The Scotsman - Top Stories - Back-bench rebellion rocks Blair: TONY Blair suffered the biggest rebellion of his premiership last night, when 121 Labour MPs - almost half of the party's back-benchers - voted against the government's policy on Iraq. In a damaging split in the Labour ranks, a string of former cabinet ministers led scores of back-bench rebels to defy a three-line whip by supporting a motion stating the case for war remained unproven, despite a personal appeal by Mr Blair. The amendment was defeated by 393 to 199 votes, with 52 Liberal Democrats, ten nationalists and independents and 13 Conservatives joining the Labour rebels. A second vote on the government motion expressing support for the United Nations' route was won by 434 votes to 124. The size of the Labour revolt was much higher than the 100 originally predicted and will raise questions about Mr Blair's ability to persuade the country and his party that Britain and the United States should proceed with military action.
Interesting.
And then again ... maybe whether or not he's in trouble is all in the eye of the beholder:
House of Commons Backs Blair on Iraq: British lawmakers on Wednesday backed Tony Blair's determination to disarm Iraq, but rebels from his own Labor Party mounted their biggest challenge to the prime minister since he came to power in 1997. While the government carried two votes decisively, the losing dissenters made a stronger-than-expected showing, underlining the strength of opposition to war among Britons and within Blair's party. The prime minister emphasized that the House of Commons vote was not about whether Britain should go to war against Saddam Hussein he said it was too soon to make such a decision. Instead, lawmakers by a vote of 434-124 approved a government-sponsored motion which backed the prime minister's efforts to resolve the crisis through the United Nations and called on Iraq "to recognize this as its final opportunity" to disarm. Opponents included 59 Labor lawmakers. By a tally of 393-199, legislators rejected an amendment that said "the case for military action against Iraq (is) as yet unproven." Among those supporting the measure were 122 of Labor's 410 lawmakers, making it the biggest revolt within the usually disciplined party since it took power.
I think it can reasonably be said that perhaps -- just perhaps -- The Scotsman may have An Agenda.
That said, it may indicate that Blair may pay some considerable domestic political costs if the UN doesn't approve the US/UK resolution:
..... The Turks aren't the only ones having a hard time selling the war to their legislature and electorate — even President Bush's staunchest ally, Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, is struggling. A parliamentary vote on a motion, rejected by Blair, to give UN inspections more time in Iraq saw almost one third of the legislators of Blair's own Labor Party vote against his government. Although Blair, with the help of the opposition Conservatives, still won the vote by a comfortable 2-1 margin, the fact that almost one third of his own party's legislators broke party discipline on a crucial war vote was a stark reminder that the Blair is in danger of losing the leadership of his own party — particularly if the war proceeds without UN authorization.
Or maybe it doesn't. British politics are puzzling at the best of times.
And speaking of costs .....
(LA Times, registration required) Iraq War Cost Could Soar, Pentagon Says: The Pentagon has begun telling the White House and Congress that defeating Iraq and occupying the country for six months could cost as much as $85 billion, according to sources — considerably more than what senior administration officials have been saying in public. Combined with aid for regional allies such as Turkey, the price tag for the conflict could top the $100-billion mark, twice the war costs cited just last month by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and an amount that the White House dismissed as outlandish last fall.
(LA Times, registration required) A Huge Postwar Force Seen: Peacekeeping and humanitarian operations after a war with Iraq would probably require "several hundred thousand soldiers," the Army's chief of staff said Tuesday — a force approaching the number of U.S. troops massing for a possible war in the Persian Gulf. Gen. Eric K. Shinseki told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Bush administration would need to keep a large force in Iraq even after the war to curb ethnic tensions and provide humanitarian aid. Asked to name a figure, the four-star general said: "I would say that what's been mobilized to this point, something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers." [...] The general's statement that a peacekeeping force approaching the estimated 200,000 Americans now forming an arc around the Persian Gulf would be required after a war stunned some lawmakers. One senior Democrat questioned whether the Bush administration could go forward with a war that would require such a force after combat unless it received more support from the United Nations Security Council. So far, only three of the other 14 council members have indicated support for the administration's plans. "It would be a huge proportion of the deployable force," Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said in an interview. "It reinforces the importance of trying to keep the Security Council together.... There's no way we can keep 200,000 troops in Iraq for a substantial time. That's too large a force." Troops from other countries would be needed for such a large peacekeeping operation, Levin said. The Army, the branch usually called on for such missions, puts the number of troops available to be deployed abroad at 293,000, out of a total of 480,000.
So 200,000 of 293,000 troops will be needed just to keep the peace in Iraq after the war.
My, but that ought to make things interesting. Bush may have a grand plan for "liberated Iraq" (just how liberated is a country when it's being occupied by 200,000 foreigners, one wonders), but however grand his plan is, Congress is highly unlikely to pay for it during hard economic times. They will be even more unlikely to pay for it once the outlay for the war gets diverted from the rest of the budget and trips the country back into recession. It may or may not be foolish of them, it may be shortsighted ... but it is highly likely.
America's costly new global role: President Bush envisions a Middle East of peace and stability, a region that moves increasingly toward a neighborhood of democratic states no longer led by despots or providing a breeding ground for terrorists. But it's becoming clear that the costs of such an effort - in terms of US treasure and military forces - is likely to be enormous. And it comes at a time when the United States finds itself entering an era not unlike the cold war - militarily engaged around a world marked by potential danger points ranging from Iraq and nearby Afghanistan to the Korean Peninsula, the Philippines, and Colombia.
Mind, I don't think Congressional reluctance will stop anything at this point -- having given the preliminary permission, Congress is both unlikely and unable to tie his hands at this point -- but Congress can, and most likely will, refuse to bear the entire cost of occupying and rebuilding Iraq.
(This may be especially true if, as was reported on a recent 60 Minutes, Saddam has laid/plans to lay a black ring of VX nerve toxin around Baghdad's outskirts. It would certainly kill more than a few soldiers trying to cross it, true, but it's more likely to kill thousands upon thousands of Iraqis. And cleaning it up, if that's even possible, would be beyond nightmare. That may be the sort of thing to push Congress into saying, "This is now somebody else's problem.")
Posted by iain at 03:35 PM
The Black Gender Gap (Newsweek, February 26, 2003): ..... Who then could have imagined that an African-American female would one day stand atop the nation's foreign-policy pyramid? Who could have predicted that black women would, educationally, so outstrip black men? Who could have dreamed the day would come when black women would lay claim to "white men's jobs" -- the phrase used by banking executive Malia Fort's former boss as he reminded her of the time when "the only thing a black woman could have done in a bank is clean up"? Today a black woman can be anything from an astronaut to a talk-show host, run anything from a corporation to an Ivy League university. Once consigned to mostly menial work, black women (24 percent of them, compared with 17 percent of black men) have ascended to the professional-managerial class. [...] College-educated black women already earn more than the median for all black working men—or, for that matter, for all women. And as women in general move up the corporate pyramid, black women, increasingly, are part of the parade. In 1995 women held less than 9 percent of corporate-officer positions in Fortune 500 companies, according to Catalyst, a New York-based organization that promotes the interests of women in business. Last year they held close to 16 percent, a significant step up. Of those 2,140 women, 163 were black—a minuscule proportion, but one that is certain to grow.
