Law affirms church doctrine to youths: Cardinal Bernard F. Law, dancing and singing with an exuberant crowd of young Boston Catholics, yesterday declared that those who believe the church's teachings on divorce, women's ordination, and other hot-button topics will change when the pope dies are mistaken [...] One woman asked Law how Catholics should live out the church's teaching that Christians should love homosexuals, but oppose homosexual acts, and whether it would be OK to attend commitment ceremonies held by gays and lesbians. ''We are called to love and accept every human being,'' he said. But he said that the church expects every unmarried person, gay or straight, to be celibate. ''Any acting out sexually outside of a marriage, which is a lasting union between a man and a woman, is not in accord with the teachings of Jesus and the church,'' he said. ''Anything else that calls itself a marriage isn't a marriage, from our perspective, so that for us to give public recognition to that in any way would be to affirm a pattern of living that is not ordained by God ... It would be inappropriate for us to be supportive of organized efforts to indicate that it really doesn't make any difference, that it's just up to personal choice.''

OooooKay. Yes. Right. Quite. Because of course a man who continually made it possible for priests to not only "act out sexually" outside of marriages, but who knowingly allowed them to do it against children, is such a believable person on this issue.

Law offered an unsolicited critique of violence toward gays and lesbians. ''We need to be very clear that we don't approve of the kind of terrible negative actions and violence against those persons who proclaim themselves to be homosexuals, and the violence of words that occurs - that's totally unacceptable, and that's against the gospel of Christ,'' he said.

Well, that was big of him, now wasn't it?

And in the meantime, they're still having ever so much fun back in the ol' Beantown:

Boston Diocese Agrees to Sex Scandal Oversight: The Archdiocese of Boston, at the epicenter of a damaging child sex scandal in the Catholic Church, will hire a full-time director to oversee how it handles allegations of sexual abuse against priests, a church appointed panel said on Tuesday. The panel, appointed earlier this year by the archdiocese's leader, Cardinal Bernard Law, said the new director would be in place by the end of August, along with a new advisory board, made up mostly of lay people, to oversee outreach to victims of priestly sexual abuse.

I would note that this is somewhat less than the article makes it appear. The director willl be supervising the same oversight review board that was fairly ineffective the first time around, since it never really got the information to work with, and was stacked with cronies. Granted, it has been reconstituted, so we'll see how effective it can be now.

But still ... there's just something odd about taking advice on sexual morality from someone who is startlingly immoral, sexually or otherwise.

Posted by iain at 03:43 PM

 

Pairs fix? Alleged mobster arrested: An alleged Russian crime boss was arrested in Italy on U.S. charges he tried to fix the pairs and ice dancing figure skating competitions at the Salt Lake City Olympics, according to a federal criminal complaint filed Wednesday.

... I don't even know what to say to that.

It certainly puts the whole mess in Salt Lake in a slightly different light. Not merely corruption just for the fun of it, but corruption for filthy lucre. And in the previously pristine sport of skating. Imagine.

... But .... the MOB? Fixing SKATING? How much money could there possibly be in that?

Posted by iain at 03:25 PM

 

Dead Heat: ..... heat waves kill more people in the United States than all of the other so-called natural disasters combined. More than 400 Americans die from heat-related illnesses in a typical year. Annual mortality from tornadoes, earthquakes, and floods together is under 200. Since heat waves inflict damage on the nation's major cities, well within the range of most media organizations, the lack of visibility or panic is all the more mysterious. [...] But in recent years, Chicago has become the national epicenter of heat mortality. This summer, Chicago had recorded 27 heat-related deaths by July 22. That's small by current standards. In one week of July 1995, 739 Chicago residents—the majority of them home alone—died in one of the greatest and least-known American disasters in modern history. To place the 1995 heat wave in context, think of the great Chicago fire of 1871. It killed less than half as many people. [...] In Chicago, people still debate whether the medical examiner exaggerated the numbers and wonder if the crisis was a "media event" that the press had "propped up somehow." The American Journal of Public Health definitively established that the medical examiner's numbers actually undercounted the mortality by about 250 since hundreds of bodies were buried before they could be autopsied. But how many people read the American Journal of Public Health?

Better yet, how many people read the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports? About a year after the Great Invisible Heat Wave of 1995, the CDC published a report (which, unfortunately, I can't find, although I can find an abstract of another summary) that noted that in some ways, the deaths from that heat wave were quite atypical. Fully expected, of course, were spikes in the numbers of infant and elderly deaths; the young and the old are most vulnerable to temperature extremes because their bodies lack the ability to adjust to temperature. As I note, fully expected.

What was not expected was the spike in young, healthy adult black males who died of heat related causes. No apparent cause was ever determined for this spike; it was never really even analyzed. The CDC just looked at it and said "... well, we don't get it either," and sailed on to the next thing.

Note as well that according to Slate's figures, the CDC report is vastly underestimated.

Posted by iain at 02:29 AM

 

Profound Effect on U.S. Economy Seen in a War on Iraq: An American attack on Iraq could profoundly affect the American economy, because the United States would have to pay most of the cost and bear the brunt of any oil price shock or other market disruptions, government officials, diplomats and economists say.

You know .... this is the only reason I can imagine Shrubya deciding NOT to attack.

That said, given as he's oil folk, a thoroughly cynical person would say that it's a positive reason for attacking, to help his friends! But I am not thoroughgoingly cynical, oh no no no. I am merely corrosively cynical. I would never impute such a reason to Our Glorious Leader's policies. (Actually, I really wouldn't. I give him credit for having one or two more principles than that. THAT said ... I do still feel that wanting to attack Iraq has WAY too much to do with wanting to redeem Daddy Dearest's policy mistake in not going on to Baghdad way back when.)

To be sure, Shrubya and fiends --, er, pardon, and friends would dearly love to use the expansion of the military to cut back on any and all domestic programs. (Except corporate welfare, of course.) And the craven cowards in Congress might well allow it, because it would be positively unpatriotic not to do what was necessary to support our people in the field. And if the 1989 invasion caused the 1991 recession to hit a relatively strong economy, just imagine what an oil-fed recession would do to the economy now. Oh, those would be some good good times, yes indeedy!

Posted by iain at 04:46 PM

 

Race Is Seen as Real Guide to Track Roots of Disease: Challenging the widely held view that race is a "biologically meaningless" concept, a leading population geneticist says that race is helpful for understanding ethnic differences in disease and response to drugs. The geneticist, Dr. Neil Risch of Stanford University, says that genetic differences have arisen among people living on different continents and that race, referring to geographically based ancestry, is a valid way of categorizing these differences.

Not that I necessarily disagree with him -- it rather depends on what exactly he says in his research, doesn't it? -- but Dr Risch is going to need some industrial strength fire retardant to go near his email these days. Even suggesting such a thing tends to set people off, because of where it can lead.

Posted by iain at 04:35 PM

 

Newsday.com - Qwest Plans to Restate Earnings: Qwest Communications International Inc., already under investigation for its accounting practices, expects to restate financial reports for 2000 and 2001 because an internal analysis found accounting errors. [...] Company officials said the accounting errors were made under policies approved by its previous auditor and related to telephone services and sales of optical capacity and equipment. Qwest hired auditor KPMG LLP in June to examine its books, after dismissing Arthur Andersen LLP.

Well, of course. Who else would it be?

You begin to wonder if Andersen is somehow behind every business bankruptcy or business fraud ... er, pardon me, financial report restatement due to financial practices approved by the previous auditor that that occurs in the US in the next year. I can just see it now:
- Hey, lost a lot of money! Those pesky acccounting practices. All Andersen's fault.
- But your auditor wasn't Andersen, it was ----
- Nope, nope, nope. Doesn't matter. All Andersen's fault. Everything's Andersen's fault. That's the mantra of American business this year: It's all Andersen's fault.

And of course, it seems to be, doesn't it?

Posted by iain at 04:29 PM

 

Well. I am impressed.

I hope that I'm not the sort of person to bellow "racism" any time anyone says anything. I consider myself well to the left of, say, JC Watts and Clarence Thomas, and probably to the right of, say, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. (And seldom on the same planet as Farrakhan.) That is a lot of attitudinal turf, as it were.

That said ... I have seldom seen more impressively racist sentiment dressed up in "I'm not racist" drag than a couple of recent pieces by Mickey Kaus.

The article that inspired his recent observations is at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (read fast; their articles expire about two seconds after posting):

Could Mr. Right be white? "I'm not going to sit on a porch in a rocking chair, all alone at 80 years old because of color," says Wanda Dunn, a 37-year-old Stone Mountain Web designer. "I don't see it as a turning away from black men but as expanding my options." When it comes to interracial dating, people have traditionally focused on the taboo nature of black men dating white women. Yet statistics show that more black women are becoming involved with white men. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of black female/white male marriages remained relatively static between 1960 and 1980, increasing from 26,000 to 27,000. But by 2000, the number had jumped to 80,000. [...] The reason most often cited, though, for the change in dating attitudes is demographics. A disproportionate number of black men are in jail, or are murder victims. One in every 20 black men older than 18 is in prison, the 2000 Human Rights Watch report concluded. Black teenage males are seven times more likely to be murdered than white teenage males, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. The result is that black women face a marriage squeeze. According to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, the percentage of black women who are married declined from 62 percent in 1950 to 36 percent in 2000.

OK. So that's our starting point. From there, Kaus extrapolates as follows:

Miscegenation -- an official trend: The Atlanta Journal Constitution has a seemingly important taboo-busting story on the increase in black women dating white men. [...] Why the shift? Blake emphasizes the large percentage of black men who are off the dating scene because they're "in jail, or are murder victims." But isn't there another possible factor, something that happened in, say, the mid-90s, something like ...(the suspense must be killing you) ... welfare reform? It's not only that the hundreds of thousands of black women who are now working rather than on welfare come into contact with non-black men at work, It's also that when you're working the virtues of pooling your income with a male earner are now far more obvious than in the days when that could cost you your AFDC check.

I beg your pardon? How dare he? Apparently, the default assumption is that welfare reform not only benefited black women more than black men (and I won't even argue with that for the moment), but that most black men are on welfare now, AND that those who are on welfare, for whatever reason, are truly unworthy people. Who knew? I'm going to have to go find every single male member of my immediate and extended family -- and to the best of my knowledge, only one of us has ever been on welfare at all, in the past three generations -- and tell them that clearly, they're just doing something wrong. That cousin of mine working at Intel, the other ones working for the state, the others out in the business world, they've just got to quit their jobs and go onto welfare, because clearly, they're not doing their part to represent our race properly!

It's quite obvious that he has, shall we say, somewhat archaic views about the whole thing, since he uses the term "miscegenation". To be sure, he does use it more or less accurately. (Do note, however, the additional statement in the definition: offensive when used disapprovingly, as often formerly. In other words, it's a term laden with baggage, and a sensible person -- which is to say, anyone paying any attention whatsoever to American culture since, say, 1960 or thereabouts -- would not use it when speaking of interracial dating or marriage in these modern days. They would, in fact, say only, "interracial dating or marriage".

And then there's this lovely sentiment in the same above-linked Kaus piece: Two issues go unaddressed: 1) How will black men react when black women start getting all sorts of favorable publicity (in newspaper stories like this one, and advertising imagery) for going out with non-black men? Anger seeems one short-run possibility. Really? Anger. How very very special of you to assume such a response, Mr Kaus.

So. Moving along nicely, Bradford De Long, an economics professor at Berkeley, raised this very mild objection to Kaus' original argument: Does Mickey Kaus really think that Wanda Dunn, 37 year-old African-American Stone Mountain web designer, would be on AFDC if not for the mid-1990s welfare reform? To which Mr Kaus responds:

I wasn't saying (nor do I think I said!) that every black woman who dates white men is a potential welfare mother, or that welfare reform was the only factor producing the rise in miscegenation. But (a) the influence of welfare in the African-American community is more pervasive than you might think. According to Prof. Greg Duncan's analysis of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, for example, of black children born from 1967 through 1969, some 72 percent would spend at least a year on welfare by the time they reached age eighteeen. (The figure for non-blacks was 16 percent.). More than 40 percent of black children were on welfare for seven years or more . That means welfare isn't an inescapable trap -- obviously lots of people go on it and off it and wind up in the middle class. But it means welfare is a bigger force in shaping black culture than DeLong seems to want to admit. Also (b) you don't have to be on welfare, or poor, or black to be influenced by the welfare-conditioned culture of the urban poor -- any more than you have to be poor or black to be influenced by the ghetto-based ideas of NWA and other rappers whose music fills headphones in Scarsdale and Montecito. So just bcause Wanda Dunn is a Web designer doesn't mean she wasn't influenced by ideas (memes!) that welfare reform provoked among people who, unlike Wanda Dunn, are poor enough to be on public assistance. P.S. Duh!

No. In his first piece, Mr Kaus most emphatically did NOT say "that every black woman who dates white men is a potential welfare mother, or that welfare reform was the only factor producing the rise in miscegenation." I will agree with him on that point.

I will also note that his clarification managed to be even more offensive than his original piece, by assuming influences on people which he cannot know or infer from anything that was in that original article. I would also note that as Ms Dunn is at the age of 37, she was a full grown adult, and probably had had a date or two by the time welfare reform came along the pike. (One of the posters in Mr DeLong's log notes that in the first piece, Kaus may have been making fun of his own tendency to find the benefits of welfare reform everywhere. The appearance and tone of the second piece rather refute that argument, unfortunately.)

Please note that I am not saying that Mr Kaus is not entitled to publish his opinions. As long as Slate is willing to pay him, he's certainly entitled to publish. (And even if they're not, as long as he has his own website.) I just happen to think that his expression of his opinions is most impressively vile.

Posted by iain at 01:07 PM

 

MP comes out as gay to reinforce Tories image: ALAN Duncan has become the first serving Conservative MP to declare his homosexuality - in a move aimed at driving home the party?s new tolerant image.

My, that's impressively cynical. And from Europe, too. Who knew?

Mr Duncan, 45, has been known in Westminster as a confirmed bachelor.

The concept that a newspaper would actually have published that line in this day and age is enough to make you laugh, though.

