required to measure against public opion. In fact, the court's decision in this case turns on a neat rhetorical trick. Normally, the "cruel and unusual" provision is considered an intact phrase; a punishment is unusual precisely because of its cruelty. However, in death penalty cases, that doesn't work. The death penalty, at least for the moment, is not considered inherently cruel. In this case, what happened was that the "cruel and unusual" phrase was severed, and only the question of whether or not executing the retarded was "unusual" was at issue. "Unusual" can only be measured against current public opinion. When you consider the 12 states that don't execute anyone, combined with the 18 states that previously barred executing the retarded, it can be said that the country is moving to a consensus that executing the retarded is an unusual punishment that should not be used.

Posted by iain at 11:58 AM

 

Media Relations: ex libris: strange boy, strange article/ June 23, 2002

Posted by iain at 11:36 PM

 

Conference in Liberty draws protests

Um. Yes. Quite.

OK, I'm confused.

Exactly what was Phelps' group protesting? I mean, if you think homosexuals are bad bad bad bad bad, then surely a group which believes that homosexuals can and should renounce their evil ways would be good ... right? I mean, the whole "god hates fags" thing seems to be the one major point of agreement, right?

Just pick a side and run with it, OK? Lovingly bigoted or hatefully bigoted, it's all the same out here.

The end of the article is just perfect, really. Poor Nazi sympathizers. Just didn't know what to do. "We're kind of standing here in the middle and we don't know what to do," said Aaron Chartier. The other, Steven Hopkins, with a group called Blood & Honor, added: "It's annoyingly confusing." You know you need to focus your message when you're confusing your natural allies.

Posted by iain at 10:08 PM

 

President Bush is reportedly studying Aristotle.

I will believe that when donkeys fly.

Quite apart from the fact that our president does not seem, shall we say, philosophically inclined ... where on earth would he find the time to study Aristotle? He doesn't even have the time to read the policy documents issued in his own name.

To be sure, that's not remotely what the article is about -- the question at hand is whether or not Americans are actually reading books, or just buying them and faking it -- but it's such an incredibly arresting opening line.

Posted by iain at 09:52 PM

 

Rite Aid Officers Indicted on Fraud

Well, this sort of thing will keep the stock market down for a while to come. After all, its very existence depends on companies that state their profits and losses accurately. Once the trust in the system breaks down, the stock market has serious problems. (It may anyway, but that's another issue entirely.)

Bergonzi's attorney, Ira Raphaelson, said the real problem is confusing accounting rules. "The rules are unclear," he said.

Oh, please. How many rules can there be that say, "No, really, lie about your earnings. No problem at all, honestly. Just go in and change the figures for no reason whatsoever."

At least this one has nothing to do with accounting firms, merely corrupt executives. Andersen can breathe a sigh of relief ... or something.

Posted by iain at 11:19 PM

 

Conspiracy Theory Grips French: Sept. 11 as Right-Wing U.S. Plot

The French are so very ... French sometimes. And wonderfully constant.

Posted by iain at 11:06 PM

 

Executing Mentally Retarded Unconstitutional

Interesting. Not entirely unexpected -- although the 6-3 split was better than I'd expected -- but still, interesting.

Scalia is quite right, of course; both currently sentenced and future prisoners will now try to convince courts that they're mentally retarded, and states will need to set or accept some sort of standard to work with it. There is likely to be a (relatively brief) clog in the court system as people suddenly file all sorts of additional appeals (most of which will be rejected either because appeals have been exhausted or because they're filed out of time; the merits of the allegations will be largely irrelevant to the disposition of the cases). Of course, that does bring up the question of whether or not the court's administrative convenience should take precedence over the attempted execution of someone who may not be competent to understand what they've done or the penalty they'll be paying. (And apparently our Chief Justice has the judicial version of a snit fit by omitting the traditional word "respectfully" before the word "dissent". How very mature. The Court must be ever so pleasant a place to work both when things like that matter, and you use that sort of traditional courtesy to slap your coworkers in the face.)

There is a certain concern about the Court using public opinion, of all things, as a barometer for correct judicial decisionmaking. After all, if public opinion were the issue, all of the early civil rights decisions would have gone the other way. To be sure, I don't argue with the result, as such -- although, frankly, I think executing retarded inmates is slightly more humane than allowing them to live the rest of their lives in a maximum security prison (slightly). I am somewhat concerned about how the justices reached that result. Is "cruel and unusual" always to be measured against public opinion? I suppose it's embedded in the concept, but ... is there no absolute?

States can help fight HMOs

And in other news, my current HMO lost its battle against the state of Illinois at the Supreme Court. At the moment, at least, I couldn't be happier. It will be interesting to see if HMOs abide by the national standard for independent reviews, should one ever come to be -- I rather think that they're unalterably opposed to independent review (understandable, actually, from a pure business independence viewpoint) -- but think that a national standard would be considerably watered down from the admitted hodgepodge of state standards. (HMOs pay Congress more, you see ... er, that is, they make larger campaign contributions, and may therefore expect more results from their lobbying efforts ... oh, dear. There's just no good way to look at that, is there? But I digress.)

That said, I wonder how far it's possible to expand this decision? Perhaps get HMOs to look at their decisions for including medication in their various formularies. (Currently, Unicare -- Rush Prudential's new name -- only covers a very limited spectrum of prescription drugs. If your particular prescription isn't on their list, you pay a premium to get it, or have to shift to a covered drug. I'm guessing that Unicare tried to shake down ... er, that is, tried to get better deals for drugs from some manufacturers, and when they succeeded, allowed the lowest copayment, and when they didn't, charge as much as they think they can get away with. Interestingly, visiting their website, I discover that my office visit copay just tripled. Entirely without notice, too. Nice of them.)

Posted by iain at 10:52 AM

 

'Combatants' Lack Rights, U.S. Argues

You know ... it's really impossible to overstate the irony just embedded in this very odd case. The government is going to court to tell the court that the court has no right to review the government's declaration of a person as an enemy combattant ... and the government will (ultimately) abide by the court's decision as to the court's power over the government in this matter. The government is also paying for a lawyer that it asserts that the prisoner has no right to consult, and is in fact apparently allowing limited consultation. It says quite a lot about a certain social respect for the rule of law. Purely a public respect, I'd imagine, as I fully expect that the government's response -- win or lose -- will be to stop ever mentioning US citizens and residents whom it detains. After all, the three or so cases that have already arisen promise to be naked nightmares for the administration; far easier just to avoid the situation in future completely. But nonetheless, an interesting situation.

As to the specifics of the case ... well. It could scarcely get much more messy. Given that this string of cases will wend its way to the Supreme Court, I would fully expect that the Court will wait and combine this case with Jose Padilla's, which is an altogether cleaner case -- after all, he was an American citizen apprehended on American soil. (That said, other issues in Padilla's case are murkier -- after all, by the government's own assertion, he doesn't seem to have done anything actually illegal, although he may have been planning to do so, and absent actual evidence of conspiracy and planning, the government may be forced to charge Padilla with something in order to justify his continued retention. And make no mistake: even if the court says that all habeas corpus rights apply for Padilla, the government will keep him prisoner for the foreseeable future.) Whatever decision the Court decides to make, it will be easier to use Padilla's case as the rule, and then others as markers off that rule.

There's very little legal support for the government's current position, since it hasn't really occurred that often -- conversely, there's not all that much against it in case law, either. The scholars mentioned in the article mention the Japanese internment cases, but I wouldn't imagine that the government would cite those even as evidence of what should be allowed in exigent circumstances; that line of reasoning has been expressly repudiated by both Congress and the courts, and the pure odiousness would get the administration into a public relations nightmare.

"In ordinary wars, the courts would not even look at a case like this, but in this rather peculiar war, the issues are less clear," said Ruth Wedgwood, a law professor and terrorism expert at Yale University. True enough. The problem is that Hamdi was captured on the battlefield, as essentially an ordinary soldier. The information the government can get from him is quite limited.

I honestly think the courts will allow the government to win this specific case, purely because Hamdi was captured overseas on the battlefield. The interesting part will come when it expresses its concerns -- and it will -- and how the government changes its tactics to avoid raising those concerns in the future.

Posted by iain at 10:18 AM

 

Burger King's Whoppers are the cause of sex addiction.

No, really.

No. REALLY.

OK, the science is slightly more sophisticated than that ... but not much.

Whoppers. Who knew?

I wonder if that means that Wendy's is safe....

Posted by iain at 01:18 AM

 

OK, I knew that.

Although I was expecting Gluttony, and hoping for Lust.

Posted by iain at 12:30 AM

 

Cabinet backs war court - with veto: After weeks of public Government agonising, Federal Cabinet last night decided that Australia should ratify the International Criminal Court - with a condition giving special protection to Australians. [...] The declaration would say that Australians could not be tried by the court - which will hear cases of war crimes and genocide - without a warrant from the Australian government.

Really? How very interesting.

So why is it that Australia can do this, and nobody says boo, but when we try to make essentially the same condition, the world has hysterics and says we're trying to destroy the war crimes court? (I"m not saying that I think we should or should not have signed -- haven't read the treaty, honestly -- all I'm saying is that nobody seems terribly bothered by Australia saying, "You can't try our soldiers unless we say you can." Frankly, Australia participates in more peacekeeping missions than we do; their soldiers are far more likely to be in a position to be tried for such things.)

Posted by iain at 09:36 PM

 

Today's whimsy courtesy Nona Hendryx and the Perfect soundtrack. (Yes, I had it. Shut up.)

I sweat
Goin' through the motions
I sweat
I sweat...
Until I'm soakin' wet

Posted by iain at 01:41 PM

 

Chicago Tribune | Star Doormat is uninviting way to sell patriotism: It's the latest in patriotic housewares from Crate & Barrel. It comes in that classic rectangular shape. There are stripes. You know the colors already: red, white and blue. And white stars, of course. Sound familiar?
     Here's how to use this patriotic product. You put it outside your door, say on the porch stoop. When guests arrive, they can wipe their dirty shoes on the red, white and blue. Or say you've just walked your dog. You can wipe your dog's feet on it.
     It's not a flag. It's simply a grand old doormat. A patriotic doormat, if you will. (Registration required)

You know ... I'm really not one to get all exercised about displaying the flag, I'm really not. I don't have anything against it -- I have no desire to go out and burn one or anything like that -- I just don't feel the need to display one. (Also, those flags that people kept printing in the papers a while back? Actually illegal. But I digress.)

And even I read that article and wonder: What the hell were they THINKING? Where is Crate and Barrel's mind? Do they not have public relations people who are connected enough to the actual public to say, "Guys, really, flag doormat? Not a good idea right now, if ever. Just think about the symbolism, OK?"

The Star Doormat makes a lovely display in their catalog. In fact, it's the very first thing you see on their website.

(Good grief, there's an entire category of this stuff. OK, some of it's unobjectionable, and always would have been ... but napkins? paddle ball sets? and how precisely are a plain glass beer mug or a plain black grill or a barbecue tool set supposed to have anything to do with stars and stripes?)

The Star Doormat would be ill-advised at the best of times. Needless to say, this is NOT the best of times.

So what the hell ARE they thinking?

Posted by iain at 01:14 PM

 

They Heard It All Here, And That's the Trouble (via The Usual Suspects)

OK, I am impressed.

An analyst uses the very freedom of the press which he derides to publish an article that, if his superiors had the power which he would like them to have, would never have been published. I mean, let's be honest: however much most people in this country's intelligence services think this way -- and I should imagine that most do -- most of them also have more sense than to publish an article like this.

You want to talk common sense failures? Wouldn't it be a failure of the media to see a vulnerability, see that it has not been addressed, and fail to say something?

It seems reasonable to me that a process should be established where such articles are filtered through a government agency such as the proposed Department of Homeland Security. A skeptic would call this censorship; a patriot would call it cooperation. This type of cooperation existed during World War II and believe me, this current war is a "world war" also.

Well ... to put out just the mildest of many objections to that concept, the proposed Department of Homeland Security doesn't actually exist yet, does it? I doubt that at the current time, Ridge would welcome the addition of the role of government censor to his duties; the poor man is already burdened with a desperately thankless position, and the press thinks he's largely powerless. All he needs is to have that one specific power added to make his life a living hell.

And, you know, I know a great many people who consider themselves to be patriots who would also call Mr Pluchinsky's desired regime "censorship". In fact, the author himself, later on in this selfsame article, calls it "censorship"; it's just that he doesn't think it's a bad thing.

(It is intriguing to wonder if this article was approved by Mr Pluchinsky's higher-ups at the State Department. I rather doubt it; after all, to effectively say to the media in the media, "We think you should be censored within an inch of your lives and beyond" is hardly going to reduce media coverage of your errors. In fact, it's likely to aggravate some media people into putting you under a microsocope, holding up each and every mistake and lovingly dissecting it in public. And if they can somehow attach one of these mistakes to Mr Pluchinsky himself ... well, we're talkin' media orgasmic bliss here. This article, however well intentioned it maybe, can only make an analyst's job more difficult. State would almost certainly have said, "Do not publish this." And yet, here it is. Uncensored, apparently. And reiterating all of the things that, perhaps, a terrorist might have missed, concentrating them wonderfully in one place so that you can get the information you need to search for all the right keywords. How ... odd.)