It may be that in a truly peculiar way, the notorious lack of marriage among American blacks (roughly 60% of all black children are born out of wedlock) may be serving black women in an oddly positive way. If the point is brought home that strongly that you can only really rely on yourself, then you know that you have to prepare. And if that's what you see -- if, say, two or three generations of your family consist of women who have done for themselves because there was no other choice, then you would start preparing yourself for that choice early.
In fact, if watering-hole conversation is any criterion, the most difficult challenge black women face today may lie closer to home. Go any Friday night to Lola’s Cajun eatery in Los Angeles and you’ll find a weekly gathering of what could easily be dubbed “the black, beautiful, accomplished but can’t find a mate club.” In bars, colleges and other gathering spots across America, the question is much the same: where are the decent, desirable black men?
And that's also going to be a problem. Historically, a man is not a man if he can't provide for his family. In this day and age, that doesn't mean that the woman doesn't work ... but it may well mean that a man somehow still expects that he should outearn his wife. And the plain fact is, you get a tremendous culture clash when you have highly educated women working with men who aren't. Not only are the women earning more, but they simply know more. The combination may leave the men feeling that the relationship is completely unbalanced, that they have no position of strength in the relationship. The effect of that double whammy might be to feel rather ... emasculated.
Posted by iain at 12:35 AM
Excerpt, Vanity Fair (February 2003), p. 116, Ask Dame Edna:
Dear Dame Edna,
I would very much like to learn a foreign language, preferably French or Italian, but every time I mention this, people tell me to learn Spanish instead. They say, "Everyone is going to be speaking Spanish in 10 years. George W. Bush speaks Spanish." Could this be true? Are we all going to have to speak Spanish?
Torn Romantic, Palm Beach
Dear Torn:
Forget Spanish. There's nothing in that language worth reading except Don Quixote, and a quick listen to the CD of Man of La Mancha will take care of that. There was a poet named Garcia Lorca, but I'd leave him on the intellectual back burner if I were you. As for everyone's speaking it, what twaddle! Who speaks it that you are really desperate to talk to? The help? Your leaf blower? Study French or German, where there are a t least a few books worth reading, or, if you're American, try English.
Dame Edna
Poynter Online - Dreams of Dame Edna: ..... Dame Edna has me tossing and turning in bed. As most of you know, the haughty Dame -- a fictional character played by Australian actor Barry Humphries -- wrote a nasty little item in her advice column for February's Vanity Fair. In the column, a reader asks whether we are all going to have to learn Spanish. Dame Edna replies that there's nothing worth reading in Spanish except Don Quixote, and that the poet Garcia Lorca should be left on the intellectual back burner. "As for everyone's speaking it, what twaddle!" she says. "Who speaks it that you are really desperate to talk to? The help? Your leaf blower?"
Petitions from angry Latinos and others have circulated on the Internet, demanding an apology from Vanity Fair and Mr. Humphries. The editorial director of Latina magazine wrote to Dame Edna, suggesting that she familiarize herself with Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, and Jose Luis Borges, among others.
Vanity Fair said it "regretted" the offense, but then tried to explain: "In the role of Dame Edna, Barry Humphries practices a long comedic tradition of making statements that are tasteless, wrongheaded, or taboo with an eye toward exposing hypocrisies or prejudices. Her patently absurd comments ... were offered in the spirit of outrageous comedy and were never intended to be taken to heart."
But groups like the National Association of Hispanic Journalists aren't buying that argument. In a letter to Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, NAHJ raised a good question: "So Dame Edna gets to spout off such bigotry, and we're not supposed to say anything about it because the character is a clown and the column is satire? We disagree. Humor and satire are not safe hiding places for ignorance and bigotry."
Which is why I am having late night thoughts about Dame Edna. Is it possible, in this irony-challenged day and age, to comment on ignorance and bigotry through humor and satire?
You know ... I really don't think it IS possible any more. We do seem to be quite the humor-challenged culture, these days. Not that there isn't humor, of course. It's everywhere. We have funny papers, we have standup comics, we have sitcoms galore ...
The distinction seems to be that we don't allow pointed satire and irony in writing any more. The ability to distinguish between that which is seriously meant, and that which is twaddle, seems to have disappeared from this country somehow. (I mean, really. How seriously can you take someone who writes elsewhere, "I am back on my 'Tourette' syndrome visiting some of your little cities that remain amongst the world’s best-kept secrets. I started last week in Portland Maine, in one of the most gorgeous theatres I have ever played. Needless to say, it wasn’t built as a convention centre, and no acoustic engineers had anything to do with it, so the sound was perfect. [...] I wrenched myself away to come to Washington DC, a city which occasionally gets a little paragraph on page 10 of the European and Australian press, but is otherwise, except for the White House, a big secret. I adore it, though it’s very cold and I have to wear my humanely culled simulated wombat fur underthings. It must be horrid for President Bush who comes from the south to live in such a frigid zone. No wonder he wears that constant look of perplexity, poor mite."
(It's the weather? Really. My. I just thought he was constantly perplexed. But I digress.)
We seem to be able to take satire and irony when it's physical -- that is, when there's an actual person being tasteless and ironical in our actual faces. (Better able to take it, anyway.) After all, where would "Absolutely Fabulous" ever have been in this country if we couldn't take politically incorrect comedy? (Although it may be noteworthy that it didn't originate here, and the American version failed miserably.) But when it's written down, and we lose the physical context, our ability to deal seems to go right out the window.
The other problem is, of course, that an outsider hit one of our nerves. It is an undeniable fact that minorities make up a fair percentage of the lower-income and menial jobs in this country. Is it fair? No. Is it just? No. Should things be this way? No. But they are what they are, and having an outsider say these things at all, let alone in print, rankles.
It would be interesting to find out exactly where that ability to take written humor went. Given the declining literacy rate in this country, probably out with the ability to read.
Ask Dame Edna -- What happened to humor?: ..... That the line was not greeted with screaming laughter, however, was perhaps due to the fact that Dame Edna had unwittingly captured the tone of Vanity Fair magazine and attitude of many of its readers so closely. Though soon e-mails flitted back and forth among Spanish-speaking readers of Vanity Fair -- an interesting sociological group in itself. Soon, there were hot petitions of protest against blue-rinsed Dame Edna. Letters of complaint to Graydon Carter (the editor whose hair, etc.): "I am a thirty year old Latina marketing executive with three graduate degrees..." During a week of heightened code-orange alerts in New York City and elsewhere, there were code-magenta bomb threats received at the offices of Condé Nast. An apology was not long in coming. Now that we are a nation of sufferers and victims, the Puritans have won the day. [...] For a magazine so confused in its purpose, it is perhaps not so very surprising that Vanity Fair didn't see the Hispanic furor coming. Each month the magazine's predictions about what's going to be "hot" next month -- Fabergé, Frida Kahlo, A.S. Byatt, Georgia O'Keefe -- are invariably not. [...] But there are other prophesies from Vanity Fair's editor. Graydon Carter (whose hair, etc.) was widely quoted by media types in New York, after Sept. 11, saying that irony is dead.
It's truer to say that humor is having a hard time of it in America these days when we can't tell the difference between a joke and the deadly serious.
I have to admit, had I been the editor of Vanity Fair, I think my reaction would have been: "Oh, grow UP!"