Posted by iain at 08:20 PM

 

Same-sex ruling challenged: Ottawa's decision to appeal a controversial court ruling that clears the way for same-sex marriage was jeered Monday by gay and lesbian groups and an opposition MP. Justice Minister Martin Cauchon said that until society agrees on the definition of marriage, his department must challenge an Ontario court ruling.

Well, I can't say as that's surprising. Mildly saddening, but not at all surprising. (Since it was a provincial court, ruling only on what happened in Ontario and not in all of Canada, I'm somewhat confused as to how a British Columbia ruling has anything to do with Ontario, but .... whatever.)

Posted by iain at 06:17 PM

 

Forbes.com: Group accuses White House of obstructing Cheney suit: Judicial Watch said its process server went the White House on July 22 to deliver the lawsuit to the vice president, who was chief executive of Halliburton (nyse: HAL - news - people) from 1995 to 2000. But the group said the courier was turned away by the Secret Service and allegedly threatened with arrest.
     "We have served many a lawsuit on Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Hillary Clinton when they were in the White House ... Never before have our process servers been threatened with arrest," said Larry Klayman, who serves as chairman and general counsel of the 8-year-old legal foundation that has filed a number of highly publicized lawsuits against government officials.
     Cheney adviser Mary Matalin dismissed the claims as a public relations stunt and said the lawsuit should have been served on Cheney's private attorney.

"Stunt" it almost certainly was. Nonetheless, given Judicial Watch's specific history, it was almost certainly not the sort of stunt she means. After all, they've served the White House many many many many many MANY times before. They had no reason to expect that the papers would be flatly refused. (In fact, the particular method of refusal is so impressively illegal that both the vice president and the man who allegedly threatened Judicial Watch with arrest should themselves be arrested.)

I don't expect the attempt to get Cheney sanctioned to go anywhere -- I fully expect that after they try this particular stunt a time or two more, the judge will tell them to go to Cheney's lawyer just to get the thing served -- but it ought to be thoroughly amusing to watch and not at all helpful to the administration's efforts to paint this whole mess as pure obstructionism.

Posted by iain at 06:10 PM

 

Bush Criticizes Senate Welfare Bill (washingtonpost.com): President Bush insisted Monday that welfare recipients put in a 40-hour work week and said a Senate bill requiring less is riddled with "so many exceptions, so many loopholes" that it would reverse six years of welfare progress. Bush leveled his assault on the Democrat-written legislation while on a $1.2 million fund-raising hop to South Carolina for the state's Republican gubernatorial candidate, Mark Sanford. He faulted legislation passed last month by Democrats, who control the Senate Finance Committee, because it does not include the stiffer work requirements he seeks, would not produce as much money as he wants for programs promoting marriage, and would increase funds to help working welfare parents pay for child care.
    "They're saying we got to spend a bunch more money in order to make us feel better and to make things work better. We don't need that," Bush said.

So, let me just get this straight: he wants people on welfare to be required to work a 40-hour workweek, but we should make absolutely no provisions to deal with the fact that most people on welfare have children that need to be dealt with.

He does not consider education to be "helping people become independent and it's certainly not my view of understanding the importance of work and helping people achieve the dignity necessary so they can live a free life, free from government control." He begrudges education to people trying to get themselves off welfare. This from a man who wanted to call himself the education president.

What sort of job does he envision welfare recipients having? Low end service jobs for unskilled labor are all very well and good, but they don't lead anywhere. In an economy that's staggering around the way this one is, that will likely lead to frequent bouts of unemployment. It's a job, sure, but it's no way to build a good life. Don't we want people to be able to get off welfare, stay off welfare, and make a better life for themselves and their children?

(And don't get me started on his revolting "promoting marriage" proposition. Welfare rules don't allow the women to be married and receive full benefits for their children. Additionally, if most of the men were worth being married to, they probably would be married to them. A fair number of these women are escaping from abusive situations, but we should just shove those families back together! Yes we should! After all, once that man kills that woman and maybe her children, then we won't have to care for them on welfare anymore, will we? Of course, the guy will be going to prison, which is a sort of welfare captivity, but with a little luck, he'll be in Texas, where they get rid of them as needs killin' just as fast as they can!)

Welfare reform has already had such wonderfully pro-family effects, such as acquainting children with their grandparents and foster care:

...new research underscores a smaller, unwelcome trend: a rising share of children, particularly black children in cities, are turning up in no-parent households, left with relatives, friends or foster families without either their mother or their father. Researchers say they cannot pinpoint the forces driving parents and children apart. But among them, they said, may be the stresses of the new welfare world ? loss of benefits, low-wage jobs at irregular hours and pressure from a new partner needed to pay the rent. [...]
     "What we're seeing is the complex relationship between this thing we call welfare reform and the impact on families," said Wade F. Horn, the Bush administration official who oversees the welfare program. "In some cases we see positive effects on family structures, and in other cases we see more children living in no-parent families." Mr. Horn said new welfare demands might expose an unfit parent whose children are better off in foster care. On the other hand, he added, a West Virginia mother told to seek work in Ohio may feel obliged to leave a child behind to finish school. "What it tells us," he said, "is that we need to do an even better job on understanding the complexities of these programs on real people."

Yes, but the problem is, the administration doesn't want to understand. Understanding would mean that it would have to face the fact that welfare reform implemented without proper analysis beforehand means that we may well have been doing things wrong. Understanding would mean foregoing the quick policy soundbite and saying, "Look, we need to pay attention to what we're doing. It does no good to promote marriages that don't work and work rules that force people to stay away from their children, especially when we're trying to be a compassionately conservative, pro-family administration. Destroying families is really the last thing we want to do. And if we continue to promulgate policies that target poor and black families in particular, we will be condemning ourselves to having a permanent minority underclass, and that's not what we want to do."

Who thinks we'll hear that from this administration anytime soon? Anyone? ... no, I didn't think so.

Compassionate conservatism, my ASS.

Posted by iain at 05:45 PM

 

Cutting through the pain: They look like cat scratches, but these nicks on the skin come from razor blades, pocketknives or the plastic utensils picked up in fast-food restaurants. Sometimes, they're raw marks brought on by such furious rubbing of an eraser that the skin wears off. Paper clips, unbent, transform into stabbing instruments. Cigarette lighters scorch concealed flesh.
     It's called self-injury or ?cutting,? and almost every Tristate teen knows it's not about skipping class. [...] Officials at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center ? where there are more evaluations for psychiatric emergencies per year than at any other children's hospital in the country ? say roughly 20 percent of their 3,600 cases annually show some type of self-mutilating behavior. That could include burning or other types of self-mutilation, but cutting is the most common.

What on earth is going on in this country that self-mutiliation is now the fastest growing juvenile psychiatric disorder?

I can understand that to some extent, it's a symptom of teenagers not getting the counseling they need ... but why do so many more teenagers need counseling these days?

I should imagine, given that "boys direct their emotions toward others, girls turn their feelings inward", there ought to be an equally sharp and commensurate rise in bullying and physical violence by boys. Which would be largely disguised because bullying and physical violence are by and large expected of boys.

Posted by iain at 05:35 PM

 

Prosecutors admit sole witness changed story in capital case... Steven Thompson's identification of Emile Dixon as the shooter became the basis for a federal death penalty case brought at the behest of Attorney General John Ashcroft, despite the apparent misgivings of local prosecutors and his own advisers. Now, with Dixon headed for trial, the government has been forced to admit its sole eyewitness to the shooting initially offered a quite different story. [...] Police reports turned over to Dixon's lawyers show that Steven Thompson, who was wounded in the drive-by shooting on June 26, 2000, told detectives that night he had not seen the gunman. He said the same thing the next day in another hospital interview.

Our Lord High Minister of Injustice strikes again. So gung ho for gettin' rid of them needs killin' that he ignores his own staff when they tell him that the case won't support it. (In fact, assuming that the information in the newspaper is accurate, the case may not even support a conviction. If the only witness isn't reliable, the other evidence had better be incredibly strong.)

You do wonder about a director of a department who simply doesn't trust his people to do what they know how to do. What they have, in fact, generally been doing for quite some time. If he persists in that path, one suspects that there may be some dramatic turnover coming in the Department of Justice. How long will people tolerate being overruled in ways that turn weak but winnable cases into utterly hopeless cases? How long will they tolerate being treated as if they don't know what they're doing?

Posted by iain at 12:38 AM

 

Use of Dog to Search Children For Drugs Prompts ACLU Suit : The American Civil Liberties Union yesterday filed a lawsuit against school and police officials in a South Dakota town for using a drug-sniffing dog to search children as young as 6.

Well, well.

I knew we'd have a case of this sort. I frankly didn't expect it quite this soon after the Supreme Court's decision that suspicionless searches of high school kids engaged in extracurricular activities was a-ok. No moss growing on those folk in South Dakota, nosirree!

So, three or four years hence, if this case winds up in the Supreme Court, what will they do? After all, having six-year-olds searched by drug sniffing dogs can't possibly be what they meant by that decision, but it is certainly a logical extension. School officials can say with perfect truth that they relied on the previous decision for legal support, because there's really not a lot of difference between choosing to be in an extracurricular activity, and choosing to be in school. After all, their parents could have picked a private school, right?
Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas will say, as they have already said, that they have no problem with schools conducting suspicionless warrantless searches of everyone in the facility. Ginzburg and Stevens, if he's still there, will be transcendentally (if judicially and decorously) livid. And that leaves O'Connor, Kennedy, and Souter. Normally, I'd say that Souter would be in the camp with Ginzburg and Stevens, but he's been all over the map lately.

I predict you a prediction: in a 5-4 decision, the Court will deplore South Dakota's heavy handed tactics. However, they will say, because the school stands in loco parentis, it's quite all right for them to conduct warrantless and suspicionless searches of their students for any reason whatsoever. Students give up their Fourth Amendment rights when they enter the door. The fact that they are required to be there will, of course, be entirely irrelevant; theCourt will officially determine that they "choose" to be in school, and therefore choose to allow these intrusive searches. And that will be that.

"It definitely scared my youngest son, Tod [who is 11], and my reaction was, how dare you intimidate my children for no reason? Do you think we're all drug addicts?"

Well ... yes. Clearly, they do.

(What sort of nimrod uses drug sniffing dogs on kindergarteners, for heaven's sake? Even if the kid was the most dedicated drug user on the planet, what on earth do they thinkt he kid would do? Why on earth wouldn't blanket urine testing have gotten them what they wanted? (As well as a whole boatload of urine, of course, but still.)

Posted by iain at 07:40 PM

 

Online Access to Risky Sex: ... Sitting in his ornate living room in San Francisco's largely gay Castro district, travel agency owner Jonathan Klein expresses hope that chat rooms will bring about a rebirth of sexual exploration. "There hasn't been enough acknowledgment of the fact that the sexual freedom of the '70s was for a lot of people a really, really wonderful thing," said Klein, 50, who has lived in San Francisco for 28 years.
     Klein, who is HIV positive, said he uses the Internet to search for other HIV-positive men with whom he can have unprotected anal intercourse. Because of his HIV status, Klein said he is willing to accept the consequences of unprotected sex, including other sexually transmitted diseases besides HIV.Last year, he got syphilis--a "minor inconvenience," according to Klein. It was treatable with antibiotics, he said, and won't cause permanent health problems because he sought treatment early on.
     "It's certainly not a wake-up call," he said. "I don't intend to change." (LA Times, registration required)

Wonderful. Just wonderful.

Hey, if he's really lucky, he can get herpes and chlamydia, too. Herpes is also incurable, and chlamydia has a nasty tendency to cause open anal fissures in HIV-compromised individuals!

I'm not saying that sexual exploration is a bad thing. But surely it's possible to do that and use your brain at the same time.

I can't believe they pulled the "evolutionary biology" bugaboo into this article. Why people seek casual sex is surely irrelevant; knowing that they're doing it is sufficient for this article. And considering that a notable number of women also pursue casual sex, it's almost certainly misleading. (And just to let myself get sidetracked: I would imagine the benefit of anonymity is that, aside from the health consequences, there may be relatively few real-life consequences to activities that can still have some fairly nasty nonsexual social consequences if you get found out. Eliminate the social stigma attached to much sexual behavior in this country -- and in human society generally, really -- and you'll clear up one hell of a lot of this mess. End of digression.)

Another site, one that promotes unprotected sex, takes a provocative approach to the question of safety. "What about AIDS and HIV?" the site owners write. "What about it?? It will still exist if we have this site up or not. It's up to you (remember, you are an adult, aren't you) to decide how you want to run your life ... whom you infect, and what you even believe."

Hmm. Yes. Well, there is that, isn't there?

Granted that Mr Klein is an absolute and utter fool. The people who have sex with him are also absolute and utter fools. It doesn't matter if he lies to them; I have no reason to believe that he does. Having unprotected sex with someone you don't know, regardless of your status, makes you an absolute and utter fool, unconditionally. As Mr Klein has discovered, there's stuff out there besides HIV. There always was. There always will be. And almost all of it is quite a bit nastier in immunocompromised people; more virulent, harder to cure, when it's even curable.

And yet, these idiots don't care.

Remarkable.

But as they note, it's their choice. And after all, anyone can choose idiocy. It's the easy way to go, isn't it?

Posted by iain at 07:19 PM

 

Bankruptcy Bill Clears Impasse Over Abortion (LA Times, registration required.)

Well, I am impressed. The big financial services industry finally got the bankruptcy "reform" it was agitating for. It screws over the average consumer nicely, while rewarding banks and whatnot for profligately distributing credit cards to people when any nimrod could have said, "Hey, if you give credit cards to people who really aren't making that much money and have somewhat shaky credit histories, chances are you're not going to get your money back! ... No, really."

And then on top of that, our grand and glorious legislators make a sincere and desperate effort to single out abortion protesters so that they can't get away from judgements against them. Make no mistake; I think the protesters they talk about are particularly odious and vile, as protesters go. That said, it is surely a denial of equal protection to say, "Everyone else, if they pass the means test, can declare bankruptcy of one sort or another. Except you, over there, you nutcase protester. You're stuck paying off the judgement, no matter what." I would imagine that the first time the law is applied, it will be challenged in court, and that section of the "reform" will fall. (It would be lovely if the judges decided the whole thing was hopelessly flawed and struck it down in toto, but that's not terribly likely to happen. Alas.)