It is interesting to note the polarization that has become apparent in this country of late. The only two camps that are really visible are the "My country, always right, stomp the heathens" camp, and the "My country, dear god, how wrong can it get?" camp. One should either shred the Constitution to save our rights, or shred the country to save everyone else. The people in between -- of which there seem to be perishingly few -- are just about invisible. Nobody seems to want to acknowledge anything pretending to be shades of gray these days; only stark moral principles will do.

Posted by iain at 12:42 PM

 

Behind 'Plot' on Hussein, a Secret Agenda: ... In their rush to be seen as embracing the president's hard-line stance on Iraq, however, almost no one in Congress has questioned why a supposedly covert operation would be made public, thus undermining the very mission it was intended to accomplish. [...] The leaked CIA covert operations plan effectively kills any chance of inspectors returning to Iraq, and it closes the door on the last opportunity for shedding light on the true state of affairs regarding any threat in the form of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Absent any return of weapons inspectors, no one seems willing to challenge the Bush administration's assertions of an Iraqi threat. If Bush has a factual case against Iraq concerning weapons of mass destruction, he hasn't made it yet.

You know, I'd wondered why there would be so much publicity about a theoretically covert plan to assassinate a foreign head of state. First, it's not even remotely legal; were it to happen here, it would rightfully be considered pure murder. Second ... why would you want to confirm any such plan? To be sure, Hussein would be an idiot to assume anything else --- whatever else he may be, stupid doesn't seem to be an accurate description. And, in fact, Iraq's response is that this is nothing new.

After all, the administration has asserted that Iraq is trying to produce nuclear and biological weapons. Everyone is willing to believe this because we have, in fact, seen Iraq use chemical weapons on its own people. That said, there is no actual evidence of any such program that anyone has seen. Evidence could only come from the weapons inspectors ... who will almost certainly never go back to Iraq now. (Iraq will insist that no Americans be included -- quite understandably -- and the US will veto any such plan in the UN Security Council.)

Add to that the fact that, for once, both Defense and State seem to be on the same side in being extremely reluctant to move on Iraq -- Defense is unprepared and the military side is startlingly hostile to the very concept, and State thinks it's poor policy. In fact, the traditional tension between Defense and State has become distractingly obvious -- for some reason, Shrubya is either unable or unwilling (and probably both) to make members of his administration work and play well together, and to shut up about it when they're not. (As a comparison, although everyone was perfectly well aware that Cohen didn't like Clinton, said dislike didn't typically show up in this public manner. It is, to put it mildly, unseemly -- and who would have thought that on policy issues, the Bush II White House would be more unseemly than the Clinton White House?) As far as foreign views go, Europe and China are distressed by ... well, pretty much everything coming out of this administration, actually, but especially by the "assassinate Hussein/strike first" policies. Russia sees it as an economic opportunity. (To put it mildly.)

(An interesting little side note: it's arguable that if we attack Iraq in the way that the administration seems to advocate, we would become, under the UN Charter, an aggressor nation. The UN would then be entitled to construct a force with which to stop our attack and defend Iraq. Any such resolution would, of course, originate in the Security Council. One can imagine the result. But I digress.)

In short, for the foreseeable future, Iraq policy is going to be a fascinating ongoing and revoltingly public train wreck.

Posted by iain at 12:02 PM

 

You know ... I'd wondered about that myself.

Posted by iain at 10:40 AM

 

... Well, HELL.

This is so not good. I like Caribou Coffee, dammit. (Independent of the fact that this one store has somehow evolved into THE place to see and be seen. After all, it's not as though anyone wants to see me, and I can't stand sitting outside.)

(Mind, I should imagine that the haut will simply sail on on blissful ignorance.)

Nothing about this on the cariboucoffee.com website, unsurprisingly.

Although you kind of wonder at the effectiveness of calling for a fatwa against yourself, essentially. After all, Caribou Coffee is an entirely US based company. Its customers are Americans. Its staff -- who are no doubt almost all clueless about company ownership -- are Americans.

Posted by iain at 02:02 AM

 

The World Cup is ...

... hazardous to your health...

Two cousins charged with murder in soccer-bet stabbing: Two cousins were charged with murder in the stabbing death of a 19-year-old man after an argument about a World Cup soccer wager. Eduardo Velasquez was stabbed in the upper chest at his home Saturday night, Lexington County Sheriff James R. Metts said. Velasquez died shortly after family members brought him to the Lexington County Medical Center.

... AND hazardous for your society ...

Forty-eight prisoners escaped from an Indonesian prison while guards were engrossed in Brazil's game against Belgium at the World Cup. [...] Fifteen of the escaped convicts were caught, Lt. Col. Pandiangan said. He said the guards were "inattentive" because they were watching the game.

(Let's not even go into the rioting in Russia or the mourning in Mexico, Italy and Argentina, shall we? Let's not.)

Posted by iain at 01:14 AM

 

Moderate Earthquake Hits Midwest

Oh.

Well.

Didn't actually notice, frankly.

Posted by iain at 02:50 PM

 

Pakistan Declares It Captured 2 Americans at Afghan Border: Pakistan said today that it was holding two Americans captured more than a month ago while trying to cross the border from Afghanistan, while Pakistani officials said privately that there might be more Americans among their prisoners ... there are strong indications that a number of American officials have known about the captives' nationality for some time. The Associated Press said in a report that, according to a senior Pakistani Interior Ministry official, F.B.I. agents had questioned the two men. And Pakistani officials suggested that the process of verifying the prisoners' claims of American nationality was slowed down, with American concurrence, to give the Pakistanis time to interrogate them. Law enforcement officials in Pakistan are not constrained by American law; nor are they ordinarily constrained by American-style rules that would limit their powers during interrogations. (NY Times, registration required)

Or, to translate that from diplomatic newspaper legality into English, Pakistan has no compunctions about torture.

According to the State Department's annual human rights report, Pakistani law enforcement officials routinely violate the human and civil rights of criminal suspects, through torture, extrajudicial killings and other methods that Americans officials are prohibited from employing.

How nice. We don't have to stain our hands, and yet we get the information we need. Theoretically, anyway.

The fun part is that the people were allegedly questioned by the FBI, and yet the White House and Dept of State deny all knowledte of their existence. Plausible deniability is such a wonderful thing, isn't it? And the FBI's current reputation as a service that keeps too much information to itself stands everyone in good stead right now.

Which is to say, I don't imagine that State or the White House actually did know about these people -- no more than they wanted to, anyway. I would imagine that there are certain question s that are Simply Not Asked ("Hey, Musharraf, your intelligence services or army got any more Americans you're holding?") and certain answers that are Simply Not Volunteered ("Yes"). I should imagine that Ashcroft did know -- the FBI are his indifferently competent hounds, after all -- but he wouldn't let a little thing like rights bother him.

Still, one senior official said the notion that the administration was eager to have American citizens interrogated harshly by Pakistani authorities was far-fetched. The official dismissed the notion that "we are complicit in any such effort by the Pakistanis. I think that's incredible," the official added. "I just don't see how that could be true."

... Well, he's either an idiot too naive to hold his "senior" position, or an outright liar.

Now that we know -- assuming that we do know, as Pakistan's intelligence seems to be confused as to whether the people are Afghan or American -- what will we do? What will we do?

Pakistan - Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2001
Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor; U.S. Department of State
March 4, 2002

      ..... Human rights observers suggest that, because of widespread torture by the police, suspects usually confess to crimes regardless of their actual culpability; the courts subsequently throw out many such confessions. According to the Society for Human Rights and Prisoner's Aid (SHARP), a local NGO, 43 deaths due to police torture were reported during the year. AI estimates that at least 100 persons die from police torture each year. According to a 1999 Human Rights Watch report, children in detention also are subjected to torture and mistreatment.
     Police personnel continued to torture persons in custody throughout the country. [...] Common torture methods include: Beating; burning with cigarettes; whipping the soles of the feet; sexual assault; prolonged isolation; electric shock; denial of food or sleep; hanging upside down; forced spreading of the legs with bar fetters; and public humiliation. Some magistrates help cover up the abuse by issuing investigation reports stating that the victims died of natural causes.
    Human rights organizations and the press have criticized the provision of the Anti-Terrorist Act that allows confessions obtained in police custody to be used in "special courts," because police torture of suspects is common. Police generally did not attempt to use confessions to secure convictions under this law, and the Government agreed to amend the law after the Supreme Court in 1998 invalidated this and other sections of the Anti-Terrorist Act.
     Despite court orders and regulations that only female officers may interrogate female suspects, women continued to be detained overnight at regular police stations and abused by male officers. Based on Lahore newspaper reports from January to May 1999, the HRCP found 11 cases of violence, rape, or torture of women in police custody. Instances of abuse of women in prisons are less frequent than in police stations. Sexual abuse of child detainees by police or guards reportedly also is a problem.

Posted by iain at 12:10 PM

 

As pledges lag, church speeds cuts: Many church pastors have previously said that regular Sunday collections have dropped following months of disclosures that Cardinal Bernard F. Law kept priests accused of sexual misconduct in active ministry. But now, officials say, the scandal has hit central fund-raising so hard that overall church spending by the archdiocese will be slashed by as much as 40 percent during the fiscal year that begins July 1.

Yow. A 40% budget cut in one year. That's incredibly bad.

I wonder how something like an archdiocese handles that sort of shortfall. After all, it's not as though they have a huge personnel budget to work with, and they can only slash services so much before they start irrevocably damaging the Church's actual mission.

As the archdiocese prepares to implement Draconian budget cuts and wipe out some smaller programs, [Chancellor David W. Smith] expressed reservations about plans by Voice of the Faithful, a nascent group of concerned parishioners, to organize an alternative fund-raising drive that would allow past donors angered by Law's leadership to bypass the chancery and give directly to church programs. ''I do not believe you can properly separate the mission of the church from the bishop,'' Smith said. ''To the extent that people go off on their own and establish their own priorities for funding programs, I don't think that's proper.''

OK, let's get a grip here, shall we? It's Their Money. They may do with it whatever they will. It is entirely proper for them to say, "We do not choose to support the bishop in his endeavours. However, we feel that the missions of the various programs are worthwhile, and we will do what we can to make sure they continue." The archdiocese may not like it, of course -- it's a devolution of their power and a most pointed insult, after all -- but that has nothing to do with the propriety of the plan.

One priest notes that the amount the Archdiocese will have to settle in the various lawsuits is less than it was, but this is because the Archdiocese walked away from the settlement and plans to try to hide behind Massachusetts' shield liability law. (There is some dispute about whether or not the law applies in the case of actual malfeasance.) Yes, it will save the Archdiocese substantial sums in this most gruesome of budget years. No, it will not go over well with parishioners; they will understand, but they're not likely to approve.

In any event, it's looking as though diocesan finances are going to be getting a thorough going over throughout the country. Boston's budget is a wreck, Milwaukee is having to open its books to determine whether or not its former archbishop committed embezzlement, and now it seems that the Chicago archdiocese was paying off priests in a somewhat different way.

Church paid off Chicago priest: The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago agreed to pay a priest dogged by allegations of sexually abusing boys a $200,000-plus settlement as he left the church, according to court records and interviews. [...] Paying money to help men leaving the priesthood is common, Dunagan said, and was not done to speed McCaffrey's resignation. She could not explain the specific factors behind the decision to pay McCaffrey. "All I can say is that it is not unusual for the archdiocese to help a priest when he is leaving the priesthood," Dunagan said.

You know ... it's not that they would pay a priest who was leaving the priesthood that's bothersome. It's that he almost certainly left just in front of lawsuits and/or charges. One hopes that the Archdiocese is being truthful when it says that they didn't know about his predilection for child pornography. Given that he'd been accused of abusing boys during his priesthood ... it seems somewhat suspect, in any event.

That said, it's notable that the Archdiocese states that it did report McCaffrey to the Cook County authorities, almost ten years ago. And nothing happened. How ... odd.

Posted by iain at 11:34 AM

 

STLtoday - business: Home Depot stops doing business with federal government
     Home Depot Inc., the nation's largest hardware and home-improvement chain, has told its 1,400 stores not to do business with the U.S. government or its representatives. [...] The notification has a section that says commercial credit-card customers will receive a notice with their June bill that purchases could not be made "that would cause the company to be covered by or responsible in any way for compliance with" three federal laws or executive orders:
      -- Executive Order 11246 of 1965, which bans discrimination against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
     - Section 503 and Section 505 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which requires affirmative action and prohibits employment discrimination by federal government contractors and subcontractors.
     - The Vietnam Era Veterans' Readjustment Assistance Act of 1974, which requires that anyone doing business worth $25,000 or more with the federal government must take affirmative action to hire and to promote qualified targeted veterans, including special disabled veterans, veterans of the Vietnam era, and any other veterans who served on active duty during a war or in a campaign or an expedition. It would apply to Gulf War veterans and those fighting the war on terrorism.

My my. I am impressed. Essentially, Home Depot just announced, "We don't want to do business with the federal government because we want to be discriminatory bigots, thanks." Oh, that's not what it says, quite; that's just how everyone will interpret it. The bizarre thing is, Home Depot is required to follow federal law in those areas as a major employer and a company involved in interstate commerce; they're already required to demonstrate nondiscrimination in hiring, and to comply with any relevant affirmative action laws (such as remain). The only one that is truly specific to the federal government and its contractors, with which they wouldn't normally have to comply in any way, is the Vietnam Era Veterans' Readjustment Assistance Act.