Posted by iain at 12:45 PM
(NY Times, registration required) Justices Stress Inmate's Right to Press Appeal: The Supreme Court ordered a new hearing for a Texas death row inmate today in a surprisingly broad 8-to-1 decision that warned the federal courts of appeals against shutting the door prematurely on state prisoners who seek to present constitutional challenges to their convictions or sentences.
My goodness. How very interesting. And how very unexpected. This case had failed every appeal up the line until now; apparently, it had failed every appeal because the judges were collapsing the appealability issue into the merits of the case.
It will be interesting to see what happens now. This case will be sent back to the Fifth Circuit, which now MUST grant the certificate of appealability so that the case can be heard ... in the Fifth Circuit court which collapsed the merits of the case into the appealability issue in the first place. This would seem to indicate that the case's chances on the merits would not have a great chance of success ... except that, if this summary is accurate, the Court did exactly what they're accusing the lower courts of doing when they should not.
In an opinion by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the Supreme Court sharply criticized both the Texas courts and the lower federal courts for ignoring strong evidence of racial bias in the selection of the nearly all-white jury that found a black Texas man, Thomas Miller-El, guilty of murder 17 years ago. Without resolving the merits of Mr. Miller-El's discrimination case, the majority said today that in appealing the denial of his habeas corpus petition, he had presented evidence of bias substantial enough to entitle him to a hearing. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit misapplied both the facts and the law in refusing to permit the appeal, the justices said.
It does seem a somewhat insoluble conundrum. How do you look at the merits of a case to say, "Yes, this is a substantial enough issue to allow you to continue to appeal" without either implicitly or explicitly commenting on the chances of success of the case?
It's also fascinating that even Scalia, hardliner that he is, decided that the case had been incorrectly decided by the lower courts, whereas Thomas broke sharply. That's a tandem that almost never breaks stride; for it to happen on an 8-1 split is pretty much unheard of.
Posted by iain at 10:37 AM
Senate Approves New Child Porn Bill: The U.S. Senate Monday afternoon passed a new child pornography bill designed to overcome the Supreme Court objections that struck down a previous effort by Congress to ban computer-generated child pornography images. The House has yet to pass companion or similar legislation. In April of last year, the court ruled that Congress' 1996 law banning virtual child pornography was a violation of free speech rights. The 6-3 decision striking down the law was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, who said the statute was too broad and was unconstitutional. The high court rejected arguments by the Department of Justice that virtual child pornography was directly related to child sexual abuse. The Court said the First Amendment protects pornographers that produce images that only appear to have children engaging in sexual acts. The new legislation, sponsored by Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah) and Patrick Leahy (D.-Vt.), hopes to avoid the court objections by not defining computer-generated images as obscene and, instead, prohibits the pandering or solicitation of anything represented to be obscene child pornography.
The bill, which passed on an 84-0 vote, requires the government to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that person charged with producing or distributing child pornography intended others to believe the product was obscene child pornography, which is not protected by the First Amendment. Persons accused under the new law would have to prove that real children were not used in the production of the material.
Interesting.
They've sort of gotten halfway to the finish line this time, only to run headlong into another part of the Constitution. It makes perfectly good sense that the intent of the person would be at issue, and that it is the government's responsibility to prove that the person intended to present what they were doing as child pornography. However, where this bill will run into problems is that it requires the accused to prove that they didn't use real children. Under the concept that you're innocent until proven guilty ... HAHAHA HAHAHA! Oh, my goodness. Pardon me; the idea that this actually exists as a concept in American law these days always makes me laugh.
In any event.
In theory, since the accused is supposedly innocent until proven guilty, it should be the government's responsibility to prove that virtual children were not used in the production of the material, that real children were actually used and harmed in the making of the material. In practice, especially with crimes of this nature, the accused usually winds up having to prove that they didn't do what they're accused of doing.
And then nobody believes them anyway.
In any event, Leahy is also right when he objects to the "intent" provision -- which is, as noted above, the strongest part of this bill. There are artistically legitimate reasons for presenting something as if it were real. For example, under those laws, the film "Pretty Baby" would be utterly and absolutely impossible to produce, no matter what you did. You simply could not use a 12-year-old in any such film without running afoul of the law, despite the fact that no child would have been harmed in the making of it. (For that matter, a fact-based documentary about child prostitution might well run into problems, despite a lack of salacious intent.)
I can appreciate law enforcement's difficulty in determining what is real and what isn't. They don't want to have to make that effort. And I can appreciate Congress' attempts to help them.
I just don't think it's going to work this time either.
Posted by iain at 06:22 PM
ABCNEWS.com : Florida Transsexual Man Granted Custody: A judge granted child custody to a transsexual man involved in a bitter divorce case and ruled Friday that the man is legally male under Florida law, even though he was born female. Circuit Judge Gerard O'Brien said the ruling, the first of its kind in the state, meant Michael Kantaras could legally adopt his wife's teenage son and be listed as the father of a child she conceived during their marriage.
How very interesting.
Although, you know, I've never quite understood how you could bring up the "Invalid marriage" argument in a case like this. Either you thought the marriage was valid when you married, in which case the argument doesn't apply, or you knew perfectly well that it wasn't, in which case you have committed fraud. (And depending on what you did with your income taxes, potentially some very nasty penalties would be lurking in the mists, too.)
Aside from that, the case is certain to be appealed. I rather suspect it will be overturned by either the Florida court of appeals and/or the Florida Supreme Court. (Assuming that either party has the funds to continue on with appeals; since there's no money directly involved, this is the sort of thing that gets hideously expensive very quickly.) I somehow just can't see this decision surviving in the Florida courts. If, by some miracle, it does survive, I would expec the Florida legislature to move to limit it.
Posted by iain at 05:03 PM
Interesting to see how different outlets present different things, isn't it?
From USA Today: USATODAY.com - Vaccine for AIDS appears to work: Nearly two decades after the discovery of the AIDS virus, researchers today report for the first time that an AIDS vaccine can prevent infection but with sharply different success rates depending on race. The first full-scale human trial of the vaccine, AIDSVAX, indicates that although the vaccine failed to protect whites and Hispanics, it appears to be effective in blacks, though the number of black volunteers was small. Blacks account for half of all new infections in the USA, federal statistics show.
And then we have the New York Times (registration required).
Large Trial Finds AIDS Vaccine Fails to Stop Infection: The first AIDS vaccine ever to be tested in a large number of people has failed, over all, to protect them from infection with the virus that causes the disease, the company that makes it, VaxGen, said today. The vaccine did, however, seem to significantly lower the infection rate among African-Americans and other non-Hispanic minorities participating in the trial, the company said. Its researchers called this finding totally unexpected and said they were at a loss to explain why there would be ethnic differences in response to the vaccine. They conceded that the findings, though statistically significant, might change if the vaccine were tested among more members of minorities, who were only a small fraction of the people in the trial.
For some reason, USA Today has something invested in putting the best possible face on the results, while the Times has something invested in appearing more cynical.
The study also highlights the ethical problems of doing this type of vaccine study, although nobody would put it quite that way.