Posted by iain at 06:54 PM

 

Suit filed against UNC seeks to block required reading of Islamic book

You know, I thought the point of going to a university, at least at some level, was to learn about things you didn't already know. And that most universities had requirements you had to fulfill. But apparently, requiring people to learn about other cultures and religions is unconstitutional. I suppose one might find out that other people think about things in different ways if one read books and such about them, and that would be bad bad bad bad BAD. Clearly, it's better to just sail on in ignorance.

It turns out that CNN and AP (it's a wire release) are severely underreporting what precisely Family Policy Network's objection to the text is. To quote their lovely press release: The leader of a national pro-family organization and alumnus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) today criticized the school for requiring incoming freshmen to read passages from the Koran and attend a discussion on Islam. Terry Moffitt, Chairman of Family Policy Network, said UNC is violating the separation of church and state by forcing students to study Islam without offering an alternative course for those who find being forced to read the Koran offensive. ... "Forcing students to read and discuss the Koran is wrong, especially since there is no option for studying a different religion in its place. As a state university, UNC should never be allowed to demonstrate this kind of prejudice toward any particular religion." (The press release is at http://www.familypolicy.net/nc/unc-islam.shtml, if you care to look it up; I would just as soon not show up in their referrer logs, thank you kindly. However, I do recommend that people read their mission statement. It's vastly entertaining.)

So apparently, the University of North Carolina -- in the heart of the Baptist Bible Belt, mind you -- is being accused of proselytizing for Islam, and persecuting Christians by not requiring people to read "an equivalent text" on other religions.

Good grief. What utter and absolute YAHOOS.

In any event, I daresay that the Family Policy Network representatives will be dismissed from the lawsuit for lack of standing; no idea what will happen to the rest of it. Although it would be nice if the judge would say something like, "You go to university to learn, so LEARN SOMETHING, YOU IDIOTS." It's a federal lawsuit, and not a state one -- a tactical error, that -- so it's entirely possible that the judge could do just that. One can but hope.

(Interesting little side note: In looking up the group that CNN mistakenly calls the "Family Police Network", I discovered an interesting feature in Google. It used to just highlight typing errors by saying, "Did you mean correctly typed word?" Now, for about a tenth of a second, you get the page of your results with that line, and then it does the search for you ANYWAY. Um ... Sometimes I don't mean correctly typed word and in any event I'd just as soon do my own searches, thank you kindly.)

Posted by iain at 01:54 PM

 

U.S. Fails in Effort to Block Vote on U.N. Convention on Torture: ... Diplomats say, and American officials do not dispute, that the United States is sensitive about this issue because of potential demands for access to the detention camp at the United States naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where more than 500 detainees suspected of being Al Qaeda members and others seized in Afghanistan are being held, as well as to others held in the United States as "enemy combatants."

Why on earth would THAT be an issue? The administration has allowed the Red Cross to visit. They've certified that they saw nothing untoward going on. Unless things have changed drastically since then, there's no particular reason they should worry about visits to Guantanamo.

But an American official here said that the concern in Washington was that the plan, couched in what is called an "optional protocol," would be unconstitutional in the United States because it does not recognize states' rights. Adherence to the protocol would be voluntary. He predicted many other countries would also refuse to cooperate because of its intrusiveness.

... How, precisely, is a voluntary protocol going to be unconstitutional? If a state doesn't want to allow inspection (and none of them will), they simply refuse. (There is the broader question of how a voluntary protocol is at all useful, but that wasn't the administration's concern.) Something that allows you to refuse without penalty can't be unconstitutional as such.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said allowing outside observers into state prisons would infringe on states’ rights.
[...] The anti-torture proposal enjoys wide support among Western European and Latin American countries. But conservative Muslim states that shun outside intervention are likely to back the U.S. request in order to stave off a vote. Other opponents include Cuba, China and Nigeria, human rights activists said.

So basically, we're now on the side of Islamists and countries we consider intensely repressive or just don't like at all.

Well, all-righty, then!

Posted by iain at 12:48 PM

 

Bush Continues to Back Privatized Social Security

So is Shrubya on crack, or what? Because this dogheaded insistence on privatizing Social Security in the face of a market that's hurling itself off cliffs on a daily basis makes no political sense whatsoever. His conservative base can't possibly be agitating for this. The issue cost him votes with seniors when the markets were high, and could possibly get them to mobilize during normally lackluster midterm elections, just to try to make sure that the plan doesn't go through.

Of course, the issue now isn't that it would give a higher rate of return. The key word is "options"; people should have choice about investments. Curious how that word never really made it into his administration's rhetoric on that subject until now. To be sure, choosing the market very well might give a higher rate of return, but consider: if Shrubya and his minions had managed to invest part of the fund in the market, oh, say, a year ago, their investment would be worth some considerable amount less than they put into it.

What I also want to know is this: despite everyone on the planet (Democrats included) promising to put Social Security in a lock box, its current surplus is actually funding a great many programs, one way and another. (The government promises to pay it back. Hmm. Yes. Well, moving on ...) So let's say that maybe 20-25% of people contributing to Social Security decide to pull money and put it into the market, taking their chances. Doesn't that mean that Social Security's surplus will be less? How on earth will a government already in deficit spending manage to fund everything it wants? He's already presiding over the largest expansion of government in thirty years or so. How does he plan to pay for it all?

(Purely a side note and completely irrelevant to anything: One of the great ironies of our age is that the "tax and spend" Democrats have somehow become the party of fiscal responsibility, and every Republican government we've had for the past 20 years has managed to spend itself into a hole. How on earth did that work?)

Posted by iain at 12:23 AM

 

Civil Rights Commissioner Under Fire for Comments on Arabs: Leaders of some Arab-American and civil rights group called for the removal today of a conservative member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights after he made comments that the groups say suggested tolerance for interning Arab-Americans in the effort against terrorism. In response to testimony on reports of widespread civil rights violations against Arab-Americans, Peter N. Kirsanow, a recent appointee to the panel, said, "If there's another terrorist attack, and if it's from a certain ethnic community or certain ethnicities that the terrorists are from, you can forget civil rights in this country." Referring to a case from 1944, Korematsu v. United States, in which the Supreme Court upheld the right to intern Japanese-Americans in the interest of national security, Mr. Kirsanow ended his comments saying, "I think we will have a return to Korematsu, and I think the best way we can thwart that is to make sure that there is a balance between protecting civil rights, but also protecting safety at the same time."

Well ... I can understand why people were upset. That said .... I don't imagine that he's wrong, either. Kirsanow is not saying that he thinks that it's a good idea; he's saying that he thinks that if we continue to be hysterical about Arabs, it will happen. (His actual remarks on that specific aspect are rather measured, in fact. That said, if that was actually the coda to remarks saying that Arabs and Muslims in this country should simply accept the restrictions being placed on them without protest or comment .... the man is a political dunce.)

Frankly, given the fits we've been having lately, anyone who seriously doubts that we'd decide to intern Arabs and Arab Americans in this country is an utter and absolute fool. To be sure, deportation would be the preferred weapon of choice; expulsion is always less odious than imprisonment. But you cannot reasonably deport people who were born here; for one thing, if they're adults, there's nowhere to deport them to.

If there's a future terrorist attack in America "and they come from the same ethnic group that attacked the World Trade Center, you can forget about civil rights," commission member Peter Kirsanow said. The reason, he said, is that "the public would be less concerned about any perceived erosion of civil liberties than they are about protecting their own lives."

Does anyone seriously doubt this? Look around at the things the government has been doing. The Patriot Act. Demanding that the INS enforce 50-year-old previously unenforced and impractical laws. Detaining people without charges, deporting people without trial. After one (admittedly major) attack.

I am not as sanguine as Mr Kirsanow that "the government would never envision" internment camps. To be sure, I don't imagine that internment has been discussed at the White House; it's not quite their style at the moment.

At the moment.

If another attack takes place -- and it will -- I suspect the only reason internment camps wouldn't happen is that given current population, they would be somewhat impractical, and an administrative nightmare to boot. Besides, who would want it? Where would you put it?

Posted by iain at 02:37 PM

 

White calls Israeli strike 'heavy-handed'; Arafat: 'it was a massacre'

My, what a remarkable variety of responses to that attack. Ha'aretz was in such a hurry to get their article out that they pretty much lost all notion of grammar, including verbs and occasional nouns. (In case your response to the headline was, like mine, "Who the hell is White?", that's supposed to say "White House".)

The White House on Tuesday criticized Israel's missile attack on the Gaza Strip as "heavy handed" and said President George W. Bush believed it did not contribute to peace in the Middle East. "The president has said before Israel has to be mindful of the consequences of its actions to preserve the path to peace and the president believes this heavy handed action does not contribute to peace," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters.

(Has anyone noticed recently that reporting on the White House has tended to separate Shrubya from the institution, as if his actual opinion had nothing to do with what his minions were saying? But I digress already.)

I suppose some such reaction had to be expected when so many civilians were killed and injured. I don't imagine that anyone thinks it really means much, besides what it says. I would think that in the administration's heart of hearts, they think that killing Hamas' military leader is a good thing, overall. And in the near term, at least, no, I shouldn't imagine that it would contribute to peace.

It is quite remarkable that Israeli domestic criticism of Sharon, according to Ha'aretz (in a sentence quite lacking verbs in its subordinate clause) seems to be limited to the fact that he didn't tell the cabinet. A bizarreness of modern life, I suppose, when elected officials objection to an official assassination isn't that it was carried out -- and I really wouldn't expect that criticism, frankly -- but that they weren't told about it beforehand. Most officials don't normally want to know about assassinations beforehand.

Hamas vowed retaliation today. "There is nothing in our hands but to respond with whatever power we have," said Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahar, a political leader of Hamas, who went to Shifa Hospital to identify the dead. "Every Israeli is a target now. No one will stop us from defending ourselves." Speaking by telephone, Dr. Zahar said he had seen the body parts of several children.

"Every Israeli is a target now" ... and they weren't before? Hamas has blown up quite a remarkable number of children themselves, have they not? It's remarkably disingenuous to suddenly discover the horrors of killing children only when they're someone you know.

Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat said Tuesday that the assassination of Saleh Shehadeh, head of the Hamas military wing, has obstructed an agreement between the PA and other Palestinian parties, including Hamas, to cease terror attacks against Israel, reports Israel Radio. Arafat, in a meeting with MK Taleb a-Sanaa (Arab Democratic List), said that the agreement among Palestinian groups was imminent. (Jerusalem Post, entire article.)

And to summarize the reaction that world leaders are no doubt having but are for the most part too diplomatic to say out loud: Yeah. RIGHT.

It will be interesting to see if this attack, combined with a startling number of IDF attacks on other accused terrorists, manage to make Israel any safer in the long term. In the short term, almost certainly, there will be a sharp uptick of uncoordinated attacks against Israeli civilians. In the long term ... well. It's not as if these attacks were all that coordinated in the first place. Shehadeh's current value was likely in his ability to get his hands on all sorts of ordnance. Reportedly, he drafted Hamas' attack policies ... but what sort of policy is, "Go there and blow yourself up, there's a good man." Tricky to carry out in an environment of pervasive suspicion, yes, but not particularly complex. So it's difficult to say whether this assassination has bought Israel anything it wants. And given that the collateral damage was so extreme, it's certainly bought things that Israel probably didn't want ... but doesn't much care about now, either.

Posted by iain at 10:15 AM

 

Belt buckle prompts evacuation at Los Angeles airport terminal: A belt buckle that raised suspicion with security workers at Los Angeles International Airport caused the temporary evacuation of part of a terminal area Sunday, authorities said. The belt buckle had an image of an explosive device on it, said airport spokeswoman Gaby Pacheco. The item was discovered at about 4:30 p.m. by security workers monitoring a scanning machine on the departure level of the terminal, Pacheco said.

You have GOT to be kidding.

Let's see ... assuming that everyone who isn't white is a terrorist, yes. Assuming that little old ladies in wheelchairs, regardless of ethnicity, are terrorists, yes. Missing actual weapons as they go through security check, yes. And now, we save the world from the nonexploding beltbuckle with the explosive nonexploding engraving!

I look forward to the day that sanity returns to the country. Unfortunately, that day won't be any time soon.

Noncitizens Ordered to Update Addresses: The Justice Department said Monday that it would require all noncitizens to report changes of address within 10 days of moving or risk financial penalties, jail and even deportation. The plan, which relies on a long-neglected 50-year-old law, would apply to 10 million people older than 14 who are living in the United States legally but not as American citizens. More than 1 million are estimated to live in Los Angeles County alone. The new policy also covers illegal immigrants--said to number 8 million to 9 million nationally--but few are expected to step forward.

So ... report changes of addresses to whom, exactly? I mean, yes, OK, reported to INS ... but how? Where? With what form? Who gets this form? Who distributes this form? INS, which is being both understaffed and overworked and split into pieces by whatever the last reform bill was, now has to deal with what could very well be a deluge of paperwork. That, and they'll have to deal with panicked immigrants who are terrified that they'll be deported to some horrific places. And somehow, I can't quite shake the feeling that the form, whenever it comes to be, will have a little check box on it: "Terrorist? Yes/No". Because that's about the level that Justice's thinking is at these days.

It's not even that I object to the law, as such (although given its age, it's almost certainly a late hangover from the Japanese internment laws -- you'd think Justice might look at the provenance of these laws they're resurrecting). It's that Justice keeps making these various declarations without apparently thinking about how they'll be implemented or who will be implementing them. Let's get real, shall we? INS doesn't keep up with the paperwork on immigrants that's required NOW. A good chunk of the people in this country will be students, who move all the time anyway. How is INS to keep up with all this?

What will undoubtedly happen is that the law will now be enforced selectively. Your average student from Europe, let's say, will be completely ignored, given a small fine or slap on the hands for neglecting to complete the form. Arabs, Africans and people from Southeast Asia will simply be deported automatically, without regard to how innocent the mistake may have been. It's a way of being punitive without needing to exercise actual judgement, or possibly even thought.