So let me get this straight: during what is arguably a War -- that's how it's billed, anyway -- Home Depot seems to be essentially saying that they don't want to hire or promote veterans.

Well.

I'm sure there's a better way to torpedo relations with all of your customers, but until they discover it, this one will do. The publicity will be immensely damaging. And of course, Home Depot isn't really going to be able to explain what it meant in ways that will help. I mean, let's say that, for example, that the Atlanta branch of the NAACP decides to protest at Home Depot's headquarters because they don't want to comply with nondiscrimination laws. What's Home Depot going to say? "Oh, no no no. It's not that we don't want to hire minorities. We're fine with that. We're down with hiring minorities, OK? No, it's just the veterans we don't want." That's going to go over like a ton of bricks, isn't it?

Home Depot has already issued a "clarification". Said clarification makes things even more murky. Thing is, it's clear that the issue isn't simply being a federal contractor, as such; if it was, why would you forbid your stores to sell noncontracted items to the government? In fact, even if Home Depot wants the ability to be more discriminatory, the announced changes make no sense. You're not considered a government contractor because they go in and buy a bunch of light bulbs or tools, for heavens sake. And although Home Depot "has an unwavering commitment to support its communities, federal and local government, and all disaster agencies in times of emergency and natural disasters through generous donations of supplies and materials," its newly clarified policy would seem to say that if an employee of the federal govermnent wants to buy some emergency or other supplies in their role as a federal employee, that Home Depot store must refuse them.

Yes, I do believe that Home Depot's PR department has a long unpleasant month looming in front of them.

Posted by iain at 10:51 AM

 

Silently Shifting Teachers in Sex Abuse Cases: ... When teachers are accused of sexual abuse, educators and law enforcement authorities say, districts often rid themselves of the problem by agreeing to keep quiet if the teacher moves on, sometimes even offering them a financial settlement. The practice, called passing the trash, avoids the difficulties of criminal prosecution or protracted disciplinary proceedings. (NY Times, registration required)

Wonderful. So I would imagine that we can expect a wave of allegations and lawsuits to hit school districts, in the same way that the Church has been hit. Smaller, of course -- it looks like the majority of abusing teachers has actually been removed from the classroom -- but nonetheless, those experts who have said that a similar wave is building would seem to be right.

Posted by iain at 10:28 AM

 

Couple Sues MTV Over Hidden-Camera 'Corpse' Prank: ... Upon entering the hotel room, the Ryans "discovered what appeared to be a dead human body covered and surrounded by blood, evidently the victim of a homicide," as hidden cameras recorded their shock, the suit says. As the couple tried to flee, two actors posing as security guards blocked their way, and a third individual in the guise of a paramedic entered the room. The show's host and co-producer, Ashton Kutcher, who has described the series in interviews as a "guerrilla-style Candid Camera," finally emerged to reveal the prank.

Ha. Ha. Bloody. Ha.

You know ... I truly hope that MTV loses this suit. Loses badly, too. I mean, no, I don't imagine that the couple will get $10 million. I don't imagine that they'll even get $1 million, if it goes through trial to judgement. However, I do imagine they'll win, which is the important part. Pranks are one thing, but this went well beyond obnoxious. (To be honest, I would expect MTV/Viacom to make dedicated efforts to settle this. The amount is a sort of reverse harassment, to be sure, but most juries will be signally unamused by this sort of thing. They might well pick a higher amount of punitive damages to send MTV a signal that it needs to be better behaved.)

According to Yahoo/Reuters' slightly more detailed story, "Kutcher previously described the show as a sort of "guerrilla Candid Camera" that would poke fun at older people." Because that's what older people want, isn't it? To be the butt of practical jokes so that MTV's teenaged target audience can have a good laugh. I know that's what I look forward to!

I would also imagine that a "guerrila candid-camera style" show called "Harassment" will find itself in court quite frequently, so MTV should probably get used to this sort of thing.

Who knows what we might see in future episodes? With a little luck, this could be a real Harassment feature sometime soon.

Posted by iain at 12:29 AM

 

"... his rippled flanks glistening in the moonlight."

Well ... that's certainly a ... unique way in which to refer to one's former boss, anyway.

And it will, no doubt, be a truly stunning political treatise. ("Stunning" as in "beaten vigourously about the head and shoulders," that is.)

Posted by iain at 05:48 PM

 

God's LiveJournal
Q. Why do bad things happen to good people?
A. Shit happens.

... You know, as an answer from God, that kind of works.

(via The Usual Suspects)

Posted by iain at 04:36 PM

 

Islamic Bloc, Christian Right Team Up to Lobby U.N. (washingtonpost.com): Conservative U.S. Christian organizations have joined forces with Islamic governments to halt the expansion of sexual and political protections and rights for gays, women and children at United Nations conferences. The new alliance, which coalesced during the past year, has received a major boost from the Bush administration, which appointed antiabortion activists to key positions on U.S. delegations to U.N. conferences on global economic and social policy.

How thoroughly obscene.

Shrubya's administration is willing to align itself with countries it has publicly stated are "evil" in order to further an international agenda that would be considered unconstitutional if it tried to enforce it at home.

Conservative "Christians" who normally consider the Vatican and Islam to be misguided, at best, and generally to be "evil" and idolatrous, will align with them to further an agenda that would be considered an abomination at home. (One Southern Baptist Convention minister recently called Mohammed himself a demon-possessed pedophile who had 12 wives -- and his last one was a 9-year-old girl [...] And I will tell you Allah is not Jehovah either. Jehovah's not going to turn you into a terrorist that'll try to bomb people and take the lives of thousands and thousands of people.'') And a great many of the adherents of these conservative "Christian" sects would be appalled to know what their leaders are doing in their names.

"We have realized that without countries like Sudan, abortion would have been recognized as a universal human right in a U.N. document."

I see. This is the same Sudan that has been massacring thousands upon thousands of its own citizens in a civil war that shows no sign of ending. A civil war that has brought unceasing famine to that state. A civil war in which the majority Muslims feel that it is entirely within reason to exterminate the minority Christians. The selfsame Sudan which appears not only on this administration's list of states sponsoring terrorism, but which has been on some such list for a good decade now. This is the state with which conservative "Christians" feel they should align themselves.

Illuminating, isn't it?

Why, might one ask, should Shrubya's administration consider it a good thing to demonstrate similarity of purpose with conservative Islamic governments? Isn't the administration generally opposed to each and every one of them? The kindest position it has taken, regarding Iran, could charitably be described as, "We don't entirely hate you anymore. But most of the time, we do."

The administration and these so-called Christians should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

Posted by iain at 12:33 PM

 

Cardinal to media: You're like communist spies: A clearly frustrated Cardinal Francis George chastised the media Sunday during a public appearance--asking them to leave a morning worship service if they took notes and likening them to communist spies that he encountered in Poland. [...] When asked if he really meant to compare the media with communist government spies, George did not back down. "You asked me how I feel, and that's how I feel," he said.

Way to go, Cardinal bay-bee! Way to make a bad situation worse! And on top of that, right up until that point, the press was giving you mostly a free pass, because you were clearly blameless in almost anything that had happened in the Chicago archdiocese; you haven't been here long enough to have done anything wrong in this matter. But now that you've compared them to communist spies, the press will be thinking that you sympathise with that idiot in the Vatican who said that the press was like Hitler and Stalin, and they'll be watching your every move, because now they think you have something to hide. At the very least, from their point of view, it looks as if you dislike the notion of the Church being accountable to its parishioners. (The press will, of course, ignore the fact that the parishioners wanted them out -- even innocent people don't like having personal activities placed under a public microscope. And, after all, the parishioners aren't the ones in power, are they?)

Posted by iain at 11:49 AM

 

I Want My File-Served TV!

I'm thinking this would be a broadcaster's nightmare writ large. And not particularly good for the consumer, either. It may be a future of television, but unless the country becomes more comprehensively and differently networked than it currently is, it's certainly not the future for television.

If nothing else, I don't want a movie with a key that will only allow me to watch it a specific number of times. If it's a rental, that's one thing; if I'm buying the movie, I want to watch it when I want, as many times as I want.

Posted by iain at 10:30 AM

 

A veteran city police detective, who previously worked in the department's vice unit, has a sideline that could have come from one of his old cases. Lawrence Ciambriello, 41, is known as "Lorenzo, the "Hot N Hung Italian" on a Web site advertising male escorts.

Um ... oops?

"...the department has a policy against this kind of behavior." Well, yes, I should think it would, considering as it's, you know, illegal in 49 states and most of the one in which it isn't entirely illegal.

He seems to have turned to escorting as a way to make money after he was suspended for possibly having GHB on him. I say "seems" because there's no way to tell exactly when the ad went up.

So let me get this straight (pardon the term): a former vice cop is allegedly both an illegal drug user AND an escort. My goodness. (And on his site ad -- at http://executivemaleescorts.com/lorenzo.htm if you're interested, but I decline to link directly in a spasm of hypocrisy; if you decide to go to that site at work, you're on your own, bub -- one notes that he shaves a year -- or ten -- off his actual age. And that certain other measurements may be described as ... improbable, one suspects. And hopes.)

To be fair for just a second, I should imagine that a cop on suspension that has lasted four months would find it difficult to make a living, yes. After all, you couldn't get licensed as a security guard, if you're under investigation, and what else does that sort of training qualify you to do? People would want to know why you're suddenly not quite a cop any more, and what do you tell them? Who's going to hire you when you say, "Well, they think I was using drugs, but they aren't investigating. But I'm still on suspension." I mean, let's face it: he's pretty well screwed. (No pun intended.) Assuming that the photograph is of him and is relatively recent, he's certainly ... er, equipped to do well in his chosen field. (Improbable measurements notwithstanding.)

And now to return to my entirely unfair ways ... what the hell was he thinking?

Posted by iain at 12:42 AM

 

Music industry remains in spin: The industry worries that the expanding used market is cannibalizing new-CD sales, as well as promoting piracy by allowing consumers to buy, record and sell back discs while retaining their own digitally pristine copies. One proposed remedy being debated by record label executives is federal legislation requiring used-CD retailers to pay royalties on secondary sales of albums.

And just when you think that the music industry might have found a clue or two ...

What I want to know is how on earth they'll enforce this, should Congress be unwise enough to pass this. (No doubt Mr Hollings, the honorable -- or not -- Senator for Disney will propose such a regulation if requested; the film and television people very well may make such a request, since there are related issues with selling used tapes and DVDs.) There's no licensing process for used music dealers. Charging the royalty for new music is easy; after all, you have to get it from the manufacturers and distributers.

And how, pray, do they manage collecting and distributing the re-royalties? How would they make sure that it's properly distributed to artists? (Not that the industry is in the least interested in distributing money to artists, but let's pretend. After all, they will.) Set up an agency? run through ASCAP? What?

Posted by iain at 12:44 AM

 

Sacred Orgasm: Reagan's sex seminars -- which he calls Chulaqui Quodoushka, supposedly a regimen of Cherokee and ancient Mayan methods of aligning spiritual and sexual energies -- draw most of the fire. But there's more than sex seminars to be concerned about. To his followers, Reagan is a near messiah. And he may well have more in common with Jim Jones than with Hugh Hefner. Reagan sees dark days ahead for America, and -- between orgasms -- he is quietly training a tribe of warriors for the battles ahead.
     "From 2004 to 2011 will be a time of real testing and a challenge of people's hearts, minds, bodies and spirits," Reagan warns from his Scottsdale dojo. "It's called the razor's edge." Reagan adds that he intends for his warriors to be ready. "That's also why I include a lot of firearms training. I see us moving toward a civil war."

Sex and Guns and Civil War. How ... enlightening.

Why do so many odd cults start off in the West, anyway? Cults and militias, and this one has all the tappings of both. I suppose it's an improvement over those loons in San Diego who tried to hitch a ride on a comet; at least these people are allowed (and apparently commanded) to have sex.

If nothing else, it would certainly make for a unique preparation for battle.

But if it's supposed to be so wonderful, if it's supposed to be the way to live from here on in, if it's supposed to be the salvation of our country ... why would you make participants sign a nondisclosure clause?

Posted by iain at 10:58 PM

 

"These women are being exploited by irresponsible beauty manufacturers," she said. "I want women to appreciate their natural color. I want women to make the most of their skin, no matter what shade it is." [....] After all, to be white was long an essential passport to power and wealth. [...] The lighter one's skin, it is widely believed here, the wealthier, better educated and more attractive one is. When it comes to wealth and education, at least, there are enough examples of light-skinned success stories to reinforce that perception. Advertising adds its own familiar emphasis. Television typically shows the light-skinned women winning the men. On roadside billboards, the women shown enjoying the good life are often far paler than the passers-by who behold them.

My dark skin and kinky hair are not favored attributes in the Black community, "Your skin is too black," "Your nose is too wide," "Your hair is so nappy"--these were my badges of dishonor. [...] As a community, our Blackness, or lack thereof, is often noted in the descriptions we've coined to specify our color. One is either too black, too light, red, damn-near-white, jet-black, light-brown, paper-bag tan, high yella, graham-cracker brown, redbone, blue-veined, dark-brown, blue-black or "light-skinded." [...] This fascination with color seems odd, considering that every label can be either an insult or a compliment. Though my skin color veers toward the dark end of the spectrum, I have never been Black enough to satisfy some. My mannerisms have been my Achilles' heel since youth. I was often taunted for being "proper" or "acting White" because of how I dressed and spoke. My mother can be blamed, or applauded, for making me the anomaly I am. She wouldn't allow split infinitives or Ebonies. She also forbade me to think less of myself because of class (we lived in a shotgun house) or color--and where I grew up, color affected class. In fact, she encouraged me to do just the opposite. [...] For the record, I am not denying that I'm a Black female who hates and suffers from racism. And I'm not saying I want to be White. I simply want to be neither.

