By SEWELL CHAN and KAREEM FAHIM
Published: July 22, 2005
The police last night began random searches of backpacks and packages brought into the New York City subways as officials expressed alarm about the latest bomb incidents in the London transit system. The searches, which will also include commuter rail lines, are not a response to a specific threat against the city, said Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who authorized the searches shortly before he announced them at a morning news conference.
The police have previously inspected bags at major events like parades and demonstrations, and the authorities in Boston conducted random baggage searches on commuter rail lines during the Democratic National Convention last year, but officials here could not recall a precedent for a broad, systematic search of packages in the New York City subways, which provide 4.7 million rides each weekday.
At some of the busiest of the city's 468 stations, riders will be asked to open their bags for a visual check before they go through the turnstiles. Those who refuse will not be permitted to bring the package into the subway but will be able to leave the station without further questioning, officials said.
Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly promised "a systematized approach" in the searches and said the basis for selecting riders for the checks would not be race, ethnicity or religion....
They won't be profiling on race or ethnicity.
Right.
And if you believe that one, there's some lovely swampland in Florida that I could show you...
Thing is, given the number of people who take the NY subways every day, there isn't any way they can meaningfully do random searches. (Practically speaking, with all the worst will in the world, they can't even meaningfully search profiled riders; there are just too many riders given the number of entry points and police.) The only way they're going to be able to feel that they're doing anything effective is to search, nonrandomly, the people who "look" like they might have ... something. Given that the police have already stated that anyone found with weapons or illegal drugs will be arrested, and the fact that very few terrorists are polite enough to put nametags on saying, "Hi! I'm (insert name here), a terrorist planning to blow up the Empire State building!" chances are very good that the program will turn into nothing more than an excuse to search for weapons and drugs.
City authorities say that the program will "deter would-be attackers and improve the public's confidence." First, it won't deter any "attacker" with a working brain cell;e blowing up the station itself is just as effective as blowing up the train, and they know perfectly well that the police will never have enough people to keep this up all that long. If they can't blow up a train station, they'll just refuse a search, go outside, and blow up a bus. Second, any perceived increase in safety is utterly alse, and does the public a disservice; they won't actually be any safer.
Well. We'll see what happens, won't we?
Posted by iain at 06:00 PM
It wasn't all that long ago that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit was on the cutting edge of the civil rights movement, a liberal pocket of scholars aggressively enforcing the Supreme Court's demand for speedy desegregation in the Deep South.
But things have changed mightily in 20 years. Today, the New Orleans-based appellate court is considered among the most conservative in the land -- but it is still at the center of politics and history. As both sides dig in for what is expected to a be contentious ideological struggle over a successor to Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court, five of the judges mentioned as possible nominees are on the 5th Circuit: Edith Brown Clement, Emilio M. Garza, Edith Hollan Jones, Priscilla R. Owen and Edward C. Prado.
"A court is made up of more that just individual judges. It has a tone or a mood. The fact that the president is looking at so many judges from the 5th Circuit tells us more or less what he may be looking for," said University of Pittsburgh law professor Arthur D. Hellman. "He may not want just a conservative judge, but one that comes from a conservative environment and is more likely to think in those terms."
The five judges will face varying degrees of opposition. Democrats say two, Jones and Garza, are unacceptable because the judges have denounced Roe v. Wade , the 1973 decision establishing a woman's right to an abortion. Clement has fewer opinions on social issues to parse, and Prado, who was appointed by Bush, is considered moderate by many Democrats.
The court -- which covers Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana -- is known for its independence, and the Supreme Court has reversed it in a number of high-profile cases. The high court has also openly rebuked the 5th Circuit in death penalty cases, signaling that the appeals court crossed the line in denying defendants' rights. [...] Theodore M. Shaw, the director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said it is "extraordinary" how many times the Supreme Court felt it necessary to chastise the 5th Circuit. "We are not talking about a liberal Supreme Court," he noted. "We're talking about a conservative Supreme Court that apparently became frustrated with the 5th Circuit's failure to meaningfully review criminal convictions for constitutional infirmities . . . cases involving prosecutorial misconduct, police misconduct, racial discrimination. Those problems were not being addressed by the 5th Circuit, so the Supreme Court had to step in."