Posted by iain at 11:56 PM

 

Draft of W.H.O. Treaty Would Ban Cigarette Ads: Negotiators have drawn up a draft of an international treaty that would phase in bans on cigarette advertising and sports sponsorships by tobacco companies as part of the World Health Organization's campaign to curb smoking worldwide. [...] Antismoking campaigners have charged that the Bush administration has worked to undermine some of the toughest proposals, particularly concerning the ban on cigarette advertising. The United States has opposed any across-the-board ban on grounds that it would violate American free speech guarantees. (NY Times, registration required)

My, my, my. The adminisrtation is actually explicitly raising the constitutional issues regarding an international treaty in public -- as they have not done with the international criminal court treaty.

That said, frankly, they're right to do so. Any sort of blanket ban on advertising of an otherwise legal, if pernicious, product would be blatantly unconstitutional. (Not that this has stopped this administration before. They pick and choose when they want to support the document. But I digress.)

It will be interesting to see what happens. I suspect that the administration will actually sign the treaty and let it go forward to the Senate -- where the Carolinas, Virginia, Georgia and all other states with a substantial amount of the tobacco trade will cook up deals to get the thing buried. There is absolutely no chance that this treaty will be ratified. After all, although the article only cites Japan as a cigarette exporter, we are as well. (And a plain tobacco exporter, for that matter.)

Posted by iain at 10:01 AM

 

Commerce Department to invite consumer groups to discuss digital rights management: Officials in the Technology Administration at the U.S. Department of Commerce are looking for consumer groups to join the debate over digital rights management they're refereeing, dominated until now by Big Hollywood and IT companies. Commerce officials are working to set up a meeting with interested consumer groups after a combative digital rights management workshop last week in which Free Software and fair use advocates didn't get much of a chance to counter comments by the Hollywood and IT panelists. Chris Israel, deputy assistant secretary for technology policy, says he hopes the consumer-only meeting will happen within a few weeks.

Well, this ought to be a hoot. Considering as the administration doesn't believe in consumer rights or the constitution or little things like that, I mean.

It's also not going to be terribly helpful if only the same consumer groups show up. The administration already assumes that they're hostile -- with admittedly very good reason -- and unless more moderate people show up to make the same type of points, it's not likely to get anyone very far.

Posted by iain at 09:44 AM

 

Saudi prince, Goya painting in drug deal: A Saudi prince used diplomatic immunity to smuggle more than 2 tons of cocaine from South America to Europe on his personal airplane in a trafficking conspiracy in which paintings by Goya and Foujita were used to pay for drugs, U.S. officials said Thursday.

What on earth IS it with that family? Has excessive wealth robbed them of all their brain power? (For the sake of relative balance, I suppose it's necessary to report that the Saudi royal family is denying that they've ever even heard of him. So ... how on earth did he get diplomatic immunity? Those claims have to be presented by the government in question itself, after all; countries don't just allow anyone to say, "I'm a diplomat; give me a diplomatic visa!"

The fun part is that he's currently in Saudi Arabia. Now, practically, that probably means that someone will hide him away until everything blows over. He's not likely to be allowed to leave the country for years, since doing so would subject him to probable arrest. However, should Saudi Arabia decide that perhaps their public reputation is taking a beating and maybe they should find the guy and do something with him, there are a few options. First, they could hand him over to the US, in which case if convicted he would go to jail for a really impressively long time. Life, most like.

Or else the Saudis could decide to handle it themselves. According to the information page at the US Department of State:

Penalties for the import, manufacture, possession, and consumption of alcohol or illegal drugs are severe. Convicted offenders can expect jail sentences, fines, public flogging, and/or deportation. The penalty for drug trafficking in Saudi Arabia is death. Saudi officials make no exceptions.

As we've seen with the Saudi princess who committed the heinous crime of marrying someone who was not approved by the royal family, they're not particularly chary of executing members of the royal family. For this particular crime, they're also not likely to make any type of exception, should they decide to pursue the charge. (That said, the drugs weren't trafficked in Saudi Arabia. They may feel that they have no legal standing to pursue the charge, which, frankly, would be entirely fair.)

Posted by iain at 02:29 PM

 

KPIG snuffs Web's 1st online radio simulcast

Well, hell. I'm going to miss KPIG.

And probably several other radio stations, as well.

Posted by iain at 02:16 PM

 

JPEG Patent Claim Sparks Concern

You know ... I'm pretty sure that, generally speaking, patent claims that have been ignored by the patent holder for 16 years are considered to have been abandoned.

I'd say that this is the sort of thing that's going to shove people harder to the SVG, PNG and other open formats, except for the wee fact that browsers still don't support them too well, and the file sizes are MASSIVE.

I must admit to being thoroughly astonished that Sony actually paid that patent claim. If nothing else, taking the case to court and appealing would have dragged it out long enough that the patent itself would have expired by the time the case was actually settled.

I expect it will wind up being handled more or less the way the GIF thing settled out. Endusers will not be pursued -- there's no practical way to do so, anyway -- but producers of software that write JPEG images will wind up paying Forgent a small fee per unit sold, which they will, of course, thoughtfully pass on to consumers.

Posted by iain at 12:03 PM

 

Magaw forced out as security chief

So basically, he was fired because his six-month old agency was inefficient, missed severely unrealistic deadlines (some of which involved major airport renovations, and most of the airports were severely and understandably reluctant to rush into major construction without detailed plans) and because the airlines didn't want the public to know that making many of the changes would not be particularly difficult or expensive because they wanted to rip off ... er, that is, pass charges on to the public purse.

My, being a public servant just isn't what it used to be, is it? Back in the olden days, when they asked you to fall on your sword, you'd usually done something to deserve it.

Posted by iain at 06:18 PM

 

Foes say tipsters a threat to rights: Operation TIPS - the Terrorism Information and Prevention System - would create a system for letter carriers, bus drivers, utility workers, truckers and others "to report suspicious terrorist activity," the Justice Department Web site said. [...] Late yesterday, the Postal Service said it wasn't signing on."The Postal Service had been approached by Homeland Security regarding Operation TIPS; however, it was decided that the Postal Service and its letter carriers would not be participating in the program at this time," an agency statement said.

It's entirely likely that a great many of the government's desired informant businesses and agendies will simply refuse to sign on, now that the Postal Service -- which is, after all, itself an arm of government, if somewhat privatized; you would think they could simply have been ordered to participate -- has declined. After all, what palpable benefits can there be? The program as constituted is too unwieldy to work well, it seems to (finally!) be drawing a considerable amount of public criticism, the evidence obtained in these searches would almost certainly be inadmissable at trial because it would be in part obtained without a search warrant or reasonable suspicion ... but those are just the legalistic arguments. From a pure business standpoint, once it's discovered that your carriers, the people who enter homes, are informants for TIPS, it's quite likely that both people who are ideologically opposed and people who may really have something to hide will simply stop doing business with you. For a great many of these services, there are alternatives, and if your competitors decline to participate, you've put yourself at a very public disadvantage. Quite apart from anything else, it's just one more thing for already very busy field personnel to keep track of. Take, for example, some cable installer, and their list of routines: Install the cable, test the setup to make sure it works, make sure all the connections are done right, make sure everything's grounded, make certain that you do the bill right and that the customer gets everything they're paying for, and oh yes! snoop! Now, all but one of those is absolutely essential to the job of a cable installer, so if there's time pressure and one of those doesn't get done, it's pretty obvious which one it will be.

I note that Congress is still maintaining a cowardly silence on the program. Shameful.

Posted by iain at 10:30 AM

 

'Double jeopardy' rule is dropped after 800 years: PEOPLE cleared of murder, rape and armed robbery will be able to be retried for the same crimes under plans to reform the justice system proposed by David Blunkett yesterday. The scrapping of the 800-year-old double jeopardy rule is part of the Home Secretary's blueprint to bring Britain's courts, prisons and police into the 21st century.

So they've seriously proposed it.

I do wonder why.

They must know that even with high profile government losses, the proposal to scrap the double-jeopardy principle stands little chance of getting through the Commons, and no chance of surviving the Lords. (Although it's never clear how much they have to do with anything anyway. They can block legislative reform, however; that's why Section 28 is still on the books in England.) And I will admit to being puzzled as to how scrapping that particular rule brings Britain any closer to the 21st century.

I get the impression that the other "reforms" might be considered terribly controversial, if it weren't for the double-jeopardy rule revision getting all the attention. It may be a sort of stalking horse for the other reforms, which are the ones genuinely desired. If they get this one, it's just the lagniappe.

Posted by iain at 12:35 AM

 

African aid workers tackle Scottish poverty: AFRICAN aid workers are being posted to Greenock and Port Glasgow to help deprived Scots overcome social problems. The unique project has been put together because of the appalling deprivation of an area that has become one of the worst in the country. It will "challenge stereotypes", according to the organisers, the Prince's Trust and Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), the Third World development agency

... Well, yes, I should think it would. I should also think that not a few Scots might find the concept utterly humiliating. Not the ones being helped, you understand -- by the time you get to the sort of grinding poverty that requires aid workers, you generally don't care who helps out. It will mostly be people further up the economic scale, who can afford to feel embarrassed by it all.

Posted by iain at 12:26 AM

 

Well ... the witch may not yet be dead, but her show is certainly on life support.

Posted by iain at 07:19 PM

 

The First Church of the Second Thursday

How ... wonderfully forward thinking of them! Getting things out of the way like that, I mean. Very expeditious!

Posted by iain at 11:50 AM

 

Bush will cut aid to U.N. family planning program, sources say: President Bush is poised to reject the advice of a fact-finding team and cut off millions of dollars to a U.N. family planning program that abortion opponents say supports forced abortions in China. An independent team that the Bush administration sent to China in May concluded that the allegations were untrue and recommended that Bush release $34 million to the U.N. Population Fund, said two officials who are familiar with the issue.

This makes so desperately little sense that it's baffling, unless you think about it in a certain way.

I mean, yes, there is more than a little bone being thrown to the conservative base, which is still all nice and grumbly about the Mychal Judge law he signed. (Which has nothing to do with reproduction; it's just that it benefits gays and unmarried signles, and thus isn't at all conservative.) Even so, it's still a bit puzzling ... until you realize that one of the key players is the domestic policy advisor. Then it makes a certain sort of sense.

The one thing a birth control program in China would not be doing is emphasizing the wonders of abstinence. It would probably be mentioned, yes, but for the most part it would be a program about real-world behaviors. However, all the similar programs in the US itself declare that sex outside marriage is bad bad bad bad BAD! BAD, I tell you! Just say no! The administration would be opening itself up to criticism of a type it doesn't want to even consider if it approved money for the program. Therefore, the funds must be withheld.

The problem for the administration is that they must have known early on that the money couldn't be released. Nonetheless, they sent a fact finding commission ... which, undoubtedly to Shrubya's shock and chagrin, found facts opposing his administration's previously stated and desired conclusions. Now he must ignore the results of the commission to get the results he wants. Had he not sent those people over to China, the administration could have made their allegations, withheld their money, and people would think they were ignorant yahoos, but the political issue wouldn't be so clear. Now, however, it's quite clear that Shrubya is willing to ignore women's health and to ignore the world as it actually is to support some part of his agenda, to get him back in good with the right-wing yobbos.

The puzzling thing is that this need not have happened. Not only should he not have sent the commission over, but in these days of $105-194 billion dollar budget deficits (depending on whose figures you believe and when you believe them), it would be perfectly reasonable to say, "The United States is pulling back on some of its optional commitments in order to move toward more fiscal responsibility. Therefore, we will be using these funds to cover some of our deficit." The funds, while allocated, are as yet unspent; it's perfectly plausible and possible. This administration has absolutely no political sense.

Posted by iain at 10:37 AM

 

Group Hopes Texas Sodomy Case Heard

And off we go to the Supreme Court!

Which will almost certainly refuse to hear the case.

Even if it did hear the case, I'm not sure that we'd want to see what they'd say. I mean, I'm quite sure they'd vote to uphold the Texas law; I don't believe this court has it in itself to overturn the law. I just think that Scalia would feel moved to write a concurring opinion -- if he wasn't drafted to write the main opinion -- and watching him justify a legal prohibition in a religious framework in a secular society in which he does not believe would be utterly nauseating.

Posted by iain at 06:35 PM

 

New Moussaoui Indictment Closes Execution Loophole

Hardy har har, even.

Just in case the federal death penalty law is ruled unconstitutional because the aggravating factors are found by a judge and not a jury, the government had the grand jury come back with the aggravating factor itself.

Technically, the Court didn't refer to the grand jury, it referred to the case jury. (The defense was actually wrong about that. Not that it necessarily matters now.) However, if the aggravating factors are included in the charge at hand, then I suppose the jury must consider them.

Couldn't be a clearer statement of government desires, could it? Making sure all the I's are crossed and T's dotted so that they can put Moussaoui to death when he's convicted. Mind, if he weren't defending himself and pissing off the judge, it wouldn't be at all a sure thing; the government's case sucks bilge water.

Posted by iain at 06:28 PM

 

US planning to recruit one in 24 Americans as citizen spies - smh.com.au

Dear god.

WHAT ARE THEY THINKING?

Who do they think this many people will inform on? How much suspicious activity can there possibly be in this country? Having a democratically elected government that doesn't trust democracy is bad enough, but they don't trust anyone in this country. There can be no justification for the scale of this program; in fact, there can be no justification for the program.

The administration even wants to pervert the Neighborhood Watch program.

We might as well just stick all the Arab Americans and Arabs in this country into internment camps now. It would save time, and would keep us from watching our country shred itself slowly. We might as well destroy all our principles in one shot and get it done and over with.

And where is Congress in all this? How is it that more than 300 people, all of whom have seemed perfectly capable of speaking out when we'd just as soon they shut the hell up, now they go silent? Why hasn't Congress made even a token protest? (Quite apart from anything else, if one in every 24 Americans are to become the US version of the Stasi, there will be nearly 20 of them in Congress itself. Or there should be; I doubt that even Shrubya and his paranoid administration would dare. Pity; it might be something that would get Congress moving.)