America or Africa? Pick your neuroses. Pick your impossible dream.

I suppose there are certain benefits to having your neuroses here. The products in one of the stories would be illegal to sell here. Not that they're not illegal to sell in Kenya, as the author notes, but the FDA tends to take an extraordinarily dim view of selling products with mercury as a principal active ingredient. In other words, there but for the grace of government that every once in a while believes in some part of the public good, go us.

Posted by iain at 10:36 PM

 

Statement by President of the U.S. Catholic Bishops on Sexual Abuse
     ... what we have done or what we have failed to do contributed to the sexual abuse of children and young people by clergy and church personnel. Moreover, our God-given duty as shepherds of the Lord's people holds us responsible and accountable to God and to the church for the spiritual and moral health of all of God's children, especially those who are weak and most vulnerable. It is we who need to confess, and so we do.
     We are the ones, whether through ignorance or lack of vigilance or, God forbid, with knowledge, who allowed priest abusers to remain in ministry and reassigned them to communities where they continued to abuse.
     We are the ones who chose not to report the criminal actions of priests to the authorities, because the law did not require this.
     We are the ones who worried more about the possibility of scandal than bringing about the kind of openness that helps prevent abuse.
     And we are the ones who, at times, responded to victims and their families as adversaries and not as suffering members of the church.

The Vatican will not be happy with Bishop Gregory. He's quite right, of course, but given recent pronouncements, taking responsibility is pretty much the last thing the Vatican wants its bishops to do.

Though no one is quite ready to say so publicly, there is a growing consensus in Rome that the “zero tolerance” stance on sexual abuse slated for adoption by the U.S. bishops is likely to run into difficulty in the Vatican. Many Vatican officials, believing that the U.S. bishops are in effect making policy decisions with a gun to their head, are quietly warning that Rome is likely take a more cautious, less stringent approach. [...] “They’re being forced into a conclusion rather than sorting things out in a dispassionate way,” another official said. “The church is about reconciliation. Its highest priority can’t be driving out the pedophiles.”

I suppose one way to look at it is: who exactly is it your priority to reconcile with? The people alienated by the priests who have abused them and who have concealed abuse and who have made additional abuse possible by that concealment? Or the priests who committed the abuse?

Posted by iain at 11:33 AM

 

Lesbians Not Free of STDs: Lesbians are much more vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) than they might think, a new study suggests. [...] the study focused on the lesbians with no history of sex with men. Bauer says she wanted to resolve the discord between anecdotal stories of lesbians with STDs and the medical community which considers such transmission unlikely. Some doctors were openly skeptical of lesbians who said they had gotten STDs from women, Bauer says. "The doctors said, 'That's impossible. What man did you sleep with?'" The lesbians who never had sex with men reported STDs including chlamydia, genital warts, pelvic inflammatory disease and trichomoniasis, also known as trich, which can cause vaginal itching and burning.

I must admit, it baffles me that a doctor would think that lesbian transmission of STDs would be impossible. After all, isn't the current thinking that you've not only had sexual exposure to the person you're with, but the people they've been with, and so on and so on and so on... So let's assume that men are the principal vector for STDs. Woman A has sex with a man and catches a nasty spot of chlamydia without knowing it. Then Woman A sleeps with Woman B and passes it on. Woman B, who has never touched a man, steps out with Woman C, who is also in the man-free category. Neither of them know about the man because Woman A never mentioned it. But lo and behold, you've got Women B and C turning up with chlamydia, even though they've never touched a man. It's not that difficult, really.

Posted by iain at 04:26 PM

 

Latino Voter Lawsuit Rejected: Discrimination against Latinos in Southern California elections has shrunk to the point that they no longer require the most aggressive forms of protection under the federal Voting Rights Act, a three-judge federal district court panel ruled Wednesday.

It will be interesting to see where this case goes. I suspect that it will, overall, be in MALDEF's -- and everyone else's -- best interests to let the decision stand. Mind, I'm not sure whether or how the Supreme Court could or would articulate this sort of thing as national policy. However, I don't think I particularly want this court going near a case like that; they'd probably choose to eviscerate the Voting Rights Act completely.

Posted by iain at 02:23 PM

 

Threat of 'dirty bomb' softened: Attorney General John Ashcroft on Monday overstated the potential threat posed by "dirty bomb" suspect Abdullah Al Muhajir, Bush administration and law enforcement officials said Tuesday. Ashcroft's remarks annoyed the White House and led the administration to soften the government's descriptions of the alleged plot. "I don't think there was actually a plot beyond some fairly loose talk and (Al Muhajir's) coming in here obviously to plan further deeds," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told CBS on Tuesday.

You know ... the problem, legally speaking, with that characterization is that "fairly loose talk" is entirely legal. Padilla/Al Muhajir may or may not have stopped in Switzerland to pick up money to buy dirty bomb materials -- the $10,000 source is undisclosed or unknown, as far as I've heard (al Quaeda is merely an allegation for now), and in any event would almost certainly not have been enough to get anything in this day and age. But "fairly loose talk" is legally not enough to get someone arrested, let alone detained without trial or access to a lawyer. This case may stand a fair chance of imploding in a courtroom. Of course, results will be appealed and appealed and appealed, and eventually the Supreme Court will decide (or decide not to decide) what happens with him.

By which point, judging from how long it seems to take cases to get that far, he'll probably have been jailed without charge for at least two years.

Posted by iain at 01:31 PM

 

How Big Tobacco nicked terror act

You know ... if it wasn't so utterly disgusting, you'd have to laugh about this.

The companies apparently stand accused in Canada, the European Union and Colombia of smuggling their products in to avoid customs duty, and thereby allowing merchants to set pricing lower. (Smuggling what is arguably a drug into Colombia ... whatever.) The deleted rule would have allowed them to be considered responsible for money laundering. On the other hand, the deleted rule would also have given Justice more power to pursue possible terrorist financial connections overseas.

Yes, your tax dollars at work again! Or rather, your tax dollars being squandered on craven cowards, who then receive Big Tobacco's extravagant largesse for their campaigns. Whichever interpretation you prefer.

In any event, the Revenue Rule is now on the table before the Supreme Court. I cannot imagine that business is at all sanguine about the idea that the government might say that no, big business does not have the right to violate foreign law with impunity. I should imagine that the pressure on Shrubya's administration to support, rather than repudiate, the Revenue Rule is impressively strong. The government will almost certainly decline to go on the record in support of the Canadian suit -- that is, they'll argue that the Canadian suit is without merit due to the revenue rule, rather than arguing, as they should, that the revenue rule itself should fall.

And their donors will be terribly happy once again.

Oh, well. I suppose it may be something that the Senate defeated the estate tax repeal. Although the fiscal irresponsibility of this administration is utterly baffling; why, when you're running a budget deficit, would it be good fiscal sense to reduce your income?

Posted by iain at 12:47 PM

 

Martha Stewart Denies Insider Knowledge Of ImClone Troubles

Martha? Martha? Oh no! Say it isn't so!

... Oh. You did. Well, that's all right, then.

... But ... 3000 shares? Hmm.

Posted by iain at 12:32 PM

 

Chicago Tribune | Female victims of abuse say they've been lost in shuffle

You know, I've been wondering about that. It's not as "sexy" a story, in terms of news value; after all, what's more dramatic: "priest abuses position to seduce women" or "priest abuses children"? But numerically speaking, you have to figure that there are almost certainly more women who have been used than either young men or children. It simply doesn't stand to reason that there would be more pedophiles or homosexuals than heterosexual abusers.

Mind, I don't imagine that stories such as that of Bishop James McCarthy give the Church much comfort, as such: In New York, Auxiliary Bishop James F. McCarthy, 59, resigned as bishop and pastor of a suburban parish after admitting to having had "a number of affairs with women over the course of several years," officials of the Archdiocese of New York announced. [...] New York archdiocese officials said their information indicated that none of the women involved with McCarthy was a minor at the time of the affair, but that they were still gathering information.

Elsewhere in this mess:

Once a Victim, a Priest Wants Zero Tolerance: He was 15, he said, when two priests began getting him drunk and sexually abusing him. He had wanted to become a priest since he was a little boy, and so he kept silent, he said, for fear the priests would get angry and keep him from his goal. He did become a priest, but eventually he also became the president of a victims' group. "Some of these guys cooperate more with evil than they do with God," Father [Gary] Hayes, 49, who is the pastor of two small parishes in western Kentucky, said of his abusers and of those church leaders who covered up the abuse. [...] But victims like Father Hayes, who will meet with a group of bishops there, want far stronger measures than those included in a draft document drawn up by a committee of bishops. [...] Father Hayes, who heads a group called LinkUp, and the leaders of a second victims' group want the removal of all known sex offenders from the priesthood, with no second chances. [...] While the proposal by the bishops' committee makes no mention of punishment for church officials who may have covered up abuse or transferred offending priests from parish to parish, these victims' groups want the removal of any church leader who has moved around or helped a priest who was a sex offender. Father Hayes says he does not expect the bishops to agree to these proposals. "I don't know who they are anymore," he said, talking over lunch at a restaurant in Louisville on Monday, on the eve of his departure for Dallas. "I don't think they belong to the same church as I do."

I expect that the one thing that can be predicted from the meeting going on now is that Father Hayes will not get what he wants. The Vatican has been sending very clear signals that it's not particularly happy even with the current proposal to eject all future priests who are --- well, what, exactly? Accused? Found guilty of the offense? what? In any event, the Vatican has made it clear that its primary concern is protecting the priests so accused or charged, rather than with preventing offenses or punishing past offenses. And, to be sure, there is a sharp tension between the requirements of faith and the law, in some ways; after all, shouldn't people be given the opportunity to repent, to do penance, to somehow repay and be forgiven? Isn't that what faith requires?

To which I suspect most people might respond: let the law handle what it should, and faith handle what it can. That doesn't mean that there should not be secular punishment. That doesn't necessarily mean that people should be given a chance to repeat their offenses.

As for Father Hayes' type of situation ... it is becoming more and more apparent that a fair number of abusive priests were, in fact, abused by priests. That they turned to faith both as a means of coping and suppressing, which ... is a misuse of faith. You wonder how they'll ever be able to handle the situation; I can't imagine that one of the standard seminary entrance questions will become "Were you ever abused by or have you ever had sexual intercourse with a priest?" Although it's beginning to look like maybe it should be.

Posted by iain at 12:05 PM

 

While President Bush frequently has promoted the benefits of ethanol, the president's economic advisers are arguing strongly against legislation that would triple production of the corn-based additive, according to an internal White House document. [...] Administration officials dismissed the internal document, summarizing various agency positions on key parts of the energy legislation, as a working paper that does not reflect the administration's eventual position as lawmakers work out a final energy package.

Could someone please tell me what Shrubya's administration is there for? Because lately, I'm not seeing the point. First, he dismisses a report from his own Environmental Protection Agency as simply a product of "the bureaucracy" -- but, you know, it's his bureaucracy. (Well, OK, technically it's our bureaucracy, but he put 'em there.)

Now his administration is coming out against several of his financiers' dearly held positions ... er, pardon me, against his dearly held positions ... and instead of even considering them, he's apparently dismissing them out of hand. Why have advisors and specialists if you're not going to pay attention to what they have to say? If we just lop off the top layer or two of administrators, I'm sure it would be just as effective, and a wonderful cost savings as well. (At this stage, Christine Todd Whitman would probably be thrilled and delighted to just be fired, considering as Bush as cut her off at the knees so often what little credibility she had is soaring into the negative.)

Posted by iain at 10:00 PM

 

Net Music That's a Steal --- but Not Stolen: Acknowledging that online piracy is forcing dramatic changes in the music industry, the world'stwo largest record companies are poised to make it easy and cheap for fans to buy -- rather than steal -- songs off the Internet. [...] This summer, Universal plans to sell tens of thousands of high-quality digital singles for 99 cents or less and albums for $9.99 through online retailers such as Amazon, Best Buy and Sam Goody, according to sources and company executives. Universal plans to make new releases available for downloading as well as older ones, and possibly offer downloads before the music is available on CD. Significantly, the company plans to let consumers download songs and record them freely onto CDs —a major shift from the company's practice of limiting what users could do with downloaded music. (LA Times, registration required)

Good heavens. Big Music almost gets a clue!

The problem is, you know, the people who are likely to buy this were probably buying music straight through anyway. The people who feel that "music wants to be free!" will just keep doing what they were doing, and eventually Universal and Sony will decide that eating into their own profit margins is just silly and they'll stop offering cheap downloadable music. Which is sad, really.

Posted by iain at 06:00 PM

 

Executive to allow banned brain surgery: MENTALLY ill patients will undergo brain surgery without their consent under a controversial law being introduced in Scotland which directly contravenes guidelines set out by the United Nations. Next month, the Executive will introduce legislation allowing doctors to perform lobotomies on patients who are too mentally ill to agree to the operation.