Two-thirds of the participants were given a series of seven shots over three years, while the other third were given the same number of placebo injections. The goal was to see if the people who received the vaccine would have a lower rate of infection. In the overall population of participants, 5.8 percent of those who received the placebo became infected, compared with 5.7 percent of those who received the vaccine. The difference was not statistically significant. But among black, Asian and other minorities the rate of infection was only 3.7 percent in the vaccinated group, compared with 9.9 percent in the placebo group.
Interestingly, one of the fears of doing this type of study does not seem to have come to pass. Apparently, people did not change their sexual behavior, expecting that they were protected by the vaccine.
All of the participants were counseled on safer sex and other ways to protect themselves from infection with H.I.V. Some critics of vaccine trials have said they feared that participants might abandon such protective measures out of a false hope that they had received a vaccine that would protect them. This study found no evidence for these fears.
Of course ... that would seem to mean that we can expect a roughly 10% rate of HIV infection in higher-risk groups as a reasonable standard, which is sort of appalling, really.
The part of the test on 2500 drug-injecting Thais (how on earth did they come up with that sample?) should, if nothing else, partially answer the question on sample size for Asians.
Posted by iain at 12:03 PM
"Our Core Values, Integrity first, Service before self and Excellence in all we do, set the common standard for conduct across the Air Force. These values inspire the trust which provides the unbreakable bond that unifies the force. We must practice them ourselves and expect no less from those with whom we serve."
--- General Michael E. Ryan, Chief of Staff, United States Air Force
Apparently, these values are not shared by everyone in the Air Force Academy.
Honor, Code, Betrayal At Air Force Academy: ..... The dream was to be and Air Force officer and to fly jets. The Air Force Academy is the dream of thousands of the nation's brightest and most patriotic young people who embrace the regimented military lifestyle and pledge themselves to a code of honor. But behind the facade of spit polish and sharp creases is a culture that many women found to be accepting of rape and sexual assault.[...] It's a culture where a male cadet can be expelled for lying but can receive only a minor reprimand for date rape. [...] It's a culture where women who report a crime are themselves targeted by their peers and the administration for expulsion......
After acknowledging that it had a problem with sexual assault a full ten years ago, the Air Force set up a program to assist the women who were assaulted. Yet, somehow, the head of that service does not know how many sexual assaults are actually reported by cadets. Yes, one is too many. However, if you know how many cases are reported, at the very least, it would be an indicator of how well you're training your men that this is unacceptable. Given that the women are terrified to report assaults because they know that they will be punished and the men won't, I would imagine that the men are being taught very well indeed. They're being taught that while lying is punishable by expulsion, raping women is just something that soldiers do, and that the women are just supposed to take it.
You wonder about a culture that says that raping the people who are supposed to be your colleagues, your fellow soldiers-in-arms ... that this is acceptable behavior.
TheDenverChannel.com - 7News Investigates - Allard May Ask For Senate Hearing Into In AFA Rape Case: Sen. Wayne Allard said Friday he is ready to ask for a full hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee in the case of alleged sexual assaults at the Air Force Academy. This, in the wake of a 7NEWS investigation which has brought to light cases of female cadets who said that after they reported rape and sexual assault by fellow cadets, they were punished for coming forward. Allard said Friday that 12 current and former female AFA cadets have contacted his office to report that they were sexually assaulted at the academy and then ostracized by colleagues and reprimanded by the administration for reporting what happened.
The other part of this problem is that now, the Air Force Academy is responsible for investigating itself, and the Air Force hierarchy at the Pentagon is also investigating. The Air Force is responsible for determining whether or not it has itself punished women for being violated. How on earth is the Air Force expected to produce a fair and accurate report of this? More importantly WHY would it be expected to do so? Surely the officers in charge knew and approved of this; if they didn't, they damn well should have, and in either case should not be in charge of the Academy itself, much less of the investigation thereof.
Posted by iain at 03:22 PM
U.S. Seeks 9 Votes From U.N. Council to Confront Iraq: The United States and Britain have decided that their strategy in the United Nations will be to try to persuade 9 of the 15 members of the Security Council to back a new resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq, and then to challenge France, Russia or China to veto the will of the Council's majority, administration officials said today.
... Well, that's an alarmingly stupid strategy.
Does the administration seriously think that France wouldn't veto the resolution just because a resolution might have nine votes? France just told more than half of Europe that it should shut up and be guided by them. Why on earth would they let something as petty as a marginal majority stop them? To be sure, in the face of a majority, Russia and China might well abstain; they have somewhat less at risk, and neither of them is precisely averse to the US providing object lessons to their Muslim minorities. (Not that we would run around invading Russia or China; it's just the principle.) France, however, would exuberantly, gladly, enthusiastically slap that veto down, and then would get up and do a little apache dance on the table to punctuate the point.
And, to be perfectly fair, we haven't let even opposing supermajorities in the Security Council stop us from exercising a veto. Many many times, we've been on what would normally be the losing side of an argument, except that we simply exercised the veto, and that ended it. It's entirely likely that the rest of the council would simply view this as tit-for-tat repayment, as far as the vote itself goes.
So, really, if this is the administration's UN strategy, it's alarmingly stupid. Besides, how many carrots can they possibly offer all those wavering countries? Apparently all major countries concerned are offering lavish bribes -- er, pardon me, aid and fiscal incentives to go along with one position or another. And granted, the US is in a somewhat better position than France and Germany to offer extravagantly lavish bribes. (Of course, that's likely to run into severe Congressional resistance; when you are running a massive budget deficit is no time to be giving away what money you do have.)
Posted by iain at 02:16 PM
dear mr postmanners / February 21, 2003
Posted by iain at 12:06 AM
Bookseller Purges Files to Avoid Searches: Some booksellers are troubled by a post-Sept. 11 federal law that gives the government broad powers to seize the records of bookstores and libraries to find out what people have been reading. Bear Pond Books in Montpelier will purge purchase records for customers if they ask, and it has already dumped the names of books bought by its readers' club.
HA.
I wonder how many booksellers will take this route.
For that matter, I wonder how many booksellers actually retain the information in the first place. It's not necessary for inventory control or anything else, really. And if you're the sort of organization that sells names and addresses, there's no pratcical reason to keep the book information attached.
Many libraries already do this sort of thing; once a book has been returned, although the number of times it's circulated remains atteched to the record or the book itself, there's no circulation information on your record, other than maybe the total number of items checked out over time.
U.S. Attorney Peter Hall played down concern that government agents might soon be darkening the door at Vermont bookstores and libraries. "Only in very rare and limited and supervised circumstances would anyone be seeking that sort of business information from a bookseller, a library or a business of any sort," Hall said.
And that would be a flat out lie.
Such record requests from bookstores were becoming more frequent even before the attacks. Kramer's Books in Washington won a court order blocking independent counsel Kenneth Starr from getting records of purchases by Monica Lewinsky during his investigation of the sex scandal involving President Clinton. And the Colorado Supreme Court ruled last year for a Denver book store in its fight against a subpoena of purchase records by a defendant in a drug case
If the requests were becoming more frequent -- if unsuccessful -- before the Patriot Act was passed, just imagine how many more of them there have been since then. And, of course, you can only imagine, since the government has decided in its wisdom that such subpoenas may no longer be fought or publicized.
What I really wonder is how long it will be before Our Lord High Minister of Injustice petitions Congress to make such purges illegal. After all, it's a relatively simple thing to pass a law to require those who collect information to retain it, and to require those who don't to start collecting.