You know the fun part? Let's just say that, for the sake of argument, they do get one out of every 24 people to agree to form our version of the secret police informants. There you are with FIFTEEN MILLION informants, all busily telling you about the suspicious pecadillos of their "friends" and neighbors. Where is the database that can hold this much information? How do they expect our currently understaffed intelligence services to filter it? 99.9995% of what they get will be harmless dreck. Maybe .0003% will be people committing illegal acts that are nonetheless entirely unrelated to terrorism, and which need to be funneled to local police. (Assuming that local police could use the information; the constitutional issues would be simply legion .... Oh, I forgot. Constitution doesn't exist any more. Never mind.) That leave maybe .0002% of all this junk that MAY have something to do with terrorism. And they have to find it in the midst of all that noise.

The intelligence services will not thank Shrubya and his minions for thinking this one up. Basically, they're being set up to fail. AGAIN.

via The Usual Suspects

Posted by iain at 12:14 AM

 

White House backs corporate fraud enforcer: The Bush administration expressed confidence Saturday in the president's choice to lead a corporate fraud crackdown despite reports that he served on the board of a company that paid $400 million to settle fraud allegations.

Are they doing this on PURPOSE? I mean, either the administration is throwing their disdain for normal investigations in the country's collective face, or they're just dumber 'n dirt about appearances. I honestly can't tell which -- you'd think that the son of Bush I would have slightly better sense about this type of thing. (You'd especially think that the son of Barbara Bush would have better sense.)

Posted by iain at 05:15 PM

 

State Detains Reporter Over Leaked Saudi Cable

The administration's dislike of the press and frustration over leaks has now reached the point that they're detaining people to ask for information to which they know they have no legal right. After all, reporting leaked information isn't illegal. Leaking information is not, per se, illegal. (Although in this case, leaking was illegal, as the memo was classified.)

Nonetheless, you wonder what on earth the State department could possibly have been thinking. Clearly, he wasn't going to tell, and clearly, they knew they weren't entitled to ask. They've made public fools of themselves. (Not that this is anything unusual.)

I can hardly wait until they try to exercise prior restraint on publication -- and make no mistake, they will. This administration's hostility to the press seems to know no bounds, and they will undoubtedly justify that type of prior restraint as necessary under conditions of war. (Which hasn't formally been declared -- and NO, authorizing the president to use force is NOT a formal declaration of war in the legal sense required by the Constitution -- but let's leave that.)

The fun part is that it was a reporter from the National Review. One of the publications that can be counted on to defend the administration's positions almost reflexively, and they piss off NR.

National Review is not amused.

To focus on actual substance for a moment: I don't understand why the State Department doesn't simply do away with the Visa Express program. To be sure, it allows a certain plausible deniability when people say that they haven't seen certain terrorists or whatnot ... but somehow I don't believe that's a useful plausible deniability. It does seem that personnel need not only better interview training, but security interview training. Given that most of the terrorists came from Saudi Arabia, it is utterly unconscionable that a program of that laxitude is allowed to continue.

You know, I have no idea how much control Colin Powell exercises over his underlings -- I don't even know how far down the pecking order Boucher is, and I don't really care. Mr Boucher is clearly a man that needs a good ass-kickin' (supervisorially speaking), and I hope that Mr Powell and Boucher's superiors deliver it with style and aplomb. And possibly yelling.

Posted by iain at 05:05 PM

 

Chicago Tribune | Lindh pleads guilty to aiding Taliban

Probably just as well. I can't imagine anywhere in the country he'd have gotten anything even pretending to be a fair trial.

I wouldn't be the slightest bit surprised if he "accidentally" died in prison, either.

Posted by iain at 10:36 AM

 

Defense Seeking Greater Latitude: Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is pushing a series of sweeping proposals that would weaken congressional oversight of the Pentagon and give the military more freedom to manage itself than ever before. [...] Some proposals are more provocative. They include allowing the Pentagon to send its initiatives directly to Capitol Hill before other agencies could review them. Once there, the legislation would require Congress to vote quickly, with only limited debate. That "defense streamlining initiative" was quickly shelved after objections from officials within the administration itself, who decried the seeming chutzpah of a Pentagon trying to avoid the normal reviews. Drafted by the Office of Management and Budget at Rumsfeld's request, senior administration officials say it is far from abandoned.
     Indeed, administration officials say it is part of a grander plan that is very much in play--to relieve the Pentagon, and later other executive branch agencies, from oversight that Rumsfeld calls burdensome and inefficient, but which critics say is a necessary inconvenience of democracy.
     The proposals, said a senior Defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity, are "the tip of the iceberg."

You know ... I can sympathize with wanting to be freed of some burdensome paperwork. I mean, who doesn't want that? 340 annual reports is somewhat absurd, although understandable given the size and scope of the Department of Defense. And despite the "ask the Taliban if we're mismanaging our money" line, it's been clear for decades that the Pentagon does mismanage its money; early last year there were reports that it couldn't account for something like a third of the funds allocated to it. Simply didn't know where the money was or what they'd spent it on. Rationalizing the accounting alone should cut down on that figure.

"How do we engage this discussion without sounding like the Pentagon whining to the Hill about, 'Leave us alone, we just want to do our own thing?' " Well, you can't, now can you? Especially when that's precisely what you want.

BUT.

It's impossible not to see this as yet another attack on the system by an administration that, at its core, does not believe in democracy and open systems. They don't want to be held accountable, they don't want to inform people, and they have subverted the justice system, doing their level best to transform it into something that would seem appallingly familiar to Argentina in the 1970s and 1980s.

(There's actually an adult representative in Congress who says, "Gee whiz." Goodness.)

It will be fascinating to see how Congress handles this. In all other parts of the "war on terror" they have demonstrated utter and craven cowardice in dealing with the administration. The sole area where they've shown anything resembling a backbone comes in the area of Congressional perquisites, and this comes perilously close to that. (If nothing else, it will be fascinating watching the largest employer in the country trying to gain an exemption from employment laws, trying to break its own union. Appalling, but fascinating.)

Posted by iain at 10:29 AM

 

Auditing Woes at WorldCom Were Noted Two Years Ago: Two years ago, senior finance executives at WorldCom notified the company's auditors, Arthur Andersen, of improper shifts of expenses that were appearing in the international department, but the transactions remained on the company's books until as recently as last month, according to internal company records. [...] The documents are also the first evidence that Andersen accountants had reason to question the company's chief financial officer, Scott D. Sullivan, about his treatment of so-called line costs - fees paid to other communications companies for use of their networks - at WorldCom. Andersen has maintained that WorldCom management essentially lied to its auditors.

But apparently, Andersen was lying to everyone else when it said that Worldcom was lying to them.

You know, I can still feel sorry for all thepeople who worked for Andersen who had nothing to do with the company's alleged malfeasance in this case or Enron or ... well, any of what seem to be quite a few other cases. After all, in most cases, it's just a few people -- I doubt that in all of Andersen's misdeeds, more than 100 of its 28,000 employes were involved in total. Nonetheless, the corporate culture of Andersen is clearly corrupt, and I can't feel sorry that the company in the US is effectively gone, whatever its storied history.

Posted by iain at 10:12 AM

 

Gibraltar in uproar at UK "sell-out"

It does seem that "sell out" is really the only way to describe this process. Plainly, the wishes of the people of Gibraltar didn't matter at all. Then again, after seeing what happened with Hong Kong, they really should have expected that. On the other hand, Spain is not only at least a nominal ally, but they were hardly likely to make the threat that China did, to take their land back if they had to shell it down to the bare rock.

Unfortunately, Gibraltar's threat to withdraw from the process is, one hopes, fairly empty. If they withdraw, they lose any voice in what happens to them. Spain is so upset at the concept of "joint sovereignty" that if Gibraltar isn't at the table to make a fuss, Britain is quite likely to give them away completely. After all, Britain can't afford the remnants of empire it has; it no longer has a blue-water navy in any real sense of the term, and the far flung outposts of Gibraltar and the Falklands and elsewhere are pretty much indefensible without one.

That said, one suspects that if the decision to release Gibraltar were put to the people of Britain proper, they probably wouldn't vote for it either.

Posted by iain at 12:56 AM

 

From Canada, a decision that's actually less than it appears:

Ontario must recognize gay marriages, court rules: ... Prohibiting gay couples from marrying is unconstitutional and violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the three-judge panel [of the Ontario Superior Court] ruled in a unanimous decision. Justice Robert Blair wrote in the decision that marriage "must be open to same-sex couples who live in long-term, committed, relationships - marriage-like in everything but name - just as it is to heterosexual couples." [...] Ontario Superior Court Justice Heather Smith suspended Friday's ruling in favour of gay marriages for two years, giving Parliament time to redefine the term "marriage."
     "If no steps are taken by the (federal) government, at the expiration of the two-year period, the (Ontario) common law will be rewritten and gays and lesbians will have the right to marry," said Martha McCarthy, a lawyer for eight same-sex couples seeking marriage licences from the City of Toronto.

In other words, Ontario has two years to enact their version of those lovely little Defense of Marriage Acts that we've got down here. Until they fail to do so, nothing changes. And while I freely acknowledge that Canadians can be very very different ... somehow, I'm not at all sanguine that they're THAT different on this particular issue.

And from Idaho, a decision that's exactly what it seems:

Idaho Man Ordered to Choose Between Kids or Partner: (Idaho Falls, Idaho) An Idaho man is appealing a county magistrate's ruling that he either stop living with his partner or lose visitation rights with his children. [...] Riddoch told Theron McGriff as long as he lived in the same house with has partner, he would not allow visitation by McGriff's two school-age children. The magistrate awarded custody of the children to McGriff;s ex-wife, Shawn McGriff. The ruling stated: McGriff could receive visitation rights “providing Father is not residing in the same house with his male partner.”

Because, of course, the fact that Idaho's sodomy law outlaws the same acts whether done by a heterosexual or a homosexual is entirely irrelevant. Somehow, I seriously doubt that anyone turned to the ex-wife and said, "So, Mrs McGriff, you sucked one lately? Hey, that's illegal! You're an unworthy parent! You don't get the kids either!" I seriously doubt that the Idaho Supreme Court will hear this case, or that Mr McGriff can come out of it at all well if they do. Then again, you never know. It's entirely possible that Idaho could surprise ... Nah.

Posted by iain at 10:40 PM

 

Jerry Springer sued by son of killed former guest

You know ... this feels distinctly like someone jumping on the bandwagon. Granted, a near ten year old bandwagon, but that's what it is, nonetheless. There's nothing the least bit worthwhile about the Springer show, but still, this suit seems close to baseless.

Posted by iain at 06:59 PM

 

And just when you thought that Arthur Andersen LLP had decended to the bottom of the slimepits, and that they could descend no more, you discover that yes, indeed, they CAN get more disgusting ... as long as it's outside the US.

Let's take this in sequence, shall we? Let's shall.

St. Thomas More's future is still in doubt: ... A Supreme Court of Canada decision shed light on the future of the private, co-ed school. But, instead of clarifying, the light revealed a legal tangle surrounding St. Thomas More. [...] CBIC was incorporated in 1962 to hold the assets of the Congregation of Christian Brothers, a Catholic lay congregation - not priests. Among its other interests is Vancouver College, which it also defines as a charitable trust set up around 1920, and the Mount Cashel Orphanage the congregation used to operate in Newfoundland. Some Christian Brothers were found guilty of abusing children in their care at the orphanage, and the victims later filed civil claims against the congregation. [...] "They decided to sell the company (CBIC) as a means of generating funds to compensate the victims," explained John Nixon, Vancouver College's board chair and spokesperson who is well-versed in the history of the case. In the meantime, the Ontario courts - CBIC is based in Ontario - appointed Arthur Andersen as liquidator to dispose of company assets. [...] Arthur Andersen decided to sell the schools - the current listing is $12 million for St. Thomas More and $30 million for Vancouver College - in order to generate funds to help compensate the victims. [...] Canadian Attorneys General are responsible for protecting charitable trusts, so the province filed a petition in BC Supreme Court last March trying to block the sale. Nixon said if they're successful they'll dismiss Arthur Andersen "on the grounds that the trustee is trying to break the trust" by selling the schools.

In short, CBIC had assets -- schools, principally -- all over Canada, and Andersen, back when it was in good odure, was retained to sell certain of those assets. The problem administratively now seems to be that the trust owns the schools, but the trustees (Andersen) have the right to sell them without the trust's consent. Or something like that. Oddly, the case is still ongoing. I'm not entirely sure why; you'd think that Ontario or British Columbia could have had Andersen dismissed as trustees simply because they were under criminal investigation in the US, but such did not happen. It's especially puzzling since Andersen will effectively be out of business in the US on July 31; this must be part of the whole limited partnership mess, so that Andersen Canada is an entirely different entity than any of Andersen US.

In the meantime, Andersen Canada has not been letting the grass grow under its feet, oh no no no!

Christian Brothers liquidator spends $7 million: All of the estimated $7 million raised through the liquidation of assets in Newfoundland and Ontario of the Christian Brothers of Ireland in Canada since 1996 has been spent on legal fees and related expenses without a single penny going to victims of abuse at the former Mount Cashel Orphanage, charges a St. John’s lawyer. Most of the money was consumed in an ongoing legal battle to force the liquidation of two of British Columbia’s most prestigious private schools, said Bob Buckingham, who represents 10 of the Mount Cashel claimants.

The problem is that Andersen Canada didn't count on St Thomas More and Vancouver College fighting back at all, let alone with any degree of success. Now, properly speaking, most of the money should have gone to the victims of the abuse. Add to that the fact that the province of Newfoundland wants to be repaid what it spent to settle some of the cases, and there'd be no money left from the current pool to pay Andersen Canada's fees! Oh, no! Whatever shall they do! What seems to be going on is that Andersen is making sure that it gets paid first, and in this case, they're the only ones getting any money at all.

To be sure, Vancouver College and St Thomas More seem to be the most valuable properties in the CBIC. And no, it would not be fair to expect Andersen Canada to do all that work without getting paid.

That said, assuming that Andersen Canada wins the legal battle against the colleges, one just wonders how much of the proceeds will actually make it to the victims.