How ... wonderfully enlightened.

You do wonder what sorts of odd lobbying must have gone on for Scotland's government to think this is a good idea. If the practitioners are stating that they don't think it's good, and the rest of Britain doesn't allow lobotomies without consent ... then why does Scotland think this should be done?

Posted by iain at 05:23 PM

 

Hiding the Dirty Bomber From the U.S. Constitution - The Bush administration establishes a Department of Precrime. By Dahlia Lithwick: Most of us can agree that releasing people with knowledge of, or connections to, acts of terror against the United States is a national security disaster. But can we also agree that holding them in military prisons, without any means of testing the evidence against them, based on the bare assertion that they are or know terrorists is equally troubling?

Well ... the problem is, I don't think we can. I mean, yes, I think it's troubling, to put it mildly. Shrubya's administration seems entirely prepared to evicerate the Constitution to save it; I don't think they realize that it just doesn't work that way ... and don't really care if they do.

The American people, to use Our Shrub's favorite phrase, are for the most part entirely sanguine about doing things this way. After all, it gives the impression of keeping the People safe and sound. The problem is, reclaiming rights once the government has decided that you really don't need pesky things like the right of habeas corpus any more ... well, that's rather more difficult than it looks.

Posted by iain at 09:33 PM

 

Panic Could Magnify Harm, Experts Say: If terrorists set off a "dirty bomb" in downtown Washington, the number of fatalities would probably be fairly low but the psychological impact could cause wide-scale panic that would clog hospitals and roadways, interfere with rescue efforts and create a long-term economic crisis, government officials and outside specialists said yesterday.

And leave us not underestimate the effect of announcing something that not only hadn't happened, but by the government's own statements, wasn't even close to happening.

Jose Padilla one of many terror arrests, Bush says: "This guy Padilla's one of many who we've arrested," Bush said in a Cabinet Room meeting on his proposed overhaul of homeland security programs. "The coalition we've put together has hauled in 2,400 people. And you can call it 2,401 now. There's just a full-scale manhunt on. ... We will run down every lead, every hint. This guy Padilla's a bad guy and he is where he needs to be, detained."

Hmm. Yes. Quite.

One must pointedly note that the government has had this person in custody for over a month, and yet only saw fit to mention it as Congress is opening hearings into intelligence failures at the CIA and FBI. It is very difficult not to draw the conclusion that it was announced only to defuse some part of the inquiry, to say, "Hey, look, they did something right here!" Which, of course, does not and should not excuse them for what they've done wrong. Doing their job well should be, and generally is, routine.

Without taking any position on Padilla's guilt or innocence -- one assumes that there will be something pretending to be a formal trial, one day, eventually -- one would just note that the bulk of those "arrested" are those captured in Afghanistan. Leaving those to one side, of those arrested in this country, even Shrubya's own Department of Injustice conceded -- in October, mind -- that most of those arrested had absolutely nothing to do with any terrorist plots. They were sometimes arrested for petty crimes, sometimes arrested for visa violations that generally had nothing to do with anything ... and sometimes for no reason other than being foreign.

For example, there's the case of Jean Tony Antoine Oulai. Citizen of the Ivory Coast. Christian. The US government conceded -- in January -- that he had nothing whatsoever to do with any terrorist plots. He was ordered deported -- for, quite literally, no reason whatsoever -- this past December. He's still in jail. He's been bounced all over the country; his records periodically get corrupted because clerks enter IC as an abbreviation for Ivory Coast instead of IV, and voila! they think he's Icelandic (that hotbed of Islamist terrorism, Iceland). The government will neither allow him to get out on bond, nor are they allowing him to come to trial. I have absolutely no doubt that Oulai is correct when he says, "I have no doubt [they are] going to find some jury to convict me. . . . They aren't seeking justice." He may have peace of mind, knowing he's done nothing wrong; how much peace of mind should we have, knowing that our government doesn't care at all for the truth, or anyone's rights, that it cares more about saving face?

Then again, apparently, we don't want the rights we've got, so why would we care about some foreigner's rights being abused?

They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security
---Benjamin Franklin

We will deserve neither, and we shall have neither, if we continue on this road. The only way to be fully secure is to become a garrison state, all borders sealed, armed to the teeth, killing all foreigners and all who symathize with them. And won't that be a wonderful way to live? It is not reasonable to assume that we can preserve our way of life by nibbling its core to death. And yet, that is exactly what people seem to want, and what government is eminently prepared to give them.

The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble.
--- Henry Miller, Sexus, ch. 14 (1949).

Posted by iain at 11:48 AM

 

Cops say Padilla was just a small-time thug (Chicago Tribune, registration required.)

My my. Nasty piece of work this man is, for a small time thug. Nice quiet student ... who just happened to engage in robbery and assault and -- oh, yes -- the odd spot of murder.

You know the thing that puzzles me? Just a little thing in the middle of all this. They arrested him several times for comparatively small stuff, put him in jail, he got out on bail ... and skipped on the bail every single time. After, say, one or two times of this, wouldn't you think that even for petty crimes, the system would say, "You know, there's just no point in giving you bail, because if we do, we won't see you again until the next time you get picked up on some assault charge. We'll just hold onto you this one time." But somehow, that never happened.

Posted by iain at 10:58 AM

 

USS Clueless - Sex columnists ... When a woman writes about sex or expresses interest in it, it's refreshing, liberating, a sign of the times. When a man writes about sex, he's a pervert (as I discovered over the weekend).

Oh, dear.

You know, it depends in part on how you write about sex. (Being pre-defined as a pervert by many people helps wonderfully, I freely admit.) And whether or not it's in a place where people were expecting you to do it. After all, it's quite startling to pop in, expecting an interesting political piece, and suddenly find yourself in what could appear to the uninformed eye to be a somewhat morose rumination about the attractiveness of young women, accompanied by copious illustrations.

Actually, my first response to Glenn would have been: who the hell is Rachel Klein? (OK, OK, now I know. My point being, almost everyone reading that column outside Berkeley -- almost everyone reading that column, that is -- probably had much the same reaction. Even in a weblog, assuming that all your readers would get that particular type of reference is a bit much ... as is assuming that anyone from the Chronicle would know who she is.)

My second, and somewhat more substantive response, would be this: it's much more possible, even now, for women to write about different sexual aspects and attitudes and experimentation, and although people might look askance at said experimentation, depending on their relative sexual conservatism, they're not necessarily going to think her less of a woman for doing that. Women are allowed to have a somewhat more fluid sexuality without it being questioned.

It's also true that in the history of Western Civilization -- at least, on this particular branch of that tree -- it's only fairly recently that women in general, and young women in particular, were allowed to speak publicly about being sexual; it's not particularly unusual for men -- although the ways in which they may do so are somewhat circumscribed. If a 19-year-old heterosexual man wrote in a newspaper sex column, for example, "Well, last night my girlfriend put on the ol' strapon and we went at it" ... well, he wouldn't, would he? Not if he had the sense god gave a goose. Which is unfortunate. In any event, finding frank, honest talk about sex from women is still comparatively much less common -- and finding it in nonpornographic contexts even more rare.

(There's also the issue that young women may find other young women talking about sex informative, and heterosexual men of all ages may find it tittilating ... and incidentally informative. Which is all I'm saying about THAT.)

And finally, there may even be a sort of residual feeling that young men don't talk in public about the young women they're having sex with. By that I don't mean that they don't discuss it with their friends; I mean that they don't discuss it with the world at large, because there is a residual feeling in society that to do so may be to ruin the woman's reputation. (I don't insist on the existence of any such thing; I merely throw it out as a possibility.)

And the final comment: "Real men", inDEED. Really, sir! (You'll have to imagine the very dry tone of voice and the lorgnette.)

UPDATE: Woops. Seems I misquoted there. The actual sentence was, "Fortunately, out here in the real world men are coming back into style." ... On further review, I think I need a drier tone of voice and a bigger lorngnette for that one.

(A complete nonsequitur: Why does the world seem determined to make me write stuff that makes my referrers go all weird the past few days?)

Posted by iain at 01:30 AM

 

Big media's worst-kept secret : Bernard Goldberg is the Sammy Gravano of big-time journalism. Like the mafia turncoat, Goldberg has broken the code of silence and revealed his profession's worst-kept secret: The national media are liberal. [...] Indeed, the big news of Goldberg's book is not the extent of liberal bias in the media, but its limits. At the networks, he asserts, ratings trump conscience every time. The networks believe the white viewers who make up the bulk of their audiences want to see stories featuring slightly better versions of themselves. So blacks, Hispanics, the poor and unattractive get the bum's rush. Television's "dirty little secret," he writes, is that the "paragons of liberalism who run the magazine shows aren't just afraid of turning off their mostly white audiences by putting minorities on the air, they're also worried about scaring their viewers with ugly [or poor] people!"

Well .... I don't imagine that the networks are quite wrong about what the bulk of their viewers want to see, judging from what the top rated shows are. That said, judging from how well shows from HBO and Showtime do directly against the networks, I would wager that the view is ... incomplete. (Let's face it: who, precisely, are The Sopranos or the women from Sex in the City supposed to be "slightly better" than?)

Posted by iain at 08:16 PM

 

In-body laser would make Dr. McCoy just beam: Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have developed a specially coated microscopic laser - about the size of a human cell - that could, in the next 10 years, be placed inside the body and used to instantly warn patients when a disease appears, said Paul Gourley, a Sandia scientist working on the technology. [...] The size also means the lasers would be inexpensive to make - probably costing only a few cents each, Gourley said. The lasers also have some interesting military applications. They could be used to enhance a soldier's retina and let him or her see infrared light, without the use of bulky goggles or other equipment, Gourley said.

You remember the olden days -- five, ten years ago or so -- when reducing the size of something meant increasing the price, because reducing the size and retaining function was so difficult? My, how things have changed.

I'd imagine that last option got the military's attention right quick, too. After all, if it can improve eyesight, and it's that small, maybe it can improve other functions as well. That "universal soldier" movie might actually not be that far off, or some version of it anyway. (Jean Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren. Look it up.)

Posted by iain at 03:24 PM

 

A Rift Among Bloggers (NY Times, registration required).

Oh -- and I mean this sincerely -- dear.

I have but one thing to say to all concerned: Oh, grow UP!

Posted by iain at 02:52 PM

 

Sequential Tart: Queer Characters, Revisited: ...It's true that for one brief shining moment, the company has revived the Midnighter, his partner -- excuse me, husband -- and the rest of The Authority, the team. But the revival is meaningless; in fact, it's downright hypocritical. Because DC is killing off The Authority, the series. [...] Seeing positive role models (including superhero couples who are gay or lesbian, and who aren't sly in-jokes like The Ambiguously Gay Duo) can have an immeasurable effect in lifting those weights, and healing those wounds. The converse is also true: when they see homosexuality treated as something shameful — something that shouldn't even be talked about in public, much less shown — kids (and others) who suspect that they might be Like That get the message that they're flawed, or sick, or generally unworthy. And I can't believe that that's a message that DC or Marvel really wants to send.

Um ... 'scuse me? DC being part of the big AOL Time Warner media conglomo, and Marvel being part of ... whatever Marvel's part of, I'm pretty sure that (1) they probably don't care in the least about broader social messages -- individual artists and writers may, but the company as a whole certainly does not -- and (2) the public that they serve -- principally but not purely teenaged boys -- isn't all that upset about a message that says Queers are Bad. Also, getting upset at a comic book publisher for showing characters whose sanity is, shall we say, a tad lacking is like getting mad at air for being there to breathe. I mean, hello? Batman, anyone? Given what they do, arguing that superheroes are either sane or willing to pay the least attention to social rules is really a bit silly.

Moreover, the concept that DC or Marvel want to deal with the parents of said teenagers in presenting gay relationships in a favorable light .... well, you can imagine. They get enough flak for presenting superhero women as more or less competent women with stupendously large breasts. (See Teenaged male audience, above.) Who needs more agita?

And finally, most of the artists are living out wish fulfillment dreams, to the extent that the publisher will allow. When they were teenagers, THEY wanted to see powerful women with big bazooms who nonetheless would succumb to the right man's will ... and, you know, other bits and pieces. And for the vast majority of them, having male superheroes who fall into bed with each other is just not quite part of what they want, you know? They wanted to be the guy with the outsize pecs (it doesn't matter whose tits they are, they're going to be way too big) and rippling abs and lats and whatnot -- especially the whatnot -- they don't want to have said guy.

Not in public, anyway.

Posted by iain at 02:23 PM

 

Scotland on Sunday - Top Stories - America piles on the pressure to avert war: APPALLED at the possibility of a doomsday scenario that could extinguish its international war on terrorism, Washington is bringing out its big guns in a diplomatic offensive to try to avert war between India and Pakistan.

Yow.

And I thought I was cynical. Who knew that the Scots could be even worse?

Ok, bub: you want cynicism, I'll give you cynicism.

If India and Pakistan actually go nuclear -- and the assumption that they will is, in some ways, really impressively racist; assuming that the little brown people can't exercise the same restraint as the US and Soviets exercised over those many years -- then although it may do some damage to the war against terrorism, it may do some good as well. After all, according to a great many recent reports, al Qaeda and other Islamist radical groups are active in Pakistan and Kashmir. Between direct hits and fallout and the fun diseases that would be caused by having lots of dead bodies exposed all over the country, it can be assumed that a great many of the terrorists would be killed in the attacks. And, just as a side benefit, depending on where the nuclear attacks actually hit, there's a fair chance that the fallout would saturate the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Any terrorists in the area would be contaminated and would probably die ... as would a fair number of US and British soldiers, of course.