Well.
I wonder how it works when someone gets elevated to the Court when it's on record that the people they're going to work with have little regard for their opinions.
I wouldn't think that Priscilla Owen is seriously being considered by the White House for the Supreme Court. The fight they had to get her onto the Circuit court would be as nothing compared to the fight they'd have over her for the Supreme Court. (The White House argument that, having confirmed her for the circuit, the Senate could hardly refuse to confirm her for the Supreme Court doesn't quite work; the Senate Democrats only confirmed her as part of that terribly ill-advised filibuster deal, and the Supreme Court was specifically excepted.) Prado is unlikely, since the Democrats have informed Bush that he could be confirmed. That leaves Jones, Garza and Clement. One so conservative that the Democrats would fight back hard if Bush pushed her forward, one who could become the first Hispanic on the court -- and who seems to believe in upholding previous Court decisions even when he doesn't much like it; one with almost no paper trail whatsoever.
The questions are: how much of a fight does Bush really want? how much does he want to make history? how devoted to his friend Alberto Gonzales is he, and how much does he want his friend on the court? is there any sense that, given that O'Connor was the first woman on the court, her seat should also go to a woman? (Note that, although everyone denied that it was a factor, there was tremendous pressure to make certain that Thurgood Marshall was succeeded by another black. Note also that, with Ginzburg on the Court, there will be much less pressure in that direction over O'Connor's seat. Unfortunately, Bush can't go for the two-fer by selecting an Hispanic woman; there don't seem to be any at the appropriate levels -- state supreme court or federal circuit of appeals -- under consideration.)
And, of course, how much does the administration need or want the confirmation to distract from the Karl Rove Follies of 2005? A relatively uncontroversial nominee, like Prado or perhaps Clement, will not sufficiently distract either Congress or the press.
Yes, an entertaining summer is ahead for all ... once Our Glorious Shrub gets around to making his decision.
Posted by iain at 11:27 AM
President Bush changed his stance today on his close adviser Karl Rove, stopping well short of promising that anyone in his administration who helped to unmask a C.I.A. officer would be fired. "If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration," Mr. Bush said in response to a question, after declaring, "I don't know all the facts; I want to know all the facts."
So.
Leaving aside the fact that Our Glorious Leader has moved the target from "if anyone was involved in releasing this information" to "if someone committed a crime" -- the question is fast becoming an issue of which parts of this administration will be prosecuted for commiting some sort of crime.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has collected at least 3,500 pages of internal documents in the last several years on a handful of civil rights and antiwar protest groups in what the groups charge is an attempt to stifle political opposition to the Bush administration.
The F.B.I. has in its files 1,173 pages of internal documents on the American Civil Liberties Union, the leading critic of the Bush administration's antiterrorism policies, and 2,383 pages on Greenpeace, an environmental group that has led acts of civil disobedience in protest over the administration's policies, the Justice Department disclosed in a court filing this month in a federal court in Washington.
The filing came as part of a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act brought by the A.C.L.U. and other groups that maintain that the F.B.I. has engaged in a pattern of political surveillance against critics of the Bush administration. A smaller batch of documents already turned over by the government sheds light on the interest of F.B.I. counterterrorism officials in protests surrounding the Iraq war and last year's Republican National Convention.
F.B.I. and Justice Department officials declined to say what was in the A.C.L.U. and Greenpeace files, citing the pending lawsuit. But they stressed that as a matter of both policy and practice, they have not sought to monitor the political activities of any activist groups and that any intelligence-gathering activities related to political protests are intended to prevent disruptive and criminal activity at demonstrations, not to quell free speech. They said there might be an innocuous explanation for the large volume of files on the A.C.L.U. and Greenpeace, like preserving requests from or complaints about the groups in agency files....