Posted by iain at 06:51 PM

 

U.S. Deports Most of Those Arrested in Sweeps After 9/11: As legal challenges to its policy of secret detentions advance slowly through the courts, the government has managed to deport most of the Sept. 11 detainees at the center of the lawsuits. [...] Other expulsions of the Sept. 11 detainees have been so abrupt that family members did not know for days after the fact. In the case of Ali Yaghi, a Jordanian detainee who had applied for residency, his American wife and three children in Albany were never told that he was deported to Jordan on June 24, after spending nearly nine months in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn on an immigration charge. Mr. Yaghi has not been heard from since, raising fears in his family that Jordan's security services may have been so suspicious about his long detention that they arrested him upon arrival.

Wonderful.

So now administration policy is to deport people before their cases can be heard, so that when they are challenged as to either the content of the charges or the secrecy of the trial, the case can be dismissed as moot.

Which means that if they keep this up (and they will) we will never get a case on the merits of the policy and the law, because the people with standing to challenge won't be around to sustain the challenge.

Our government can be utterly loathesome some days.

Posted by iain at 11:59 AM

 

Reno dance party adds twist to Florida race: Inspired by a television skit that spoofed Janet Reno as the gawky host of a basement dance club, the former U.S. attorney general is throwing a real-life "Janet Reno Dance Party" at a Miami Beach nightclub to raise money for her gubernatorial campaign. Reno will court young voters during the July 19 fund-raiser at the Level nightclub on glitzy South Beach, campaign spokeswoman Nicole Harburger said Tuesday.

Well, that's certainly a unique approach.

Wait ... she thinks young people watch SNL? She thinks anyone watches SNL?

... Oh, dear.

Posted by iain at 11:29 AM

 

Suit accuses Cheney, firm of fraudulent accounting: A watchdog group filed suit Wednesday against Vice President Dick Cheney and the oil industry company he once headed, accusing them of fraudulent accounting. [...] The suit claims accounting practices resulted in the overvaluation of the company's shares, which resulted in investors being deceived. Judicial Watch is also suing troubled accounting firm Arthur Andersen LLP, which was Halliburton's auditing firm at the time. Andersen was found guilty of obstruction of justice for its role in shredding documents related to Enron.

OK, everybody pile on Andersen! (Not that they don't deserve it.)

Frankly, I've wondered why there weren't more lawsuits related to Haliburton; there certainly seems to have been enough evidence of something. (I do love the concept that we can go to Cheney and say, "So, Iraq? Your fault. No, really.")

The fun part, in a sort of sickening way, will be watching the delaying tactics. Cheney will almost certainly assert that as a sitting vice president, he should not have to deal with the lawsuit at the current time. Of course, he can't simply make that assertion alone; we have that ever so unfortunate precedent of Clinton vs Jones which states that even presidents aren't immune to the constitutional requirement for a speedy trial. So what he will instead state is that in a time of national emergency, he shouldn't need to be distracted by such a triviality. After all, Shrubya could need another operation on his colon, and Cheney would need to be president for another hour or two! What would he do then? Facetiousness aside, there is a certain merit to that argument ... but then, there was slightly more merit to Clinton's argument that delaying Paula Jones day in court would do no harm to her case. Nonetheless, if the lower courts follow precedent, as they should, they will refuse Cheney's bids to delay the suit.

And that will land the thing in the Supreme Court. What WILL they do?

In the meantime, Shrubya asks us to believe that he's serious about reforming the business situation in this country, trying to restore order and faith in the system.

Yeah. Right.

Bush Took Oil Firm's Loans as Director: As a Texas businessman, President Bush took two low-interest loans from an oil company where he was a member of the board of directors, engaging in a practice he condemned this week in his plan to stem corporate abuse and accounting fraud. [...] Bush attacked corporate loans during his speech on Wall Street on Tuesday, when he offered proposals to tighten the accountability of corporate executives while stopping short of the tougher measures headed toward passage in the Senate. "I challenge compensation committees to put an end to all company loans to corporate officers," he said. A senior administration official, briefing reporters on Bush's plan, said Tuesday that Bush wants public companies to ban loans to their officers, including directors. "Corporate officers should not be able to treat a public company like their own personal bank," the official said. The contrast between Bush's record as a business executive and his rhetoric in the face of corporate scandals underscores the challenge his administration faces in trying to credibly foster what he calls "a new era of integrity in corporate America."

Why, yes. Yes, his record does present our little Shrub with something of a credibility problem, now doesn't it? You'll pardon me if I treat his rhetoric with the scorn it quite evidently deserves.

About the only good thing that can be said of all this is that should the House and Senate pass something closer to the Senate version of business reform than the plan Bush has called for, he may find it awkward, to put it mildly, to veto the thing.

Then again, introspection and worrying about appearances aren't exactly his strong points, are they?

Posted by iain at 11:20 AM

 

My, what a terribly interesting place Florida seems to be these days.

High court upholds Florida execution stay: The U.S. Supreme Court refused Wednesday to allow executions to resume in Florida, upholding a stay issued by the state's high court. [...] Attorney General Bob Butterworth argued to the U.S. Supreme Court that the state's high court had no authority to question the constitutionality of the state's death penalty law.

Excuse me? The state's highest court, which has as one of its specific duties to determine whether or not a given law is within the limits set by both the Florida state constitution and the US constitution does not have the authority to determine whether or not that particular law is constitutional. And the state's highest constitutional officer is making this claim.

Yes. Well. Quite.

Bush praises newest justice: Taking a swipe at a judiciary he often deems too liberal, Gov. Jeb Bush on Wednesday hailed his appointment of Miami attorney Raoul G. Cantero III to the Florida Supreme Court as the first step toward building a bench that would be less likely to overrule the governor and Legislature. [...] On Sept. 1, Cantero, the grandson of former Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, will replace retiring Justice Major Harding of Jacksonville, who authored an April 2000 opinion that overturned Bush's plan for speeding up the state's death penalty process. [...] ''The increasing power of courts . . . should not come at the expense of institutions that have a more legitimate claim to govern our lives,'' Bush said. "As the courts grow ever more powerful, there is an even greater need for judges who are humble about the judicial role. Humble in the sense that they know courts are not mini-legislatures or governors.''

I see. So he wants a court that will sit idly by when the legislature and governor write laws that are unconstitutional and unenforceable.

Yes. Quite.

One can but hope that Jeb Bush gets exactly the Florida Supreme Court that he deserves.

Posted by iain at 10:36 AM

 

Wonderful. Just when it seems that perhaps we've cooled down a little on the whole "flying while Arab" profiling thing, we get lovely things like this:

No suspicious data found on ECC computer hard drives: No suspicious or terrorism-linked information was discovered on the Edison Community College computer hard drives seized by Collier County sheriff's deputies earlier this week. [...] The hard drives were taken from the ECC campus library in East Naples on Wednesday night after someone called authorities about three men who appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent whispering together and using the Internet. Officials said they were accessing Islamic newspapers and other Islamic sites. [...] Officials say investigating any suspicious behavior is routine when called in by a concerned member of the public.

The problem, as I hope the librarians tried to make clear to the Collier County sheriff's department, is that such behavior is neither illegal nor even reasonably suspicious in nearly any college in the country. You can find students doing that sort of thing all the time. It's fairly clear that it was only considered suspicious because they were apparently Arab.

I hope they weren't able to locate the men doing this -- it doesn't appear that they were, but the article is understandably terse. It's quite probable that the FBI would have been called in, and once there, would have felt the need to detain them at length, just to justify appearances. That is, after all, what seems to be the primary motivation behind most of the continuing detentions these days.

Posted by iain at 10:41 AM

 

And another one bites the dust.

On Friday, the Arkansas Supreme Court struck down the state's exclusively homosexual sodomy law, leaving Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas as the only states in the country that continue to single out gay sex for criminal penalties.

Note that according to Data Lounge, PlanetOut's shortlist of states with criminal penalties for gay sex may be wrong: Data Lounge lists "Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah." Since I know for a fact that the Louisiana law still stands, I suspect Datalounge has a better grip on things.

I also have no idea why PlanetOut thinks that the Arkansas case will have anything to do with the Texas case. First, Texas thinks Arkansas is full of hicks. Second, absent federal constitutional issues -- and in the notorious Bowers v. Hardwick case, the Supreme Court ruled that states could criminalize consensual sexual conduct between adults without offending the federal constitution because it was within our Judaeo-Christian heritage (which might give one some hint of how they'd rule should the "under God" pledge thing ever make it that far, which it won't) -- the Supreme Court in fact has no reason to hear the Texas case, and is likely to refuse certiorari altogether. I suppose it's possible that if Lambda Legal challenges the law under "cruel and unusual punishment", the court might look at it in the same way as they did the execution of the mentally retarded ... but under that rule, Bowers v. Hardwick should never have happened in the first place; even then, most states had rescinded their sodomy laws.

Posted by iain at 02:08 PM

 

A better title for this article would be "Denial is NOT a river in Egypt."

Many Gay Men in U.S. Unaware They Have H.I.V., Study Finds: The vast majority of young gay and bisexual men in the United States who were found to have the AIDS virus in a new study were unaware of their infection, according to findings reported as the 14th International AIDS Conference opened here today. The rates of unawareness among minority gay men ages 15 to 29 in the study were staggeringly high. Among those found to have H.I.V., the AIDS virus, 90 percent of blacks, 70 percent of Hispanics and 60 percent of whites said they did not know they were infected.

OK. The numbers are appalling, I will agree.

Nonetheless, the newsworthy part of this is ... what, exactly? Is there something in there besides the numbers themselves we really didn't know?

The abstract for the research itself underscores the maddeningly incomplete nature of this report. The one thing that does come through in the research that is ... delicately understated in the article is that the men tested in the study are absolute and utter idiots:

Of [young men who have sex with men (MSM)] with unrecognized HIV infection, 257 (59%) perceived themselves at low or very low risk for being infected (P1:66% vs. P2:54%; p=.01); and in the six months before their interview, 214 (49%) had 3 or more male sex partners (P1:48% vs. P2:49%; p=.74) and 224 (51%) had unprotected anal intercourse (UAI) (P1:54% vs. P2:49%; p=.28). Of those who had UAI, 107 (48%) did not use condoms because they perceived themselves or their partners to be HIV negative or at low risk for infection (P1:46% vs. P2:49%; p=.69).

OK, granted, again, the information is incomplete. Were these men idiots, naively trusting (well, obviously), or merely lied to by people they should not have trusted in the first place? There's no way to tell from the abstract, and there's no more information on the study available at the site. The problem, in fact, is that you really can't tell whether one of two things is going on: are the people simply in denial about their risk factors, and therefore refusing to be tested? This is the most likely scenario. However, it is also possible that a number of them had tests done, engaged in unsafe sex, and then seroconverted during the interim. After all, recommendations are only for testing once every six months, and that is a very new update from a recommendation for annual testing. (To be sure, this is unlikely to account for very many of them, but surely it accounts for at least a few of them. However, you can't tell from the way the research is reported in the abstract, and the abstract itself makes me suspect that they may not have asked that question. Again, it's hard to tell.)

It's also entirely unclear how much overlap there is in the different risk categories. For example, the numbers allow -- just -- that the people who had three or more sexual partners are not the same as the people who engaged in unprotected anal intercourse. This is extraordinarily unlikely, I would think, but without further detail, it is just barely possible.

The CDC researchers in fact have a singularly depressing body of work regarding ethnicity in the US and AIDS available at the AIDS 2002 conference site; to wit:

• High HIV prevalence and incidence among young African American men who have sex with men in 6 US cities: what factors are contributing? - note that this abstract contains a rather appalling answer to some of the questions noted below.
• Low HIV prevalence but high sexual risk among young Asian-American men who have sex with men: HIV prevention opportunities
• Travel in Asia among Asian-American men who have sex with men: HIV-related risk behaviors and prevention opportunities
• Unrecognized HIV infection and barriers to testing among young Asian American men who have sex with men

In the NY Times article linked above,

"It is alarming that in the third decade of the epidemic we don't know why so few black gay men know their status," said Phill Wilson, executive director of the African-American AIDS Policy and Training Institute in Los Angeles. Mr. Wilson said more research was needed to send "the best prevention messages to ensure that these men know their risk and understand how to prevent infection."

To be sure, the statement is at least somewhat disingenuous. African American men don't know their status because they don't get tested. That is blindingly obvious. The questions that should be asked are: (1) Why are they engaging in unsafe sex when they know better? (2) What are the circumstances in which they're contracting the virus? (3) How can we get them to change their behaviors? (Technically, there is a fourth question -- why don't they get tested? -- but the answer to that is also blindingly obvious. First, many don't think of themselves as gay -- see below -- so they don't think they need to be tested. After all, only gays and drug users and Africans and Haitians get AIDS, right? Second ... they don't want to know. If they don't know, then it isn't true, right? What you don't know can't perturb your mind.)

There is no reasonable complete answer to the first question. Part of the issue is that since homosexual conduct is held in such contempt among black communities -- many of whom persist in thinking of homosexuality itself as a "white man's disease" -- that people conduct their relations in desperate secrecy, a secrecy that does not lend itself to open discussions of having safer sex. Part of the issue is that so many of those who engage in sexual conduct with men are also involved with women; the whole "down low" thing. (About which I have commented one time or maybe twice before.) You would think that would make them more likely to engage in safer sex -- you don't have to explain to your woman why she caught some STD when she's only been sleeping with you if you don't bring one home, after all -- but against all sanity, it hasn't. I suppose it detracts from the excitement of the moment, the illicit thrill, if you actually plan. Moreover, it would require you to actually plan, and that would require them to confront what they're doing, which they're not ready to do.

The circumstances in which they are contracting the disease ... Now that is the sort of thing that leads to black, black laughter, of the kind that makes people wonder if you have quite lost your mind. A great many of these African American men are contracting the disease from each other through the previously mentioned illicit and unsafe sex. However, those men have to pull it in from somewhere, don't they? Wherever could it be coming from? Those CDC researchers have a charming little theory, which they are not quite stating directly:

[African American men who have sex with men (AAMSM)] were no more likely to report ever being forced to have sex (p>.05), but more likely to report bisexuality (p<.0001), or ever having STDs (p<.001) or being in jail (p<.0001). [...] AAMSM also report lower prevalence of factors associated with HIV risk (drug use and forced sex) other than STD or jail.