Of course, an actual nuclear war would mean that millions of people who don't live in either country would be exposed to hefty levels of fallout. I can't imagine, for example, that Bangladesh or China or even somewhat distant (but not distant enough) Australia is particularly sanguine about such a concept. Granted, there's not a lot that Bangladesh can do, or that Australia would do ... but China could get right pissed off, militarily speaking. (What good it would do to pummel a country that just effectively blew itself up, I don't know, but they could, is the point. And, to be entirely serious for a moment, I don't understand why China isn't applying some serious pressure of its own, for that very reason.) Then again, the whole fallout scenario may well be why such an attack might not come to pass. After all, fallout from Pakistan would fall principally in -- whaddya know? -- western India. Oops.

There's also the chance that a nuclear war between the two of them could get the other Arab countries to crack down on their radical Islamists. After all, if the terrorists in Kashmir had never been given such a free hand by Pakistan, then things wouldn't be in quite this situation, now would they? It might give them just the excuse they need!

Is that cynical enough for everyone? ... Good.

Now if The Scotsman would just get a grip on the editorial comments in its stories by its writers .....

Posted by iain at 08:36 PM

 

Falwell Slams Show on Gay Issues but Appears on It
   The Rev. Jerry Falwell has slammed an upcoming cable TV special about gay parents and their children on the youth-oriented Nickelodeon network as a show that aims "to invade the minds and hearts of children."
   But among the guests appearing on the program he so strongly denounces is Falwell himself. While disapproving of gay parenting in his comments on the program, the conservative Christian evangelist also says homosexuals are entitled to respect and should not be "in any way harassed or robbed of their civil rights."

Hypocrisy: Ah, the stench of it!

Oh, well. Now that it's apparently legal to use his own name to make fun of him, I suppose the man needs to find something to do.

Posted by iain at 08:13 PM

 

Upset With Society

... Did I fall asleep for several months and now it's April 1? I feel certain that I'd be better rested if that were the case ...

Gotta love the acronym, though. (I'd also like to point out that the width of the title graphic screws the hell out of the planned 740 pixel width of the [relentlessly nested] table structure.)

Posted by who?

Posted by iain at 12:29 AM

 

Israel Seeks Condemnation of Syria: Syria's role as head of the U.N. Security Council resulted in an awkward dilemma Thursday, when Israel asked the council president to condemn his own country for harboring militant groups that attack Israel.

Oh, my.

The next year at the UN Security Council is certain to be relentlessly interesting, isn't it? Israel can sponsor resolutions condemning Syria for terrorism, from which China and Russia (and maybe France) will probably abstain, and the US and Britain will support. The US can condemn Syria as a junior member of the Axis of Evil. (France probably will veto that, actually.) It's just going to be worlds of fun, isn't it?

Posted by iain at 12:07 AM

 

I love my registrar! ... even if it does have a really silly name.

Domain name registrar Go Daddy Software Inc. said Thursday it is suing VeriSign Inc. , the fourth complaint against the market leader for allegedly deceiving rivals' customers into transferring their business.
     The latest lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court in Phoenix, accuses VeriSign of false and deceptive advertising, interference with customer relationships, misappropriation of trade secrets and consumer fraud, according to Scottsdale, Arizona-based Go Daddy.
     At issue are letters VeriSign is sending to people labeled "Domain Name Expiration Notices" that urge recipients to return the forms, along with $29 per domain, or risk losing their domains, Go Daddy said.

I've actually received three of these notices myself. Since one of them was for a domain that had been transferred away from Verisign (this one, in fact), I could sort of understand if, let's say, the paperwork had been a little mixed up. But it was vastly amusing receiving them for (1) a domain that already had been renewed with Verisign (I couldn't get everything together before it was too late to transfer), and (2) two domains that had never been registered with Verisign in the first place.

And it seems that Verisign's investors are also pissed off; the company may have been misleading about "organic revenue growth", whatever that is.

There are other reasons to find Verisign distasteful, aside from its interesting domain name business practices: VeriSign to Help Telecoms with Wiretaps: Security and Web address provider VeriSign Inc. (Nasdaq:VRSN) on Monday unveiled a new service to help U.S. telecommunications carriers comply with wiretapping regulations that have gained more prominence since the attacks of Sept. 11. Mountain View, California-based VeriSign is testing its new ''NetDiscovery'' wiretapping services, which is expected to be commercially available in early July for land-line, wireless and cable carriers, said Terry Kremian, executive vice president of VeriSign's telecommunications services.

Weirdly, at the same time that Verisign is helping telecoms fulfill wiretapping requirements, they're also helping AOL develop encrypted IM. What on earth is going on at that company?

Posted by iain at 01:06 PM

 

Yahoo! News - Falwell Loses Web Site Dispute: A Web site that pokes fun at the Rev. Jerry Falwell and uses his name without his consent will be allowed to continue, an international arbiter of Internet domain names has ruled. The World Intellectual Property Organization denied Falwell's complaint against Gary Cohn, owner of www.jerryfalwell.com, in a decision distributed Thursday. The Geneva, Switzerland-based arbiters' panel denied Falwell's claim that he has a common-law trademark on his name.

My my my. I did not think that decision would fall out that way. Just goes to show, I guess.

That sais ... for an intellectual property organization, some of their arguments for rejecting Falwell's claims are exceeding odd. For example: "The complainant has failed to show that his name, well known as it is, has been used in a trademark sense as a label of particular goods or services. There are many well-known ministers, religious figures and academics. Are their sermons or lectures to be considered commercial goods?" the decision reads. ... Well, yes, their sermons and lectures are technically commercial goods. At least, they're certainly copyrightable and usually copyrighted goods, which is effectively the same thing. Why on earth would you make that argument in this case?

In any event, it will be interesting to see what happens. I'm not sure where Falwell can go with this now. Back to court, I guess.

Posted by iain at 12:54 PM

 

Blogging Goes Legit, Sort Of: Next fall, a handful of students at the University of California at Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism will convene weekly to learn about blogging from John Batelle, a co-founder of Wired magazine, and Paul Grabowicz, the school's new media program director.

... whatever FOR?

I mean, if it were, say, one or two sessions of a popular culture class, that would be one thing ... but an entire course? In a journalism school?

For heavens sake, people. It's editorialism, it's not investigative journalism. Yes, occasionally, original journalism happens, but for the most part, that's not the actual point of doing it.

Posted by iain at 12:15 PM

 

ReplayTV Users Sue Hollywood: Users of ReplayTV, with the assistance of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, are taking legal action against the largest Hollywood studios. In a lawsuit filed Thursday in federal court in Los Angeles, five users of ReplayTV 4000 video recorders asked a judge to declare that their use of the devices to record programs and skip over commercials is entirely lawful.

... Well, that's a different approach.

Mind, I wouldn't be surprised if the judge threw the case out. After all, it is not, in fact, illegal to do record and time-shift. In fact, I'm pretty sure that when Congress passed a law, ages ago, allowing the sale of videocassettes and mandating a surcharge that was to be given to producers, that it was explicitly made legal. The only thing that's changed is the medium. (And, of course, the fact that producers make bupkis from digital recorders, as they weren't conceived at the time the law was passed.)

Oh, well. I don't suppose a ringing affirmation from the judge can hurt any, if the judge can be persuaded that it's in anyone's interest to do so.

Posted by iain at 11:29 AM

 

Kansas repeals law discriminating against Asians: ... As of July 1, Kansas will no longer have a decades-old law on its books discriminating against Asians. Gov. Bill Graves has signed a bill that repeals a law that bars Asian immigrants from inheriting property. [...] Two other states - New Mexico and Florida - still have alien land provisions in their state constitutions. A repeal is on the November ballot in New Mexico.

Still on the books in THIS day and age? Good grief. (Then again, in New Mexico it was legal until 1990 to kill a man you caught shtupping your wife, as long as you killed them both at that moment and then brought law enforcement back to see the tender tableau. But I digress.)

What I truly don't understand is why a case involving these laws hasn't reached the Supreme Court. Surely they would all have been struck down as unconstitutional. In fact, I'm surprised that the Japanese internment cases didn't overrule these laws.

According to The Alien Land Laws Project at the University of Cincinnati, there are, or were, four states with alien land laws today: Wyoming, Florida, New Mexico and Kansas. The site itself is confusing; it cites Florida's provision as having been repealed, but then talks about an ongoing letter writing campaign to get it repealed.

Posted by iain at 11:07 AM

 

My, but Virginia prisons seem to be terribly exciting places these days.

Gay Inmate Killed In Hate Crime: A gay inmate has been murdered in what prison officials say was a hate motivated crime. Kenneth W. Boothe was found strangled in the cell area of Red Onion State Prison, in Virginia. Boothe's cellmate, Joseph L. Armstrong, has been ordered to give investigators hair and blood samples as well as any writing or literature in his cell that "indicated prejudice against persons of a homosexual nature.'' He has not yet been charged. Armstrong, 24, had allegedly indicated in writings and telephone conversations that he "would cause bodily harm to homosexuals,'' investigators said.

Now, help me to understand this: Mr Armstrong was known to be prejudiced against gays. He had not only sexually assaulted a 3-year-old to get himself into prison, but had sexually assaulted another inmate while in prison. (Note that such crimes almost never get prosecuted, or even noticed by prison officials; it must have been both very public, and the sort of thing that the county realized it was going to get sued over -- I wonder if maybe he was in a cell with someone in on a very small misdemeanor charge at the time.) All of this in his immediate history, and yet, they put him in a cell with a known gay inmate. How, one wonders, can this not meet the standard of "depraved indifference" by prison officials?

ACLU of Virginia takes inmate's case: The ACLU of Virginia is representing a Virginia prison inmate with gender identity disorder who is suing to win hormone or other suitable treatment from the state. Without proper treatment, the inmate, Ophelia Azriel De'lonta, formerly known as Michael Stokes, has compulsively mutilated himself in at least 20 unsuccessful castration attempts, according to his appeal filed in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Well, there's an impressive tangle of issues for the courts to sort out. First, there's the denial of what is technically optional medical treatment. Second, there's the fact that because the state has denied the inmate this technically optional treatment, they've been required to give him hideously expensive emergency treatments. (There's also the rather bizarre point from the judge that they can offer De'lonta antidepressives -- considerably more expensive than hormones, although I suppose a prison would buy those in bulk, all things considered -- and psychological treatment.) Third, there's the difficulty of having an apparently female inmate in an all male prison; I would imagine that De'lonta is in administrative segregation at all times, or else pretty much rape bait. Fourth, there's the department of corrections official who said, "to continue estrogen treatment for this inmate would perpetuate the problem, not make it better." What problem would that be, pray? Fifth, there's the issue of prisons overriding what has been deemed as medically necessary treatment for purely administrative purposes.

All that said ... De'lonta hasn't got a prayer of winning this case. Gender reassignment is technically an optional procedure. What was recommended, as far as can be determined from the article, is not actual treatment, but a transfer to another prison where more specialized treatment was available, whatever that would involve. And frankly, I suspect the ACLU's interest in this case is essentially limited to the issue of the denial of required treatment for administrative or budgetary convenience; a very real issue for prisoners ... but a lousy case with which to argue the point.

(Purely as an aside: what sort of robberies could you commit that would get you a 73-year sentence? There's no indication from the article that anyone was hurt or murdered, or that drugs were involved.

... And why on earth would you name yourself after the Angel of Death?)

Posted by iain at 10:50 AM

 

"And here a miracle occurs..."

Posted by iain at 10:02 PM

 

Rage Is Here

Well, I'll be .....

But ... who the hell is Red Cape Comics, and will they be printing more than one issue? The redcapecomics.com domain resolves back to the Rage website.

I'm guessing that it's just going to be one promo thing for the end of the season. I don't think the Viacom Paramount megalith actually contains a comics publisher, although the AOL Time Warner lump does.

Posted by iain at 05:55 PM

 

Tonga kingdom's jester not laughing about lawsuit

... Someone has a court jester in this day and age? And he actually wears one of those hats? Good heavens.

Hey, maybe that explains Ashcroft's recent proposals! We've been taking them seriously, and he meant ... No? Oh, well. Would have been nice.

Aaaanyway ... sale of passports to foreigners is an official business? Knowing full well that many of those people are certainly engaging in criminal activities? How odd.

That said ... the country's annual revenue is only $41 million? A whole country? I mean, they're small, but ... yow. Chicago's annual revenue is more than that. (It's nearly a billion dollar annual budget, so it had damn well better be, I'd think.)

Posted by iain at 05:16 PM

 

The Village Voice is now reviewing gay porn.

No, really.

No. REALLY.

I suppose to match the fact they've been reviewing straight porn for a while.

I realize the Voice is hiply alternative, but ... well, that's different, anyway.

(And yet again, my referrer logs will become relentlessly interesting.)

Posted by iain at 01:56 PM

 

R&B superstar hit with 21 counts of child porn

... 21 counts? for one videotape?

Well, that smacks of political overkill.