Now, hold it right there.
They truly want us to believe that they have over 3,000 pages that they've retained purely in reponse to consumer complaints.
Right.
Leaving aside the fact that they expect the public to be credulous enough to believe that crap, we're left with the statement "...as a matter of both policy and practice, they have not sought to monitor the political activities of any activist groups and that any intelligence-gathering activities related to political protests are intended to prevent disruptive and criminal activity at demonstrations, not to quell free speech." The first problem with that statement is that ACLU and Greenpeace do little else but political activity. It's pretty much impossible to either monitor or "gather intelligence" on those groups without monitoring political activity. Thus, Justice's actions, absent a specific criminal complaint, were perforce illegal.
The Justice Department is opposing the A.C.L.U.'s request to expedite the review of material it is seeking under the Freedom of Information Act, saying it does not involve a matter of urgent public interest, and department lawyers say the sheer volume of material, in the thousands of pages, will take them 8 to 11 months to process for Greenpeace and the A.C.L.U alone. The A.C.L.U., which went to court in a separate case to obtain some 60,000 pages of records on the government's detention and interrogation practices, said the F.B.I. records on the dozens of protest groups could total tens of thousands of pages by the time the request is completed.
"8 to 11 months to process for Greenpeace and the A.C.L.U alone." So just how many groups have they been observing, and how many pages of documents do they have in their guilty little hands? (Seriously, why on earth would the FBI ever care about an American Indian Movement group in Denver protesting Columbus Day? It wouldn't be a large protest. Where are the terrorist implications? What reason did the FBI have to even pay the slightest bit of attention?)
What we have, unfortunately, is an administration acting much like the Nixon administration ... and for much the same reasons. They're engaged in prosecuting a thoroughly unpopular war, facing a certain amount of upset over paranoid tactics at home. What they also have, which the Nixon administration really didn't, is certain knowledge that there will be further terrorist attacks both abroad and here. (I do not mean that the administration knows of specific attacks that will take place -- I mean that they know that attacks in general will take place -- as do any thinking persons -- although they don't know how or when. They know that they will likely be especially devastating, because despite being a very soft target, we're also a fairly distant target, and it's more difficult to obtain the materials needed within the US, or to get them outside and get them inside the US these days.) Couple that with an administration populated by ideologues and corporatists, and the actions of this administration can't possibly be considered even a little surprising. Revolting, appalling, disgraceful, possibly (probably) illegal, but not even a little unexpected by anyone paying attention.
Which, of course, most of the press seems not to have been. But that's another matter.
Posted by iain at 02:54 PM
Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate, refused yesterday to back off on his earlier statements connecting Boston's ''liberalism" with the Roman Catholic Church pedophile scandal, saying that the city's ''sexual license" and ''sexual freedom" nurtured an environment where sexual abuse would occur. "The basic liberal attitude in that area . . . has an impact on people's behavior," Santorum said in an interview yesterday at the Capitol. "If you have a world view that I'm describing [about Boston] . . . that affirms alternative views of sexuality, that can lead to a lot of people taking it the wrong way," Santorum said.
Santorum, a leader among Christian conservatives, was responding to questions about remarks he made three years ago on a website called Catholic Online. In those comments, Santorum said, "It is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political, and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm" of the clergy sexual abuse scandal.
The junior senator is chairman of the Senate Republican Conference and is considered a possible candidate for his party's presidential nomination in 2008, if he wins reelection to a third Senate term next year.
''I was just saying that there's an attitude that is very open to sexual freedom that is more predominant" in Boston, Santorum said yesterday. Reminded that the sexual abuse occurred across the country, Santorum said that ''at the time [in 2002], there was an indication that there was more of a problem there" in Boston....