So.

In our wisdom, we propounded as a society a "get tough on crime" policy that resulted in unprecedented numbers of African American men (as well as Hispanic men) being sent to jail.

Where they had unprotected sex with each other -- the prison systems in their wisdom (with one or two notable exceptions) deciding that giving prisoners condoms was encouraging illicit sex, which the prisoners would have anyway. (Please note: the bit about "forced sex" can be utterly disregarded. Research indicates that men do NOT report being raped, even anonymously, unless the physical damage is so severe that they need medical help. It is entirely likely that many of those who had sex in prison were forced, either by rape or by being given a "submit to me or take on the whole gang" choice. Really, these researchers are themselves so naive sometimes you just want to shake them.)

Having had sex with infected men in prison -- and prisons typically only test for HIV on intake or when someone starts showing symptoms of AIDS; short sentence prisoners who have sex with infected men in prison may never show symptoms while they're there -- these men then come out and bring the disease back with them into the community.

Isn't that just ever so special?

It's not as if this type of consequence wasn't foreseen. It's not as if we didn't know. Society just didn't care.

So let us not express such surprise that African American men are infected at such an appallingly higher rate.

What can be done about it? ... Honestly, I'm not sure. To be frank, it requires behavioral change and community change and perhaps societal change at large. I suspect the community and behavioral change will come about only when the death rates due to AIDS start approaching sub-Saharan Africa rates. And make no mistake; without immediate behavioral and community attitude changes, we will die at those rates. Many of the things that produce that sort of death rate in Africa -- poverty, lack of education, lack of medical support infrastructure, etc -- also apply to black communities in this country, if not to those horribly grinding extremes. What is likely to happen once death and infection rates start wheeling that desperately out of control are two things: (1) black communities will decide that the government has no intention of helping and that they have to make changes themselves. Unfortunately, some of the changes are likely to be rather grim, involving ostracism and a little bit of murder here and there before things get under control. (2) The government -- no no, not THIS government, for heaven's sake, a later one with, like, brains and heart and compassion, the sort of things that this administration has no use for -- the government will somehow be forced to take a hard look at the statistics, and will find itself deeply and powerfully embarrassed, and decide that perhaps it should do something.

An unusually cynical viewpoint? ... perhaps. But it's not as if all of this hasn't been known for a little while now. Granted, in the past year, we've all been a bit distracted. Still ... does anyone out there really think that THIS administration has plans to do something about the problem?

Posted by iain at 12:05 AM

 

Still on Death Row, Despite Mounting Doubts: Mr. Elmore has been on death row for 20 years. Though he was convicted by two juries -- his first conviction was overturned on technical grounds -- he has always maintained his innocence. His lawyers argue that he was framed by investigators who planted evidence and lied in court. They also say they have DNA evidence that casts doubt on Mr. Elmore's guilt.
One might expect such contentions from defense lawyers. But further doubts about Mr. Elmore's convictions have been raised by others, including the medical examiner whose autopsy report was critical in his arrest and conviction, who now says she has reservations about how the state used her findings. A retired F.B.I. forensics expert, hired by South Carolina, calls a state report that linked Mr. Elmore to the crime "a fraud." [...] Though doubts about his guilt have been raised over the years — including the lawyers' assertions about the DNA testing of evidence that the state said it had lost — Mr. Elmore, who has an I.Q. of 75 and a fifth-grade education, has not been able to get a new trial.

In other words, South Carolina is determined to kill him, because it's easier to execute a man than to admit that it could have made mistakes. And mistakes were certainly made in this case, with evidence repeatedly "misplaced" and misidentified, evidence of professional malfeasance or incompetence ... there is no reason for South Carolina to refuse a new trial for this man other than hubris and embarrassment. At this point, it's reasonably certain that Mr Elmore's habeas corpus appeals have been exhausted; his only chance is for his attorneys to produce such overwhelming evidence of his innocence that South Carolina is embarrassed into a new trial or a dismissal of charges. Since, to some extent, this requires the cooperation of the state, I think it's reasonable to state that it won't happen. (For that matter, it would only requre the state to pay attention to the experts who have already filed opinions. Which, of course, they will not do.)

The fun will come when South Carolina actually schedules him for execution and his attorneys file for a stay, citing the Supreme Court opinion against executing the retarded. South Carolina will certainly assert that he is not retarded, that he understands what he's done (regardless of the fact that his actual assertion is that he hasn't done it). The state has to be careful, of course, because if the appeal gets too involved, then evidence of actual innocence may work its way in, and then the state is screwed.

Posted by iain at 10:55 PM

 

Media Relations: is jacko wacko?/ July 8, 2002

Posted by iain at 12:59 AM

 

Wicks's Statement Stirs Little Reaction
Around the time in May that Mets catcher Mike Piazza held a news conference to respond to -- and deny -- a blind item in a gossip column about a gay star player on the Mets, Sue Wicks of the Liberty told Time Out New York that she was gay.
     In an interview in the weekly magazine's May 30 issue, Wicks was asked: "Are you a lesbian?"
     "I am," she said. "Being from New York, if you're gay, you're gay. I think it's important that if you are gay, you not be afraid to say who you are."
    Piazza's denial made headlines and was reported on the nightly news broadcasts. Wick's [SIC] affirmation received scant notice.
    Wicks, a 6-foot-3 forward, is a W.N.B.A. All-Star and a fan favorite. Little girls wear her No. 23 jersey and blush when she autographs them. Last month, she received an award from the team for community service. Around the league, Wicks is respected among her peers for her work ethic on and off the court.

Hmm. While not disputing the article's argument that the strikingly different statuses of male and female athletes in our society makes a difference as to how and whether one comes out and how it is received, I would suggest two things.

First ... what the hell has being from New York got to do with being gay or not? I'm pretty sure that if you're from Kalamazoo and you're gay ... well, you're still gay. (OK, that's picayune, I know.)

Second: the fact that the reaction of most people to this announcement would be, "Who the hell is Sue Wicks?" is probably somewhat more relevant. Notably, the reaction when Martina Navratilova, to whom the article compares Wicks, made the same announcement was not "Who the hell is she?" but "What the hell is she DOING?" (primarily from her sponsors and the tour officials) or "Who knew?" or "I always knew," or "Yay!"

There may be some advertisers that become a little skittish ... if they even notice. However, it's possible that being a relatively little known athlete in a relatively little watched sport may preserve her endorsements. Obscurity has its benefits, in an odd sort of way.

At this point in time, the only women with any sort of athletic prominence, as a group and as a general rule, are figure skaters and tennis players. (Although women's soccer has its moments.) Those are the only people whom we would probably notice when they came out ... and not all of them. (Amelie Mauresmo, French tennis player, only made the news after coming out because a fellow player insulted her for it, after all; the event itself was a complete nonstarter, newswise.)

Assuming that the WNBA propels women's basketball into more prominence, there may come a day when that announcement by a WNBA player is a Very Big Deal to someone besides the person in question.

That day is not today.

Posted by iain at 12:51 AM

 

US fast food industry faces lawsuits

Sigh. Just ... sigh.

You know, I can agree with the part where they want to get fast food producers to stop marketing to kids. That makes a certain sort of sense, I will agree. But that's it. It's entirely unreasonable to say thad adults don't know what's in these foods; we do. It's entirely unreasonable to say that we don't know the effects of that sort of life; we do. And unlike the tobacco industry's products, we actually do need to eat. Do we need to eat hamburgers and fries? Of course not, but peole do choose to eat those things; if they're free to choose to smoke, which has no good aspects whatsoever, why shouldn't they be free to choose fast food, which is at least food, of however dubious nutritive qualities.

Posted by iain at 12:41 AM

 

Texas Jury Rejects Retarted Claim: A jury on Wednesday sentenced to death a convicted rapist and murderer whose attorneys had argued should be spared because he is mentally retarded.

My goodness. What a wonderfully intriguing place Texas is. For 20 years, regarding John Paul Penry, Texas' argument has been, "Yeah, we know he's retarded, but frankly, we just don't give a damn. He raped and murdered a woman, and you know, some people just need killin'." Now that the Supreme Court has stated that mentally retarded people can't be executed, Texas is suddenly saying, "Why, no, he's not retarded. Whatever gave you such a damn fool idea? Besides, he still needs killin'." Really, one could become quite cynical about the administration of justice in Texas.

I do wonder what sort of standard the jury was given when they were told "that they would have to first determine that Penry was not mentally retarded before sentencing him to death by injection." How can you determine that someone is retarded, for legal purposes, unless you have a distinct standard that you're working with? So this case will take another five, six years to make it back to the Supreme Court a third time, and the Court will overturn Texas (almost as enjoyable as overturning the Ninth Circuit, I'd bet) and say, "You need standards. Try again."

In the meantime, observing this meander, all the states that allow execution will conduct research and take expert testimony about what constitutes mental retardation. They'll be able to pull together a reasonable set of standards that juries can work with.

And then they'll ignore all their research -- I suspect they'll realize that a surprising number of people on death row actually are retarded in the traditional sense -- and set the standard IQ for retardations, for judicial and no other purposes, at something like 1. Maybe as high as 5, if they're feeling generous. (I don't think you could even walk with an IQ of 1.)

Frankly, it strikes me that executing the mentally retarded is a damn sight kinder than keeping them in prison, especially when they won't understand what they've done or why they're there. However, that's a contrarian view, and I don't imagine it's shared by very many people. And, after all, the retarded want to live just as much as anyone else.

Posted by iain at 10:50 AM

 

Bishop approves limited blessing for non-married couples: The Episcopal Diocese of Kansas will begin authorizing limited blessings of non-married couples, whether homosexuals or heterosexuals, for whom marriage would be a financial hardship, Bishop William E. Smalley said Monday. [...] He said he thinks three parishes in the diocese may use the policy for blessing homosexual couples, although he was unsure how many may seek authorization for blessing heterosexual couples.

OK, that's ... different.

And blessings would make the job of local law enforcement ever so much easier. You put a little announcement in the paper, send out invites, go to the church to get blessed, and then get arrested at the reception, what with homosexual conduct being illegal in Kansas and all.

I do love the concept of Episcopalians, known for being one step away from Catholicism and generally conservative withall, being called "notorious renegades". In any event, since the bishop will be retiring in 2004, it's likely that the policy will last only a year or two, so might as well get your blessings while you can.

Posted by iain at 01:23 AM

 

Brazil team stoned by fans after early end to parade

Good grief. They did this after they won? Imagine what they'd have done if the poor guys actually lost!

Soccer may be the world's sport, but I think we can stick with our basketball riots, thanks. At least the only things that seem to get hurt in those are cars without people in them.

Posted by iain at 12:07 AM

 

So, yesterday, we get this headline:

Ovitz: "Gay Mafia" After Me!
     Forget the financial missteps and the countless enemies he made as Hollywood's once powerful überagent: Mike Ovitz knows once and for all why his reputation and business are in ruins.
     It's the "Gay Mafia."
    ..... "It was the goal of these people to eliminate me," Ovitz said. "They wanted to kill Michael Ovitz. If they could have taken my wife and kids, they would have."

Um ... Mike, babe: if they're gay, what the hell would they want with your wife and kids?

Anyway, next day, we get this gem:

Ovitz Issues an Apology for Comment About 'Gay Mafia': Former superagent Michael Ovitz has issued a public apology for remarks in a magazine article that hit newsstands Wednesday blaming a "gay mafia" of his enemies for the recent collapse of his talent management enterprise.

Well, I should think so, yes.

First, he got the terminology all wrong. It's not the "Gay" mafia, it's the "Lavender Mafia". (Sometimes the "Lavender League" if you're being precious.) A small thing, yes, but if you're going to piss people off gratuitously, you need to sound like you know what you're talking about.

Second ... did he really think he could get away with that? I mean, he's talking about the Lavender Mafia. If they have enough power to bring down the company he founded, for heaven's sake, what did he think they'd do to him when those remarks got back to them?

I'm sure they made him an offer he couldn't refuse to get him to retract that statement. Maybe threatened to have his home redecorated by Evil Queens Without Taste. (Think "rococco" without any of its few saving graces.)

I'm just trying to figure out how Eisner wound up in the Lavender Mafia. I mean, who knew?

Just remember: we're here, we're queer ... and we will get your ass if you cross us....

Posted by iain at 11:59 PM

 

Well, of course. Who else could it be?

Take the Disney Villain Test Now!!

Posted by iain at 05:33 PM

 

Bush blames attorneys for late report to SEC: The White House acknowledged Wednesday that when he was a corporate director, President Bush failed to promptly disclose stock sales as required by federal law. A spokesman blamed it on a "clerical mistake" by company lawyers, though Bush has said government regulators lost it. [...] On the largest sale, Bush sold his stock for $4 a share, just before the company filed a quarterly report revealing it had lost $23 million during the period. By the end of the year, the memo says, it was trading at around $1. [...] Though the memo indicates SEC investigators observed a pattern of late filings by Bush, the agency said in 1993 it would not bring a case against him. Bush's father was president at the time the SEC memo was drafted in 1991. [...] Fleischer said: "If there are any bad players in our free-enterprise system, they will be held accountable by this administration and by the government."

Um ... yeah. Right. Sure. Whatever you say, Shrubya. I mean, I believe him when he has his mouthpiece say things like that. Don't you? Especially when he can't keep his stories straight? Doesn't that fill you with confidence?

That said, since the abuses are so thoroughgoingly systemic, he may have no choice but to do something to restore some faith in the system. But faith in him to do the right thing because it's the right thing to do, of that there is none.

Posted by iain at 02:05 PM

 

How dangerous is Al Qaeda in America?: A public service message brought to you by the U.S. Justice Department, SF Weekly, and other patriots

Posted by iain at 01:31 PM

 

Which reminds me ....

Don't expect much from these parts come the early days of next week. Cook County in its infinite wisdom has pegged me for jury duty for the FOURTH (yes, FOURTH) time.