It's also worth noting that the state's attorney is in a truly odd legal position at the moment: apparently, because the tape is evidence of itself, they can charge R. Kelly with producing child pornograpy ... but they can't charge him with having sex with a minor, because the minor in question says that it isn't her. I suspect this is a legal conundrum that's going to bite the state's attorney in the prosecutorial ass; it simply doesn't make sense as a legal position.

And there's at least one entirely separate video featuring R. Kelly and assorted women being sold at Tower Records. Win or lose on the child porn issue, he has a legal case against Tower for selling the tape, and against the producer for manufacturing it. Allowing for the fact that Mr Kelly's brain seems to be severely damaged -- according to all these reports, he's married, he's a celebrity, and he has sex with women (underaged or not) and videotapes it, all of which would indicate a severe wish for self destruction -- nobody had any legal right to profit from those materials without his permission, and Mr Kelly wouldn't surely not have given that permission.

Another interesting little aside: the R. Kelly video for which he was arrested is apparently easily available from various vendors. Who are, thereby, guilty of trafficking in child pornography (assuming that the person in the video is, as alleged, underage) and purchasers are guilty of possession of child pornography. It seems that people are so fixated on the celebrity sex aspects that they're not really understanding the child porn side of it all. (One hopes, anyway.) If police seriously wanted to shut down, or at least slow down, trafficking in this video, all they would have to do would be to run a few highly publicised stings in which they arrested people wanting to buy it.

Posted by iain at 01:41 PM

 

Bush to Propose Security Cabinet Position: In a major restructuring, President Bush will propose creation of a new Cabinet-level domestic security office that will take over border security, intelligence and other issues now housed in eight separate federal agencies.

Well, how wonderfully forward thinking of our Shrubya!

Especially since Congress has been threatening to do just that, entirely without his approval, for quite some time now. Having a person responsible for dealing with a $38 billion budget who yet is not an official cabinet officer and who therefore theoretically is not required to testify before Congress as to what he's actually going to do with that money ... well, somehow it just got Congress all in a tizzy. Can't imagine why.

With a bit of luck, actually having a defined area of responsibility will give Ridge something to do, as well as giving him a bit of clout in the turf wars with CIA, Justice and the FBI, and, oddly, Defense. (Well, if Rumsfeld will keep announcing policy changes and terrorist threats without even speaking to Ridge, there will be turf wars, won't there?) That said, I suspect they're going to discover that keeping the CIA and FBI independent of Homeland Security will mean that it's impossible for the department to coordinate the analysis of their intelligence, because it won't get all of their intelligence. There's going to be a lot of stuff they find that doesn't seem to have anything to do with national security that will wind up being relevant, which will be discovered after the fact; that's just the nature of the beast. The only way for homeland security to determine what is or isn't relevant is to take over the intelligence analysis from both agencies ... in which case, they could be combined into one, with separate domestic and foreign intelligence departments. (This being entirely too logical, and threatening the turf not only of both agencies but the Department of Justice as well, it certainly won't happen. Pity.)

Maybe, with a bit more luck, they can change the name so it doesn't sound like it's defending South African apartheid, or dreaming of resurrecting the Reich. (I'm betting that it winds up being called the Department of National Security, and then we can have the wonderfully odd juxtaposition of the National Security advisor not being in the National Security department.)

A side note: I find it truly remarkable that White House officials are admitting, if without attribution, that this announcement is deliberately timed to distract people from the congressional hearings. Aside from the lovely cynicism embedded in that ... don't they think we'd mind being deceived? Don't they think we care in the least that they're doing it and gloating about it? It's not that it's right to deceive the public or misdirect them ... but doesn't anyone in the White House have the sense god gave a goose not to SAY something like that anywhere near the record?

Another amusing little side note: I understand that there are extenuating circumstances. But I do find it mildly odd that a hack-and-slash-the-budget Republican is now presiding over the biggest buildup of government in at least a generation. I should imagine, policy positions aside, that alone is making the conservative wing all twitchy.

Posted by iain at 01:09 PM

 

Tenet had told Arafat he's on his own if bombs continue: official: CIA chief George Tenet told Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat hours before the deadly suicide blast he would face the wrath of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on his own in case of any more such attacks, a senior Palestinian official said Wednesday.

Ah. Which, no doubt, would explain this:

IDF denies attempt to kill Arafat after shell lands near his bed during Ramallah raid: The IDF denied allegations Thursday by Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat that a tank shell that landed near his bed showed that Israel was trying to kill him. The shell struck just a meter and a half from his bed during this morning's IDF incursion into Ramallah. It punched a hole in the wall between Arafat's bedroom and the bathroom. [...] Capt. Jacob Dallal, an IDF spokesman, said Arafat was not the target of the operation. "If there had been any intention of harming Arafat, it would not have been a problem," Dallal said.

Actually, I don't doubt that the IDF wasn't trying to kill him. I'd be surprised if they hadn't known that he wasn't in his bedroom at the time; had he been there, they probably wouldn't have targeted it. I suspect that it was a precisely pointed reminder that they could, any time that they wanted. And now that the administration has apparently decided that it's done restraining Israel at all -- and I'm only surprised that the decision was so long in coming -- I daresay that Arafat will be receiving all sorts of pointed reminders in the near future. (Presumably not explosive ones. I wonder what would have happened if the shell had been explosive?)

Oddly, the administration seems to have gone into full CYA mode:

A senior US official told The Associated Press on Wednesday night that Israel had not informed Washington before it struck Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's West Bank headquarters in response to the bus bombing. The administration had not given Israel a green light, the official said.

So ... we told Arafat that we wouldn't restrain Israel if there was another bombing. (I wonder how long it took before that hit the streets. Granted that some sort of bombing had already been planned; if it got out early that Tenet was planning to tell Arafat that we were lifting all restraints on Israel, I wonder if Islamic Jihad might have thought, "Well, there's an opportunity to get rid of Arafat and have ourselves a little chaos and fun!" Just a thought.) Israel, no doubt, heard that very quickly. Israel actually acts with a teensy bit of restraint, all things considered. And then we say that we didn't say what we said.

You know, anything resembling coherence in middle east policy really would be appreciated. Hell, two consecutive coherent statements would be appreciated.

Posted by iain at 11:30 AM

 

Winfrey's Plug Boosts Ice Cream Sales : ... ``This is the best ice cream I've ever tasted,'' Winfrey said on her show Thursday. [...] By Friday morning, Graeter's had received 450 ice cream orders through its phone line and Web site. By Monday, it had received more than 700 orders. Normally, the company might have received 75 orders during that period, executive vice president Rich Graeter said.

Feel the power of The Oprah!

Seriously, a fifteen-fold increase in sales over a given period? Hella impressive.

Posted by iain at 06:09 PM

 

Thestar.com/Security flaw found in browser: Another security flaw has been discovered in Microsoft Internet Explorer that could allow a hacker to take control of your computer.

Oh, goodie. Yet Another Explorer Problem.

Although, that said ... Gopher? Of all things, the gopher protocol? I didn't even know that anyone used it any more.

Posted by iain at 04:03 PM

 

Media Relations: the real r. kelly/ June 5, 2002

"R. Kelly indicted on child pornography charges"...

... Even with other people saying that the girl and Kelly stated, in pre-legal-charges days, that they'd had sex together, I'm surprised that the state brought this case ...

Posted by iain at 03:44 PM

 

Match Report: United States 3 - 2 Portugal

So, I know I said a couple entries ago that I'm not a soccer fan. But I know just enough to look at that result and say ... Whoa.

Then again ... if this was, say collegiate basketball, and (to pluck examples from the air) 13th ranked Illinois State defeated 5th ranked Indiana ... it would be an upset, but not something earthshattering. Yet when the 13th ranked United States defeats 5th ranked Portugal (yes, international soccer teams are ranked -- the US is only four points behind traditional powerhouse England and five behind several-times champion Germany, for heaven's sake), everyone goes into shock. I don't quite get it.

That said ... this World Cup has had a few interesting jolts here and there, hasn't it?

• 13th ranked US defeats 5th ranked Portugal
• 42d ranked Senegal defeats top-ranked France (now THAT was an upset)
• 40th ranked and host country Korea defeats 38th ranked Poland -- how on earth is that anything other than a very mild upset? And yet it's treated as though a major power has fallen. Weird.

One wonders if, just perhaps, this might not be Europe's year. Maybe Brazil or Argentina might break through in a non-European site.

In the meantime, the US and Korea play this weekend for leadership of Group D and a berth into the second round, and Portugal and Poland play to avoid first round elimination. Not the way this group was predicted to go.

Then again ... exactly how many of us care anyway?

Posted by iain at 02:25 PM

 

U.S. Will Seek to Fingerprint Visas' Holders: The Justice Department will propose new regulations this week requiring tens of thousands of Muslim and Middle Eastern visa holders to register with the government and be fingerprinted, administration officials said today. The initiative, the subject of intense debate within the administration, is designed for "individuals from countries who pose the highest risk to our security," including most visa holders from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and many other Muslim nations, officials said. More than 100,000 foreigners, including students, workers, researchers and tourists, all foreigners from designated countries who do not hold green cards, would probably be covered by the plan, an official said. [...] civil liberties and Arab-American groups expressed outrage at the proposed requirements, arguing that such a policy was a blatant example of racial and ethnic profiling. "What's the logic of this?" said Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "Anyone who's truly dangerous is not going to show up to be registered." James J. Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, a policy organization, said the registration plan would be "an overtly discriminatory, inefficient and ineffective way to deal with the problem."

From the Washington Post, Wednesday, June 5: The proposal produced an immediate objection from Rep. John Conyers (Mich.), the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. "It is shocking that the freest nation on earth could engage in a system of racial and ethnic profiling," he said. "It is as though the equal protection clause had no meaning or context whatsoever to the authors of this Orwellian proposal."

You know what I don't quite understand? Why doesn't Justice simply require all visitors to this country -- excepting Canada, Mexico and whatever Caribbean nations that we have that sort of agreement with currently -- to provide this information before they come here? Yes, it would be a lot more work. But frankly, it would short-circuit the predictable (and quite true) complaints of racial and ethnic profiling, such as those made by Representative Conyers. And hey! Might even realize that there are criminals and terrorists from other countries that perhaps, just perhaps, we don't want to let in. (Although the concept of, say, a Swedish terrorist boggles the mind.) Of course, it would require all visitors from those countries to apply at the US consulate in that country for a visa ... oh, wait! they already do! Which means that the objection about airport backlogs is a red herring; it would (or at least should) be handled earlier in the system by either allowing or refusing the visa application itself.

That said ... unless INS or its successor agencies puts in place a database with information on terrorists and criminals, provided from other countries as well as those already known, it won't do a lick of good. Currently, all those things need to be manually checked, especially since the information needed by INS is in FBI and CIA databases, and INS is resisting getting an effective database system that would efficiently collate the information from those agencies.

THAT said ... as one of the lawmakers of our fair land, Mr Conyers might wish to acquaint himself with some of the finer nuances of Constitutional law. To wit, most constitutional protections do not apply to people who are neither residents nor citizens of the United States. They certainly don't apply when you're not here yet. He might wish to reserve his high horse for another issue where it might be put to better use.

Posted by iain at 01:59 PM

 

Soccer / Sports Extra / ireland.com

Ignore the content, for the moment. (Oh, please. You think I"m a soccer devotee? Let's get real, shall we?) Take a look at the background.

As advertising goes, I suppose it's considerably less annoying than the interstitials like Salon has, or those incredibly annoying Shockwave/Java "prestitial" ads that have bloomed like kudzu all over the web, or the pop-ups-and-unders.

On the other hand, I'm not sure that advertisers will stick with an ad format that's not up there, in your face. It isn't that hard to simply ignore it, or even just miss it altogether. (That said, I would imagine that the zippy little ad at the top of the page makes up somewhat for the subtlety of the background.)

Posted by iain at 10:43 PM

 

Airlines face post 9/11 racial profiling, discrimination suits: Five passengers who were removed from or prevented from boarding flights last year after the September 11 terror attacks filed suit Tuesday against four major U.S. airlines, accusing them of racial profiling and discrimination.

Ah, yes.

The upside of our "liberal hypocrisy", as Mr Kristoff would put it.

Anyone care to bet how long it will be before the airlines ask Congress to immunize them against legal suits of this nature? After all, profiling people who are or appear to be Arab is an entirely reasonable thing to do, right? And if they're going to do that, why, then, they should be protected from the legal consequences of their actions! It's just national security!

Posted by iain at 07:07 PM

 

U.S. eases rules on domestic surveillance: Saying the nation needs to take more aggressive steps to foil terror plots, Attorney General John Ashcroft yesterday relaxed decades-old rules governing surveillance of domestic religious and political groups. [...] Ashcroft stressed that the policy changes did not affect rules governing wiretaps and other forms of electronic surveillance. Agents will still be required to furnish specific evidence that a crime has been committed before getting approval for such surveillance.

FBI Changes Rules on Secret Wiretaps: Responding to criticism, the FBI has quietly changed its internal rules so that Director Robert Mueller personally reviews any requests by agents for secret terrorism wiretaps denied by lawyers at headquarters. The change gives FBI agents in the field a final avenue for appeal directly to Mueller if they believe terrorism investigations are being hampered by headquarters.

Leaving aside the fact that under J. Edgar Ashcroft's "everything old is new again" doctrine, you don't have to have evidence, or even reasonable suspicion, of criminal activity before starting to observe people or groups ... it does rather seem as if the right hand continues not to know what the left is doing. In this case, I suspect it's quite deliberate.