So let me get this straight-ish:
The Catholic priest abuse problem was created by the liberal attitude in Boston. Despite the fact that it occurred both nationally and world-wide, with reports and trials across the country, in Ireland, in Austria, in Australia, and elsewhere. Despite the well-documented fact that Boston's problem got so bad because the cardinal in charge kept moving abusive priests around and not disclosing their abuse, hoping against evidence that they'd spontaneously clean up their act. Despite the fact that the Catholic Church itself has always railed against the liberalism he decries.
... Well, all-righty, then! Glad to have that cleared up!
Here's the thing. Let's suppose, just suppose, that this is meant to play to conservative voters in Pennsylvania in what is apparently becoming a fairly difficult re-election contest. Many Catholics are fairly conservative voters. Will it really do to offend them this profoundly? Surely he can pander to the Protestant religious right without insulting the Catholic religious right. It can't possibly be that difficult.
Posted by iain at 11:33 AM
According to Robert Novak and the Bad Politics weblog, Rehnquist is going to send his letter of retirement to Bush this weekend.
Bush is biggest obstacle to a conservative court
July 7, 2005
BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
Conservatives who have spent more than a decade planning for this moment to change the balance of power on the Supreme Court are reeling from blows delivered by two dissimilar political leaders: Edward M. Kennedy and George W. Bush. Sen. Kennedy has succeeded with the news media in establishing a new standard of "mainstream conservatism" for a justice. President Bush has put forth "friendship" as a qualification for being named to the high court.
Bush is by far the bigger obstacle in the way of a conservative court. While Kennedy's ploy presents a temporary problem, Bush's stance could be fatal. The right's morale was devastated by the president's comments in a USA Today telephone interview published on the newspaper's front page Tuesday: "Al Gonzales is a great friend of mine. When a friend gets attacked, I don't like it." Bush is a stubborn man, who sounded like he might really nominate Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in the face of deep and broad opposition from the president's own political base.
Adding to the tension is word from court sources that ailing Chief Justice William Rehnquist also will announce his retirement before the week is over. That would enable Bush to play this game: Name one justice no less conservative than Rehnquist, and name Gonzales, whose past record suggests he would replicate retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on abortion and possibly other social issues. Thus, the present ideological orientation of the court would be unchanged, which would suit the left just fine....
Rehnquist Stepping Down Friday
Bad Politiks weblog
Thursday, July 07, 2005
I just received a note from a friendly source suggesting that Rehnquist will announce his retirement tomorrow. Last Friday morning, this same person told me that O'Connor would step down (3-4 hours before it hit the AP wire)....
Judging from various reports, Bush really seems to want to nominate Gonzales to the court, both for historical reasons (he wants to nominate the first Hispanic) and because, heaven help us, Gonzales is his friend and he's upset about the attacks on Gonzales from both sides -- from liberals because of the torture memos, conservatives because it's thought Gonzales is moderate on abortion. If Rehnquist also retires, Bush could nominate Gonzales to replace O'Connor, and also a very conservative jurist to replace Rehnquist as chief. Or, if he wants to go for Big History, he could nominate Gonzales as chief, and the uberconservative whoever as a regular associate.
If there really is a second simultaneous vacancy, Bush will likely just nominate from outside the Court for the chief justice post. Otherwise, he's going to force the Senate through not one but three judicial confirmation hearings -- you have to be separately confirmed for chief justice if you're already on the Court -- and that would be an even bigger nightmare than this is shaping up to be.
Oh, the summer of love that is shaping to be in DC this year looks just fine, doesn't it? As Bush goes in search for what he's dreaming of, to ease the fire that within him burns (or that burns within the Conservative wallet, anyway), this love he's contemplating is worth the pain of waiting...
UPDATE, 4:21pm CT: according to various reports, Rehnquist doean't plan to announce his retirement today. Pity. I was so looking forward to the Summer of Senatorial Love.....
Posted by iain at 02:48 PM
French and South African AIDS researchers have called an early halt to a study of adult male circumcision to reduce HIV infection after initial results reportedly showed that men who had the procedure dramatically lowered their risk of contracting the virus.