Posted by iain at 10:02 PM
CNN.com - Chirac lashes out at 'new Europe' - Feb. 18, 2003: French President Jacques Chirac has attacked eastern European countries hoping to join the EU, saying they missed a great opportunity to "shut up" when they signed letters backing the U.S. position on Iraq. France has been a leading voice against Washington's press for war in Iraq to disarm President Saddam Hussein and is insisting weapons inspectors in the country be given more time. But 13 countries either set to join the EU or in membership talks have signed letters supporting the United States. Chirac said: "These countries have been not very well behaved and rather reckless of the danger of aligning themselves too rapidly with the American position. It is not really responsible behavior. It is not well brought-up behavior. They missed a good opportunity to keep quiet. I felt they acted frivolously because entry into the European Union implies a minimum of understanding for the others," Chirac said. Chirac called the letters "infantile" and "dangerous," adding: "They missed a great opportunity to shut up."
My goodness.
You know, heads of state do not often tell other heads of state (or their foreign ministers) that their proper role in things is to just shut the hell up. Even Rumsfeld, for all his "old Europe" commentary, did not say that what France and Germany should have done was to "shut up." He just said that they were "a problem", which was just about as insulting. I daresay that since Rumsfelt was complimentary -- in his peculiar way -- to eastern Europe, Chirac felt it incumbent upon himself to insult them in the grievous way that France and Germany had been insulted, so that they could all bind together.
Apparently, Chirac feels that France is the head of the European Union (this, of course, would be a surprise to Brussels, as well as to Greece, which currently holds the presidency of the EU) , and as such, has the right to dictate to other independent countries. Unfortunately for him, they are independent countries and get rather testy about such things.
Below follows a pure digression from the main point.
The European Union is, frankly, something of a puzzlement, structurally, when you look at it from the outside. According to EUROPA The EU at a glance, apparently the EU's official public information site, the EU isn't meant to replace institutions or governments, yet countries cede sovereignty over certain institutions. How you manage a baroque combination of neither replacing institutions yet claiming sovereignty, I'm sure I don't know. Those are not really logically consistent positions. (A digression from the side note: as far as I can tell, the EU site contains no information whatsoever about the EU presidency. I'm sure it must be there, but it seems to be hidden deep inside.)
There is also a peculiar multiplication of the legislative and consultative structure. There's the Council of Europe, which seems to contain all European countries except Serbia and Montenegro (which seem to be "Special Guests", whatever that means), and Belarus. There's the Council of the European Union, from which the rotating EU presidency seems to be drawn. (And hey! a whole paragraph on said presidency!) There's the European Council, which the Heads of State or Government of the fifteen Member States of the European Union and the President of the European Commission. (Apparently, in EU terms, rather like the US Conference of Governors except that there technically aren't any US governors that could push The Button.) And there's the European Parliament.
The EU severely limits the authority and responsibilities of the EU president. The EU parliament is elected at five-year intervals, which is sensible enough, but according to the Hellenic EU Presidency site, the EU presidency itself rotates among the member states at six-month intervals. Seriously, what on earth can you possibly accomplish within six months? Even if the EU was set up along traditional parliamentary lines, where the president is the head of government and the prime minister is the head of state ... well, the EU doesn't seem to have a prime minister, for one thing. (I can't imagine most of the countries acceding to an EU prime minister with real authority and responsibility.) So, logically, the EU presidency must be more or less American-style, with combined responsibilities for both positions ... except with a six-month rotation, by the time you settle into the job well enough to understand all the responsibilities, they belong to someone else.
Seldom could an office have been more specifically designed to allow its holder to accomplish less. Even the governors of our Southern states -- which have notoriously weak governors, notoriously strong lieutenant governors, and typically split voting for each position -- have more authority and responsibility than that. But then, they get to hang around longer, too.
Ideally, it would seem, the roadmap for the Europeans is that the EU would eventually come to resemble the United States, in that they would have a unified foreign policy, and would agree on the proper use of the military of the component states -- maybe even have a common European military some years down the road. The problem with the roadmap is, they're starting very late in the game. The original 13 colonies of the US had, in fact, a very short existence as independent states under the Articles of Confederation, only about 12 years. Texas, as the Republic of Texas, is the only other part of the US that ever had any sort of independent existence where it had to deal with foreign affairs and military defense and all the things that nations normally handle. Europe's states have had, by contrast, hundreds, sometimes more than a thousand years of existence as independent states. They've gotten quite used to it. Thus, there isn't really a parallel between, say, the state of Illinois and the national state of Spain. Illinois does not have, and has never had, its own foreign policy, its own military defense (the state's national guard is essentially a state police force writ large, although there are both national and state administrative links). Spain, by contrast, has had a king or two, has had its own independent army, has had its own foreign policy. And trying to combine all of those elements into a unitary state, speaking with one voice, with one military, sharing the same interests ... it's going to be incredibly difficult. It's going to be made even more difficult if France insists on the concept that the EU exists to oppose the US, since most of the component states of the EU have no desire to oppose the US in the way that France seems to want. (And at the moment, most of Europe seems to like France little more than the US does.)
Posted by iain at 04:27 PM
Google buys blog tool developer | CNET News.com: Internet search company Google will acquire Pyra Labs, the handful of Web developers who helped jump-start the personal publishing phenomenon known as blogging, Pyra's founder said Sunday.
Well, that was ... unexpected.
Wasn't it only a couple years ago that it looked like Pyra was going to collapse? And now it's all acquired and everything.
Posted by iain at 10:11 PM
Media Relations: scare tactics/ February 17, 2003
Posted by iain at 10:05 PM
(NY Times, registration required) Florida Ponders Fate of Historic 2000 Ballots: The contested 2000 presidential election has largely faded into people's hazy memories of pre-9/11 America. But the Florida ballots are still there, nearly six million punch cards and their chads, stowed in boxes, stacked on pallets, wrapped in plastic. The state has kept them for two years, as federal law requires. Now that the time is up, a pressing question for state officials here is: What do we do with these things?
"How about a bonfire?" said Theresa LePore, the Palm Beach County supervisor of elections, who designed the butterfly ballots that led many Al Gore supporters to vote for Pat Buchanan.
You know ... if I were one of the Florida officials in charge of that mess, I can't imagine that I would want to keep those things around for historical reasons. Or, really, any reason whatsoever. That bonfire concept would just sound mighty tempting .....
Posted by iain at 01:21 PM
Yorn desh born,
der ritt de gitt der gue,
Orn desh, dee born desh, de umn
bork! bork! bork!
The Lord High Minister of Injustice strikes again, and often.
FindLaw's Writ - Kreilkamp: The Attorney General Forces Federal Prosecutors to Break Promises: Two weeks ago, Attorney General John Ashcroft rejected a recommendation by federal prosecutors that the Department of Justice decline to seek the death penalty against defendant Jairo Zapata. The prosecutors, however, had already signed a deal with Zapata: If he provided information about his drug lord bosses, they would recommend that a judge not sentence him to death. Moreover, Zapata had already provided the information, thus putting himself in danger of reprisals. Yet thanks to Ashcroft, they were forced to break the deal. [...] Is it really acceptable to lie to people when their lives hang in the balance? Ashcroft seems to believe so. [...] It's not the first time. Since taking office, Ashcroft has tripled the pace set by his predecessor, Janet Reno, of rejecting such prosecutorial recommendations. So far, he has done so in 28 cases, according to research by the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project in Kentucky. The Counsel found that Reno only did so in 26 cases in a five-year period during her tenure as Attorney General.