It's very impressive, the way this revised wiretap rule operates. Basically, if the FBI lawyers, whom one would think have experience in, you know, the law say to an agent, "You can't do this, it's illegal," they now have the ability to appeal to the director ... who can apparently sign off on it. (Although it apparently then does get passed up to the Justice department lawyers, whatever sort of oversight that will be now.) How thoroughly peculiar. One wonders just how egregiously unwarranted a request for surveillance will have to be to be rejected by the FBI director in this environment, where he can turn on the television or open a newspaper and watch his agency being pilloried each and every day for the failures that contributed to September 11. I mean, I know that I'd expect him to err on the side of caution after being dragged over the coals for having been over-cautious, right? And most assuredly, the lawyers at Justice will scrutinize each and every request and note when boundaries are being overstepped and reject all such requests, right? I mean, wouldn't you trust the Justice Department to keep the Constitution in mind at all times? The same Justice Department, one might add, that is attempting to deny one of the defendants access to his court appointed lawyer. (He's an American citizen on American soil. Given the precedent they set with Walker Lindh, for ill or good, the Justice department now oversteps itself in trying him in a military court, when Shrubya explicitly said that American citizens were not going to be tried in that manner. Given that Justice oversteps in placing him into a military court, they certainly overstep in trying to deny him legal representation.)

Given everything, I feel ever so confident about how we can expect our Justice department and our intelligence gathering organizations to respect our rights in the coming months and years.

Don't you?

Posted by iain at 06:29 PM

 

Gene Simmons Tongue

And may I just say: YUCK! I don't particularly want to see someone stick their tongue in Hef's ear. (No, no, not Gene. Although, actually, if they could have gotten Hef to stand still for it, it would have been one hell of a picture, wouldn't it?) I don't particularly want to see Tommy Lee talking about sex with his girlfriend -- hell, I didn't want to see the video. (Well, you know, duh.) And referring to the magazine as GST is going to make people think of it alternately as some sort of tax or something to do with time.

That aside, what sort of sense does it make to launch a lifestyle (lifestyle?) magazine in this business climate?

Posted by iain at 05:06 PM

 

USS Clueless - Minority: Somebody needs to look up the word minority in the dictionary. It isn't possible for a minority to represent 58%.

Oh, piffle; that's just being picayune. Would it suit better if they'd said "58% minorities"?

That said, I've no idea why they can't say 58% nonwhite. Or, contrariwise, say, 42% nonminority, just to get people scratching their heads and saying "huh?"

But if you really want to see fun buzzword usage, try RACE, PLACE AND SEGREGATION: Redrawing the Color Line in Our Nation's Metros - 4 HOUSING STUDIES ON 3 METROPOLITAN AREAS: BOSTON, CHICAGO, & SAN DIEGO. (Adobe Acrobat required to read report segments linked on that page.) Oh, my goodness, that's just a wonder of terminology, it is:

Residents of Chicago's metropolitan area are redrawing the color line, this time in the suburbs. Since the early 1980s, African-Americans and Latinos have increasingly moved to the suburbs, but they have not been welcomed into all communities. Rather, they are experiencing segregation equivalent to that experienced in the inner city. This is showing up not only in census data but also in our study of recent home buying patterns, which indicate that, if left unaddressed, segregation is only likely to spread. [...] The problems of resegregation at the school level are even more severe in the suburbs than they are in city, because the suburbs are so small and many have relatively small numbers of schools. Also most do not have any strategic plans for the future, and they have very limited experience in dealing with multi-racial populations. Given the dynamic pattern of racial change occurring in suburbia, the housing and educational dimensions require further study and analysis to develop effective public policy prescriptions that aim to avoid replicating existing inequities present in many urban venues.

"Replicating existing inequities." Hmm. Really.

There are two issues with this report. First, it assumes that segregation, in and of itself, is a bad thing. Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn't. I would note, however, that the original issue with segregation was not that it kept people from knowing each other, but that it was originally entirely involuntary and that the combination of the involuntary aspect with the segregation produced sharply unequal distribution of resources. (As compared with today, when we have largely voluntary segregation, largely involuntary integration programs ... and sharply unequal distribution of resources. Hmm.)

The second problem is present throughout the report itself, if not in the press release. Briefly, the authors clearly assume that mostly nonwhite districts will automatically become ghettos, even in the suburbs. This despite the fact that one of the things distinguishing the suburbs from the city is the presence of money. This despite the fact that people, of all colors, move to the suburbs to make a better life, and aren't likely to tolerate that sort of thing. This despite the fact that people in the suburbs in general have the financial resources to prevent that sort of thing. It also makes the default assumption that pretty much all segregated neighborhoods in the urban city are ghettos, which is a blatant slander.

The authors of that study should have been slapped quite hard before they let that study out in that shape. Gary Orfield has lived in this city and should have known better.

But the study authors are, at least, blunt in their terminology. You always know who they're talking about.

And, of course, that they're full of it.

Posted by iain at 04:21 PM

 

Solving Kid Porn's 'Real' Problem: ... "We are the Internet police," said BayTSP CEO Mark Ishikawa, who says that since June 2000 his company has found over a million copyright violations for its clients, which include Adobe and various Hollywood studios. The same system could be used to weed kiddie porn from the Web, he says. But for the past two years, Ishikawa has run into brick walls whenever he's pitched his system to law enforcement agencies. Polite nods all around, but no takers.
     That was before the Supreme Court ruling and the introduction of a bill that would create a central database of some 250,000 images of known child pornography. The purpose of the database would be to help cops and courts differentiate between real and fake kiddie porn and prosecute illegal smut peddlers. The system would differentiate between pictures of actual children and computer-generated images.

Wait ... the largest active collection of this type of material in the country is going to be in the hands of the government? How ... very odd.

The photography identification technology looks very interesting. If it actually works as promised, it could be a useful way to make some of those laws workable.

Except for one wee problem.

Ishikawa would not disclose how his technology crunches through P2P networks or how it circumvents firewalls. In fact, BayTSP's habit of poking into shared files stored on personal computers has won Ishikawa a lot of enemies and even death threats from recipients of his company's cease-and-desist nasty-grams.

Depending on how the technology works, it's quite likely that cases built using this method may be thrown out of court for illegal search-and-seizure violations. In theory, at least, our law requires you to actually be committing a crime, or at least planning to commit a crime, before law enforcement is allowed to go snooping through your files. Simply using a filesharing program, technically, is not prima facie evidence of either illegal activity or conspiracy, in and of itself. And circumventing a firewall, absent a warrant, ought to be a violation of DMCA, to say nothing of the Constitutional Eviceration ... er, that is, USA Patriot Act.

Posted by iain at 10:39 AM

 

Welfare reform may reduce chances of marriage for single mothers: For years, work and marriage have been seen as twin pillars of welfare reform, but just as President Bush is seeking welfare legislation with more stringent work requirements and more support for marriage, an unexpected contradiction is emerging. New research findings in two states show that the stricter work requirements of contemporary welfare policy significantly reduce the chances that a single mother will wed. [...] Wade F. Horn, the Bush administration official who oversees the welfare program, said Friday, "We see nothing inconsistent between what we're trying to accomplish and results of the Connecticut study and others.''

Well, of course they don't. Because they're blithering idiots.

In any event, I should imagine that helping women realize that they're competent and that they can do for themselves would lower the marriage rate; anyone giving it the slightest scintilla of thought would have expected that.

That said ... technically -- very technically -- Horn is correct. Trying to encourage marriage in theory has nothing to do with getting fewer marriages at the other end of the process. (I always wonder who these women are expected to marry. I mean, I would imagine that there are reasons they're not with the fathers of their children. If Shrubya's administration actually took a good look at the men, they might find that trying to encourage marriage in those situations is one of the worst things they could do to those women.

Of course, that would actually require them to look at the programs and care about the results, as opposed to the ideology.

Posted by iain at 03:35 PM

 

Death Row inmate with sleeping lawyer wins Supreme Court appeal: A Texas Death Row inmate whose lawyer slept for long portions of his murder trial will either win freedom or a new trial, after the Supreme Court refused to intervene Monday.

How ... unexpected. And odd. Very odd, in fact.

The Court deliberately delayed Cockrell v. Burdine until after Bell v. Cone because the issues were similar ... and then produced a decision (or rather, declined to produce a decision) which gave a case with the precisely opposite result.

Mind, the core issue of the Cone case is somewhat different: did having a mentally ill lawyer mean that the defendant was unable to meet habeas corpus deadlines through no fault of his own? The core issue of the Burdine case is: does having a lawyer sleep through substantial portions of your trial make a material difference to your defense? Why sleeping matters and mental illness doesn't, I honestly don't understand, but having decided Cone one way, you'd think that the court would be bound to reverse and remand Burdine's case for a rehearing in light of the Cone case. Instead, they flatly refuse to consider the case ... which they could have done initially, since they didn't even hear the damn thing, after all that.

"We're disappointed that the Supreme Court chose not to review this case, but we'll proceed with our next step, which will be retrial," said Harris County Assistant District Attorney Roe Wilson.
    "He'll be found guilty again," Wilson added. "He signed a written confession. We have videotape of him at the bank using the victim's ATM card. We have records from pawn shops where he pawned the victim's belongings."

I daresay he will be convicted again. However, I should think that, if his lawyer at least stays awake, he might not get the death penalty. If nothing else, because this time the prosecutor will know better than to say, "Life in prison isn't that bad a punishment for a homosexual." One hopes, in any event.

What I truly don't understand is why, once the appeals court went against them, Texas didn't just go for a new trial anyway. It would surely have been both less expensive and faster than this. In any event, the precedents are now established in our court system: Deranged, mentally ill, drunken, or insufficiently trained or experienced lawyers? A-OK! Sleeping lawyers? No no no, we just don't like that.

Posted by iain at 03:14 PM

 

Tyson hugs gay right activist before workout: "I was shouting stop homophobia and holding up my sign, and then he just came up and hugged me and said he wasn't homophobic,'' said Jim Maynard, vice-chair of Equality Tennessee and one of three demonstrators. "I was totally shocked,'' Maynard told The Commercial Appeal. "I didn't really know what to do. So I just posed with him and smiled for the cameras. It's a step in the right direction.''

Well ... it's a step in some direction, anyway.

Perhaps Australia's Tatchell will live through his confrontation with Tyson, after all.

You do wonder what Equality Tennessee did after that. I mean, it's just a bit difficult to wander around shouting "stop homophobia!" after the guy hugs you. Talk about defusing your enemies ....

Posted by iain at 12:05 AM

 

Bishop Suggested Concealing Abuse Evidence
     In a tape obtained by ABCNEWS, the auxiliary bishop of Cleveland, A. James Quinn, was recorded in 1990 telling a seminar of church leaders and lawyers to destroy any anonymous allegations when sex-abuse allegations arise.
    "Personnel files should be carefully examined to determine their content. Unsigned letters alleging misconduct should be expunged," Quinn said on tape.
    Quinn continued to suggest that officials should consider sending "dangerous" material to the apostolic delegation at the Vatican Embassy, before lawyers or law enforcement officials could formally subpoena the material.

Congratulations, Mr Quinn! You have just contributed prima facie evidence of criminal conspiracy! Unfortunately, the US government is too cowardly to arrest you for your role in this conspiracy -- arresting serving bishops tending to complicate our relationship with not only the Vatican, but with US Catholics -- so we'll have to settle for pillorying you in the realm of public opinion.

Of course, there's also the intriguing point that, insofar as the reams of paper documenting abuse have come to light in various dioceses, the bishops involved seem to have felt that trying that hard to conceal criminal activity was one step they couldn't take. You wonder why, really. Frankly, if they had done as he suggested, most of these cases wouldn't be coming to light, at least not in such detail. And they wouldn't have even had to lie on the stand; without the documentation, they'd never have had to testify. So ... why?

Posted by iain at 10:47 PM

 

Weakland begs for forgiveness: His moving mea culpa revealed one new embarrassment, his acknowledgment that he had erred in a previous statement in which he asserted that he had raised enough money in speaking fees, gifts and honorariums over 25 years to more than equal the $450,000 settlement that the archdiocese quietly paid to the former graduate student who had accused him of sexual assault. "In my remaining years, I will continue to contribute to the archdiocese whatever I can, and, of course, the archdiocese will receive whatever effects I own on my death," said Weakland, 75. Later, the archdiocese released a statement saying that Weakland's work had brought in a total of $196,723 since June 30, 1978, including money it earned in an interest-bearing account.

In other words, he ... borrowed, shall we say, approximately $250,000 from church accounts.

So his reasons for staying silent until now, however badly it might have seemed handled from the outside, become more apparent. I would imagine that his lawyers were strongly against any mention of the money's sources; the implied embezzlement should be enough for either the state or the federal government to bring charges. It's tricky, though; embezzlement is an offense against the State, but typically, it's not prosecuted if those who have been defrauded don't seek it, and if the embezzler isn't some sort of con artist.

On the other hand ... that's a LOT of money to ignore. The Church's wishes may count in mitigating punishment -- sending a 75-year-old bishop to jail for embezzlement when the archdiocese almost certainly won't want it, and he has no chance or desire to repeat the offense -- but the amount may end up making the State feel that it must do something

Posted by iain at 10:40 PM

 

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