This is the problem with being reliable and not moving, you see. 18 months after a presidential election, almost like clockwork, here comes the summons. The only good thing this time is that for the first time ever, they haven't sent me to Outer Suburbia, so I don't have to get up at 3AM to get there on time.

Posted by iain at 01:08 PM

 

Emergency Landing by Jennifer Block

The phenomenon of women traveling to far-away clinics actually has a name: "abortion tourism." But usually the flow is from countries where abortion is illegal, or close to it. Best known are the estimated 7000 Irish women who journey to England every year for the procedure. Yet with 86 percent of all U.S. counties lacking even a single provider, American women have more in common with their Irish sisters than we'd like to think. For many in the Northeast who need a second-trimester abortion, New York City is the only choice. [...] Without really intending to, Catherine re-created a network that existed pre-Roe v. Wade, when abortion was legal in New York State and almost nowhere else. Back then, some 350,000 women with unwanted pregnancies flocked to the city.

Wondrous. Just wondrous. Welcome back to the 1960s.

At least there's someone performing the services, if not as many people as needed. And I should imagine that Shrubya's administration is utterly furious at Bloomberg for defying the party line on that particular subject. And of course, mandating the training will mean more people will go into the business -- more ideologically oriented people, of course, since it's not likely to be a track that makes a lot of money.

Unfortunately, the access issue is likely to get considerably worse, and there are no signs that it will get better any time soon. It may well be that in a few years, New York will be the only city in the country with reasonably available abortion services.

Posted by iain at 12:21 AM

 

My goodness. What a difficult choice. Anthrax risk or radiation poisoning? Anthrax, radiation. Decisions, decisions.

What the hell are they doing, anyway? How much radiation do you have to zap mail with to kill things? Whatever the amount, it seems that they're zapping it with so much that the paper itself is releasing chemicals into the air and skin. In other words, masks and gloves and goggles all the time, people.

Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, who sought the investigation in February, said the report suggested that the earlier Congressional inquiry "may have been too quick to conclude irradiated mail was harmless, and they may not have taken employees' health concerns seriously enough."

No, ya think? That said, I understand the desire at the time to do something to make it stop. It does appear that our "something" may have been just a bit excessive.

Posted by iain at 01:45 PM

 

Italian politician caught in drag with gay lover

... oh, my.

He has declined to comment...

Well, yes, I should think he would.

And in related news ... my, but Italian newspaper sites are ... different, aren't they?

Posted by iain at 11:22 AM

 

Council of Europe - Chart of signatures and ratifications of a treaty

You know, I think I'm appalled.

What sane body allows the dictates of one-ninth of its membership to control the rest? (And for those of you who are about to mention the UN, who says that it's sane?) Only five countries need to ratify the cybercrime convention before it becomes binding law in the 44 member states and four observer states, including the US. And despite having raised constitutional objections, the Shrub's administration did sign the damn thing. (Then again, given the thoroughgoing eviceration of the Bill of Rights by the Patriot Act, I can't imagine that the administration is overly concerned about the constitutional issues.)

In normal times, I don't believe that the Senate would ratify the thing (and if it's got a brain it its collective head -- about which there is much doubt -- it will realize that it CANNOT ratify the Hate Crimes protocol, since it counts protected speech -- racist insults and the like -- as hate crimes under that protocol). But these are not precisely normal times.

In any event, you do wonder that states in the Council of Europe don't chafe considerably more under its leadership, if that's quite the proper word. It makes no sense, for example, that Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic -- to pull five names out of a hat -- could perhaps force a solution to a problem that is best for their region onto the rest of Europe. It would be as if, say, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Nevada decided that the best thing for the entire country was to have a pipeline from the Great Lakes built out to those states, and Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Minnesota and New York -- which actually have Great Lakes water -- had no say in the matter. (Given Europe's history, I should think there would be a very real chance that the former Soviet Bloc countries would take the chance to stick it to Russia every chance they could reasonably take, without harming themselves.)

It's just a very odd way to handle international treaties and legislative bodies.

Posted by iain at 10:57 AM

 

Court Had Rehnquist Initials Intricately Carved on Docket

An interesting review of the 2001-2002 Supreme Court term.

National Railroad Passenger Corporation v. Morgan still seems like the case from Mars, frankly. It's as if someone flew in and gave Thomas a temporary brain transplant, allowing him to rejoin the real world for a moment, before restoring his normal brain and flying off again. He never sides with the plaintiff in civil rights cases.

Posted by iain at 10:17 AM

 

Dog runs as write-in candidate against Katherine Harris

Well ... Snoopy and Mickey Mouse regularly run for president, so why the hell not? I do hope Percy wins, though. He'd immediately be removed for being unable to perform the dutites of his office, of course, but still ... then again, how difficult is it to put your pawprint on something to certify an election?

Percy and his volunteer campaign staff have been shaking paws and handing out flyers, with slogans including: "Never made a mess in the House! Never will!" and "PERCY! Putting the LICK back into Republican." His official campaign bio describes Percy as a compassionate conservative who takes a hard-line with social parasites, particularly fleas and worms. His past is free of sex scandals, due to "timely neutering."

Just imagine how very different our recent history would have been with a little "timely neutering."

Posted by iain at 02:05 AM

 

Again and again, in international treaty negotiations, the Europeans would come up with some grand idea for a treaty clause which had the slight flaw that it violated the US Constitution.

You know ... thing is, I can't remember hearing or reading that this administration has said any such thing regarding this treaty, at least not recently. The administration is making the sovereignty argument, as such. And it does seem fairly apparent that the Bush administration is renouncing international agreements both because they were negotiated by Clinton, and because they're international agreements. (That said, I think they rejected Kyoto on the merits. I also think that some of these rejections stem from a fundamentally different view of the role of business in the American polity than the Clinton administration had.) I don't know that most Americans care about either the ICC or Kyoto, either way -- they're both fairly abstruse to a lot of people, precisely because they weren't passed or debated in the Senate, and so there's a level of discussion that never took place. (One of the oddities about the US is that arms control treaties are the only ones that ever get thoroughly dissected in public before Senate debate or passage; everything else gets buried.) It does seem strange that the administration isn't making the constitutional argument for domestic purposes; it's plain foolish not to, both for international and domestic consumption. Europeans may well feel that the Constitutional argument is silly, but they would at least understand the internal use. (The House, which has no constitutional role in treaty deliberations, has been having Constitutional snit fits all over the place. The administration, oddly, has not.)

In any event, if the Heritage Foundation is correct (of all organizations to cite), not signing the treaty doesn't actually make any difference; US nationals are theoretically subject to its jurisdiction anyway.

Interestingly, Clinton's Justice department apparently ruled that there was no constitutional bar to signing the ICC. Make of that what you will. (Unfortunately, the advisory opinion itself doesn't seem to be available. In any event, Justice's support for the document was described elsewhere as "lukewarm".)

The administration has not, in fact, been making the constitutional case at all, in regard to any treaty. (UPDATE: the Cybercrime convention being an exception. See comments.) The argument made with regard to the biological weapons treaty was manifestly not that it was unconstitutional; the argument, according to that linked Washington post article, was "that the Bush administration has concluded that the protocol, as drafted, lacks the teeth to prevent cheating by other countries, yet still would be burdensome to American universities and industries, and might leave U.S. companies vulnerable to theft of commercial secrets." The commercial argument will make the US companies happy, but it's hardly a constitutional issue as such.

Note that I am not saying that the constitutional issue is invalid. I do think that the administration should simply have kept the treaty withdrawn and gone into "wait and see" mode, rather than "unsigning" it. If nothing else, the political costs would have been slightly less. However, if the administration thinks the constitutional argument is valid, then they should make it.

(For what it's worth, Australia is none too happy, either, although they may sign the treaty. For much the same reason, that odd combination of constitutional issues and sovereignty issues. As I've noted previously, the UN -- or whoever -- is allowing Australia to make precisely the reservation that they are refusing to allow the US. Curious.)

Posted by iain at 12:30 AM

 

Gone fishin' ... instead of just a-wishin'... that he hadn't gone fishin', that is.

I always thought burials at sea were done without coffins, myself. Just a tasteful shroud or some such. And in any event, I thought these days, you couldn't do a burial in territorial waters, as such, unless the person had been cremated first. Who knew? Maybe Maine is a wee bit different....

Posted by iain at 06:15 PM

 

All right, I'm impressed. Who knew the Tehran Times could do sarcasm?

At least ... I hope it's sarcasm. Otherwise, I just have to scratch my head and think, "Ohio? Where the hell did they get THAT from?"

Posted by iain at 04:30 PM

 

Bosnians Alarmed by U.S. Threat: Bosnia pleaded Monday with the United States to back off on threats to dismantle a U.N. police mission in this troubled Balkan country, arguing it could erode recent gains toward lasting peace. [...] "If Americans pull out there will be troubles all around," said Halil Deronja, 23, a student in Sarajevo. "I'm afraid of what will happen in the future in Bosnia, especially because in the past other countries said that if one pulls out- all of them will do the same." Aziza Hadzic, 65, a retiree of Sarajevo, put it even more bluntly: "If Americans leave, there may be a new war here."

On the one hand, I sincerely doubt that Europe would pull out of the police-training mission, if only because it would represent a prime opportunity to spit in our eye. (So they might think, anyway; I suspect our general reaction would be to shrug and say, "Yeah? So? It's what we wanted in the first place.") Second, at this point in time, Europe should have an extremely well-founded fear of leaving the Bosnians to their own devices, seeing as they have a nasty tendency to use them to torture one another.

That said ... the question is, how long are we supposed to be there? The world resents us for acting as the world's policeman, but then won't let us stop doing it, because they so often feel that the alternatives are worse. If Europe has a justified fear of Bosnian tendencies to mayhem, Bosnia has a justified fear of Europe's tendency to throw sanctions at bullets and paper them over corpses. The Bosnians can't be trusted to police themselves (or, more sadly, don't trust themselves to do it), they don't trust Europe to do it, and they won't allow Asia or Africa to do it. (And a nice little spot of Euro racism that was, too ... although part of it was based in the fear that they would send in Muslims, who they feared would just stand by and watch the Christians get brutalized. Oddly, the world seems to regard the Americans as either nonreligious or irreligious, despite the poisonous fundamentalist tinge our policies have taken the past 20 years. Nobody seemed to fear that the Christian Americans would stand by and watch the Muslim Bosnians get mauled. Wonder why that is? But I digress.)

At some point in all these various peacekeeping operations, the country at issue has to grow up enough to handle its own peace, or there was never any point. We didn't sign on for a permanent occupation of Bosnia, and I don't think the UN quite wanted to sign on for a formal partition of the country, but all that seems to have happened.

(We didn't sign on for a permanent occupation of Afghanistan, either, but that's what's going to happen there, as well. And I suspect we'll continue to kill innocent people as long as we can't tell a wedding party from an al-Qaeda convoy, but that's neither here nor there at the moment.)

At some point, any peacekeeping force -- whether US-backed or not -- needs to be able to step back and say, "All right, you're on your own now. Try to behave yourselves." Else, what's the point?

Posted by iain at 04:25 PM

 

"WAY too inappropriate", inDEED!
(But you're going to snicker. You know you will.)

Posted by iain at 02:25 PM

 

Judge Finds Federal Executions Unconstitutional: A federal trial judge on Monday became the first U.S. judge to declare the current federal death penalty unconstitutional, a ruling that is sure to set off fierce national debate over the issue. U.S. District Judge Rakoff said the federal death penalty act ``deprives innocent people of a significant opportunity to prove their innocence'' and ``creates an undue risk of executing innocent people,'' thereby violating due process. (NY Times, registration required.)

OK. I predict you some predictions:

1) The government will go to the appropriate Court of Appeals to get an immediate stay. Not that there's any federal prisoner scheduled for execution any time soon; it's just the principle of the thing. What happens at this level ... well, it all depends on how contrary the court is feeling. (If it were the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the request for a stay would be rejected out of hand, but that's the Ninth for you.) The court may grant the request for a stay, or it may say, "Look, there's nobody scheduled for execution anytime soon, so the need for a stay is moot, at the moment. Come back once you've got someone scheduled, and if the case itself hasn't made it this far, we'll think about it." If the 2d Court of Appeals says the latter, the government will appeal to the Supreme Court for a stay, which it will then immediately obtain, because that's the Supreme Court for you.

2) The 2d Court of Appeals will almost certainly rule for the government, when the case itself arrives. Frankly, I can't imagine any circuit but the 9th ruling against the government in this case. It will then, of course, be appealed to the Supreme Court. And that's where things will get interesting.

Thing is, I suspect that overall, the Court has a majority of justices in favor of the death penalty. Even with O'Connor and Ginsburg having recently expressed doubts about the penalty in public, I would expect a simple 6-3 or 5-4 majority in favor of the penalty itself; I would think Stevens would be against it, and possibly though not definitely Souter. The swing vote in this case would probably be Kennedy, and I really can't see him voting against the death penalty.

The fun part will be watching to see if Scalia says something gruesome, like, "Who cares if they're innocent? If they were sentenced to death in accordance with the law, that's it, the penalty is valid." After all, he's said such things before. Considering the heat he's taken for it, he may decide to phrase things more delicately this time. Or maybe not; he's an ornery cuss.

The legal reasoning for the majority is likely to be ... eccentric, at best. Given that the case is statistically based, using evidence from state courts, the majority is likely to say (1) evidence from state courts, with varying and sometimes lesser standards of evidence and of proof from those of the federal courts, is simply not relevant, and (2) they will then cite statistics, based primarily on state courts, of the efficacy of the death penalty at deterring crime, regardless of whether or not the actual guilty parties are caught and killed.

The issue will only be exacerbated by Ashcroft's pattern of overruling his prosecutors and ordering them to seek the death penalty when they normally wouldn't. He seems, according to the article, to be doing it in part as a reaction to people accusing the Justice Department of bias in seeking either the death sentence or a plea bargain. As a result, we have the nicely gruesome picture of our chief Justice officer engaging in what is neither more nor less than reverse discrimination to make certain that people are sentenced to death, rather than that they aren't. How charming and appealing!

It will be a fun time at the ol' courthouse, just you wait and see!

Posted by iain at 11:15 AM

 

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