Here is something even more disturbing: In more than 90% of Ashcroft's recommendation rejections, the defendant has been a minority group member. Also troubling is evidence that Ashcroft's rejections are political, not based on the merits of the prosecution: Nearly half involve trials in Connecticut and New York, two states that have been resistant to applying the death penalty.
Finally, there's an important difference between Ashcroft and Reno, other than the rate of recommendation rejections. Available evidence indicates that Reno did not reject recommendations embodied in a signed agreement. Ashcroft, however, has done just that. Indeed, the Kentucky Death Penalty Project says that he's done so in seven cases - suggesting that ignoring signed agreements is a deliberate pattern.
So let's summarize Ashcroft's behavior, shall we? Let's shall. (1) Death penalty good. Apply early and often. (2) The government's word, as embodied by signed agreements, is meaningless. (3) Those anti-death penalty states need to be forced to execute people, if necessary. (4) Killing minority defendants: it's a good thing!
Apparently, states' rights is the sort of thing that he only supports when the rights in question are those he wants to support.
(And all that said, and given that I loathe the man and the ground he slithers on ... even I can recognize that the last paragraph of the Findlaw's Writ article is thoroughly unfair.)
Posted by iain at 12:31 AM
MSN Health - Shaving Frequently Linked to More Sex, Longer Life: A clean-shaven face may be the sign of a happy and healthy man. A new study suggests that men who don't shave daily have fewer orgasms and are more likely to suffer a stroke than stubble-free men. [...] One-fifth of the men who didn't shave daily were less likely to be married, had sex less often, and were more likely to smoke, have heart problems, and work in manual, blue-collar occupations than other men.
.... Well, all-righty, then!
I'm guessing that this means that women don't like their men unshaven, since it seems to correlate (somewhat weakly) with marital/relationship status.
Men who didn't shave every day were nearly 70% more likely to have suffered a stroke during the study than others. And that increase in risk did not go away after adjusting for other lifestyle factors known to affect stroke risk. Researchers say hormone levels may be at least one possible explanation behind the link between shaving and stroke risk. Low levels of testosterone and high levels of estrogen produce slower beard growth, and these hormones may also play a role in the development of heart disease and stroke.
Wait, that doesn't make sense. Lower testosterone levels and higher estrogen levels (to a point) tend to produce lower blood pressure and less heart disease. If those factors also mean that you shave less often because your beard doesn't grow as much, then wouldn't it also say that those who shave less often are healthier in that one aspect?
A puzzlement.
Posted by iain at 05:17 PM
(NY Times, registration required) Conferees in Congress Bar Using a Pentagon Project on Americans: ...... House leaders agreed with Senate fears about the threat to personal privacy in the Pentagon program, known as Total Information Awareness. So they accepted a Senate provision in the omnibus spending bill passed last month, said Representative Jerry Lewis, the California Republican who heads the defense appropriations subcommittee. Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, the senior Democrat on the subcommittee, said of the program, "Jerry's against it, and I'm against it, so we kept the Senate amendment." Of the Pentagon, he said, "They've got some crazy people over there."
Nice that Congress has actually deigned to notice that. Unfortunately, accepting the Wyden amendment is a very small step, and means that Congress' recent streak of political cowardice remains intact.
..... The negotiators did agree to extend from 60 to 90 days the time the Defense Department would have to provide a detailed report to Congress, including its costs, goals, impact on privacy and civil liberties and prospects for successes against terrorists. Unless that report was filed, all further research on the project would have to stop immediately. But President Bush could keep the research alive by certifying to Congress that a halt "would endanger the national security of the United States."
Does anyone think that the president will not send that letter perhaps ten seconds after the omnibus budget reconciliation act is passed? Anyone? ... Yeah, that's pretty much what any sane person would think. And the administration can completely gut the amendment by simply transferring TIA out of the Pentagon (and away from Poindexter -- really, what on EARTH were they thinking?) into Homeland Security, where it would logically belong anyway.
And, to be sure, the Wyden amendment, even with the letter, only allows research, and not the use of TIA against Americans.
Assuming that the project comes into existence, anyone think that the Pentagon or Justice or Homeland Security or any department where the project winds up will be in the least deterred by laws saying, "Don't use it against Americans!" Anyone? .... anyone?
Posted by iain at 11:13 AM
Scientists in Uganda begins tests on HIV/AIDS vaccine designed for East African strain of the disease: Ugandan researchers have begun testing an AIDS vaccine specifically designed for a strain of the disease common in East Africa, the lead researcher said Wednesday. Dr. Ponsiano Kaleebu said his team at the government-run Uganda Virus Research Institute gave two Ugandan volunteers the first injection Monday. The vaccine is a two-step process that involves first delivering the genetic information on HIV, then using a weakened smallpox virus to carry the information to cells. It does not contain HIV and so cannot cause infection with the virus that causes AIDS.
Posted by iain at 11:00 AM
Shirky: Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality
Who knew weblogs even had economics?
That said, the article conflates journals with topical weblogs, which confuses the results. Personal journals are more frequently intended to foster conversation between and connection with "friends" (anyone who looks at one or two or more LiveJournal journals will understand that the term is to be used somewhat loosely) whereas a topical weblog (wave to the nice people!) is more usually meant to pontificate (minus the lovely pointy hat) to the masses. Even if the masses are just one or two occasional passers-by. (They also don't necessarily seem to become conversational.)
Posted by iain at 02:21 PM
Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Washington to cut bases in Germany as its forces head east: Washington is planning to cut and downgrade its network of military bases in Germany and to transfer some its European military assets to the new pro-American Nato allies of eastern Europe, according to diplomats and officials on both sides of the Atlantic. [...] While such a decision is seen as too important to have been provoked by the worsening dispute between Washington and Berlin over Iraq, the momentum for moving out of Germany is also being increased by the US-German estrangement.
And as the momentum increases, the estrangement will no doubt increase. Although Germany is doing a really spectacular job of increasing the estrangement itself, with a bit of help from France. (France?) (Purely a side note: an astoundingly neutral presentation of a US/Europe issue, for the Guardian.)
The interesting thing is that even though there really is no need to keep American troops in Germany -- the country is now officially surrounded by NATO countries, whatever that's worth; any invader (who would invade?) would need to go through several layers of NATO just to get to them -- the Germans probably could, until recently, have persuaded the US to scale back the extent of the decampment from Germany. After all, even though there was no real need for the soldiers to remain in Germany, there was also no need or desire on the part of Washington to do real damage to the economy of several German provinces.
Then.
The Pentagon ordered all non-essential investment in the sprawling US bases in Germany frozen last month, funds amounting to tens of millions of pounds, according to a German MP who said he saw the secret instructions from Washington to US military commanders in Germany. "All avoidable US investments in Germany have been stopped on the orders of the Pentagon," the Christian Democrat MP, Michael Billen, told the newspaper Welt am Sonntag. His Rhineland-Palatinate constituency in south-west Germany includes major US air bases, venues that have grown into American communities over the past half century. Mr Billen said that US officials had told him that the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, wanted the spending frozen since it was not clear whether the US forces' strength of around 100,000 would remain on that scale.