The study's preliminary results, disclosed Tuesday by the Wall Street Journal, showed that circumcision reduced the risk of contracting HIV by 70 percent -- a level of protection far better than the 30 percent risk reduction set as a target for an AIDS vaccine.
According to the newspaper account, the study under way in Orange Farm township, South Africa, was stopped because the results were so favorable. It was deemed unethical to continue the trial after an early peek at data showed that the uncircumcised men were so much more likely to become infected.
All of the men in the study had been followed for a year, and half the men had been followed for the full 21 months called for in the original study design, according to the Wall Street Journal, which obtained a draft copy of the study. [...] Medical anthropologists began noticing as early as 1989 that the highest rates of HIV infection in Africa were occurring in regions of the continent where the predominant tribal or religious cultures did not practice circumcision. Adult HIV infection rates above 30 percent are found in Zimbabwe, Botswana, Swaziland and eastern South Africa, where circumcision is not practiced; yet HIV infection rates remain below 5 percent in West Africa and other parts of the continent where circumcision is commonplace.
Laboratory studies have found that the foreskin is rich in white blood cells, which are favored targets of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. So the theory is that men who are uncircumcised are much more likely to contract the virus during sex with an infected woman, and that the epidemic spreads when these newly infected men have sex with other women within their network of sexual partners....
Allowing that the issues are somewhat different, it will be interesting to see if these results have a sort of follow-on effect outside Africa in Asia and in the West. I wonder if they'll have difficulties in some of the African countries as well, since circumcision can be used as a sort of tribal or religious marker.
It will be interesting as well to see if it results in an uptick in infant circumcision in Europe, where traditionally such things simply aren't done, except for religious reasons among Muslims and Jews and a few other very small groups. And here in the US, circumcision has been on a very very slow downslide after peaking in the 1960s. Historically, circumcision was performed because it would reduce masturbation by deliberately reducing the sensitivity of the penis (HA! like an old scar you didn't even remember getting and couldn't feel all that much would deter the youth of America!) and because ... it was thought to "reduce social disease", ironically enough. (Some people tend to compare male circumcision to female circumcision, also called female genital mutilation, which tends to make others discount what they say. After all, female circumcision is quite specifically designed to prevent those women from feeling pleasure in sex by excising significant parts of the vagina and entire clitoris -- if you don't enjoy sex, you're not going to be unfaithful, are you? -- as well as the same sort of tribal and religious markers as male circumcision. The problem is, of course, that female circumcision tends to also carry with it not only a specific mutilatory intent absent from male circumcision, but also a much higher incidence of infection and death. But I digress.)
One possible reason for the reduction in the US circumcision rate is because people pointed out that there was, shall we say, quite clear evidence that circumcision didn't reduce masturbation, that there seemed to be no evidence whatsoever that it reduced disease, and that it inflicted pain on an infant -- typically, no anaesthetic is given during the brief surgery -- for no apparent reason whatsoever. (Peculiarly, in the United States, while the Northeast has had the highest rate of circumcision -- approximately 65-70% of all males -- the West, even today, has a sharply lower rate, approximately 30-45% over the years. A reflection of fewer hospitals and a different ethnic mix, perhaps.) Now that we have evidence that it does reduce disease, will that rate increase?
Another question that I wonder about -- and one that these studies could answer, if they're properly set up -- is whether or not circumcision might significantly reduce the rate of transmission of other diseases. After all, if it works for one, it might work for the others.
There are organizations in this country working to reduce the circumcision rate, viewing it as a form of both unanesthetized and painful surgery -- which it is -- and genital mutilation -- which, within a very strict definition of the word "mutilation", it might be. This argument is both that it's torture for the infant, and that it interferes with the sexual sensation of men. So the question for some parents may become: even allowing that all of this is true (and the jury is still somewhat out on the latter issue, if not the former) ... is it worth the reduced risk?
The question in Asia and Africa may be: is it worth taking on a primary marker of another ethnic group or religious group -- one you may have some reasons to dislike -- to reduce the risk of contracting HIV?
Posted by iain at 01:21 PM