THAT decision, however, was almost certainly a direct result of the recent US/Germany rift. Most of the spending done on those bases and soldiers is mandated; the money is allocated by Congress to the Pentagon for specific things, so this is part of the relatively little discretionary money that the Pentagon can spend on such things (although note that saying that it's "relatively little" money doesn't mean that it's not a fair amount of change, so to speak). Thus, the administration can use it to send the rather pointed message to Germany that things are reaching the point where the US will simply shrug and allow Schroeder's government to explain to its voters why it did so very much to encourage the US to depart.
Incidentally, there also seems to be a rather significant divide in the German parliament on the issue: in the article German Politicians Spar Over NATO Veto, Rainer Arnold of the government party states that NATO is fine, really, just fine (and, most startlingly, that Turkey will get its defense equipment from NATO -- I suspect that his prime minister and France were a tad surprised to see that in print), while Christian Schmidt of the opposition notes that the government position threatens both NATO and the EU because now everybody knows that Germany cannot be relied on.
U.S. Military in Europe May Change (Washington Post, February 9, 2003): The United States is contemplating radically changing the nature of its military presence in Europe, moving from a "garrison" system of big, heavily staffed Cold War-era bases to a more expeditionary posture in which troops would be deployed to the continent on a rotational basis, said members of the U.S. delegation flying home yesterday from an annual conference on security issues in Munich.
The plain fact is, from a purely military point of view, it makes relatively little sense to keep your force projection core in a country entirely surrounded by allies. It makes more sense to put them in a forward position, where they can serve as some sort of tripwire. Of course, these days, the only place in Europe -- or places pretending to be Europe -- that you can find a tripwire would be in the Balkans -- and we're already there in somewhat larger numbers than we'd like, thanks -- or on Turkey's southeastern border.
Pointless rebellion has taken NATO to the brink (The Scotsman, February 11, 2003): ..... NATO, it was being argued, is dead, torn apart by a transatlantic split. In its place, a new truth: when it comes to defence, Europeans and Americans neither share the same view, nor occupy the same world. This, however, makes two crucial mistakes. NATO was always a psychological tool, never a military one. It cannot have "died" as a means of fighting aggression; it was never alive in this way in the first place. Its history has been one of armed inactivity. Secondly, France’s rebellion is not succeeding. It has been raising the pacifist standard while dragging an economically enfeebled Germany on its coat-tails. To its shock, only Belgium has answered its rallying cry. The other 16 NATO members have steadfastly rejected the Franco-German attempt to exert de facto control over Europe’s foreign policy. The two countries, with their Belgian sidekick, are alone.
The plan they have vetoed was not even one for attack. Lord Robertson asked to send equipment to let the poorly defended Turkey stand up to an attack from Iraq’s northern front. The package involved Patriot air defence missiles, NATO early-warning planes and several units intended to cope with the chemical and biological warfare which Saddam Hussein is expected to have. In a relatively basic and defensive NATO task, Lord Robertson had failed. This has raised an ugly question. If it cannot agree to defend an ally in time of forthcoming war, what is it for?
A question many people have been asking for quite some time now. It makes no strategic or political sense -- even if you're raising what the Scotsman (with a certain sarcasm, I think) calls "the pacifist standard" -- and since when could any country even pretending to be a "great power" afford a pacifist standard? -- why on earth wouldn't you help a theoretical ally protect itself? It doesn't require any sort of commitment or support of the invasion of Iraq to state that a country with which you have been militarily aligned, off and on, for around 50 years, should be given what it needs to protect itself, just in case the worst happens.
Mr Bush has forged a new policy of pre-emption because his country was hit on 11 September, 2001 and forced to update its world defence view. Europe has, so far, not been hit. In its old world order there is no conventional threat and, therefore, no reason to act. [...] Unlike France and Germany, John Howard has been forced to think about the issue - it was mainly Australian tourists who were slain by the al-Qaeda bomb in Bali. This is a grim trend emerging from the 11 September, and it is one which covers few countries in glory. Only countries directly affected by al-Qaeda are recognising the hard decisions needed to tackle Islamo-fascism.
A few problems with that position: (1) The other 16 countries in NATO which are supporting the defense of Turkey -- which, leave us not forget, is actually the issue at hand -- have not been, in any comparably significant way, hit by "Islamo-fascism" (or, to put it more reasonably, significant terrorist attacks); (2) In this context, "Islamo-fascism" pulls together two things which ought to be left entirely separate. It's really only incidental that Saddam is a Muslim; the relevant issue is that he's nuttier than a fruitcake when it comes to the issue of his personal power over his country. And yes, his dictatorship is more or less fascistic. (The US intelligence community, even after Powell's speech to the UN, continues to doubt any real connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq exists.)
Mr Chirac’s conscientious objection would be easier to accept if France agreed to sign several oil deals with Baghdad, so it directly profits if Saddam stays in power. And, on the quiet, Mr Chirac has deployed the Charles de Gaulle aircraft to the Middle East - poised to join in when US cruise missiles hit the bunkers of the Republican Guard. If his NATO ploy fails, France still wants in on the oil action.
What an ... interesting supposition to come out of a European country. (BTW, the word "carrier" should be inserted after "Charles de Gaulle aircraft" -- the Charles de Gaulle is France's aircraft carrier.)
Posted by iain at 11:44 AM
Potomac Watch: Activists take on Russell Building over racism: Activist Dick Gregory wants the Senate's prime office building -- the Russell Senate Office Building -- to get a new name because it honors an avowed racist. Naming the building after Sen. Richard Russell is an "insult and an indignity" to black Americans, Gregory contends. He and other African American leaders plan to speak at black churches nationwide during February -- Black History Month -- to drum up support for their name-change campaign.
You know .... although I would not myself be averse to seeing the Russell building's name changed ... surely there are more important issues to be spending one's political capital on. Especially now that next year's budget proposal is out and one can see all the things that the administration plans to do. (Or not do, as the case may be.)
One wonders how much agitation there was back in 1972 when the building was being named. After all, that was a time when Congress was somewhat friendlier to hearing such protests than they are now. (Up to a point. Four years later would have been even more propitious, but nothing seems to have happened then, either.)
Mind, even for his era, Senator Russell seems to have been unusually vile:
In 1964, Russell offered a bill to establish a federal racial relocation commission that would "more equitably distribute" African Americans throughout the country so every state had about 10 percent of U.S. blacks. [...] When President Truman decided after World War II to end segregation of the armed forces, Russell tried to block it. He took to the floor of the Senate with charts to demonstrate how African Americans had "appallingly high rates of venereal disease," and said mingling the races in the armed forces would expose white people to this health threat. He also successfully blocked anti-lynching legislation in the Senate.
(One wonders, precisely, how commingled races in the armed forces could expose white people to this "health threat". I suppose it's possible that they could have been going to the same prositutes -- not that our soldiers would do any such thing, of course -- but then, it's kind of hard not to say, "You know, unless you're in Nevada, if you go to a prostitute and don't use any sort of protection, you're likely to catch something. And how can you tell how they got it, anyway?"
The only alternative to getting it from prostitutes is, of course, from each other .....)
Apparently, all you have to do is serve in Congress long enough, and sooner or later, they'll name something after you, completely ignoring what your record of service actually contains. One wonders what they'll name after good ol' Strom or Jesse or Teddy. (Oh, hush. He may be a liberal whose politics I generally like, but that doesn't mean that Ted Kennedy doesn't have some spectacularly reprehensible things in his background. Although, that said, most of them don't seem to have been conducted in the well of the Senate itself.)
"We're fixing to educate people all the way across the country," said Gregory. "Most people don't even know who Richard Russell was or that there's a building here named after him. Once the people become aware of it, the name change will happen real quick."
No ... you know, I don't believe it will. Mostly because people will look at the issue, say, "Well, yuck ... but hey, what about this war thingy? And why if the economy is getting better did my company just cut 10,000 jobs? And the EPA just said that the chemical company next door could start ignoring most of the clean water act, what's left of it." There are just bigger and more directly important issues out and about at the moment.
I have always applauded African-American activist Dick Gregory in his great drive for racial equality. But I part company with him on his new cause -- renaming the Russell Senate Office Building because it honors a long-gone, unreconstructed racist. [...] It is also true that the Lott affair reflects a willingness to re-examine our sorry past in dealing with minorities. That incident shows we do not tolerate such blatant bigotry in current leaders. But it does not mean we should go back and rename every building, monument, highway and bridge honoring our past heroes. [...] Russell's hammerlock on racial legislation was broken, and now, nearly four decades later, his name is not widely known outside Capitol Hill and his home state. The country has moved on. So should Gregory. For all his efforts to demonize Russell, he has not succeeded in getting one senator to support his "Change the Name" campaign. He should keep pressing his courageous struggle against America's racial divide, but he would accomplish more by looking forward, not back.
All of us who believe in equality could support him in that.
Critics say Justice's planned expansion of Patriot Act would increase spying, restrict data: The Justice Department is preparing to expand the 2001 Patriot Act to increase surveillance within the United States while restricting access to information and limiting judicial review, a nonprofit government watchdog group asserted Friday. [...] Among other things, it would prohibit disclosure of information regarding people detained as terrorist suspects and prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from distributing "worst-case scenario" information to the public about a nearby private company's use of chemicals. In addition, the measure would create a DNA database of "suspected terrorists;" force suspects to prove why they should be released on bail, rather than have the prosecution prove why they should be held; and allow the deportation of U.S. citizens who become members of or help terrorist groups.
Justice Dept. Drafts Sweeping Expansion of Anti-Terrorism Act (Center for Public Integrity Special Report, February 7, 2003): ..... “We haven’t heard anything from the Justice Department on updating the Patriot Act,” House Judiciary Committee spokesman Jeff Lungren told the Center. “They haven’t shared their thoughts on that. Obviously, we'd be interested, but we haven’t heard anything at this point.” Senior members of the Senate Judiciary Committee minority staff have inquired about Patriot II for months and have been told as recently as this week that there is no such legislation being planned.
Mark Corallo, deputy director of Justice’s Office of Public Affairs, told the Center his office was unaware of the draft. “I have heard people talking about revising the Patriot Act, we are looking to work on things the way we would do with any law,” he said. “We may work to make modifications to protect Americans,” he added. When told that the Center had a copy of the draft legislation, he said, “This is all news to me. I have never heard of this.”
(The CPI special report contains a link to the full 12MB Adobe Acrobat text of the draft bill.)
Apparently, it's the entire concept of that whole pesky "Constitution" thing that's slipping under the administration's radar. Having successfully curtailed many civil liberties with the Patriot Act, they're now coming after as many more as they can. (I must admit that the provision regarding the EPA and chemical companies seems so thoroughly out of left field for the bill that one wonders what it's doing there.)
The various provisions are really impressive, in an appalling sort of way. Section 201 tries to put teeth behind the idea that the authorities wouldn't have to tell who was arrested, what they were arrested for, and where they were being held. This would constitute a direct contravention of the habeas corpus provisions of the Constitution. Section 202 is really a pointless effort to protect the chemical industry from disclosure; additionally, hiding the "worst case scenario" information means that any unaffected nearby hospitals might not have the information they would need to provide care to people affected by the chemicals. The Terrorist DNA database would be abused in a most impressive fashion, once it was up and running. After all, you can really only get DNA from people you have in custody -- legally, in any event.
The question really isn't so much about Justice reaching for all it can. After all, Ashcroft's dedication to defending his peculiar version of the Constitution -- minus that pesky bill of rights and the separation of church and state, and maybe the 14th and 15th Amendments and a few other things -- has never been in doubt. The question now is whether or not Congress will once again roll over and play dead for the administration. If there's no new domestic terrorist attack, even if there's war in Iraq, Congress may be disinclined to grant the administration such wide ranging powers. A foreign attack on US interests doesn't help Justice's desires; Justice's brief doesn't extend overseas, after all.
Justice has to be hoping that terrorists really will go after a few hotels in the next week or two.
Posted by iain at 08:51 PM
Faith-based initiatives quietly lunge forward (Christian Science Monitor, February 6, 2003): When the Senate failed last year to act on President Bush's signature "faith-based initiative," the White House did not give up. Bit by bit, through executive orders and changes in agency regulations, the administration has been carrying out the initiative anyway. [...] The most controversial proposal to date has come out of the Department of Housing and Urban Development: HUD has proposed a change in its rules to allow taxpayer money to be used for the construction, acquisition, or rehabilitation of houses of worship. Under the plan, the government would subsidize those portions of a building that would be used for social services, such as food pantries, counseling, or homeless shelters. Until now, HUD has been the only federal agency that explicitly forbade grants to religious groups. If the new rule is approved, after the public comment period ends in mid-March, that restriction would no longer apply.
You wonder what part of the doctrine of "separation of church and state" is completely slipping under the administration's radar. One can allow that permitting religious groups and organizations to compete with secular groups and organizations for federal grants would not seem to be a violation of the doctrine, although sometimes it may push it right to the edge. Surely, however, contributing to the building of houses of worship would seem on its face to be a direct and flagrant violation. After all, once a building is raised, you can't really dictate its use. It's fairly likely that most religious organizations would have multipurpose buildings, used for both religious and charitable purpose -- that's the way most smaller organizations work, after all, religious or otherwise. Untangling the religious use from the allowed charitable use would be almost impossible.
Posted by iain at 08:19 PM
Bimbo Contest - Barbie issues first public statement in wake of high court defeat. By Dahlia Lithwick ..... It is with a heavy chest that I learned of the Supreme Court's decision this week not to hear the appeal of my case against Aqua. I want to say for the record that I believe strongly in free speech and that for only $1.99 I will phone you or your child at home and speak freely to them about all things Barbie™. So call now. [...] I also want to assure you that despite our disappointment at the Supreme Court's ruling, the people at Mattel remain dedicated to the principle that Barbie™ is neither a bimbo nor a natural blonde. And that as long as I represent the company, Barbie will stand for purity, chastity, and innocence. And that Mattel's new line of Lingerie Barbies™ that stirred up all that controversy this past Christmas will continue to be sold and marketed with all the good taste and respect for childhood that makes Barbie™ the perfect gift for your toddler.
Posted by iain at 10:16 AM
